The Demon Lord

Peter Morwood

The Book of Years Series, Part Two

© Peter Morwood copyright 1984, 2017

Peter Morwood has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in the UK in 1984 by Century

This revised edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

Table of Contents

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

PREFACE

“…and did take enseizen of Dunrath-fortress, where was yslayen HARANIL, most Honourable of LORDES, and with him nygh-all of clan TALVALIN.

…which Exile was of four yeares. Upon his returning to Dunrath in company with RYNERT-KING and an hoste both of Horse and Foote, LORDE ALDRIC did by dyveres secret ways make essay to come unto ye citadel thereof, wherein was ye Necromancer Duergar Vathach. And there by poweres enstryven of that good Enchanter Gemmel, the same that did give him comfort in tyme of sore Distress, LORDE ALDRIC did bring Deathe most well-deserved to his foe and thus ykepen oath unto his Father HARANIL. And by HEAVENES grace (it is said) he did vanquish Kalarr cu Ruruc, who first fell and was yslayen at Baelen Fyghte but was restored unto lyfe for endoen of great Evill to this lande of ALBA…

Yet took LORDE ALDRIC no delight in Victory, enhaven rather exceeding Sadness that all folke of his Blood were no more, and to ye KING made declaration of soche sorrowful Memories as were in Dunrath. Now to the wonderment and great Amaze of all then setten him forth into ye Empyre of Drusul to find forgetfulness.

But some privy to ye KINGES counsels noise abroad that this LORDE was bidden thence for his own Honoures sake…”

Ylver Vlethanek an-Caerdur

The Book of Years, Cerdor

What is life, except

Excuse for death, or death but

An escape from life?

kailin-eir Aldric-erhan, ilauem-arluth Talvalin

PROLOGUE

The forest was immense, stretching from the Vreijek border to the eastern edge of sight in a single unbroken sweep of trees, defying belief by size alone, yet enforcing that same belief with its own huge reality. It wasn’t a part of the Imperial province known as the Jevaiden; it was the province. Few people lived there, for all the lush, abundant growth. A thin fringe of humanity dwelt along the edges, and some scattered villages had sprouted up a small way within, but nothing more. The forest’s reputation didn’t invite visitors.

Except, on this day, for two impudent, intrusive specks.

Though it was near midsummer and early evening, the forest was already growing dark. Thick, rain-swollen clouds overlaid the sky with their grey blanket, choking all heat and light from an invisible sun. Under the shadow of the trees, where a tang of pine resin scented the air, it was cool and still. Then a crash and clatter shattered that stillness as horses came at a gallop through the bracken into a clearing, where they skidded to a snorting, stamping halt.

There were two horses, a pack-pony, and two riders. One of them wore the greens and russets of a forester, his high-coloured face crossed by the crescent sweep of a heavy moustache. It was a cheery face, the sort where smiles were frequent, but not now. He was irritable, out of breath and in a mood where those smiles were far away.

“Satisfied? Content we’ve shaken them? If they were ever there at all.”

The other man said nothing. Wearing stark, unrelieved black and looking on his black horse like a part of the oncoming night, he gestured for silence and rose in his stirrups, head cocked to listen for sounds in the forest that were not sounds of the forest.

A crow cawed mocking comment and spread dark wings as it launched from a branch above him in a clattering flight across the clearing that ended violently. The horseman jerked a weapon from his saddle holster, tracked the bird for a moment and transfixed its body with a dart. It changed in mid-flight, as he suspected it might, but only from a living creature to a bundle of black feathers flung against a tree trunk near the ground.

“Lady Mother Tesh! It was a crow, Aldric! Only a crow!”

“I see that.” Aldric Talvalin’s voice was quiet compared to his excitable companion. “But I don’t like crows.” As he dismounted to recover his missile, the telek spring-gun still gripped in his left hand hushed any further criticism. So did the quick impatient glance from his eyes. They were halfway between grey and green, and they betrayed nothing of the thoughts behind them. If a man’s eyes were the windows to his soul, as philosophers claimed, someone had closed these shutters long ago. A long white scar ran down one cheek, reason perhaps for the weary cynicism he wore like a mask. Only those who knew him better knew the real reasons, far more than a scar and far harder to explain in a few words.

“And Youenn,” he continued in the same soft voice, “I won’t tell you again. Within the Empire I’m no longer Aldric Talvalin.”

He was no longer so many things, despite regaining all of them with a great deal of blood. He had spilled it with the taiken longsword hanging at his hip, but plenty was from his own veins. Aldric could still feel the echoes of pain deep inside him, from hurts to both body and spirit. He had been clan-lord, Ilauem-arluth Talvalin, for so short a time it seemed only a dream, like the others he sometimes drowned in wine to let him sleep.

Lord of a clan which no longer existed, master of a citadel where every stone reminded him of things he would rather forget, and would have forgotten, given time. But no-one had given him that time. Instead he had been sent here to keep them by proving his allegiance, by proving he was trustworthy, by obeying his lord the king.

By killing a man he had never even met.

Aldric felt dampness on the palms of both his hands as he mounted his horse again and returned the telek to its holster. The knowledge shamed him yet he couldn’t help it, for he loathed this place. He realised that in the first moment he set eyes on its green sprawl beyond the town of Ternon. He loathed its silence, its claustrophobic gloom, and most of all he loathed the memories it brought flooding back. Once, not long enough ago for comfort, he had fled like a hunted animal through a forest much like this, and it mattered not at all that the pursuers existed only in his imagination. Aldric had avenged the terror of that flight a thousand-fold and sworn never to hunt any living thing again except for food, but the memories remained, festering in the secret places of his mind like wounds that refused to heal.

“There was no reason for that dash through the woods.” Youenn Sicard said, returned to an old complaint. “Few people travel in this part of the Jevaiden, and almost any road will be empty.”

“ ‘Almost’ isn’t enough. We were being followed, and I’m still not sure if…” His voice trailed off and a frown drew his brows together as he twisted in his saddle, reaching for the telek again.

Then he kicked one foot from its stirrup and threw himself sideways. An instant later something flicked through the space where he had been, tugged for an instant at his left arm, and made a noise like a carpenter driving a nail as it slammed into the trunk of a tree.

Time seemed to run slow. He had sensed the arrow being aimed at him before he heard the sound of it being loosed, yet barely avoided its flight. The black leather of his jerkin sleeve and the white linen shirt beneath both parted as if slit by a razor, and for just a second the thin pink line across his bicep looked no worse than the scratch from a thorn.

Then it split apart and blood went pulsing down his arm.

“Get down!” His urgent warning was partly a yell of pain because the wound hurt with all the focused intensity of a hot wire run through the torn muscle. The shock of seeing his own flesh laid open could freeze a man for long enough to let the next blow kill him. It could also freeze a man who saw it happen, and Youenn gaped in startled disbelief while his horse jibbed as the blood-smell reached its nostrils.

Another arrow followed the first, and this one made a piercing squeal. The whistle attached to it was a signal-device, but it was just as useful for frightening horses. Youenn’s untrained steed, already spooked, bucked until all he could do was clutch reins, saddle and mane as he fought to keep his seat.

Five riders burst through the ferns and bracken at the far end of the clearing. They wore masks and looked like bandits, but Aldric had never heard of bandits who rode in light cavalry skirmish order with guard-hounds bounding at their heels. Three carried bows already raised and drawn, and in the same instant he saw them, they loosed.

The triple hiss as the arrows passed over Aldric’s head was bad enough. The sound afterwards, heard clearly despite the baying hounds, was far worse. It was the thudding slap of three impacts so close together as to seem just one, and he knew with grim familiarity what he would see when he glanced back.

Youenn Sicard stared down with dull surprise at his chest and its fine new crop of feathers. At such close range the arrows had driven fletching-deep, and as he sagged forward Aldric saw how his back sprouted quills as though they were pens and he their inkwell. Youenn’s eyes met his with a puzzled question in them. His mouth opened to ask it but only blood came out, and Youenn Sicard pitched headlong to the ground.

There was no point in any shout of denial, Aldric had seen death too often not to recognise its presence now. He slammed heels against his black courser’s flanks and with the pack pony in tow charged towards his startled enemies. If the four men knew anything about Alban horselords they might have expected it, but they expected panic and flight, not attack. He was on top of them before their minds processed the new information. His taiken longsword left its scabbard with almost-unnatural speed, and as he passed between the foremost pair Aldric cut right and left in a gleaming figure-eight that emptied both saddles.

The remaining riders flinched away, a hound screeched as it went down under the black courser’s pounding hooves, then he was through and vanishing into the same forest shadows from which they had emerged just thirty seconds earlier. A single hasty arrow came after him, rattling harmlessly out of sight among the branches, and there was a brief thudding of hoofbeats in his wake that stopped almost as soon as it began.

He guessed why. His trail was clear, easy to follow and easily followed – too easily, at least for men who had just seen what might happen if they caught up with him. They loved life too much for that. There would be no pursuit. They would leave him to the forest.

Aldric slackened his pace at last, sweaty with exertion and a little unsteady from shock. Few were able to simply shake off the effects of a wound, and those who could were either battle-frenzied or so gravely hurt that the wound acted as its own soporific drug. This arrow-cut was slight by comparison and hurt like hell because of it. He remembered the last time, running through another darkening forest with another arrow-injured arm. Then he had been on foot, and the wonder here was that no low branches swept him from his saddle. There were no sounds behind, nor to either side, nor ahead of him, and he grinned a hard little grin that was mostly just clenched teeth. He had lost them.

Then Aldric remembered Youenn Sicard, and the grin turned sour as it faded. Not only because the man was dead, though that was dismal enough. Without a guide, with no idea of where to go from here, he hadn’t just lost his pursuit.

He had lost his way as well…

CHAPTER ONE

The mist that silent morning shifted like a living thing in the darkness before dawn, insinuating pale tendrils of chilly intimacy between the trees. Sluggish coils eddied away as Evthan eased from the high bracken, flowing back to wrap him in a clammy embrace. The hunter shivered as he knelt to study the vapour-shrouded ground, then his eyes narrowed and he paused, listening.

Somewhere in the gloom a bird burst into song and Evthan’s eyebrows drew together at this ill-timed intrusion. They were thick brows that met above his hawk nose in a single bar, even without the frown to join them. He was the best hunter and tracker in the Jevaiden, commanding high fees from the noblemen who came here in late summer seeking game. They often said the lanky Jouvaine could think like a beast, and right now his attention was focussed what he had seen in the damp turf. With an arrow nocked to his bow, he slipped back into cover even more quietly than he had emerged.

Evthan wasn’t afraid. Just very cautious.

There was a clearing ahead, edged by a stream running down from the edge of the Jevaiden plateau, where deer often came to drink, and at first it seemed empty until the hunter realised it was as full of fog as a cup might be of milk. Even nearby trees were mere scribbled sketches on a shifting grey canvas, and he was uncomfortably aware that anything at all could lie unseen beneath them.

Even the Beast.

His mouth twisted, sneering at a half-formed hope. It wouldn’t be his luck to have that target for his arrow here today, in the same way as it hadn’t been his luck this month or more. That was why Darath had sent him out to find help, another hunter, someone who could find the Beast and kill it. The headman didn’t know how much that command had wounded Evthan’s pride. Or perhaps he knew all too well, since Darath’s family hadn’t been spared their visit from the Beast.

Evthan remained hidden in the undergrowth while the eastern sky brightened towards sunrise and a faint breeze thinned the fog. That small movement of the air brought a prickling of woodsmoke to the hunter’s nostrils and he set his brooding aside. His fingers took up pressure on the bowstring as silhouettes emerged in the clearing, soft unreal forms still half-veiled by the mist. Evthan’s held-in breath sighed out between his teeth. Tethered to the roots of a long-fallen tree, a packhorse and a sleek black courser unconcernedly cropped the grass.

A young man in leather breeches and high boots was rummaging in one of the pack-saddles. His fine white linen shirt clung to his body as if not yet dry after a recent washing, and occasionally he flexed his left arm a few times, wincing as he did so. At last he shrugged and got dressed in more leather, then in metal. First was a heavy jerkin with quilted padding at shoulders and elbows, reinforced still further with sections of mail. Over that went scaled leggings, lamellar body armour laced in blue and white, and sleeves of more mail and polished plate.

When the last strap was tight he picked up the sword propped against a nearby tree trunk and knelt to face the dawn, gazing full at the risen sun without concern for its glare. The drifting skeins of mist had become a haze of glowing gold, and countless points of light reflected from the polished black metal of armour. At last he bowed his head for a moment before he rose to tend his horses.

*

Aldric had suspected for some time that all wasn’t as it should be, and he trusted such warnings more than ever when they pushed into his mind. The watcher, whoever he might be, hadn’t used his advantage of surprise and if he was an enemy, that mistake would be fatal. Literally.

But what if he was a friend…?

Aldric dismissed that notion. He had no friends in the Jevaiden, not since Youenn Sicard was killed by the ‘bandits’ whose motives had nothing to do with simple robbery. Real bandits would likely have known their target carried only the Empire’s worthless silver coins. Five hundred florins should have made him a wealthy man, but not now, and that was what sickened him about Youenn’s death. If, despite all appearances to the contrary, the attackers had been mere thieves, the Vreijek guide had died for nothing.

That was why the half-seen shadow in the forest made him so nervous. There were so few honestly dishonest reasons for an ambush, only intrigue and assassination. And counter-assassination, said a small voice in the silence at the back of his mind. For all the elaborate secrecy surrounding it, he couldn’t shake a suspicion that someone realised what King Rynert had commanded him to do.

Aldric felt a bead of apprehensive sweat crawl from his hairline, and beneath the armour his back was growing damp. Despite the salve and bandage covering it, the arrow wound in his left arm stung as salty perspiration bit the raw flesh like acid. Acting calmly required conscious effort, for there was nothing calm about the memories of past events which tumbled through his skull. They weren’t memories of his dignified rejection of the Talvalin lordship, a pretty little scene played out for witnesses, but the reality between himself and King Rynert that had taken place in private a mere half-hour before.

*

“Mathern-an arluth, I’ve regained this fortress at no small cost, and now you say I have to leave again. I have a right to hear your reason.”

There was more outraged protest in Aldric Talvalin’s voice than proper courtesy permitted, but Rynert let it pass. They were alone in the great hall of Dunrath-hold, in the donjon at the citadel’s heart, and the king’s footsteps echoed in the emptiness as he paced to and fro.

“Aldric-an,” he said, “the only reason I need give is that I am your lord.” Several silent seconds passed. Aldric had heard that same reason from his father years ago, but hearing it from Rynert was no easier, even though it remained stark truth. “There is another way of viewing this, of course,” the king continued. “Despite your youth you are a high-clan lord, and ilauem-arluth Talvalin deserves at least the privilege of respect due his rank.”

“I thank you for that, mathern-an.” Aldric inclined his head. There was nothing that a quick glance could read from the thoughts which drifted in the hazel depths of Rynert’s eyes, while good manners – and simple caution – forbade staring.

“Do you know what they say in the Empire about the warriors of Alba?” asked Rynert. Aldric didn’t, and shook his head to prove it. “They simplify—” The king hesitated, correcting himself. “They oversimplify our Honour-codes, all the duties and obligations which make us what we are.” He didn’t mention how Aldric had stretched those duties and twisted those obligations almost out of recognition. “They say if his lord commands a kailin to kill, he kills – and if his lord commands him to die, he dies.”

“Stripped to the bones, Lord King, but correct enough.”

“So you accept this, Aldric-an? You accept the bare simplicity of kill and die?” Uneasy now, not liking the trend of conversation, Aldric nodded once.

“I’ve seen both sides. I can do nothing but accept it. What I did myself, what Lord Santon did, and… And my own brother.” The recollection hurt like an open wound and his voice faltered into silence.

“Their honour commanded them to die, and they died,” said Rynert. “The oath made to your father commanded you to kill.” He paused in his incessant pacing and gazed at the wall, looking beyond it to the battlefield of Radmur Plain and the great funeral pyres which still smouldered there, streaking their smoke across the sky. “And you fulfilled your oath. Oh, yes. No man can deny it, least of all Kalarr cu Ruruc.” His voice hardened. “And Duergar Vathach. After the way you dealt with him…”

So that’s it, thought Aldric grimly. Use of sorcery. A clan-lord might be expected, or indeed ordered, to turn his tsepan dagger inward as recompense for flouting the cold laws of the Codes. Santon had done it. Baiart had done it. Did Rynert intend him to follow them along the self-same self-made road?

“What is your command, mathern-an?” he said, breaking the silence and the gathering tension more loudly than he had intended. “Die?”

“Kill.”

“Do I know who?” Unease shifted in his stomach like a drowsy snake, a fear the answer would be yes.

“I doubt it.” That gave Aldric less comfort than he hoped. “Crisen, the son of Geruath Segharlin. An Imperial Overlord. The father is an ally, the son… Not. It is time to close the account. I hope he finds the gold he stole was worth it.”

“Gold?”

The king may have caught the subtle nuances of that single word, but missed the flicker of disgust on Aldric’s face at being commanded to kill a stranger for the sake of money. A moment earlier he had been steeling himself to his own suicide for such an intangible thing as honour. And he would have done it.

Probably.

Perhaps.

Aldric was no longer the honour-besotted boy who had spent so many hours reading the Books of Years in Dunrath’s library and dreaming of great deeds. He had seen what Honour could do. He had smelt it, and tasted it, and slept badly afterwards. This was another matter, and he had to say something even though he didn’t know how to begin.

“I, I am kailin-eir again, Lord King,” Rynert’s head jerked round at the betraying stammer, “and you yourself said I am ilauem-arluth Talvalin. But I can’t—”

“What?”

“Can’t…” Aldric hesitated again before the words came out in a rush. “I can’t be your executioner, or your assassin. Not for the sake of gold. That would make me no more than a—”

He all but bit his tongue before it could betray him. Less than four weeks past, he had been accidental witness to an exchange no other man apart from Rynert’s bodyguard, Dewan ar Korentin, was meant to see. His king, his honourable lord, had given money to a Drusalan taulath mercenary, and within half an hour this same king had informed his High Council that the Drusalan Emperor was dead. Maybe the two events were mere coincidence, or maybe not. He had drawn his own conclusions. Most contracts, for houses or holds or swords or armour, had the usual term of half on commission, half on completion. What he had seen was payment of the second half.

Aldric knew little about tulathin – Shadowthieves, they were called, on the rare occasions when decent men spoke of them – but he knew enough. They had no honour, and respected only the gold which hired their unique talents: subtlety and secrecy and ruthless violence for anything that ambition, politics or simple hatred required. A taulath would spy on, steal, kidnap or kill anything or anybody for anyone who could pay the price, and a king could pay that price without a second thought.

“It would make me no more than a man without Honour,” he said, and let Rynert take what he would from the stumbled words and toneless voice.

“My lord Talvalin, your Honour requires obedience above all else. Obedience to duty. Obedience to obligation. And obedience to me! So obey!” It wasn’t the reaction Aldric had expected.

“Mathern-an, why pick me to be your murderer?” That was when Rynert stopped pacing at last.

“You speak as if you had never killed before. I choose you because I choose you!” His taut, almost-angry face relaxed, and he flung both arms wide in a helpless gesture. “And I choose you because I must.” The king stalked to a chair, sat down and leaned back, interlacing his fingers and staring at them through hooded eyes before touching their steepled tips thoughtfully to his mouth. One booted foot hooked another chair and dragged it closer. “Aldric-an, sit down,” he said. “You and I must talk.”

For the duration of an indrawn breath Aldric almost asked how that differed from what they had been doing, then perched on the edge of the seat in a nervous way that ill-suited the third most powerful lord in the realm. He could see how Rynert studied him, noting stance, posture, expression and the more involuntary betrayals of wary eyes and bloodless lips.

“You have something of a reputation already, my lord. A reputation for strangeness, one that borders almost on eccentricity. You are… Unusual. And you dismay people.”

“Which people?”

“The ones who matter.” Aldric wondered if that proved he didn’t. “My other lords. The way you fulfilled the oath to your father and reclaimed this fortress was unconventional. You have, and I quote—”

Quote who? Quote what? A report from that prying bastard Dewan ar Korentin?

“—An unsettling aptitude for sorcery and no compunction about using it. And you are a wizard’s fosterling.” Aldric’s eyebrows drew together and his mouth opened. “That was no insult, so think before you say something you may regret.” Aldric closed his mouth again, but made sure there was an audible click as his teeth met. “It means that this past four years you lacked the support and protection of your clan. You learned to think for yourself, and the uncharitable see a clan-lord who owes his king nothing. No obligation, no duty and perhaps no loyalty.” Rynert’s statements were logical, reasoned and, coming from a king, beyond argument.

“It doesn’t explain why you chose me for this assassination.”

“To prove your loyalty to those other lords. To incline them to accept you as an equal. And because you have a better chance of success than any other man in my domain.” This time there was enough warmth in the statement to make it an undoubted compliment. “The reasons which require me to choose you also incline me to choose you. Your actions were not that of a clan-lord, not even a kailin. But you hold to your Word of Binding once that word is given, even if it has little to do with what my lord Dacurre regards as Honour.” Dacurre, eighty years old, opinionated and inflexible, was a by-word in his own lifetime for blinkered conservatism.

“What if I refuse?”

“You would forfeit…” Rynert gestured at the hall, and by implication at the fortress and the wide lands which surrounded it, “Everything. For the sake of the men killed here keeping faith, I would not permit you to keep this. It would be unfair.”

By which he meant it would be hazardous, and might give other lords ideas. Aldric shrugged, but said nothing. There was nothing more to say. Rynert relaxed after that shrug and laid out the rehearsed reasons Aldric would publicly offer and he would publicly accept: a lack of preparedness for lordship, and the unhappy memories within the fortress. He didn’t elaborate on how slight and selfish they might sound to men whose friends had died in battle, and Aldric didn’t say so either.

Not until he had talked to Gemmel.

But Gemmel wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere. Enough people said they had seen him, but always somewhere else and some time ago, until it seemed as if he was deliberately avoiding his fosterling. At last Aldric gave up and played his assigned role for Rynert’s selected audience, Dewan ar Korentin and several other clan-lords. The Albans greeted his speech with dismay and even anger, but from the look of him the Vreijek bodyguard was both amused, unimpressed, and unconvinced.

Rynert’s make-believe hadn’t worked in that quarter, and Aldric wondered if it had failed in other places too. After all he had gone through to achieve his revenge and recapture Dunrath, it must seem improbable that he would put all that aside. At best unlikely, at worst false cover for something else. There were no questions asked aloud, but plenty for discussion later behind closed doors, if what he was being asked to do gave him any ‘later’ in which to do it.

That was then. This was now, and for good or ill he was the king’s messenger delivering a fatal message. He could be an assassin, or a landless exile whose life might be longer if he never came home again.

The choice was his.

*

Evthan had watched while the man in the clearing worked his fingers into plated gauntlets and settled a helmet on his head, harnessed his horses, mounted the black and nudged it with booted heels. He had crouched out of sight as the man rode past, and remained there until well after the beat of hoofs faded to silence. Then he straightened and scratched his head in confusion, for there were many questions in what he had seen but not a single answer.

Behind him, someone cleared his throat.

The armoured man stood there with sword drawn, its point glittering bright and sharp a bare handspan from Evthan’s throat. He could see a gleam of teeth in the face shadowed by the peaked helm and the war-mask over cheeks and chin. It might have been a smile, or it might not. Probably not, for when he dropped his bow in token of surrender, that unwavering point advanced with disturbing eagerness until it rested in the soft spot where his collarbones met, using the convenient hollow to push him backwards. The blade was sharp indeed, for it needed only the pressure of the first goading jab to send a thin trickle of blood down his chest.

The wound wasn’t over-painful, but the situation lacked dignity. Evthan stood a good head taller than his captor and could have knocked him flying with one hand. At least, with no weapons involved. As it was, he backed up as required. When they stopped the armoured man took a long step sideways, out of Evthan’s reach but not beyond the measure of his longsword’s sweep. Evthan’s rage – and yes, his outrage – at being stalked better than he could do himself was clear on his face, and needed little more provocation to let it loose. That ready sword was a warning to keep it in check.

“What are you doing here?” The man spoke clipped, correct Drusalan, but with an unfamiliar accent that was neither Vreijek nor Jouvaine and certainly not Drusalan itself. It was nothing Evthan had ever heard before, despite all the hunting-parties from across the Empire he had guided through these woods. They had all treated him with courtesy and respect, so he frowned at the impudence of this demand.

“I am forest warden,” he said, pulling his authority around him like a cloak. “And I should ask the questions.”

*

“This says otherwise.” Aldric rested his taiken in the crook of one arm, where its blade clinked against the mail-rings of his sleeve and its edges gleamed threat. It would be so easy to resolve the situation with a single cut, that gleam suggested, so easy to remove any risk that this forest warden might report his presence. He had learned to recognise those deadly suggestions over the past few months, and to ignore them. “Now, again, who sent you?”

“Sent me? Nobody sent me, unless you mean my village headman.”

“And what would he send you to find?” Evthan’s lips compressed and at first he said nothing. When he spoke at last his voice was low, and thickened by shame.

“Another hunter.”

“Better than the one who lets an armoured man walk up behind him?” Aldric selected the barb with care and saw the Jouvaine’s face twitch as it struck home. Either the man was a consummate actor, or he was what he claimed to be. He even spared a fraction of a second to regret the accuracy of the guess, but at least he knew the man’s hostility wasn’t only for him. “Another hunter, to hunt what?” There was no reply. “A wolf, perhaps?” Evthan flinched, as if expecting the word to summon its owner from the forest.

“Not a wolf,” he whispered. “The Wolf. The Beast!”

Aldric hesitated, considering. He needed somewhere to lie low for a while, in case there were more not-bandits wandering the woods, and he had heard of such troublesome wolves before. Northern Elthan sometimes suffered from them when the winters were hard, rampaging animals notorious enough to deserve a name and fame. Like certain weapons. He glanced at Isileth Widowmaker as he ran the longsword’s blade back into her scabbard. There was no resistance to being put away unused and he wondered, as he often did, what he would do if one day there was.

“I can’t just call you ‘forest warden’, man.” He spoke Jouvaine now, with a better accent and a crooked grin to take the bite from his words. “Say your name.”

“I am Evthan Wolfsbane, hlensyarl. I am Geruath of Seghar’s warden here, and…” he stumbled on the required courtesy, “and in his name I greet you.”

He might have thought the change of Aldric’s expression came from being called outlander, the word was Drusalan and insulting, but he would have been more worried had he known the true reason for that bloodless compression of lips.

A lord’s-man, Aldric thought. Haughty, and proud of his rank. He let the subtle insult pass for the sake of peace, more concerned by the coincidence – if it was merely that – of meeting such a man as Evthan. He sensed the hunter wanted him kept distant, almost as if fearing what closer acquaintance might bring. It didn’t surprise him. He had been speaking the Empire’s language and if Evthan believed he was an Imperial, then with the Empire’s reputation the man might think him worse than any wolf.

Even this Beast he seemed to fear so much.

“I thank you, Evthan Wolfsbane, forest warden of the Jevaiden.” Aldric judged his bow to a nicety. “I am… Kourgath-eijo, late of Alba.”

The deliberate, delicate pause allowed Evthan to question its purpose, and when he didn’t, Aldric settled onto the trunk of a fallen tree like the kourgath wildcat that was his crest and current name. A whistle summoned his black courser to the far end of the clearing, with the pack-pony still attached by its tether. The animals watched for a few moments and then, with nothing else to do, lost interest and began to crop the grass.

“I’ve hunted wolves before, Evthan. Tell me about this one.” The hunter picked another deadfall to sit on, a well-judged two sword-lengths distant. Not as far away as insult, not close enough for friendship.

“The Beast came to the Jevaiden forest at the end of winter. Four months past. He preys on more than Valden – my village – because for weeks on end we hear only the small wolves and what man cares for them? Yelpers at night, runners after sheep. They are nothing. And we forget. Not the Beast, but his speed, his silence, and above all his cunning, so much more than any other wolf. Until he returns.” He fell silent, and as a token of trust Aldric took off mask and helmet, unlaced the mail and leather coif beneath, slipped it from his head and waited for more.

“The elders held a meeting, this new moon,” Evthan said at last. “They came from all the villages. It’s now known, since he came among us, that the Beast has taken thirty people for his food.”

“Thirty?” Aldric echoed, not believing. Not wanting to.

“My wife and little daughter were among them.”

“Mollath Jowl,” the Alban breathed, his oath half a prayer. “I’m sorry.” Even as the words left his mouth they sounded hollow. He had sensed a tingling of tension since riding into the forest country five days before and had thought it a reaction to his own narrow escape, or maybe the proximity of the Empire. Now he knew otherwise. But how could there be so many deaths and the killer still at large, in this land famous for its huntsmen?

The thought rose unsummoned. Might this Beast be more than it seemed? He wondered why Evthan hadn’t voiced the same suspicion, for the hunter was no fool. But he was superstitious and feared to name the Beast aloud except by its title. To speak of evil was to risk inviting it, and once invited… Aldric knew the consequences of an unwise invitation all too well. If Evthan shied away from calling this one ‘wolf’, he would never dare to mention – Aldric didn’t complete the word himself, even in the privacy of his own head – whatever other horror roamed the forest after dark.

“So brave, this Beast of ours,” he heard the hunter say. “Women, old folk and children. Never a full-grown man to make him earn his meat.”

“Not brave.” Aldric’s voice was flat and toneless. “Clever. Too clever.” He tightened girths, set boot to stirrup and mounted, then swung in his saddle to stare down at the Jouvaine. “I think it’s time this wo—, this Beast was dead.”

Evthan bowed, accepting the unspoken offer. He had seen something bleak shadow the young man’s grey-green eyes, like unexpected clouds across a summer sky. They made him shudder.

After a time Aldric glanced down again. Evthan was striding beside Lyard, matching the black Andarran charger’s haughty pace with ease, but with the look of someone in a daydream more than half a nightmare. He saw a sheen of perspiration forming on the Jouvaine’s long-jawed face, much more than justified by the mild day or this brisk walk through the woods, and was uncertain whether he should interfere or wait and hope to learn something new. When thatched roofs appeared between the leaf-thick branches he found an excuse to speak.

“There’s your village, hunter. A bowshot yonder.” The Jouvaine blinked, seeming to return from a place far beyond the forest, and drew in a trembling breath. He recovered his composure with an effort and met Aldric’s unwinking gaze with another.

“Best I lead the way, Kourgath. Since the Empire’s troubles we—”

“Aren’t over-fond of armoured riders? Yes. So I can believe.” He dismounted, drawing Widowmaker up across his back on her cross-strap until the taiken’s long hilt reared above his shoulder. Whether anyone here recognised it as the peace position from which he couldn’t draw the blade was another matter. They might still see only an armoured man with a ready sword. “Walk on. I’ll be behind you.”

The rest, that ‘behind’ might be the safest place to stay, he left unsaid.

*

Valden was tiny, a cluster of lime-washed cottages huddled in a clearing hacked from the living forest. The new stockade which ringed it kept the trees at bay, but gave the place a claustrophobic air like that of a besieged fortress. Aldric could almost smell the fear. People performing listless tasks in their small garden-patches stopped and watched with dull-eyed resignation as he entered the stockade. They had lost faith in their hunter long ago and were fast losing hope in anything else. They might have left the village had the forest not surrounded it, but they did nothing now but wait for that forest to sprout fangs as it had done so many times before.

He understood Evthan’s black mood better now. Valden’s despair was an infection which needed surgery to cure it, and destruction to bring healing. The destruction of the Beast.

The hunter’s house was larger than expected, with a stable at the back. It was empty now but clean enough, with fresh straw in the hall and fodder baled at the back, all likely intended for the steeds of whatever gentry Evthan might guide on expeditions into the forest. Aldric wondered how long it had been since the last one. Once the horses’ harness was off he gave them both a rubdown and inspected their hoofs, then saw to water, hay and a careful measure of grain from his own feed-sack. For an Alban horselord, the welfare of his animals always came first, when they were his means of getting out of a dangerous situation far faster than he got into it. He threw his saddlebags over one shoulder and returned to the house.

It had a pleasant smell, blended of beeswax from polished furniture, of lavender from dried bunches hanging in the corners of each room, of woodsmoke from a black iron stove that must have cost a great deal to bring out here, and best of all to a hungry man was the savoury scent of food. After what Evthan had said about the loss of his family, meeting two women was a surprise that must have showed on Aldric’s face.

“Aline, my sister,” the Jouvaine explained, “and Gueynor, my niece.” That was the girl who backed into the shadows as Evthan brought his guest indoors. “I hoped I would return with company, so I asked them to prepare a meal. It will be better than my poor efforts.”

Aldric opened his mouth to say a thank-you, but his stomach beat him to it with a protracted bubbling squeak like a rusty gate submerged in syrup. It caused a protracted few seconds of embarrassed silence while he went pink and everyone else looked elsewhere. He laughed, not that there was much else he could have done, and the awkward moment passed when the others joined in. He had a feeling it was the first time any of them had laughed at anything in far too long.

His insistence on time to wash and change before the meal was typical to those who knew Albans, but it also gave him privacy to rearrange the contents of his saddlebags. In the past months he had learned to distrust everyone on principle and, while Imperial florins weren’t worth much, the quantity he carried would raise questions if anyone saw them.

And there were other things he preferred no one saw at all.

He returned washed, brushed and free of armour, though still carrying his Three Blades – which got a look from Evthan, but no comment – and found the table in the small main room already set. Such a room, and the several others of this house including the one for his own use, showed the forester’s elevated status in Valden. Its headman, for all his apparent authority, might not live in anything as fine because Evthan served a more important purpose. His skills as hunter and tracker pleased Lord Geruath’s friends and sent them away happy with their sport, a happiness that trickled down in tangible form to the whole village. Some of that happiness was on the table now, because the bottles of wine were a probable gift from one such contented hunting-guest.

Aldric had lived off field and travel rations long enough to grow weary of beans and lentils made up as stew with leathery meats either smoked or dried or salted, and dared hope he might get a steak, or a few chops, or in the head-forester’s house perhaps even venison. Something crisp-edged and sizzling from the pan or a bed of hot coals, anyway. There was at least wild-boar bacon done that way, but as a garnish for eggs and cheese.

The main dish was beans, made up as stew.

He was quick enough to keep any hint of disappointment off his face because this village was under siege, by an enemy beyond reason or parley or treaty. If finding any food other than what they grew themselves meant a journey through woods where the Beast lay in wait, then all the money in his saddlebags could buy no better than he was served now.

So stew it was, but good stew regardless, store-cupboard beans, bacon and sausage lightened by fresh vegetables from the garden behind the house, spices that must have come in during quieter, happier times, and a splash of fruitfire distilled from local berries. With fresh bread, butter and an aggressive cheese to follow, it was a far better meal than Aldric had expected and he had to restrain his appetite. It was likely that this dinner included donations from other households, enough food to feed all of them for several days, yet too-obvious pity, charity, whatever, would insult the effort put into their welcome. As he waved away an offered third helping in favour of a dried apple and a little more wine, he caught the look of relief on Aline’s face and realised he’d judged the situation right.

When they finished, Evthan pushed back his chair from the table and coaxed life into a long-stemmed pipe. Logs in the stove snapped and settled, dishes clattered from the kitchen as Aline packed away far more than mere leftovers, and an air of comfort settled over the house. Aldric guessed it was far from usual, and sat quietly so as not to disturb it. He could have forgotten the atmosphere outside altogether had it not been for Gueynor. Even when her aunt left she stayed behind, fascinated by her uncle’s guest yet also nervous. She was afraid of the Beast, afraid of the man who had arrived in armour and still carried weapons, maybe even afraid of her uncle. Did Evthan lash out at the remnants of his family when despair became too much for him to bear? Or was she afraid for him, for his loss of reputation, for what a stranger’s success might do to the little self-esteem he had left? Aldric didn’t know.

What he did know was that her high-boned cheeks and braided pale-blonde hair were achingly familiar. There had been no women in his life since the parting with Tehal Kyrin, Several had tried to catch his eye and once caught had looked appealing enough, but cold company rented with cold cash held no appeal. Gueynor was different. She wore typical Jouvaine peasant clothing of loose blouse and skirt, boots and bodice, all embroidered and her best clothes, but she wore them as if they were more even than that. Their eyes met, and Aldric was the first to venture a smile, hoping for one in return.

At that instant a deep, sonorous wail rose and fell out among the trees. Gueynor gasped, her gaze tearing away from Aldric towards her uncle’s face as if expecting to see – or startled not to see – a reaction of sorts, but the hunter remained calm. He breathed out fragrant smoke and looked first at the girl, then at Aldric.

“The Beast,” he said, “is in our woods again.”

Aldric set down his cup, noting how his hand transferred a tremor to the surface of the wine, and crossed to the open window. Everything was still. No birds sang, not even a breeze moved the air. The world seemed shocked to silence by that melancholy sound, and unbidden images coiled out of his subconscious, souring the wine against his tongue. He had drunk nothing like enough to drown them.

It was a waking dream, and within the dream was nightmare, a flickering of images like pictures strewn across a table. Snow falling, drifting into a white shroud across a leaden winter landscape. From that stillness, the sound of tears and a buzz of glutted flies. The mingled reek of incense and roses, gross red blossoms with thorns like talons. Flame, and candlelight, and the distant mournful howling of a wolf beneath a silver full-blown moon. Pain, and the gaudy splattering of blood across cracked milk-white marble…

He leaned against the wall and stared at Evthan.

“Are you sure that thing’s a wolf?”

“I told you before,” the hunter said. “Not a wolf. The wolf.” He drew on his pipe while Aldric lifted his discarded cup again and took a thoughtful sip. There was no tremor this time, but the blood-red wine made him wish he had asked for white instead. As he sat down he tried to impose order on the thousand thoughts which tumbled through his mind.

“What does your Overlord say about all this? And what has he done?” Aldric waited, but heard not even an indrawn breath, and looked from side to side with an air of idle curiosity which wouldn’t have deceived anyone but these strangers. “Was anything done by Lord Geruath?” he asked again. “Anything at all?”

Gueynor glanced at her uncle, and from the corner of one lash-hooded eye Aldric glimpsed Evthan’s answering nod. What the exchange meant he wasn’t sure, but that she needed given leave to speak was interesting. If ‘interesting’ was the word he wanted, which he doubted very much.

“The Overlord’s son – Crisen – sent messengers once,” she said, as if daring him to question that once wasn’t enough. “They were asking about…” Under Aldric’s intent stare her voice faltered, once more becoming nervous and uncertain. “They questioned all of us about… About…”

“About what?” Aldric leaned forward, but Gueynor said nothing more. “Evthan, what did the messengers ask about?”

“She doesn’t know,” the hunter said. It was a lie. She did know, she had been about to say what she knew, and for whatever reason had decided not.

“That was why I asked you.” Aldric’s abruptness was deliberate. Evthan was a proud man, and if insulted might lose his temper and forget whatever mask of innocence or ignorance he was hiding behind. It didn’t work.

“They asked about the Beast,” Evthan said, and instead of becoming angry he grew stiff-necked and haughty instead. “I remind you, hlensyarl, that you are guest in this my house, and—”

“And I mean to help you hunt this Beast. But I also deserve to learn something about it. I think I have that right, at least. Estai tel’hlaur, Evthanul?” The hunter looked abashed. Proud he might be, but being called on his outburst left him embarrassed and ashamed.

“I don’t deny it, Kourgath. Your pardon.” Aldric nodded cold acknowledgement and drained his wine-cup down to the bitter dregs, then returned it to the table with a click.

“I want,” he said, “to see your blacksmith.”

“I’ll take you to him, Kourgath.” Gueynor was on her feet at once, and this time there was no request for permission. Evthan waved them both from the room and Gueynor led the way, not trying to talk. Aldric didn’t blame her. He had smiled at her more than once since he entered the house, but now, with the Beast’s howl still echoing in his memory, he was no mood for idle chatter.

*

The smith showed Aldric where everything was in his small, well-appointed forge, and after a brief word of thanks left with what seemed relief. Gueynor remained behind, watching with unsettling attentiveness. He was certain he had let slip nothing that wasn’t already suspected, but even so her interest disturbed him.

“Does anyone in Valden own a hunting dog?” he asked and she emerged with a blink from some private inner world.

“Laine bought two. After the Beast came. But he uses them to catch deer.”

“They’ll do.” Aldric jerked his head towards the door. “Go speak to him. And take your uncle. This – Laine, was it? – might not want to put his hounds at risk.” Gueynor hesitated. “All right, leave your uncle out of it. But be as persuasive as you can.”

Directly she left he pulled a bag of new-minted florins from inside his jerkin, shook a dozen into a crucible and pushed them deep into the fire before pumping the bellows until sparks whirled up and the charcoal panted from dull red to a blaze of yellow. Aldric was sweating with more than heat and effort. Now the silver coins had begun to melt he wanted done before anyone realised what he suspected about the Beast, with that suspicion plain in the fire for all to see. The fewer people knew about that, the better, because in this damned strange place with its damned peculiar people anything might happen. They might panic and, in that panic, somebody might die.

A glance from the doorway assured him that no one was about, and he walked as quickly as quietness allowed to the stable where he had stowed his gear. There were arrows underneath one arm when he came back, with nocks, beeswax and untrimmed fletchings in the other hand to answer awkward questions, and an undercurrent of cursing that he hadn’t thought to get his sequence of action right and do this first.

Born into one of Alba’s oldest high-clan houses, Aldric was educated as well as any and better than most. The Art Magic was neither approved of by clan-lords nor taught to their children, but he had acquired a certain ability in that direction too, and knowledge about other subjects far from wholesome. It didn’t matter that he had heard the howl at midday in bright sunshine, the moon tomorrow night was full, and he was far too cautious to trust what legends claimed were the limitations of a werewolf.

Then he stopped shy of the door, because someone was moving inside. With one arrow reversed and held like a dagger, Aldric drifted noiselessly into the smithy, moving sideways away from the betraying brightness at his back. Then he relaxed and lowered the arrow, because the intruder was Gueynor. She hadn’t heard him come in, and from the look of her wouldn’t have done so even if he’d kicked the door wide open.

“Why did you come back?” he asked. “There’s nothing here to interest you.” Until he heard the clink of silver florins as she turned his money-bag over in her hands. There was indeed interest here, more than enough of it.

“Coins,” she said. “Silver coins. And others melting. So even you think…” She took several gasping little breaths, fuelling the scream he sensed was building up inside her. “I – I’d hoped they were wrong. But they said…” Her voice was getting shrill. “You don’t think! You’re sure! Or else you wouldn’t—” One hand jerked convulsively and coins chimed across the floor. “It’s true, isn’t it? It’s – it’s—”

“It’s a precaution, no more!” His iron-edged snap was the vocal equivalent of a slap in the face, enough that the scream died still-born. When Aldric laid the arrows aside and put his hands on her shoulders, not to shake but to reassure, he felt them shiver at the touch. “Gueynor, you only met me what, two hours ago? You don’t know what I know. But it’s a lot less than what I don’t know.”

“What if you’re right? That the Beast is – might be…” Forced to confront something she had avoided with every waking thought, she looked on the verge of tears.

Whether he was right or wrong about the rest, Aldric realised what she meant. Most of their legends claimed werebeasts had no choice about their changing, they might not even be aware of it, with no control over the behaviour of their bestial counterparts. They were victims as much as those they killed, and that made the killings doubly tragic. So what were Gueynor and Evthan concealing from him? Why did Crisen Geruath want to hear about the Beast, and then do nothing? What was happening here? And how much had Rynert known of it when he selected Aldric as his emissary? Question piled on question, and like any unrelieved irritant they made him angry. He hid it with a hard, brief smile.

“Given my talent for error, I’m more likely wrong. But don’t want you to tell anyone else about this, please. They would only worry.” He cupped her chin with one hand and wiped away her tears with the other, amused at such worldly wisdom from a young man who, just a year ago, had seldom even spoken to a woman. He kissed her cheek, deliberately chaste, yet the touch of her skin warm on his lips tempted him with a bittersweet memory he’d tried to dismiss and didn’t like to dwell on. She was so like Kyrin. Like her, yet unlike her, and most importantly, not her at all. That made things easier.

Aldric backed away, shaking his head as if waking from a convoluted dream, and with a courteous little bow ushered Gueynor out before locking the door as he should have done at the beginning. There were silver coins on the floor, and steel-tipped arrows on the bench. Aldric stared at and through them, then squared his shoulders and turned towards the forge.

There was work to do.

*

Evthan was standing outside the smithy when he emerged and both men looked at one another, neither wanting to be first to speak. It was the hunter who cleared his throat and broke the uneasy silence.

“Gueynor saw how you looked at her, and… And she came to the forge to offer payment for the Beast’s life. We can’t do it in coin. But you, you—”

“Threw her out? Nothing so violent, I hope. I have my reasons.”

“You’re a strange one, Alban.” Unlike when Rynert used the same word, this wasn’t an insult. “And you treated my niece with…” Evthan searched for the right word. “With courtesy and restraint. If the worst should happen, I don’t want to send you to the Darkness by our rites without your proper name. For the comfort of your spirit. And that name isn’t Kourgath. I beg pardon if I offend.”

“You don’t.” But you understand enough Alban to realise ‘kourgath’ is never more than a nickname. What else do you know that I’ve yet to find out? He gave the man a formal bow. “My proper name is safe enough with you, Evthan Wolfsbane.”

“Don’t, if—” Evthan said, but Aldric hushed him with a gesture and a crooked smile. Six days ago – Light of Heaven, was it so long already? – his only funeral rites might have been the ones administered to Youenn Sicard by foxes, kites and crows.

“Somebody should have my name, if only to remember I once passed this way. I’m Aldric Talvalin, kailin-eir and ilauem-arluth, highborn and a lord in my own right. At least I was once. Not any more. Now I’m eijo, landless, lordless, a wanderer on the roads of the world.” Again the sour smile twisted his lips, and the darkness was on him again as it hadn’t been since the arrows hammered Youenn dead from his saddle to the dirt. “Can you blame me for seeking nameless peace now and then?” Evthan drew his own conclusions.

“You were involved in the fighting we heard of?” he asked. Aldric nodded, because it was true enough. Truer than Evthan could ever imagine. “And you left Alba as a consequence?”

“Persons of rank and power suggested it.”

“So you are a mercenary.” Evthan seemed content now he had a category in which to store Aldric. “Several have already guessed as much. But we protect our friends, Kourgath. You are safe in Valden.”

“I thank you for that,” said Aldric, though he took note that nothing was said about being safe in the woods. Without thinking he pushed the arrows he carried through his belt and when he realised what he had done, it was already too late. Without his hand around them the crudely finished heads were plain to see, and plainly not steel. If Gueynor had kept his secret, his own stupidity had revealed it.

“Those are interesting.” Evthan gestured at them, and his blue eyes narrowed to conceal the fear in their depths. “No one else believes the Beast might be more than… Than just a wolf.”

Liar, thought Aldric. Apart from himself there was Gueynor, Evthan himself and Crisen Geruath – and why the interest from that quarter anyway? The other two had good reason to wonder, and be frightened of what they learned, but Crisen was the Overlord’s son should have had no curiosity at all about the doings of peasants. Yet he had sent messengers asking about the Beast. Unanswerable questions of his own flashed through Aldric’s mind and he glanced northward, towards where Evthan had told him the Geruath hold of Seghar lay.

“As I told Gueynor, these are only a precaution.” He drew in a long deep breath and looked up at the sky. “Time we began. Get the dogs. I’ll see to my gear.” He watched Evthan walk away, twitched his shoulders in a movement that might have been relief of tension or a dismissive shrug, and headed for the stable. Any hunt today or tonight would be a waste of time, at least for the quarry he hoped to flush. But tomorrow could prove another matter.

Especially after moonrise.

*

Even though his arming-leathers were sturdy enough for hunting, he deliberated over his battle armour for several minutes. The full tsalaer was far too heavy, but not its separated parts, so he detached both armoured sleeves from the cuirass and strapped them over his padded jerkin, then hid everything beneath a short leather riding-coat. Just in case. Hidden armour could be as useful as a hidden dagger, and he carried three of those already.

There was rather more reluctance about the way he unhooked Isileth Widowmaker from his weapon-belt and slid the taiken’s scabbard into its accustomed place on his saddle. Aldric disliked being separated from the longsword by more than the length of his arm, but three feet of steel wasn’t practical for hunting. Hunting animals, at least.

His taipan shortsword went alongside it, but not his tsepan. That remained in place, as a matter of self-respect. A kailin could leave off rank and family and name, and even two of his Three Blades, but never the black dirk which preserved his honour.

Aldric belted his shortbow’s case around his waist before sliding the silver-headed arrows in beside it. Besides the special arrows he picked out half-a-dozen more with winged broadheads, flesh-tearing points meant to stop anything unarmoured dead or shockingly maimed in its tracks. Finally he took one of the two holstered telekin hanging on either side of his saddle, adjusted the holster’s straps and laces until it was snug against the left side of his chest, and drew the telek.

It was another of his many gifts from Gemmel, a graceful thing so well-shaped to fit his grip that aiming was as natural as pointing a finger. The spring-gun was no hunter’s weapon, but had distinct advantages in the dangerous distance between sword-length and bowshot. This one and its mate could project eight darts with lethal force for more than twenty paces, as fast as he could pump the spanning-sleeve and squeeze the trigger.

He broke the telek’s action and checked its mechanism before emptying half the darts from the polished cylinder. After a swift over-shoulder glance towards the closed door at his back, he withdrew their replacements from his belt-pouch. Like the arrows cased beside his bow, they too were tipped with silver. Evthan might have seen the arrows, but no one had seen the darts and he meant to keep it that way. Once each one had slid into its respective chamber, he rotated the cylinder once more and snapped it shut, engaging the safety-slide with a push of his thumb.

Behind him the stable door creaked open and Aldric turned, arm snapping up to shooting position. Gueynor stood framed in the doorway, gilded by the sunlight at her back, a wicker basket in her hands and eyes fixed on the unwavering telek. She looked shocked, because it had thrust out at the end of his arm like the head of a striking snake, but there wasn’t even a tremor of fright. As he returned the spring-gun to its holster Aldric wondered how much her hysteria in the forge had been a skilful act, and what reason she had found to bring her back.

“I… My aunt asked me to bring you these.” Gueynor held out the basket, full of small sealed jars and bunches of herbs.

“Are they hunting provisions?”

“No!” It wasn’t simple denial, but a strange noise halfway between shock and a strangled laugh. “Definitely not.”

Aldric examined two or three of the stoneware pots, their stoppers tied down and sealed with wax. Their labels made little sense – speaking a language was not the same as reading it, especially with the part-letters, part-symbols Drusalan alphabet – but the dried herbs attached to those labels were clear enough. Here a stalk of withered foxglove, there a handful of dwale berries, every one of them a plant he had learned from early childhood to recognise and avoid.

“Awos arl’th Dew!” He set the basket down and wondered if he should put on gloves before he touched it again, if he ever did. Gueynor wasn’t wearing any, but that meant nothing. “There are enough varieties of poison here to kill the entire village twenty times over. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“My aunt said it might be useful.”

“Your aunt is a… A practical woman.”

Gueynor watched him for a few seconds more, but when he stood immobile and said nothing more, she whisked out of the stable and closed the door behind her. That was when Aldric tried to make sense from the brief exchange. He was sure Aunt Aline had nothing to do with this deadly basket. Poison was of no use against a werewolf, so did this gift hint at something else altogether? The difference between Gueynor and other peasants he had met still nagged at him.

The kailinin of Alba had an ingrained dislike of poison. What was medicine today could be a weapon tomorrow, a cowardly, secretive weapon that went against all their honour-codes. But that was when it was being using against other warriors. He lifted one to study the slip of vellum hanging from its neck by a length of cord, and though the crabbed handwriting on one side was still beyond his ability to read, the purple-blue flower painted on the other provoked a grim little smile. Apothecaries at home in Elthan and Prytenon called this distillate ‘wolfsbane’, and he wondered if the irony was accidental or not.

Its wax seal cracked across and across under his thumbnail, and lifting the stopper released a faint sharp scent that prickled in his nostrils. Aldric drew the telek, opened it and, with extreme care not to let the stuff touch his own skin, used a flat-tipped piece of wood to smear gummy black toxin behind each steel point. Then he grimaced, shrugged and did the same for the four darts tipped with silver. Perhaps if one didn’t work, the other would.

And if neither did – goodnight, my lord.

CHAPTER TWO

It was warm and still in the forest, with no breeze to cool the heavy air. Under the spreading canopy of branches, sunlight became a green translucent glow, filtering through layered leaves until the tall trunks looked like sunken pillars in a drowned and long-forgotten hall. Although an occasional bird sang, the notes were flat and lifeless and soon died in the oppressive silence. Aldric’s boots hissed through the grass and bracken, while Evthan made no sound at all.

There were no dogs. That had been a source of slight friction, because when Laine refused to subject his precious pets to the lurking dangers of the woods, Evthan hadn’t pressed him on it. Aldric might have done so, except for a feeling that the hunter’s reluctance had more behind it than just good manners to a neighbour.

As the sun slid down the western sky, the light dimmed and the shadows stretched longer. Aldric’s nerves were already stretched by waiting, watching and listening for any movement which might betray whatever made it. He didn’t start at every snap or rustle, but it was a close-run thing. Evthan however seemed relaxed, and though he didn’t speak it was from long solitary habit rather than any rudeness. The latest bird to risk a chirrup faltered and went quiet, and as each leaden minute trickled by it seemed the forest held its breath.

“Which way now?” When Aldric spoke his voice seemed a loud, unwelcome sound, but Evthan raised an arm to point north-east.

“Into the Deepwood,” he replied, and walked on without waiting for a response.

As the forest’s embrace closed around them, Aldric didn’t need to ask why it was called the Deepwood. That name was well-deserved and obvious. The woods near Valden, cleared of undergrowth for hunting until they were virtually parkland, were an open meadow compared to this claustrophobic tangle of brush, brambles and evergreens. After half an hour his eyes yearned for the sight of a beech-tree or an oak to relieve the sombre monotony of pines living, dying or dead, but all upright in one another’s close-meshed needled embrace.

They were old, as old as anything he had ever seen. There was a brooding stillness in the Deepwood, and a sense of such antiquity that even he, cseirin-born with a history of sixty generations, felt an intruder on the peace of long, slow ages.

“Evthan,” he said, his voice hushed now as if to avoid whatever ancient presence slumbered in the warm, close confines, “let’s turn about. Go back to the village. Now.”

Evthan glanced at him and what might have been a smile tugged at the corners of his thin mouth. But the smile didn’t extend beyond that twitch of muscles as he nodded, turned in his tracks and went back the way he had come. Aldric felt an embarrassed blush burning his face. He wasn’t frightened by the claustrophobic forest, even though kailinin-eir could feel fear just as much as anyone else and after that nightmare flight through Baelen Wood four years ago, he had more reason than most. This was only an awareness that the Jevaiden Deepwood was a place where he was neither comfortable nor welcome.

He had learned to heed those subconscious warnings. For an instant, with the hunter’s little half-smile still stinging his pride, he almost called Evthan back to insist that they continue. Another look at the encroaching dusk changed his mind and instead he walked quickly after the Jouvaine hunter.

But not too quickly.

He was whistling a brisk little tune as he drew level and Evthan gave him another of those half-amused looks, sidelong, without turning his head. He said nothing. Above their heads, far beyond the confines of the Deepwood, the sky became a smoky blue-grey which dissolved into saffron as it swept down to the horizon and the last faint residue of sunset. That cool amber light beyond the trees transformed them into hard-edged silhouettes, every branch, every twig, every leaf and needle etched precise and black against the afterglow. Aldric glanced from side to side as the world grew dark and ceased to be the one he knew.

He lengthened his stride; it was difficult to keep pace with a man whose long legs could match a warhorse, and he got a distinct impression that Evthan was walking faster now than he had done before. All around were small sounds as the night-forest came to life with tiny creaks and twitterings or an occasional minute, furtive movement. They were little noises, normal in the evening, and undisturbed by Aldric’s own muted musical contribution. Then his whistle faltered, began again uncertainly and trailed away in a scatter of unconnected notes as an eerie tingling sensation crawled over the skin of neck and arms like the half-forgotten memory of a shiver. He knew it was more than that.

Someone – or some thing – was behind him.

Aldric stopped, holding his breath to hear better while his wary gaze raked across the undergrowth. There was nothing but a slither of fern-fronds and then silence, as if he had heard only the echoes of his own passage through the bracken. Except that this echo came from thirty feet off to his right. And why had everything else gone quiet…?

He knew the answer to his own unspoken question. It was because the lurking presence was still out there, invisible in the thick vegetation, studying him, assessing him with interest and curiosity but no malice. At least for the present. It had stopped whenever he stopped, which made him reluctant to move again for fear of what might follow.

“Evthan?” There was no reply, and with another tremor of shock Aldric realised he was alone. But not alone enough. There was a soft crunch of bracken as something huge moved purposefully closer. A metallic tang soured his dry mouth, and one hand rose to the holstered telek. It cleared leather with a harsh scrape that should have angered him but this time could never be loud enough, then click-clacked as he wrenched back on the cocking sleeve.

The slow movement in the forest ceased at once.

Aldric could feel the clammy embrace of sweat-saturated cloth against his skin, and an all-too-familiar queasiness in his stomach. Having a small claim to courage didn’t mean he couldn’t feel fear, and he was feeling it right now. Fighting a desire to turn and run, he reversed along the narrow track which was all that Evthan had left to ease his passage through the Deepwood’s worst tangles. There was no sound of pursuit. Then he noticed something which for an instant took his mind off whatever he had faced down in the forest. The polished metal of the telek was glinting in the moonlight.

Moonlight…?

Aldric’s head jerked back, his gaze going up between the tree trunks to what little of the sky was visible between their lowering columns, and if he had been uneasy before, it was as nothing to how he felt when he saw the moon. It perched like a bloated fruit on the extremity of a branch, growing ever brighter as dusk crawled into night. That was the last straw. There was a wide difference between brave and cowardly, but much less between foolhardy and stupid, and like anyone out of his depth Aldric knew when it was time to shout for help.

“Evthan!” he yelled, regardless of what else might hear him. “Evthan!” In his secret heart the last thing he expected was an answer, so when the hunter emerged from a jumble of shadows Aldric almost jumped out of his skin. He sagged with relief, trying to get his breath back and thankful the deepening shadows couldn’t betray how much he was shaking.

“What’s wrong?” Whatever else the Alban suspected he might be, Evthan Wolfsbane wasn’t a fool. After a single glance at his companion’s shocked, white face he jerked an arrow from the quiver at his hip and set it to his longbow’s string. “What’s out there?”

“The Beast, maybe.” Aldric managed an inadequate laugh. “Or a bear, or a boar, or just something ugly from the back of my own mind. Father of Fires, I didn’t wait to find out!”

“I don’t blame you.” The hunter’s teeth gleamed. “The Deepwood after dark is no place for a novice hunter, especially one as—” he altered a word on the tip of his tongue, “—as ill at ease in thick forest as you are. Yes?”

“You mean frightened, don’t you?” The forced bravado disappeared from Aldric’s voice. “Scared out of my wits?”

“I do not,” said Evthan. “Every man has his own special fear, whether it be close confinement, open space, deep water or… Or high places. I can climb a tree at utmost need, but only then. Otherwise my feet stay on the ground. So I think it is with you and the forest. But I’m no more ashamed of my fear than of having brown eyes like my mother, when my father’s eyes were blue.”

Aldric’s own eyes blinked as he wondered what had made the Jouvaine shape his words like that. The cseirin-born – the lord’s immediate family – of Alba’s ancient high clans all shared hereditary features as distinctive as their painted crests. In clan Talvalin that meant fair hair, blue eyes and notable stature, yet Aldric, the last clan-lord of all, took after his own Elthanek mother with brown hair, hazel eyes and only average height. He made a wordless noise and noted that this peasant hunter was again proving to be more than he appeared.

How much more he would have to discover later, for though the moon was well along, it wasn’t yet full. He had known as much in the light of day, but the silver disk peering at him through the trees rattled his assurance. Looking again with more care, he could see it still lacked a nail-paring along the rim. Which meant that tomorrow night was full moon, and the night of the summer solstice. Aldric slid his telek back into its holster, but didn’t buckle down the peace-strap which secured it. Not yet.

Evthan’s route out of the Deepwood was much more direct than the one he had followed on the way in. Aldric didn’t know why, unless it was out of consideration for himself and, if so, he wasn’t sure he liked being patronised to that extent. He was still trying to phrase a reply which wouldn’t insult a gesture of honest kindness when he noticed two things. One was that Evthan had become almost as nervous as he had been a half-hour earlier, and the other was that even in the shadow-streaked uncertain light, he could see they were walking along a path. It was narrow, twisting and uneven, flanked on either side by trees, but it was still a path. In the Deepwood…?

And then he saw the clearing.

Aldric was glad to rest his Deepwood-wearied eyes on an open space at last. It glistened under the moon like a pool of quicksilver, and at its centre was a solitary tree that might once have been an oak – or an ash or an elm – but now was unrecognisable, centuries dead, a split and blasted monument to the fury of a long-forgotten storm. A hundred yards from where he stood, the forest began again as if the hands of men had never interrupted it, for this was no natural clearing. Northward, beyond the shattered tree, was the remnant of a mound ringed by standing stones. The place had a sense of profound age and the stones were everywhere, some upright, some askew and a few fallen completely, half-hidden in the grass.

It was the several still lintelled across others like colossal doorways into nowhere that made Aldric’s scalp prickle. He had seen things like this before, for his own long-dead blood kin – an Mergh-Arlethen, the Horse Lords – lay in such mounds throughout the southern part of Alba. Their great barrows weren’t round, as this had once been, but long to resemble the ships which had brought them and their tall steeds across the deep sea. They dotted Cerenau and Prytenon up past Andor and Segelin to the very eaves of the forest of Guelerd, and in Alba they were undisturbed, honoured as much for their great age as for what they were.

Here on the fringes of the Empire things were different, and this mound was already open to the sky. He could guess what the inside looked like; the tomb torn apart by disrespectful hands, its burial chamber violated in search of treasures buried with the dead, the poor old bones scattered and their long rest disturbed. To any Alban such actions were repellent, and in particular to the last of the Talvalins, whose reverence for his ancestors was all the greater now ancestors were all he had. Yet curiosity compelled him to look closer, almost as if he might make amends for the rude treatment meted out by others.

“Don’t go into that place.” said Evthan. His hand closed on Aldric’s left bicep, holding him back and in that grip discovering the meshed mail and splinted steel beneath the leather sleeve. If the revelation startled him he gave no apparent sign.

“Why not?”

“Because it was once a holy circle of the Flint Folk, where they worshipped the old gods that are not our Gods.” Religion, thought Aldric, and almost smiled. Never debate with a man about religion, politics or taste in women. But then Evthan muttered, “I could wish it still was, instead of being…” before his words tailed off in a way Aldric didn’t like. Perhaps this involved more than just religion.

“Instead of being what, Evthan?”

“Instead of being what it is now! Unhallowed and evil! Keep away from the ring of stones, Kourgath. Everyone else does.”

“All the more reason for me to look. I sense nothing evil about either the ring or the mound, and the dead have never done the living harm.” Even as the words left his mouth he remembered the traugarin raised by Duergar the necromancer, and Kalarr cu Ruruc who had first died before the Clan Wars five centuries ago. “The peaceful dead, at least.”

“But why should the lord of the mound be at peace?” Evthan made his argument with inexorable logic. “His long sleep ended when they broke open his tomb.”

“They? Who are they?” Evthan hesitated, and Aldric pounced on it. “Don’t you know? Or don’t you want to tell me?”

“I know.”

“I think so do I. Crisen Geruath. Someone whose name appears too many times without adequate reason.”

“He, and his father. Lord Geruath searched for ancient weapons – he collects them in his tower at Seghar as another man might gather works of art. But the son sought for other things.”

“And did he find them?”

“Now Kourgath – Aldric – how much would you expect a mere hunter to know about the private doings of his Overlord?” Evthan’s teeth glinted, not a grin now but a fence securing any further words on the topic.

“I’d like to meet your Overlord. And his son.”

“I’d like to be there to see that meeting.”

“Perhaps you will. For now I’ll be content to see this holy place. It may not be holy any more, but it grows more interesting by the moment.”

“But I told you—”

“You told me a superstition, nothing more. But I’ll give the mound-king your respects if I meet him.” The hunter flinched at that, and Aldric saw him flinch. Was it because of his own casual, thoughtless remark or for a more obscure, more private reason? Questions, so many questions. Soon, he promised, there’ll be many answers to keep them company.

As he walked out across the moonlit clearing, unseen eyes watched with interest from the shadows.

*

Things hidden by the long grass gave way with sharp, dry cracking sounds beneath his boots. They were neither twigs nor branches and Aldric didn’t even have to guess before he stopped, knelt, and lifted one into the thin wash of silvery light to see it better. The slender leg-bone ended in a small cloven hoof, and it was very old. Groping about on the ground was something he wouldn’t have done in daylight, for this open space in heavy forest was viper territory if ever he’d seen it. On a hot day the snakes would have been everywhere, basking in sunlight that couldn’t otherwise reach ground level. In the cool of the night they were gone, leaving him alone to fumble with ancient sacrificial bones. He found their age reassuring, and on the occasions he looked more closely the remnants were always those of sheep, or maybe goats.

But then something crunched under his heel and skidded in a manner so uniquely nasty, and so unlike any sensation which had gone before, that for several seconds distaste outweighed curiosity. It was inevitable that curiosity won, and just as inevitable that Aldric regretted it, for what he picked up was a human hand. The fingers had shattered – that was the crunch felt as much as heard, like treading barefoot on a snail – and its decomposing flesh had smeared under his weight. A stench of putrefaction offended the clean night air, for it had lain on the ground a month or more, and as foul matter slicked across their leather, he was glad of his gloves.

It was a small hand; a woman’s, or perhaps a child’s.

He drew breath to summon Evthan, then remembered the man’s wife and daughter, mentioned at their first meeting. That recollection shut his mouth with an audible click of clenching teeth. This pathetic remnant was another leaving of the Beast. He gently laid the fragment down and, with an effort, kept obvious revulsion from the way he wiped his fingers clean. Then he drew his tsepan dirk and used the needle point to scratch out a little grave. In other circumstances he would have muttered an apology for dishonouring the dirk with such a menial task, but not now. Simple decency would not offend an honourable weapon.

After he finished and pressed the soil back into place, Aldric remained on his knees, forcing himself back to calmness. Rather than detached regret, he felt a rage such as he would never have imagined possible over the death of an unknown foreign peasant’s unknown child. Usually such spasms of fury only came with his hand on Isileth Widowmaker’s hilt, but now his whole body trembled and sent reflected moonlight dancing along the tsepan’s blade. Crisen Geruath and the inner turmoil of his own honour ceased to be important. If razing the Jevaiden down to bare black rock could assure the obliteration of the Beast, he would have fired the forest without a second thought.

As that impotent fury faded to a killing mood that was infinitely more dangerous, Aldric realised why Evthan was subject to such strange fits of brooding. If he, outlander, hlensyarl, could be so overwhelmed by anger at the evidence of a single slaying, then what must the Jouvaine’s mind be in now that thirty people, many known to him, had been ripped apart and eaten?

And how many of that thirty had walked into the jaws of the Beast because they trusted the protection of what they thought was the finest hunter in the province?

There was a film of icy perspiration on the Alban’s face as he rose, and urgency in the way he slid the tsepan out of sight. Had he been in Evthan’s place he would have used the wicked blade as intended, and been grateful for the privilege of an honourable end. Except that not even the most sincere suicide would help the dead, or those still living. It would only help the Beast. And if Evthan really was more than he seemed, taking his own life was the last thing he would do…

Aldric clamped down on his feelings and pushed them to the back of his mind. Not that they ceased to have substance, his willpower wasn’t that powerful, but they would no longer affect his actions unless he desired it or events required it. And then, wound as tightly as the spring of a telek or the string of a crossbow, he would release them when and where they would do most good.

He continued his walk towards the mound and when he paused, one hand against the rough surface of a fallen sarsen, he looked back towards Evthan. The hunter was just visible, backing away from the clearing, from the mound, from the moonlight and into the comfortable darkness under the trees. Aldric wondered at that, finding the massive trunks and their ink-thick blots of shadow far from comforting. He preferred the sky above his head.

So he appreciated the rich irony of his next three steps, which brought him under the great stones of the burial chamber and into a confined space of dark and silence.

*

He had expected cracks, crevices and perhaps even the gaping holes left by the Overlord’s grave-robbers, It hadn’t occurred to him that the dome would still be complete enough to exclude any light. The blackness within the mound pressed around him like folds of heavy cloth, and even though the pupils of his eyes expanded to enormous proportions in their quest for a glimmer of something useful, their involuntary effort was wasted. The only things he could see were sparks created by his own straining vision.

Aldric reached out until his outstretched fingers touched the great blocks of the dry-laid chamber wall, trusting to luck and any irregularities warning of unseen hazards. Then after just three shuffling sightless paces he stopped again, muttered an annoyed oath against himself, and reached into the pouch at his belt for the tinderbox and thick beeswax candle it contained.

He always carried them, seldom used them, and forgot them. Just like now…

Half-closing his light-sensitive eyes to guard them from its flash of sparks, Aldric tripped the spring of the tinder box. Then tsked in annoyance and did it again, twice, until the fluffed linen wisps caught fire enough for him to light the candle’s triple-thickness braided wick. It smouldered for a few seconds before a blue-cored yellow bud swelled from the stem of the wick to blossom into a tall, saffron flower. Once assured it wouldn’t go out, he fixed its brass shield-ring to catch any potential drips and looked about him.

It was enough to make him catch his breath.

The roof of the hollow hill hung grey and huge an arm’s length above his head. He hadn’t known what to expect, for every mound he had seen before had been intact, its secrets of construction hidden under high-heaped soil and green grass. Aldric knew each had at least one chamber at its heart where the dead lay, but this was the first time he had looked inside. That grey roof was a single colossal slab raised by the strength of great grief or great piety to balance with ponderous delicacy on three tapering pillars. Though it had remained in place for unknown centuries, its presence looming over him sent a shudder fluttering through the marrow of his bones. If that capstone fell he, like the owner of the tomb, would be nothing but a memory.

Shadows crawled from the crevices between the stones as he raised the candle for a better look. There was a strangeness to the barrow, something so obvious that for a few moments it escaped him. Then awareness dawned. The place was clean. There was no earth trodden between the slabs of the floor, and no trace of debris from the robbery – or even the forest outside, although dry, dead vegetation must blow inside with every gust of wind. Instead the chamber seemed to have been swept, and recently at that. As he moved towards where the old chieftain lay, Aldric wondered who had such unconcern for local legends that they not only entered a place usually avoided – except by inquisitive Albans – but tidied it as well. The original occupant was no fit state to appreciate the gesture.

Or was he…?

Other chambers opened off the main crypt, most likely storerooms for possessions bringing status and comfort to the Afterworld. He didn’t trouble to investigate, sure they had been even more thoroughly cleaned out than the main tomb. Yet it was hard to ignore those yawning entrances, as if something might creep from them the moment his back was turned. Aldric cursed his own over-active imagination. Except for optimistic spiders which had spun webs here and there he was the only living creature in this place, and he had weapons more dangerous than a spider’s bite.

Aldric shifted the candle from right hand to left so he could loosen his telek in its holster, and disliked what that shift did to the way the shadows moved. He disliked it most intensely. The telek slipped free, this time without a sound, and his thumb released its safety-slide as the weapon’s reassuring weight settled into his hand. Nothing moved now except the play of light and darkness at the corners of his nervous eyes, but he turned and kept on turning with his boot-heel as a pivot, tracking line of sight with the telek as he raised the candle higher.

And cast light across the lord beneath the hill.

The old chieftain’s appearance wasn’t as unpleasant as expected. He had been too long dead for that. His corpse, laid out on a simple bed of stone slabs and reduced by the weight of passing years to mere sticks and leather, was no more frightening than firewood. The ceremonial trappings of death held no terrors for an Alban kailin-eir of high-clan birth, aware that regardless of rank and title he would eventually come to this. More aware, indeed, than most. The cseirin-born met their ultimate destination early in life, and Aldric had been only a small boy when his father Haranil took him to the vaults beneath Dunrath-hold. There he had seen his own funeral column, with its vacant niche patiently awaiting an urn of ashes. His name and rank and date of birth were already cut into the polished basalt, but the last line remained incomplete, needing another date to give perfect symmetry to the carved inscription. Even at five years old the experience had been sobering.

There was an odd smell in the air, compounded of more than mustiness and candle-smoke, and Aldric glanced at the withered corpse with one eyebrow raised then shook his head. There was nothing of decay about this smell; without the sickliness of corruption its sweetness was more like a perfume. He walked closer, then remembered his manners and bowed, the still-drawn telek glinting in the candlelight as his right arm made the small, graceful gesture of respect to the dead. This was someone’s ancestor, and if the dead man deserved such regard as raised this tomb around him, then simple courtesy wouldn’t be out of place. He met the dark gaze of the skull’s empty eye-sockets without blinking, but didn’t match its mirthless final grin.

“Here you lie, lord of the mound. Just bones and rags and dust. Our way is better. Fire is clean.” The skin around his mouth scored chevrons of shadow into itself as the recollection of a strange old saying made his teeth show in the candle’s flame. “ ‘Give thanks that death is at the end of life, and not at the beginning’…” After Duergar Vathach and his traugarin, it made ugly sense.

Then all thought stopped.

There was colour amid the ivory and brown of the thin hands folded on the dead man’s breast, and that colour was the source of the elusive fragrance. There were roses twined between the bony fingers, three bloated, baleful roses so deeply crimson they seemed almost black, their great petals velvet and luxuriant, their scent far heavier than any he had smelt before. Rich as incense, almost overpowering like the drug ymeth, the dreamsmoke of Imperial decadence, and yet somehow less wholesome still.

A few months ago, far too few, there had been a dream, and within that dream lurked nightmare…

Aldric realised his hands were trembling; not much, but enough to send a spiral of black smoke from the candle wick as it guttered under molten wax. He wished too late that he had told everything to Gemmel when he had the chance, and not hidden his fears behind false, drink-born bravado. At least he might know by now what all this might mean.

There had to be a reasoned, logical explanation for the flowers. Maybe Geruath the Overlord had discovered this dead man was long-forgotten kin, and the roses were an apology for the indignities of breaking open his tomb and stealing from it. Yes, that was the likely solution. Aldric was half-ashamed of his own reaction, though he knew well enough he was trying to fool himself. There was nothing reasoned or logical about what was going on in the Jevaiden, in Valden or in this tomb.

He walked around the stone bed, looking down at the shrivelled corpse, and wondered who this man had been, what he had been, and what he had done for his people to grant him so imposing a burial. And it was at the far side, when his boot pressed down on a thing which crackled in the silence, that he discovered the crypt wasn’t empty after all.

The thing was a sheet of parchment, its edges dry and crumbling, and it had an ugly sense of familiarity that made Aldric’s mouth go dry. The last time he found an overlooked object that was sought by others so many, many deaths had followed. Deaths, and horrors, and the extinction of his clan. With this one still pinned securely underfoot, he was tempted to scrape it against the floor until it became illegible shreds.

But Aldric Talvalin was as much prey to the vice of foolish, fatal curiosity as any proverb-maker’s cat and he looked at it first, holstering his telek and setting the candle on one corner of the dead chief’s last bed before he picked up the page with apprehensive fingers. It was a poem of some sort, written with a pen in the spiky letters of formal Jouvaine script, and he could read it. Any lettered man could read it, for High Jouvaine was the language of learning, understood in varying degrees by almost every scholar… Even those who paid scant attention to dull lessons on a drowsy summer day. He scanned the lines twice, once for translation and once for sense, then ripped the brittle sheet across and across, crumpled the remnants between his palms and dropped them back onto the stones of the floor.

“What else would I do?” he asked the long-dead chieftain, forcing false amusement into his voice. “Keep it? Not knowing what I know!” The skull’s grin didn’t alter and its empty sockets continued gazing at the entrance of the burial chamber, as if watching something living eyes could never see. Now you’re talking to a corpse, Aldric thought. What’s next? He stared down for several seconds at the pieces of parchment by his feet, disturbed by what he had read and trying to forget it. At first glance it had seemed to be an-pesoek, a little charm like the two or three he knew for finding lost things or calming unruly animals, but pesok’n hadn’t such an ominous sound to them…

The setting sun grows dim

And night surrounds me.

There are no stars.

The Darkness has devoured them

With its black mouth.

Issaqua sings the song of desolation

And I know that I am lost

And none can help me now…

A tiny voice whispered the words inside his head over and over again, their rhythms weaving circles and patterns and made sense that was no sense at all. Aldric’s lips compressed to a bloodless line as he shrugged, dismissing the whole thing from his mind. Except doing that wasn’t as simple as the shrug suggested.

He dusted flakes of parchment from his hands and reached out to pluck a rose from between the corpse’s claws, then gasped and jerked his fingers back with as much shock as pain in the small noise. He had barely touched the flower when a thorn jabbed straight through his glove and into the pad of his thumb, almost as if it had struck at him like a viper. A single ruby bead of blood welled out of the skin-tight black leather, rivalling the colour of the rose’s petals before it became a sluggish drop on the chieftain’s brow.

Aldric teased his trophy free with much more care the second time and raised it to his nostrils even though he had no need. The overblown perfume flowed into his lungs like a thick stream of hot honey, making his senses swim as if with vertigo. It wasn’t a natural scent, not here, not now. Not at all.

Then the blood so recently tapped by the rose froze in his veins as something moved behind him. It was only a tiny scuff of noise, but it was in a place where no such noise should be unless he made it himself. And he hadn’t. His throat tightened, his pulse thundered in his ears and the rose fell from his slack fingers as he became as immobile as the dead lord.

As the dead lord had been.

Then he turned with all the speed of a trained swordsman and his right hand snatched the telek from its holster, up into an arm-stretched shooting posture aimed point-blank at…

Nothing.

The lord of the mound lay as he had lain through all the long years since his kinfolk built the tomb around him, with a solitary gleaming gem of Aldric’s blood on his forehead like a mark of rank. There was no longer any sound, but in the entrance to the crypt there was a glitter that hadn’t been there before. The glint that comes when flame reflects from metal.

“Evthan?” Aldric’s arid mouth had trouble shaping the word. “Evthan, what are you doing, man? Come into the light where I can see you!”

At first there was no reply, then with a clatter of footsteps four men burst into the burial chamber. They were soldiers, lord’s retainers, in quilted body armour and round helmets, and they carried shortswords drawn and ready. There were no shouts of warning, no commands for him to drop his weapon, just an immediate charge to kill.

Aldric couldn’t understand why his warning sixth-sense hadn’t put him on his guard; it happened sometimes, that was all. He had no sword, not even his taipan, and his bow was useless at such close quarters, but these men – probably local recruits who wore their new authority in their scabbards – seemed not to know what an Alban telek was, much less what it could do.

He educated them.

His first dart hit the foremost soldier square on the solar plexus, its sudden, massive shock collapsed the man’s legs under him. He fell in his tracks like a puppet with cut strings as Aldric’s arm swung up and back with a speed gained by many hours of practice with the weapon. His left hand gripped the spanning-sleeve and racked it back then forward as part of the same movement, so that the telek reloaded and presented again in what seemed an eyeblink. It was a bravo’s trick and frowned upon, but it was effective.

The second of the four leapt over his comrade’s body, sword raised for a downward chop. He was so close that the telek almost hit him in the face as the second dart left it, burst his left eyeball and drove through its socket into his brain. His head jerked back as if kicked and he was dead before he dropped.

When he fell, his sword fell with him. It didn’t matter that its wielder was a corpse, the blade was still sharp and aimed at Aldric’s skull. There was barely room to dodge, and he slammed against the crypt wall with a bone-jarring thud and a muffled scrape of metal as his sleeve shredded between the armour under it and the rough stones that raked his left arm from wrist to shoulder. Pain lanced through him, and he felt a flood of moist warmth spreading towards his elbow as his half-healed bicep split wide open for the second time within a week. After a few seconds the blood dribbled from his fingertips, pattering on the floor with a sound like rain.

Aldric wasn’t surprised when things went still and silent. Those two quick deaths would give even the most hardened warrior pause for thought, let alone yokels who had most likely never drawn in anger against someone who could match them stroke for stroke.

Then something did surprise him. One corpse moved.

He took three quick steps backwards, aware that the two remaining soldiers had also retreated. As the man rolled into an untidy, half-seated slump with his head resting against the chieftain’s bier, Aldric realised the meagre light of his solitary candle had deceived him into shooting too low. That quilted armour had absorbed enough force to save the soldier’s life, but the dart’s slamming impact full on a nerve-centre had felled him as effectively as a punch to the same spot. Even now the man couldn’t make his legs obey him.

For just an instant Aldric considered finished what he had started with another dart, then decided not. This opponent wasn’t a threat, just as killing a helpless man in cold blood wasn’t part of the Alban honour-codes. Nor was it a part of Aldric Talvalin, except as a most reluctant act of mercy.

Yes, he was still outnumbered two to one, but he could take down both these peasants one-handed if he had to. A stab of icy heat down the core of his injured arm brought sweat out on his skin and reminded him he no longer had a choice. It would have to be one-handed…

One of the pair shifted his feet with a loud scuff of leather on stone, and Aldric’s attention focused on the man at once. Tall and thin, with a lean face, deep-set eyes and a small, mean mouth, he looked like a weasel made human. The mouth opened a fraction, showing teeth.

“Ven ya’va doss moy!” he snapped at his companion, waving the other man back.

“Majen ovet, Eldhertag Keeyul, tau asyen sli—”

Another abrupt gesture silenced the protest and sent the other man stumbling obediently back into the entrance, but one word of the brief exchange told Aldric how lucky he was to be alive. ‘Eldhertag’ wasn’t a name but a rank, and a Drusalan rank at that. These men weren’t inexperienced locals at all but Imperial soldiers, and the weasel-faced one, Keeyul, was a senior serjeant. Sheer chance had reduced the odds so early in the fight, and now surprise had worn off Aldric knew he was in grave peril. This eldhertag was more dangerous than all the others put together; he had that unmistakable confidence in his own ability and the way he held his sword suggested he knew how to use it.

The Drusalan’s weapon was little more than a big knife with a broad, slightly curved blade ending in a clipped point, and it looked like the bastard child of a falchion and a butcher’s cleaver. There was no elegance to it, just a great deal of brutal efficiency. Aldric was skilled enough with taiken and taipan, spear and telek, horse and bow, but fighting with short blades in a cramped, ill-lit and unfamiliar space could be more dangerous than any other combat.

Keeyul might already have made his move if not for the telek, and even then he must suspect it was unloaded and harmless. But after seeing two men shot down in what must have appeared a single instant, suspicion wasn’t enough. He needed certainty.

Aldric knew what was passing through the soldier’s mind. He knew, too, where one of the discarded shortswords lay, and made a quick backwards jerk with the telek as if to reload it – but the eldhertag’s reaction was far faster than he had expected. The man wasn’t just skilled, he had all the craftiness learnt in years spent fighting other people’s wars, and he accepted the invitation to attack with his blade not his body.

What should have been a neat sidestep became instead a wild wrenching of Aldric’s body to get clear of the stabbing point, and he almost didn’t make it. His side stung where the shortsword had parted jerkin, shirt and the topmost layer of skin, and it gave him a hellish fright. Even as he swung the telek against the soldier’s arm in an automatic parry, he knew he had committed the cardinal sin of underestimating an opponent.

Aldric dived at full stretch for the fallen sword and grabbed it despite the pain shooting through his left arm, rolling to break the impact of the fall and to get him out of range. Sinews cracked as he shifted that roll a few degrees and managed it a bare instant before the eldhertag’s blade gouged sparks and splinters from the ground just at the place where he should have been.

The weasel-faced soldier was good, but whether he could match Aldric Talvalin with a sword in his hand was another matter. Not that Aldric dignified what he held as a sword at all. The thing was sharp enough, as cold air against his stinging ribs made all too plain, but it had a restricted reach, no guard to speak of and even less balance. Aldric hefted it, thought of Widowmaker’s excellence, and snarled.

“You have luck.” The man spoke Jouvaine now, clear enough despite his heavy accent. “Wisdom not so, else you be not here. Lord Crisen do hate intruders.”

Aldric wondered what in the name of the Nine Hot Hells Evthan was up to while all this was happening. He must have seen the soldiers, and if he had, then why hadn’t he given warning. Unless they’d reached him first.

“Talk on, man,” he said. “I’ve fought talkers before. None were a threat, and none talk now. Except to worms.” He spoke court Drusalan, giving full weight to its insulting arrogance and implied superiority, but didn’t hide his own Elthanek burr and was rewarded with an expression where anger matched confusion. Anger meant carelessness, confusion meant a wavering of concentration, and he knew how to best use both.

They circled the stone bed, boots sliding across the floor, and at long last a tiny awareness tickled at the back of Aldric’s mind as if his whole body was emerging from deep sleep. He could smell candle-smoke and roses blended with the more immediate odours of blood and sweat, he could feel the pounding of his heartbeat and the aches and pains of the past few minutes, he could hear the groans of the wounded man on the floor. Of all his senses only sight failed him, for in the darkness of the burial chamber there was little to see except the shift of monstrous shadows across monstrous stones, and the ominous glitter of sharp steel.

The soldier in the doorway wasn’t a danger yet. He was only watchful, set there to prevent escape. Any killing was to be this serjeant’s pleasure, and it would be a pleasure. Aldric could almost taste the man’s eagerness to inflict pain, bitter and acidic like unripe apples. He was one of those men who needed to hurt, as others needed fire, or bread, or honour.

Their swords met and took measure, the contact a harsh clank from blades too short for an honest clash of steel, and the sound they made was more threatening even than the icy music of taikenin which could cleave a man in half from crown to crotch. The exchange lasted bare seconds before both broke ground and retired. It had been a test of wrists, no more, mere academic posturing wasted on weapons meant for little more finesse than hack and stab.

“You seem to have skill with the makher,” said Keeyul, speaking Drusalan himself now as his point wove to and fro like the head of a snake. “That is good. It will entertain me, before I cut you into pieces and watch you eat them.”

Aldric ignored him. Anger wasn’t the way to win this fight. He stood almost relaxed with the shortsword raised and ready, but not high enough to be a threat, and waited. It confused the eldhertag, just as Aldric intended. He felt sure Keeyul was a man accustomed to opponents who came after him, drawn by taunting and insults, chopping and jabbing until they ran onto his ready sword. It was a new experience to meet one who kept his distance, seeming unprepared for any defensive move should he lunge home. And as for one who smiled at him… For Aldric did smile, and it wasn’t a cynical sneer but as if to a friend.

“Tell me,” he said. “Out in the Deepwood after dark, don’t you fear the Beast?”

“Not at this moon—” The Drusalan bit off the rest. Then he understood, or thought he understood, and grinned a nasty weasel’s grin. “We fear nothing!” There was too much confidence in that declaration. Four men might have no fear, but two? One, alone?

“Tell me more about the moon. Is that why Lord Crisen sent you here so late at night? Or were you sent to fetch him this?” His foot scraped destructively across already-shredded parchment, and as the serjeant recognised what it had been, his eyes went wide. “You were late,” Aldric said. “What will Crisen think of that?” There was no reply. “You do fear something, Keeyul. I suggest you fear me too. And this forest most of all.”

The wolf-howl came right then, with all the impact of a perfect cue, and its echoes throbbed and faded within the barrow. Aldric had heard that same sound not twelve hours ago, and it had been startling enough by daylight. Now, at night, in an ancient crypt filled with shadows and the ill-matched reek of blood and roses, the savage sadness of the cry appalled him.

In any other place or at any other time the Drusalan eldhertag wouldn’t have flinched. Imperial senior serjeants were men with years of often-bloody service behind them, and mere noise shouldn’t have been enough. But, despite his bravado, the eerie atmosphere beneath the hollow hill must have been eroding his nerves these past few minutes, otherwise despite the years of ingrained training he wouldn’t have turned his head.

It was just a fraction.

It was enough.

Three heartbeats later Keeyul was against the wall, slumped over a chest awash with blood where Aldric’s blade had gone in, beneath the ribs and up with his full weight behind it. The Drusalan’s legs gave way as his muscles relaxed. He slid down onto the floor and coughed twice, but a third attempt became a protracted bubbling exhalation that went on and on until he shuddered and was still. Aldric stared down at him, aware his victory came not from skill but luck, and the intervention of the Beast. There was no satisfaction or triumph, only slight disgust at his own aptitude for slaughter. And thinking of the Beast, where in all this while was Evthan…?

He wiped one hand across his face, not caring that each finger left a glistening smear of crimson in its wake, then looked for the last of the soldiers, hoping the man had seized his chance to get away. But he was still there, standing in the doorway with lines of shock engraved by shadows on his face.

“You should have run,” Aldric said wearily. For all his aversion to cold-blooded killing, there would have to be another before all this was over. Otherwise news of what had happened here would reach Lord Crisen’s ears before the night was out, and he could imagine the consequences for the villagers of Valden.

Use the telek for this, he thought, not wanting more blood on his hands than there was already. Death was always simpler at a distance. Gemmel had said that, after the first appalling time he watched Aldric’s long training with Isileth Widowmaker put to real use. It was cheaper to pay the cost of killing when the details of how high it was were too far away to see. It would be even easier if its victims were so distant that they ceased to be people and were mere numbers on a tally. So might the world die, consumed by fire while its leaders calculated how much loss each could accept before defeat or victory.

So might Valden be destroyed, by the vengeful whim of a man who was the son of its Overlord.

Aldric snatched up the spring-gun and levelled it, but hesitated when he realised the soldier hadn’t moved. The man’s arms hung by his sides, his head turned away as he waited for the inevitable. His terror was a palpable thing and, as Aldric felt sickness rise in his stomach, the telek wavered. He tried to summon images of what men like this would do to Valden and the people in it when Crisen turned them loose, but still couldn’t justify what he had to do unless the man attacked him, or tried to run, or…

Or did something, anything that gave reason to complete that final pressure.

“Come on,” he said. “The odds are even now. Come on. Rush me!”

Now is that not the worst of all? said a small, stern voice inside his head. It sounded just like Gemmel. If you have to kill, then kill. But don’t waste time persuading yourself that what you do is right!

Aldric swore softly and squeezed the trigger.

*

The running footsteps dwindled, replaced after a few moments by the rapid, fading beat of hoofs. They had horses. Of course they had horses, otherwise it was a long march down from Seghar. Would they march or come on horseback when Crisen sent them to obliterate the village because of what he did and what he couldn’t do…?

Aldric lowered his telek, looking at it and smiling a small, wan smile. He hadn’t shot the soldier because he hadn’t fully cocked the weapon. Perhaps it was an accident, perhaps unconsciously deliberate. Either way, it no longer mattered. Three deaths in one night were enough for any man.

And it would be three deaths. The killing might be over but the dying wasn’t finished, for the first man he had shot was doomed. The heavy quilted armour had stopped the dart, but not enough to keep its point out of his skin, and the venom Aldric had put there was working fast. At least wolfsbane would send a kinder finish than most of the other poisons he might have used, if any life ended before its time could be called kind.

Stripping off his right-hand glove, he knelt and pressed his fingers to the soldier’s neck where the skin was already cold, and clammy with perspiration. The pulse was slow, irregular and weak like the uneven, shallow breathing, and soon to stop. There was nothing he could do, nothing anyone could do, except – he reached up toward the chieftain’s bier to shift the candle closer – make sure the lord’s-man didn’t die in the dark. But those gasps for breath stopped before the candle moved.

Aldric held his own breath for a few seconds, then straightened up. It was time to leave this place, but first he lifted the red rose which had lain undisturbed throughout the fighting. Its fragrance was as potent as before, still too excessive to be pleasant, but at least it didn’t stink of fresh-spilled blood. Then, just as he had touched the soldier, he reached out with those same fingertips and laid them on the chieftain’s dry brown skull. It had the slight slickness of polished wood or an old book-binding.

“Lord of the mound,” he said, as if making a salutation. “Did they leave your hawks and hounds and horses here, and chosen warriors to guard your goods and ease your loneliness? You’ll have more company from this night on.”

Aldric had hoped for magic, or an answer to the many riddles which troubled him. He had found only pain, and the echoes of nightmare, and corpses. After a duck of the head halfway between a bow and a dismissal, he turned and walked away.

CHAPTER THREE

The reflex jerk of one leg awoke her, wrenched sweating and wild-eyed out of a dreadful dream of endless falling. There was no warm interval of drowsiness; one minute she was deep in restless sleep, the next shocked wide awake. The moon shone into her eyes through a crack where the bedroom shutters didn't meet, and for an instant the young woman thought she had somehow lost all of one day and night. Then she realised, with a relief concealed by the darkness, that its disc wasn’t yet at full.

Sedna ar Gethin was the present consort of Lord Crisen Geruath, and a sorcerer of great though undefined ability. Not that any who lived in Seghar town beneath the shadow of their Overlord’s lowering citadel were rash enough to use the word. An over-forthright merchant from Tergoves wondered aloud about what talents she might have besides those of an ordinary mistress, pronounced the word with an emphatic inflection that made it Talents – and next day in the public square a team of oxen pulled him apart.

The Imperial punishment for sorcery was just as savage, so Crisen’s response to that dangerous speculation was at least understandable. Men of power and privilege in the Imperial provinces closer to Drakkesborg could do as they pleased with magic, protected by what they were or who they knew, but that didn’t apply to petty noblemen out on the Jevaiden plateau. Such noblemen needed to avoid attention by any means they could, and it was a measure of how things stood in the Empire that a brutal execution without trial no longer caused comment.

Sedna sat up and curled her legs beneath her. Sleep would prove elusive for a while, and she could remember enough of her dream to be glad of it. When the quilt slipped from her shoulders and the night air chilled her sweaty skin, the shiver it provoked came from more than just the cold, for it was a sensation uncomfortably close to one experienced earlier that night. She snuggled lower again, moving with care so as not to waken Crisen, but the cool draught had already disturbed the Overlord’s son.

He muttered something to his pillow and rolled over, clawing still more of the quilt from Sedna’s limbs. She glared at him, debated what to do while her skin grew even colder, then reached a decision and swung both legs out of bed as she reached for her discarded robe. It was cream silk, lined with a costly apricot satin whose weight made it cling to her body as if both silk and skin were oiled. All of that was in Crisen’s mind when he bought it but, far more important tonight, the lining made it warm.

Sedna was slight, almost thin, with all the implied plainness that word suggested in a country which liked its women well-curved. But she was neither thin nor plain, nor even merely pretty: there was all the translucent beauty of an exquisite porcelain figurine in her slender form. Straight black hair emphasised her height, for no blade had touched it in years and now, worn as she preferred it as a single long horsetail tied back with silken cord, it flowed in a glossy raven sheet for the full length of her spine and beyond. Its darkness, and the deep brown of her long-lashed eyes, accentuated a face which never tanned even when she was out of doors all day. She seemed little more than that innocent child now, for all her willowy elegance, yet any who believed it were deeply mistaken.

Sedna ar Gethin was neither child nor innocent; she was Vreijek, a sorcerer, and a long way from home.

The smells of burnt ymeth and stale wine lingered in the bedroom; Sedna wrinkled her nose with distaste and wished herself more than ever back in Vreijaur, or anywhere far from here and now. She looked down at the muffled bulk of Crisen’s sleeping body, staring in a dispassionate way which would have annoyed him intensely if he was awake and aware of it.

Despite his ferocious notions of justice he didn’t seem a bad man, at least no worse than most in his situation. He was ambitious of course, but then so many were. Sedna was just as ambitious, otherwise she wouldn’t be here. But she felt sure there was no real evil in him, unlike several of the men encountered in this same fortress during recent months.

Lord-Commander Voord for one, who slept in a guest-room in the same wing of the citadel, not far enough away for Sedna’s peace of mind. That one might not sleep at all, just sit bolt upright in a high-backed chair with his unblinking pale eyes fixed on nothing, no more needing to close them than a lizard. There was something reptilian about him, something cold and patient. Sedna didn’t know why so young a man held such high rank and no desire to find out. Ignorance of Voord’s doings was an advantage when one had to speak to him, an ordeal so far kept to an absolute minimum. The Eldheisart frightened her.

Sedna wrapped the lined robe close about her and tied it in place before she walked towards the casement and swung one shutter wide. With the contrast between in bed and out less pronounced, the night air became refreshing rather than chilly and she drew it deep into her lungs as a man might inhale the fragrant smoke of his pipe. The dream still troubled her, with an uneasy feeling that there was more behind it than a simple nightmare, and the moonlight cast too many shadows. She pronounced the Invocation of Fire, gestured with one hand towards an oil-lamp, and with a small, sharp crack its wick ignited. Sedna was a sorcerer indeed, and one considerably skilled in the Art Magic. A less careful, less capable wizard could have set the entire table aflame.

There had been death in her dream, the violent ending of several lives, but where, and who, and why should it concern her? She knew, like someone aware they have no ear for music, that she wasn’t given to precognition or visions, but a squirm of suspicion turned her gaze on sleeping Crisen. Sedna couldn’t have said why, even to herself, but nonetheless she knew.

He always showed interest in her magics, as any man might dabble in matters that interested his lover. As that Tergovan merchant learned too late, Crisen’s rank and status also shielded her from the legal consequences. Yet more than once she found her books disturbed. There was no reason for complaint; none were damaged, and curiosity was reason enough. But now, her misgivings aroused, Sedna began to see connections which hadn’t been clear enough before.

How many other times had it happened? How many times was everything tidied afterwards with much more care, so she never knew what had been read?

It was enough to find her well-thumbed copy of The Grey Book of Sangellan taken from its case then replaced with its place-tag moved from ‘Herblore’ – a proper subject for here in the forest country – to ‘Shape-shifting’, which interested her not at all. More ominously, her rarest and most expensive grimoire – a hand-bound, handwritten Jouvaine translation of the proscribed Vlechan work Enciervanul Doamnisoar – ‘On the Summoning of Demons’ – had also been moved, and when she saw it, one hasp of the reputed woman’s-hide cover was still not snapped completely shut.

Sedna noticed that intrusion straight away, for she had bought the volume at a high price when opportunity arose, and since that time hadn’t opened it except to check that all its pages were in place. It was a book for possession, not use, and certainly not for idle browsing by the unwary.

At first the realisation that someone was looking between its covers merely irritated her. Now it disturbed her. The phrase ‘forbidden knowledge’ was much over-used by the ignorant, but with Enciervanul Doamnisoar it was plain truth. And there were the usual stories and rumours of what happened to the translator a year and a day after he completed his self-appointed task…

Sedna needed to check her books, and though she would rather have waited until daylight, it had to be done right now if she was to have any peace of mind. She opened the bedroom door just enough to let her out and then, with a backward glance towards the still-sleeping Crisen, squeezed through the crack and pulled it shut behind her.

Three seconds passed. Then Crisen Geruath sat up.

*

The Overlord’s son had granted his lady two rooms for her own private use, one as a library and the other, a great cellar underneath the oldest part of Seghar citadel, somewhere she could practice her sorcery without disturbance or unwelcome notice. It was there she made entertaining magics for Crisen’s amusement, like invoking an elemental spirit to present him with great red summer roses. Why roses she never knew, but roses he had wanted and roses he got, even at the waning of winter when snow still clothed the Jevaiden in drifts six feet deep.

Once, and once only – she detested necromancy – Sedna had called up a spirit of Crisen’s ancestors. Despite insisting she perform the spell, its result hadn’t pleased him. The Geruath line was far less exalted than they claimed, littered with by-blows and low-caste bastards, and though such secrets were common among the new aristocracy elevated by support for the Grand Warlords, being common didn’t make them any more palatable. The old Drusalan nobility who supported the Emperors treated illegitimacy as a mere human failing, but that opinion was reinforced by generations of lordship. Only families such as Crisen’s were over-sensitive about the misbehaviour of men and women long dead.

Sedna sometimes wondered what lords had preceded the Geruaths. It was clear they had supported the wrong side, so they no longer ruled Seghar, and she wasn’t foolhardy enough to ask to ask what had become of them. But she could guess, and as she padded through the darkened corridors of the citadel with the echoes of that dream still troubling her mind, she realised she might have been terribly wrong about Crisen. Yes, he lacked the aura of sophisticated cruelty that Lord-Commander Voord wore like a cloak, but he could be dangerous enough, his ambition would make sure of that. And when his sense of rank and importance was questioned, the Three Gods had better guard those who did it.

Sedna considered her own unspoken words and despite her worries they brought a sour smile to her face. Unspoken was safest in this place. It was typical of the Drusalan Empire that its rulers should want to influence what people believed, what gods they prayed to and what Afterlives they went to, as if one life wasn’t trouble enough. She wasn’t religious. Few sorcerers were, knowing what they did about the nature of things, but Imperial meddling with spiritual matters angered her more than any of its other petty interferences. Rumour had it that radical Drusalan priests were demanding the Teshirin sect be denounced as heretics. If that happened the Imperial legions could go from one end of Vreijaur and Jouvann to the other, killing one in every three of the population.

There was a certain macabre aptness to the number.

From what she knew of the Alban, they were much wiser. They revered their ancestors as part of each clan’s history, rather than what they had or hadn’t been or done, and they prayed to a God represented by the sun they called the Light of Heaven. It was strange that a people bound by oaths and honour-codes which sometimes seemed more than half in love with death, should pay so much respect to a symbol of life. Or maybe not so strange at all.

There were few sounds so late at night in Seghar’s citadel, and no patrolling sentries. Except in time of war Crisen’s retainers were servants more than soldiers, and Voord’s personal guard, the only real military force for twenty miles, were in barracks on the other side of the sprawling fortress. But although the halls and corridors were quiet Sedna was mistaken to assume she was alone and unwise to let her concentration. For she was wrong in her assumption, twice over.

She crossed one last gallery and stopped outside her library door, glancing warily from side to side before removing its key from the concealed cache under one glazed tile of the elaborate mosaic floor. The lock turned with only the faintest clicking from its mechanism, and the well-greased door swung silently open to admit her. It re-locked in equal silence from within and Sedna drew a heavy curtain so no light along its edges could betray her presence. Only then did she conjure flame into the lamps and candles – all of them, for she was growing to hate the thought of shadows. They caught with a sequential crackling like dry reeds flung onto a fire, their scented oils and waxes filling the room with pleasant blended perfumes.

In the provinces a library might mean three or four handwritten volumes and a dozen printed works, maybe a score of books in all. This one was different. It was on a scale to match the great Imperial cities, not just a room devoted to books but a room full of them, with shelves from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It held an emperor’s ransom in paper, parchment and painted silk, tooled-leather tomes and fragile scrolls in lacquer cases, with books common, books rare and books priceless all jostling for prominence. Most had come from the famous shop at The Four Cranes in Ternon, and didn’t need kept under lock and key except for their value to any discerning thief bold enough to rob this fortress.

But a few had come from other sources, and they were locked away from prying eyes and fingers in the one object which spoiled an otherwise lovely room. At first glance the place looked scholarly and comfortable, somewhere philosophers could debate obscure points of reasoning over a dish of honeyed fruit and a glass or three of wine. Two incongruities gave the lie to that gentle image. One was a casket made of dull blued steel, the other an enormous velvet curtain stretching half the length of the end wall. Sedna walked to the casket, almost as tall as herself and etched with minute detailed figures, then hesitated while she gathered up the courage to look inside.

Its key went everywhere with her, built into the massive ring which dominated the centre knuckles of her left hand. The key, and the casket it fitted, were made at her own considerable expense in the foundries of Egisburg, then installed here quite openly. Her excuse both then and now was safety, a sound reason for locking any door, and Crisen didn’t question it. Also, more importantly to her mind, she possessed the only key. Sedna unsnapped a jewelled catch to release its elaborate wards from the body of the ring, inserted that key into the lock and, after a complex sequence of twists and pressures, the iron door opened.

If she had been less worried or more observant, she might have noticed miniscule scratches round the keyhole’s outer rim and a thin film of metal-flecked grease on the key as she withdrew it; telltale signs that the lock had been picked. But she did not, for at that point she hesitated. All her other actions were swift and sure, yet now something stopped her reaching into the casket. Fear, perhaps, or simply an unwillingness to learn at last what foreboding had brought her here.

Sedna put both hands inside and withdrew the bulk of Enciervanul Doamnisoar, repelled as always by the smooth, sleek contact of its flawless leather cover. According to legend it was the skin of a virgin girl, flayed with flint while she still lived then tanned to the softness of a lady’s glove as binding for this most terrible of grimoires. According to legend…

“Pigskin, probably,” Sedna muttered as she laid the book down on a lectern. She said something of the sort on every occasion she touched the book, although Father, Mother and Maiden all witness how few those occasions had been. Despite that reassuring scepticism she still wanted to wipe an unseen residue of suffering from her hands. It was several minutes before she unsnapped the three bronze hasps which held the covers shut, and longer still before she opened them.

When she did so, she found there was no need to search through its pages. The book was doing that all by itself. Logically it was because any thick volume tended to fall open at weak points in the binding of its spine. But logic had no place where magic was involved. The leaves flicked past with a tiny sound like mice behind wainscoting, fast at first then slowing down as if an unseen reader neared a place they sought.

The pages stopped.

And that was when the hostile eyes watching through a hidden spy-port saw Sedna gasp with fear and press her knuckles to her teeth.

*

Aldric emerged into the clearing again, into shadows thrown by the surrounding trees which had barely advanced from where he last saw them. He had been inside the mound for less than twenty minutes. It had seemed longer. It had been longer.

Three lives longer…

A human figure, or at least a vague silhouette of one, black against the moon-silvered grass, was watching him from beneath the lightning-blasted tree. Though he couldn’t see its eyes he could sense them on him, and also sense something else that might be relief, disbelief or even annoyance. Aldric couldn’t tell. His hand moved to the holstered telek, but he recognised the silhouette of Evthan’s lanky frame and forced himself to relax and even wear a thin smile on a face where it didn’t fit. False bravado was becoming a habit, a playacting affectation. The smile dissolved.

As he drew closer he made out more details, and they didn’t match what he expected to see. Once his anger at the lack of alarm or help faded away, Aldric imagined reasons to justify it. He was prepared for Evthan dead, Evthan injured, or at least Evthan taking cover from a superior number of armed men. Even that demonstration of caution close to cowardice wouldn’t have irritated him as much as the reality, which was Evthan unhurt, Evthan unruffled, Evthan not even out of breath with his bow unstrung and his quiver laced shut.

“One got away,” the hunter said. Aldric’s slaked anger swelled up inside him again, rising to the surface like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. His face felt so hot and red that he was sure Evthan could see it even in the pallid moonlight.

“What did you say…?”

“One of them escaped.” Either Evthan didn’t know what effect his words were having, or he didn’t care. “I assume the other three are dead?”

“You assume?” A more choleric man would have spluttered then, or shouted, or even let his fist speak for him. Instead the rasp in Aldric’s low voice finally warned the Jouvaine hunter that all wasn’t well. “And you did nothing.” The accusation was unmistakable. “You saw them, you counted them, yet you did nothing. Blazing Light of Heaven, why not?”

“Because I thought I heard something.” Even as he spoke he realised how feeble the excuse sounded, but he elaborated hastily before Aldric could say anything else. “You must have heard it too. A wolf howled.”

“A wolf howled.” Aldric’s tone was an unpleasant thing to hear. “Yes. I know a wolf howled. And I know how long those men were there before I heard it. A final time – you gave me neither help nor warning. Why?”

“Aldric, I tell you—” A glare and an angry gesture from one blood-crusted hand cut the excuse off short. Aldric winced, for the movement hurt and did nothing to improve his temper.

“You tell me nothing! Throughout this hunt you’ve told me nothing. Since we met, Lord Geruath’s head forester—” The way Aldric used the title sounded like an insult, “—you’ve told me nothing!” That wasn’t quite true, but Evthan wasn’t foolish enough to take issue with it. “We’re going back to Valden. Walk in front of me. And do nothing sudden.”

The expression on Evthan’s face almost convinced him that the man had just been thoughtless, but Aldric had seen play-acting too often before to trust it. He had been a play-actor for his own advantage more than once. As the Jouvaine walked away he fell into step behind, close enough but not too close, and drew his telek.

Though he heard the ratchet of its mechanism click several times, Evthan didn’t dare glance back. If he had, he would have seen the weapon’s cylinder rotate by several stops until the next bolt it shot was a silver one.

There was an overwhelming sense of being used as a dupe, a catspaw, an unwitting pawn in someone else’s game. Crisen Geruath’s, maybe. Or General Goth’s, or Prokrator Bruda’s. Even King Rynert’s. There were too many players, and not enough pieces to go round. There was nothing more he could say to Evthan, and no questions left to ask even if he expected answers that were more than just half-truths. He knew already who the soldiers served, the one called Keeyul had told him as much, and even knew what brought them to the old tomb after dark, though that was padded out by guesswork and his own memories. Memories? If only he could forget…

Issaqua comes to find me

To take my life and soul

For I am lost

And none can help me now.

Issaqua sings the song of desolation

And fills the world with Darkness.

Bringing fear and madness.

Despair and death to all.

As shreds of cloud slid in to mask the moon, the fine hairs on his skin prickled at his clothing as if he was cold. Except that he wasn’t cold. Or if he was, the weather had nothing to do with it.

*

The gates of the village were shut and barred, and Evthan had to shout several times at the top of his voice before someone inside opened them. It was, he explained, because the villagers were all asleep by now. Aldric stared at him but said nothing, long past the need to make small talk. He guessed the hunter was right, but both guess and explanation were wrong.

There was light within the palisade, not darkness. An extravagance of lamps and torches and candles hung outside each house, and most of all around the home of headman Darath. Aldric half-heard Evthan mutter something about ‘a council meeting at this hour?’ but paid no attention as he stepped inside the headman’s house. Half a dozen sitting nearest the door looked up as he came in, but the rest were more concerned with their own affairs. There were no questions about his success in hunting, no interest at all in why he was smeared and spotted with dry blood and, most curiously, his presence at the meeting wasn’t questioned by anyone.

As Evthan came in behind him Aldric moved to one side, leaned against the wall and listened to a debate which from volume and passionate gestures had been going on for some time. Though they all spoke in Jouvaine, there were enough dialect words flung to and fro across the table to need all his concentration as he tried to make sense of the discussion.

And what they were discussing, if anyone could dignify the uproar with such a word, was whether to abandon Valden to the Deepwood and the Beast. Reasons for and against were aired loudly and at length, but it all boiled down to the same thing: the Beast, and the Beast alone, was the source of all their troubles. Aldric turned his head, caught Evthan’s eye and raised one doubting eyebrow. Oh indeed? How little they know.

One grizzled old man got to his feet, and the respect he commanded was enough to silence the shouting and argument at once.

“Talk all you will about how your families have lived here for years past. We talk about why we can no longer live here now. This three months past we have put no silver in the coffers, though we have taken out as much as we do every Spring. The money-chests are empty, soon we will begin to starve, and Lord Geruath will still want his taxes paid. All because six men must do the work of one, for fear of the Beast.”

The undertone of condemnation in his voice provoked a ripple of discontent, a change in the buzz of sound that was too vague to identify its source. Aldric came close to a snappish correction that men seemed in no danger from the Beast, Evthan had all but told him so, but it wasn’t his place to say so when there were other things the assembled villagers needed to hear. His clenched right fist boomed against the wall, and now not half-a-dozen but every head in the place turned as if on a single neck to stare at him. Already, like a defensive mechanism, he was smiling the thin, sardonic smile that was becoming far too much at home on his face.

“You’ll do what you think is best, I’m sure,” he said. “But you shouldn’t waste too much time deciding what that is.”

“How came you bloodied, sir?” The formal phrasing came from Darath the headman himself, sitting in a high-backed chair more ornately carved than any other in the room. It was more elaborate than Aldric expected to see a peasant sitting on, and the carvings weren’t folk-art, trees and flowers and animals, but armed warriors and stylised crest-beasts. Darath himself was grey-haired, his face half-hidden by the sweep of a steel-hued moustache, and there was enough dignity about him that, peasant or not, Aldric straightened from his slouch to make a bow before he spoke again.

“I killed three men in the forest tonight. Soldiers in the service of your Overlord.” He heard the collective gasp of horror but didn’t break contact with the headman’s eyes. “This,” he raised his left hand with its clotted web of red-black trickles, “is my blood, while this—” the right hand came up, its black leather glove roughened by coagulated spatter, “—is from a Drusalan called Keeyul.”

“You killed him?” Darath’s voice was neutral and Aldric could read nothing from it.

“In a fair fight.” Fair, if the distraction caused by a howling wolf was left out of it.

“Then, honoured sir,” the warmth in Darath’s voice was unmistakable, “you have rid the Jevaiden of an evil greater than the Beast. At least it has reason for its beastly nature. Keeyul had not.”

“Listen to me, headman!” Aldric cut through a rising undercurrent of jubilation. After what they had discussed, and all but decided, any small triumph was cause for celebration. If they wanted to celebrate, they needed to know the whole story.

“Darath!” There was sudden silence. It was unlikely anyone had spoken a headman’s name like that under his own roof since Valden village was hacked from the trees. “Let me finish. I killed three, but there were four. One escaped. Right now he’s telling Lord Geruath everything that happened. He’ll say I spoke Evthan’s name aloud. How long after that before more soldiers come to this village? They’ll look for him, for me – and for anyone who gave me food, or shelter, or even a friendly word.”

“How…” Darath’s voice cracked, forcing him to try again. “How, if you could kill three, did you let one get away?” There was a pathetic desperation in the way he framed the question, and for just a moment Aldric wished he could give a better answer.

“Ask Evthan about it.” He ducked his head in another slight bow. “I’m going to my bed.”

*

Although that bed was in Evthan’s own house, the hunter didn’t follow to let him in. The council would hardly let him leave without demanding explanation for that enigmatic parting shot. Yet when Aldric reached the house its door was secured only by the hasp, and Gueynor was inside on a low chair near the stove.

“Good evening, hlensyarl,” she said, then returned her attention to the simmering pots. Aldric nodded back with equal curtness and took a seat.

“Is it?” Seeing her rekindled the dull self-loathing that any kailin-eir might feel after using poisoned weapons. It was no more than vague disquiet, not directed at anything in particular, but Gueynor was here again and she had been the one to offer him the basket of venoms. She lifted a lid, stirred, tasted, stirred again and replaced the lid before looking at him.

“No success?”

“No.”

“There’s always tomorrow.”

Aldric stared at her, trying to sift the many meanings from that simple sentence. A red-glazed flask of wine and a matching cup were on a nearby table and he poured himself a brimming measure, draining more than half of it before saying anything more. There was also a hope it might numb the pain in his left arm, which from the sodden feel of his shirt-sleeve was still leaking blood.

“Full moon and summer solstice. A fine time to hunt for… Beasts.” If Gueynor read more than the obvious from his words, her firelit face showed no sign of it. Instead she shrugged.

“The full moon should give good light.”

Aldric favoured her with a wolfish smile which put an unreasonable number of teeth on show. She didn’t match it, even mockingly, but looked away instead and prodded a poker at the coals in the stove as if they were an enemy and the flat-tipped bar of iron a sword. Aldric emptied another cup of wine in silence, then a third. He could feel the alcohol begin to take effect and was glad of it. There were many reasons why he wanted to be drunk tonight, or at least not cold sober. He poured again, and over the rim of that half-finished measure stared at Gueynor.

“What brings you here so near midnight?” he asked. The girl’s blue eyes were full of innocence, almost too much so.

“To feed you, why else?” The reply came a little too pat and Aldric smiled again, a nasty expression that was deliberately harsh and humourless.

“I can think of several reasons.” The challenge hung unanswered on the air and he took another tack. “That stuff you keep stirring – what is it?”

“Stew,” she said, and left it at that.

“What is it?” he repeated. This time she recited the list of ingredients then glared at him.

“What else did you expect?”

“Will you tell me, if I ask? When do you add one of your aunt’s special potions? Before the salt, or after?” It was unjust to say such things, and he knew the injustice of it, but he felt sick in a way no medicines could cure, he was in pain and above all he was weary of being someone else’s plaything. Gueynor didn’t protest his unspoken accusation, nor was she even irritated by his petulant righteousness of condemning the poisons which she had merely offered but which he had used.

“They were intended for the Beast,” she said. “I don’t want to know how else you used them.” Aldric set down his wine-cup and leaned towards her.

“Do you believe any poison will affect what roams these woods at night?”

“I can hope.”

“I think hope’s worth next to nothing where the Beast is concerned.”

“Then you’re convinced about what it is?”

“Convinced enough. As much as any man can be without absolute proof.”

A log in the stove crackled, cracked, gave birth to a cloud of whirling sparks and slumped into a mass of glowing embers. Aldric felt the sudden splash of heat against his face and pulled back, but Gueynor didn’t move even though she was much closer.

“You’ll burn up if you stay there! Here…” He reached out one hand to help her up and away, but she gave the stains on it a shocked stare, reached for the other one instead and found it just as bloody.

“You didn’t tell me you were hurt!” Gueynor made it sound as if he was to blame, and there was only one response.

“You didn’t ask.” Had he been a little more sober he wouldn’t have said it; had he been more in control of himself, he wouldn’t have said most of the things spoken that night. As the proverb said, it’s easier to recall a flying arrow than a thoughtless word.

“Let me see that.” Gueynor was on her feet at once, entirely businesslike, all their verbal hacking of the past few minutes set aside. “Take off your jerkin, and your shirt.” Aldric hesitated until the girl smiled at what seemed to be embarrassed modesty and reached out to tug gently at his clothes.

“I’d rather have a bath first,” he said, twitching back the half-inch necessary to avoid her fingers. Gueynor’s concern was proving awkward, because what he would rather do was remove the armoured sleeves under his jerkin. Evthan knew about them already, and that was one too many. The other thing he wanted from his saddlebags was something he most definitely wanted kept secret. “Hot water won’t matter. Cold will do.”

“I’ll be washing your whole arm, not just around the wound. A bath would do no better.” Her reasoning was sound and forced Aldric to abandon excuses for practical demonstration. No blood had seeped through the leather jerkin, it had run down his arm along the inner surface, soaking into his shirt and the padded lining of his armour. When he pressed two fingers against the sleeve there was an ugly, soggy sound, and Gueynor made a wordless sound of distaste.

“You see?” he said. “This will make a mess no matter what I do. And anyway, I have to strip to the skin and wash. I spilled more than my own blood tonight.” He let Gueynor draw her own conclusions, and she didn’t disappoint him but used the very word he wanted to hear.

“Are you… Unclean?”

He nodded and said nothing more, hinting at reluctance to talk about the matter. It was nonsense, such things played no part in Alban religious observance or the entire Clan Wars would have been an endless round of battling and bathing, but it was easy to connect their well-known fondness for hot water with the requirements of ritual. Gueynor moved aside, so concerned by her indiscretion that he regretted using the excuse at all in case something took offence.

“Avert,” he muttered, and his right hand touched fingertips to forehead then mouth before turning palm-outward. It was a gesture he hadn’t made in a long time, and in other circumstances it would have embarrassed him.

But not here, and not now.

*

Aldric checked on his two horses, then rummaged for several seconds in one saddlebag’s inner panniers before he found the object he had come for. It was Gemmel’s parting gift, at first sight just masculine jewellery, an armlet of silvered steel with a gemstone protected by a white deerskin pouch laced tight around it. He stared at it in silence, then drew a deep breath and secured its triple loops about his left wrist, settling the covered jewel into the hollow of his palm above the four pale crisscross lines of his Honour-scars. He flexed his fingers, closing them into a fist to confirm the jewel’s fit, then undid the laces and pulled the pouch away.

Lambent azure brilliance pulsed from the crystal the pouch had contained, rising to a tapering blue flame three feet in height before it died down to a pulsing glow that lapped and coiled about his hand like burning brandy. Yet there was no heat emanating from it. None at all.

This was one of the spellstones of Echainon, lost for centuries then found by Aldric, accidentally, on the battlefield of Baelen Fight. It was a potent talisman of great antiquity, imbued with such power that even Gemmel didn’t know its limitations, yet the enchanter had transferred it from its setting on Ykraith the Dragonwand to this bracelet as a luck-piece for his foster son. What unsettled him more was Gemmel’s belief he shared an affinity with the crystal, because the last man who dared make such a claim was Kalarr cu Ruruc.

“It isn’t a weapon, Aldric. Not like the Dragonwand. And I can trust you to treat it honourably, as I could trust few others in this realm. Take it, with my blessing.”

“Why give it to me?” Aldric had protested. “I don’t know how to use it! I’m not a wizard!”

“You will know, when you have to,” Gemmel told him. “As it will know you.” Aldric hadn’t liked the thought of being recognised by a destructive piece of enchanted glass and said so frequently, to no avail. “Remember when you claimed Ykraith. You knew the right procedure then. That will happen again.”

No matter how often the enchanter reassured him, Aldric remained wary of the stone. He had accepted it and carried it – and taken great care not to even unwrap it until now. His right hand reached for his tsepan and tugged the still-sheathed dirk out of his weapon-belt. Its pommel glittered in the crystal’s light like a chunk of ice, pure silver and anathema to evil magic. Aldric half-closed his eyes, held his breath and touched the pommel to the spellstone.

That breath came out an instant later as a gasp of relief, because there was no adverse reaction. At first he thought there was no reaction at all, then realised that the irregular flicker of the stone’s cold fire had changed, pulsing now in time with the beating of his heart as if its energies were as much a part of him as blood and breath. Aldric sank down in the straw of the stable floor, back braced against the wall, and put his tsepan back in its accustomed place. Then he raised the talisman level with his eyes.

“Abath arhan,” he said, not fully comprehending where the words came from. “Alh’noen ecchaur i aiyya.” There was a faint humming like bees in clover and the Echainon stone grew warm against his skin, its sapphire nimbus flinging out tendrils of smoky light that poured like mist between his outstretched fingers. Gemmel was right. He did know what to do. Aldric pressed the palms of both hands together, fingers interlaced as if in prayer, then bowed his head until his knuckles touched his forehead.

And remembered nothing after that…

*

So tired…

Aldric opened leaden eyelids and rolled his head back on a neck whose muscles seemed incapable of supporting its weight. There was no light in the stable. He had brought no candle, risking neither fire nor discovery, and the dilute trickling of moonbeams through almost unseen cracks didn’t count as illumination. Aldric opened his clasped hands and looked down at the spellstone. It magnified the lines and creases of his palm beneath it as a lens might do, and was almost colourless now, except for a tiny thread of blue-white fire deep in its core. Apart from that crawl of minute flames there was nothing to suggest the crystal was anything but a piece of polished quartz.

And apart from weariness, there was no longer any pain to remind him of his wounding. The arm inside the sleeve might show a scar, but it would be that of a wound long- healed, for the stone took energy from his own body to speed the healing process, reducing it from weeks to minutes. A useful magic without doubt, but the strength it drained left him tired beyond belief.

“Sorcery,” Gemmel had often warned him, “isn’t free. It has a price which must be paid. Sometimes that price is higher than expected, but not even the mightiest wizards can evade it.”

Aldric was paying his price now.

He dragged himself upright with an effort that brought sweat to his skin, leaned panting against the stable wall for several seconds before daring the few steps to his saddlebags, and wondered if using the talisman as a weapon would kill him before it killed his enemies. When he reached the nearest bag he stripped the spellstone’s metal framework from his wrist and pushed it deep into the pannier, tugged a few pieces of clothing down to hide it and fumbled the straps back into their buckles. Once all was back in order, he staggered to the door and out into the moonlit night. The charm of healing hadn’t taken long, he could tell that from the moon and the still-wet blood on his left arm, but even so it would be better if he was in his bath if anyone came looking for him.

As they probably would.

*

The stove in Evthan’s house heated the tank in the bath-house and its water was almost scalding hot, but Aldric used most of it to fill the wooden tub. Before he climbed in and almost fell asleep, he rinsed and dried his armour then rubbed a mixture of grease and beeswax into the places which had struck the tomb wall. If there was an unseen crack in the shiny black proofing, salt blood would damage the metal underneath as easily as immersion in the sea, corroding it until one day the mail gave beneath a blow. The smell of hot oiled metal still hung in the steamy air when Gueynor came in, unannounced yet again, with another basket, this one full of ointments and bandages.

“Don’t you believe in knocking?” said Aldric, opening drowsy eyes as he slithered deeper into the tub.

“Should I?”

There might have been genuine surprise in Gueynor’s voice, but he doubted it. She set the basket on a bench by the tub, drew the single oil-lamp closer, then spread her skirts and sat down beside it. Aldric had seen court ladies take their seats with less grace and elegance. Then he forgot about the things he had or hadn’t seen when she took his left arm in a gentle grasp. An instant later she let go as if it burned her, and her eyes were the only coloured thing in a shock-blanched face.

“Lady Mother Tesh protect me,” she whispered, drawing a protective ward-mark between them. “What happened to your arm?”

“It healed,” he said, and raised the arm again for her inspection. A narrow line ran across the tanned skin, not even puckered scar tissue but only a pale mark such as chalk might leave.

“What sort of man are you, hlensyarl?”

“A man like other men. A little better educated in strange subjects than most, but nothing more than that.”

“What do you know of Sedna?” The question confused him, and it showed plain on his tired face. “Sedna ar Gethin,” Gueynor added by way of elaboration. “Lord Crisen’s mist— His consort.”

The name meant nothing, but its distinctive form meant the woman Sedna was from Vreijaur. Just like Dewan ar Korentin, now the champion, confidant and friend of King Rynert but before that an eldheisart in the Imperial Bodyguard at Drakkesborg. Aldric didn’t suspect ar Korentin of anything. After being forced to abandon his well- favoured post, Dewan held no love for the Drusalan Empire. However he also knew a little of how the man’s mind worked and that nothing, no matter how convoluted, was beyond him. That might include the presence of another Vreijek where none was expected.

A memory cut through the weariness clouding his mind. He was aboard the merchant-ship En Sohra, hearing from Dewan’s own mouth how he had manipulated Aldric’s ignorance, and thus his unfeigned innocence, to fool the commander of an Imperial battleram. Aldric had meant what he said when he called ar Korentin a devious bastard, everyone who heard him knew it, but the man himself just smiled and bowed, happy with the compliment…

“Gueynor, give me a towel please,” he said, just as she thought he was drifting back to sleep. “And look away.”

Gueynor looked surprised, as if expecting less modesty and more appreciation of her company, but Aldric didn’t care. She watched the door while water sloshed in the tub and spattered noisily across the tiled floor, followed by the slap of bare feet and the scrubbing of the towel put to use. When she risked an over-shoulder glance it was already thrown aside, for by that time Aldric was back in his breeches and reaching for a clean shirt.

From the corner of one eye he could see her examining him, and if her scrutiny was less dispassionate than a doctor’s she hid it well. There were several traces of past injury on his skin, yet none could properly be termed scars except the one from eyebrow to jaw. All the rest, after something more powerful than the passage of time healed each of them, had that chalked-on look as if a damp cloth might wipe them away.

“Now,” he said, straightening, “what about Sedna?” The last part of the word vanished in an enormous yawn.

“Never mind questions now,” Gueynor replied, despite having plenty of her own. “You should be in bed. You look,” her hand reached out and touched his cheek just below one drooping eyelid, “as if you haven’t slept in days.”

“But—”

“Ssh! You may not need my help as a nurse, but I can be useful in other ways.” He raised one eyebrow, and she made a disapproving noise. “Like telling you when to be sensible.”

Aldric blinked; she seemed genuinely concerned for his health and why that was so important he didn’t know. Then there was Sedna ar Gethin, a Vreijek already in the Geruath hold at Seghar. Was Dewan behind that? Surely he would have said so, not left Aldric to find it out for himself. The swarm of irrelevancies whirled together like moths round a lantern, and he swayed a little until Gueynor caught one arm and helped him regain his balance.

“Bed, Kourgath!” she repeated. “Lie down before you fall down. Next time I might not catch you.”

He heard her sniff, perhaps in disdain for a man who couldn’t hold his drink since she had watched him put down three large cups of wine when he came into the house. But the family knowledge of herb-lore probably wasn’t restricted to her aunt, and she might be trying to recognise the scent of herbs or drugs taken to aid his rapid healing. Aldric let her reach her own conclusions as she helped him from the bath-house to his bed.

Whatever she decided would probably be more convincing, and certainly safer, than the truth.

CHAPTER FOUR

…I know that I am lost, and none can help me now… Night surrounds me… I am lost… None can help me… Lost… Help me… Help me… Help me… Help me help me help me HELP—

And he was awake.

Aldric lay flat on his back, shuddering all over. He was far too familiar with nightmares and that had been the worst kind, one which would make him afraid to sleep again if he recalled its details afterwards. But those details were gone now, vanished like mist in the morning, and only cold sweat remained.

The wan light of pre-dawn trickled through his bolted bedroom shutters, making vague shapes of the furniture. Familiar shapes, and comforting. Aldric rolled over in the narrow bed, hoping to find more peaceful sleep and instead found another warm body stretched out beside him. That made him sit bolt upright in a way the dream had never done, and for just a moment, when he saw the tumbled blonde hair on his pillow, he thought he was dreaming again; this time much more pleasantly.

“Kyrin…?”

Gueynor.

She pulled her nightgown close under her chin and looked up at him, as shy as any woman might be if found unexpected and uninvited in a stranger’s bed.

“I’ve embarrassed you,” she said. “I’m sorry. I should have woken earlier and left you alone.”

“Embarrassed? I should think… No, not at… Not much, anyway.” He raked hair out of his eyes and knuckled at their sockets as if trying to punch himself awake. “I thought—”

“You thought I was someone else. Someone called Kyrin?” Gueynor, he thought, was most perceptive for so early in the morning. Too perceptive for his liking.

“She was a woman I… I thought I knew better than I did.” Aldric held his breath for a second, then changed the subject. “What happened?”

“You slept. While you were standing, and even when you were walking on your way back here from the bathhouse. I’ve never seen a man so tired. It wasn’t a natural weariness. Do you…” She hesitated, searching for words.

“Just say it.”

“Do you use ymeth?”

“Dreamsmoke?” Aldric stared at her a moment and chuckled to himself, not loudly, but with an honest amusement she hadn’t seen from him before. “No. I don’t use any sort of smoke at all.” The laughter faltered, and faded away. “Perhaps I should. That way I might sleep soundly every night.”

“Not last night,” murmured Gueynor. “You spoke in a language I don’t know. So I held you, and you were still again. But you didn’t wake.”

“I… I have bad dreams. Of betrayal, and loss, and darkness. Of my father. All the time and money spent to make me skilled in bringing death, yet I couldn’t bring him one breath more of life. That was when I should have died myself, but he ordered me to live. To avenge him. So I took that oath. I set aside my honour and promised I would keep faith. I wanted to say so many things. But he was already dead.”

Aldric tried not to blink his stinging eyes, knowing what might happen if he did, and Gueynor shivered. He could see her try to imagine what was going on in the mind behind them, and wonder too if there was a short, simple answer to those imaginings.

“I’m not mad, Gueynor. I think too much about the past, that’s all. The past, and what can’t be mended. It’s a common Alban vice. But no, not mad.”

He stroked his left hand down the line of Gueynor’s jaw until it cupped her chin. Its pressure was neither rough nor painful, but for just an instant she started like a frightened animal. Then she relaxed. Her behaviour puzzled Aldric, and his brows drew together in a frown. He had often heard of people resigning themselves to the inevitable, and almost done it himself, this was the first time he had ever watched it happen. The experience wasn’t pleasant.

“Since for once we’re exchanging honest answers, my lady,” there was no sarcasm in the way he used the title, “I’m curious what secrets you might have to tell me.” The mere prospect of answering questions seemed to frighten her, as it always did, so much that he suspected physical assault would have less effect than a prolonged verbal interrogation.

“What do you want to know?”

“What don’t I want to know?” Matching question with question was no way to get answers. Aldric paused a moment, trying to get his thoughts into something resembling order then shrugged and abandoned the attempt. “Tell me everything. From the beginning.” He doubted Gueynor would do anything of the sort, but it was as if she needed some reason, some excuse, or just some sympathetic listener.

“I’ve lived here since I was a child, and my uncle Evthan has always been like a father to me. He took my real father’s place early in my life, when my parents were… When they died.” It was all familiar ground. Too familiar by far.

“But surely his sister Aline is your—”

“Aunt. My adoptive mother, yes, but my aunt for all that.” Evthan had never said that sister and niece were mother and daughter, Aldric just assumed it and was wrong again as in so many other things. “My mother’s name was Sula. She was the youngest of the family, and a kind, gentle lady. That was why my father loved her. Not for rank and lands and titles, for she had none, and despite her faith, which was not his. He loved her for herself alone.”

He realised now why so many things about Gueynor and her uncle seemed out of character, and the obstacles between father and mother were familiar ones. Albans were usually pragmatic about religion, yet they turned uncharacteristically devout when they needed reasons to obstruct a marriage and politics weren’t enough.

“Who was your father, Gueynor?” he prompted, already half-guessing the answer. “What was his name?”

“My father was… My true father was Erwan Evenou, the last Droganel Overlord of Seghar. Before the Geruaths came.” So the guess was right after all. He asked no more prompting questions, for with this first hurdle crossed Gueynor would find her memories and talking about them easier to bear. He knew that from experience. “Lord Erwan was already married when he met my mother by the river, one warm day in spring. His wife had been chosen for him to bring an alliance, gold and land to Seghar. You’ve heard of the custom?”

“I’ve heard.”

“He was young, your age or a little more. My mother wasn’t yet twenty. He was the Overlord of Seghar, she was a peasant, and he could have lain with her there and then or taken her to the citadel. He was the Overlord, he had the right. But he was a courtly gentleman. Instead of violence and rape, he climbed from his tall horse and paid her compliments as he would a high-born lady, and with his own hands gathered flowers along the river’s edge.”

Aldric wondered if that was how the meeting really played out, or if it was just what Gueynor had been told. Then he regretted his cynicism at once. The thing wasn’t impossible, and many haughty lords were often romantics at heart. Kyrin once said that he himself was… His mind veered from the memory. Did such long-past details really matter to anyone but Gueynor?

“The Empire’s law allows a man of rank to take formal consorts besides his wife, and my father wanted my mother’s presence in his household to be respectable and open. So he petitioned his own father, High Lord Evenou, at the Emperor’s Summer Palace in Kalitzim. My mother told me how he rode there himself, wearing the overmantle of a Falcon courier so he could use the post-roads. When I was born the next spring, I was his daughter in all but rights of succession, and I lived in Seghar until I was eight years old.”

Gueynor stopped and Aldric glanced at her face. They had been lying on their backs, side by side with the coverlet pulled high, with her talking into the air as if making a speech. The phrases were slightly stilted and over-correct and, and if she had spoken to him like that when they first met, her pretence of being a peasant would have caused yet more confusion and even slight amusement. It was clear, with benefit of hindsight, that she had never been other than what she was, the much-loved bastard of a lord who probably showed her more affection than his legitimate children. She was proof of love, they were just evidence of duty done to family and politics. That was a dangerous attitude, for him, for the child and for her mother. Aldric had encountered extremes of jealousy before, and knew what they could do.

Gueynor’s lips were pressed tightly together to stop their trembling, and unshed tears glistened in her wide-open eyes. Aldric, with memories like that of his own, kept his own mouth shut and waited until she regained her self-control. It didn’t take long.

“I was happy for those eight years. My mother and my father were happy too. Then everything went wrong.”

Aldric had expected to hear those words sooner or later, because this whole situation reeked of vulnerability. What happened, what he was about to hear, was as inevitable in its way as the final scenes of a classic tragedy. The only difference between reality and one of Oren Osmar’s plays was the unfairness of the plot.

“My father’s wife died in childbed, and the infant died with her. There was no difficulty about inheritance, since besides myself there were two sons and another daughter. But he decided he would marry my mother, to give her rank and style and title before the law as well as before the Gods.” Gueynor laughed, a hoarse little sound, and pushed the heel of one hand against her forehead.

“The Gods… Yes, that was the trouble. I know nothing of your Alban beliefs, Kourgath, but the Jevaiden and Vreijaur have a different faith from the Imperial lands. There the Emperor’s descended… Supposed to be descended, in direct line from the Father of Fires. Ya an-Sherbanul bystrei, vodyaj cho’da tlei.” She made a spitting noise. “ ‘Revere those of the Sherban dynasty, for their words are the words of Heaven.’ Or so they say. It’s even written on their banners. Yet how much reverence have the Grand Warlords shown their Emperors? None of it would have mattered… if the Grand Council hadn’t ruled that all lords owing fealty to the Empire must worship as Sherbanul. All lords – and their families.”

“Including wives?”

“Especially wives. If they’re of a different faith they must reject it in public, before the provincial Exark and twenty witnesses. When my mother Sula refused to renounce the Three Gods, my father Erwan broke all precedent and adopted the Teshirin holiness himself. They married by those rites. It would have been better to set aside the lordship first, rather than hold it as something the Drusalans despised. Their soldiers came, as he thought they would, but not to depose him as he expected. If they did that, he would have been granted an opportunity to speak before the Council and accept punishment by their ruling. Instead—” She broke off, but when Aldric rolled over to look at her, expecting tears, he saw instead such a cold hatred as he had never witnessed on any woman’s face. Not even on Lyseun ar Korentin’s, and before Heaven Dewan’s wife made her dislike of him all too plain.

“They dared kill an Imperial Overlord? With no authority?”

“They murdered him. They cut him down in his own High Hall, they claimed he was tainted beyond redemption even by the Lord Politark at Drakkesborg, and they even claimed my mother had enchanted him. That she was a sorcerer. And the Empire’s punishment for sorcery is… Is…”

“Is better left unmentioned.”

Gemmel had told him once, and hadn’t been invited to repeat himself. It involved force and heat and metal, applied with ingenious cruelty for as long as possible. If they did that to Gueynor’s mother… He felt nauseated, his imagination briefly touching on – and then crushing out of existence – vile images with no rightful place in his brain.

“They murdered his whole family. My family. I escaped because Evthan was there that day. He was chief forester to the Overlord, and not just because Sula was his sister; he gained his place by merit. When he took me out past the soldiers, he told any who asked that I was his daughter. Two of them tried to stop us, but I remember their officer – he was very tall, with a black beard – commanding them to let us through. He said, ‘If any child of mine was in this place, I’d take them far away before they witness what will happen. Get out,’ he told my uncle, ‘and don’t come back until things settle down.’ We got out, and we never came back at all.” Gueynor’s eyes closed, and she lay still and silent for so long that Aldric thought she might have fallen asleep.

“I’ve lived in Valden ever since,” she said at last. “I’ve learned to be a peasant, as best I can, and to accept my place. You learn a lot in ten years. But I haven’t learned how to forget. Or forgive. Oh, you can’t understand how it feels to have everything snatched from you by violence!”

Can’t I? thought Aldric. Maybe one day I’ll tell you. And what I did about it. Or maybe not.

“After that Seghar was ruled by one soldier after another; eldheisartin, hautheisartin, high ranks but high enough to suffer from delusions of grandeur. Then two years ago the Geruaths arrived, father and son, each as strange as the other. They make a fine pair. It was Lord Geruath who arranged my father’s murder. I learned this from… from well-informed sources. Yet he bided his time for eight years until his patron Etzel invited him to take the Lordship as a reward for continued support.”

“Etzel? Grand Warlord Etzel?” Lord Geruath, according to King Rynert, sided with the Emperor. Rynert had told him – assured him – that the Overlord of Seghar was an Alban ally, and a safe means by which to contact Goth and Bruda. This new information turned everything upside-down.

“Of course the Warlord. Who else?” Gueynor, brooding on what might have been, was becoming haughty and impatient. There was something else in her voice, something Aldric recognised but at first couldn’t place.

“My uncle Evthan went to Geruath and humbly requested to keep his place as forester, claiming no more loyalty to my father than to any other man who could no longer pay him. That amused our loving lord, for he’s like that himself. But one day my uncle will entice Lord Geruath into the Deepwood, alone, and I’ll be waiting for him. I’ll teach him the cost of Seghar. It’ll be his last lesson, and he’ll take a long, slow time over learning it.”

*

Aldric recognised now what he had detected; it was the vocal equivalent of the hatred seen so briefly on her face, a low, ugly snarl deep in her throat, and yet there was no way he could condemn the reasons for it. He had felt the same way, done the same things, directed the same long-brooded hate at Duergar and Kalarr. The loathing which festered inside him for four years became so powerful that the talisman Ykraith focused it as a pulse of incandescent energy to roast Duergar Vathach where he stood, and Gueynor had been anticipating her vengeance for ten years… Her mood was past now, but he would never look at this young woman in quite the same way again.

“I wonder if Geruath suspects something?” she muttered to herself, ignoring Aldric as if he wasn’t there. “He hasn’t come out of the citadel in months, except that time they dug open the old mound, and then he and Crisen kept themselves surrounded by soldiers. Mercenaries. Why mercenaries? Don’t they trust their own—”

“What about mercenaries?” After the previous night, Aldric had a certain interest in soldiers appearing where they weren’t expected.

“There are few Jouvaines in the garrison at Seghar now, and most of them are just retainers. The rest are Drusalan or Tergovan filth. A troop came here four months ago, just at the end of winter, riding through to Seghar. They hadn’t even been taken on by the Overlord when it happened. Which was just as well.”

“When what happened?” It seemed to be his expected role, like an actor in one of Osmar’s more complicated dramas, to bridge Gueynor’s thoughtful pauses when she was unwilling to say more without prompting.

“One of them was a man who called himself Keeyul.” She missed the expression which flicked like the shadow of a bird’s wing across Aldric’s face. “He offered me silver if I would… Go with him into the woods. But what he asked… He wanted me to…”

“Enough. You don’t have to tell me.”

“It wasn’t just soldier’s talk, Kourgath, not ordinary lewdness. What he suggested was filthy, and my uncle Evthan heard him say it. He spilled him from his horse into the mud and would have done much more if the other men hadn’t separated them.”

From Aldric’s own encounter with the man, Keeyul was good enough with weapons, but fist to fist against someone like Evthan his lean weasel frame was outmatched twice over. The big hunter could have, would have, killed him bare-handed if left alone to finish the job. It was a pity he didn’t get the chance.

“Keeyul wasn’t a lord’s-man, not yet, so he couldn’t do anything himself. Not to the Overlord’s head forester. But he took my uncle with him to Seghar and reported what had happened. Not to Geruath, but to Crisen. I don’t know why. Crisen ruled it would be unjust to kill a man of proven loyalty for being as loyal to his own family, and he let my uncle live.”

Aldric waited. When a lord with a bad reputation turned magnanimous, the tale usually carried a sting in it. He was right.

“But he said he wouldn’t tolerate such disrespect towards his intended retainers, and ordered a punishment. I don’t know what else they did to him, but I do know they beat my uncle with stock-whips from the cattle yard. They beat him until there was no skin left on his back, then they rubbed him with salt and flung him into an ox-cart to come home as best he could. He couldn’t stand when he came to Valden, he could only crawl on his knees and elbows like an animal. And he had barely left his bed when the Beast came.” Gueynor stared at the ceiling, remembering.

“Kourgath,” she said, “my uncle Evthan isn’t the man I thought I knew. Not now. Not any more. Perhaps it was the beating, or fretting about the Beast, or what happened to his wife and daughter.” At last her voice began to tremble. “She was four, did you know that? Four years old.”

Aldric’s mouth quirked as if at an unpleasant taste, the rank, bitter flavour of petty oppressions, of casual cruelties. This was a dirty business, and it was growing dirtier by the minute. Inexorably he was becoming involved in more than just hunting the Beast, or King Rynert’s murderous political necessities. At least now there was reason for that involvement, regardless of how petty the reason might appear. But was it reason enough to kill? Words from his past came to him, in a woman’s voice accented by the distant north. ‘Don’t take life without regret; don’t waste regret when it’s not needed. Think about that.’ He had thought about it many times, and now he was thinking about it again.

No longer restrained by pride and a need for clear speech, Gueynor was crying. They were deep, racking sobs that shook her whole body as she lay curled up tightly alongside him. Though he couldn’t guess who she was weeping for – there were so many – Aldric was glad to see the tears. She had held back far too much emotion this past while, and such a release could do nothing but good. That was something else he knew from experience.

Aldric put his arms around her and held her close until the fit of weeping spent itself. When she rolled over and kissed him, he returned the kiss and held her closer still. It seemed both then and later that there was no intent from either of them; the embrace just changed from comforting to loving as naturally as the rising of the sun outside their window. It was as if, after all the blood and death shared in memory and reality, they needed to share something of life. Their bodies moved together with a slow rhythm that was very far from love, and yet much more than mere urgent lust. For the duration of a single heartbeat in that half-lit shuttered room another face invaded Aldric’s vision.

Kyrin…

And then was gone.

*

Only afterwards, when they lay in a warm knot of entwined limbs and soft quick breathing, did he realise how thoroughly Gueynor’s nails had scored his back. It wasn’t the clawing of real or simulated eagerness, not even a peak of passion, but more like reluctance to let him go and return to the real world outside the house, the room, the bed. A world where people hurt each another to prove whose god was best, and a wolf ran in the woods.

With his head cradled in the angle of her neck and shoulder and his left arm curled around her waist below the ribs, his tousled hair tickled Gueynor’s nose until she had to shift aside. That small movement was enough to send him sliding face-foremost into the pillows.

“Mmf?” The noise he made might not have been a question, but it sounded like one.

“I wanted to pay you for killing the Beast,” she said, so quietly that she spoke almost to herself. “Nobody else can.”

“Nobody has to pay me, least of all you, least of all like that.” Aldric’s voice was muffled and, despite the implied mild criticism in his words, there was also an unspoken hint of not that I’m objecting, you understand. “Because—” he rolled into a more audible position, “—because I’m doing this for my own reasons. Because I want to.”

“And I wanted to as well,” she said, tracing patterns on his chest with one long finger until he twitched and brushed it aside.

“You made your payment too early. The Beast isn’t dead yet.”

“Yet. It will be, soon. And that wasn’t my only reason.” Her finger returned to his chest, moved up to his throat and touched the silver crest-collar encircling it. The contact wasn’t a caress, not quite, and suggested she could guess the collar meant there was more to ‘Kourgath’ the Alban traveller than he admitted. “What about afterwards?”

“Afterwards is afterwards.” The half-smile vanished from his face and now its expression was fixed in neutral wariness. “And that’s a different place. Best wait until we get there.” Gueynor nodded as if she understood his meaning, though Aldric was none too sure she did. Kissing the palm of her own right hand, she touched it once against his forehead and once against his mouth, echoing the blessing she had seen him use though she certainly didn’t understand the meaning behind that either.

“Avert,” she said in a hasty voice which didn’t trust itself to lengthy speeches, then slipped out of the bed, gathered up her clothing and hurried from the room.

*

Aldric glanced up towards the sky. It was a clear clean blue flecked with long white clouds high up, and the sun’s disc was just two handspans over the forest-fringed horizon. This would be a long day, and longer still since what he wanted was the night, and the rising of the moon.

He was dressed in his clothes and equipment from the previous day, some of it still slightly damp from washing. His pack-saddle provided a clean white shirt, but any damage on the rest had been repaired with tiny, careful stitches by a woman of the village, perhaps even Gueynor herself. His armoured sleeves were an open secret now, but he still wore them concealed. The telek and short-bow were with him again, and his tsepan was on his belt. But this time the black dirk wasn’t alone.

Aldric wore his Three Blades today, the taipan shortsword hooked to his weaponbelt at the proper angle for a fast draw, and Isileth Widowmaker’s black hilt rearing high above one shoulder. The taiken might be of little use against the Beast, but he was well aware how much her blade would have changed things against Keeyul and his companions and – though he didn’t say so aloud – he felt more at ease with the longsword at his back than having Evthan there. There was no poison on any of the weapons, not this time. If he had to bring death to whatever waited in the forest, it would be the clean death of steel.

Or of silver.

When he left the house that morning, he tracked down the dog-owner Laine, remembering how Evthan had put less effort into an attempt to borrow the animals than he might have done. Aldric gave the paunchy, fat-faced man five minutes of low-voiced, one-sided conversation, and by the end there were no longer objections about use of the hounds, or about anything he might have requisitioned from Laine’s house. He seldom made threats, but he knew how to do it well.

Aldric was ready for almost anything now, except his first sight of the two beasts he had gone to so much trouble to obtain. They weren’t hunting-dogs at all but leggy, leering black-and-tan Drusalan guard hounds, creatures with an evil reputation. Aldric’s recent acquaintance with them was beyond mere reputation, and he suspected these brutes could be just as dangerous as anything they might be used to hunt.

Sweating at the safe end of the leashes, Laine suggested he give the hounds his scent. In a mood more inclined to give them an arrow apiece – or maybe two – he approached cautiously and held out one hand for the dogs to sniff. From their expressions neither would have wagged a tail even if they possessed one, but they stopped growling and left the hand on his wrist. And that, he guessed, would be the only sign of friendship he could expect.

As Evthan wrapped both leashes around his fist, Aldric glanced up and saw Gueynor on the edge of the small crowd gathering to see them off. She was staring at her uncle as if to fix his features in her mind. There were too many people about to exchange any private words, so instead Aldric made a small half-bow in her direction and hoped she would understand what he meant. Whether she did or not, an odd expression crossed her face before she turned and walked away.

Evthan touched him on the shoulder and led the way towards the woods. Aldric glanced after him but stood a moment, confused by the emotion he had seen. He followed slowly, frowning as he tried to identify it, and realised only many hours later that what he had seen was pity.

But by then it was too late.

*

They walked all day, often stopping to look for tracks, to listen for faint, furtive movement in the underbrush, to let the dogs cast about for scent. And all day they saw, heard and smelled nothing. The refreshing clarity of early morning was quite gone now, if it ever penetrated this far amongst the trees at all. The air, warm and close, was sticky with the threat of rain that never came. It sucked the moisture out of Aldric’s skin so it soaked into his clothing instead, and left his mouth tasting dry and acrid. He took frequent gulps from the flask slung at his hip even though what it contained, a herbal tisane of some sort, was sour enough to make his eyes water. All that could be said in its favour was that it was fairly cool, and even that half-hearted praise ceased to apply by noon.

Aldric had already set an arrow to his bow, clipping the horn nock tight around the serving of the string. It might save him a fraction of time if he needed speed to save his life. More than once he toyed with the goose-feather fletching, or hooked the thumb of his shooting-glove over the string, all as preparation for nothing at all. Each time he jerked one shoulder in an artificial shrug or compressed his lips in a false smile, and once he even returned the arrow to its quiver. But within a quarter-hour or so it was back on the string because the lack of it made him uneasy.

As afternoon crawled towards evening, the few scraps of sky visible beyond the tree-tops clouded over until all the blue was gone. All that remained was a corrugated expanse of grey from one horizon to the other, tugged and driven by a distant wind too high to feel or hear. What light there was became dull, with a smoky, dirty-yellowness about it that seemed to stain whatever it touched. Evthan halted, looked around, then stabbed his toe at the ground.

“We may as well turn back. There’s little enough for the dogs to work on, and if it rains, there’ll be no scent at all.” Aldric nodded in agreement. It was something he had been waiting to hear for almost an hour now but he was damned if he would say it first. Then he jerked his head towards the panting hounds.

“Just let me get a good few steps ahead of that pair. I don’t think they like me, and I definitely don’t like them.”

As Evthan stepped aside to let him through the Alban noticed again, though it had been right in front of him since they left Valden, that the hunter wasn’t in his customary green and brown deerskins. Instead he wore close-fitting garments so dark grey they were almost black, and a sleeveless vest, a coyac, made from black fur of such thickness that it made the lanky Jouvaine seem stooped and hunch-shouldered. It was wolf-fur of course, and Aldric wasn’t a fool. He wondered yet again if the jacket was just a good-luck token worn by the man called Wolfsbane, or held the deeper significance he had suspected from the first time he saw it.

Once again he checked his arrow, releasing it from the bowstring and twisting it around and around between his fingers. As he looked down at the bright steel barb he wondered whether he should exchange it for a silver one, and glanced back to see whether those damned dogs were too close on his heels.

Then in the same motion he swung around and drew the bow and loosed the arrow at Evthan’s head. The shaft slashed past as close as the stroke of a morning razor, enough that it scored a red line across the hunter’s jaw, but any curses that spilled from his mouth were drowned by a yowl of pain behind him.

That sound came from the Beast.

It was as grey as a winter sky, and for an instant it seemed as big as a pony before it shrank to the size of an ordinary wolf again, pelt bright with the first spatter of blood where Aldric’s arrow was driven deep into its muscled shoulder. Ivory fangs glistened in a wet pink maw, and its eyes were glowing green embers. Then it vanished back into the forest with the dogs hard after it.

“I’m sorry, Evthan, but, but I – I had to take the chance!” Aldric was stammering with shock. “It just… Appeared. Out of nowhere. Right at your back. And it had you cold. But—”

“But?” Evthan touched the oozing graze across his face and winced.

“But it hesitated! It waited. Why…?”

“Because it couldn’t decide. If you’d been alone, or just me—” It might not have attacked you at all, thought Aldric but kept it to himself. “The dogs probably kept it at a distance too. And then you shot it.” Evthan dabbed at the graze again. “With silver?”

“Steel. Come on and—”

Scared birds clattered skyward as the harsh squalling of a fight rang through the woods. The frenzied snarls reached a crescendo, changed abruptly to a frantic screech, shot up to a squeal which didn’t finish and left only echoes hanging on the air. Both men exchanged grim glances and started running, each eager to see the mangled carcass of the Beast. Outweighed and outnumbered, there would only be one outcome.

That was what they thought. The reality was different. There was a mangled carcass on the ground, but it was one of the Drusalan hounds, lying dreadfully torn amid the coils of its own entrails. There was no sign of the other dog, or of the wolf.

Aldric stooped to lift something from the spattered grass. It was his arrow, and though gore smeared it from the point to halfway along the shaft, there were no toothmarks anywhere on the wood to show how it had been withdrawn. Without comment he wiped it on the turf and returned it to his quiver, then carefully chose another.

One with a silver head.

The spoor was plain enough, wet red spots dappling the grass, and Evthan was able to read even more details. He recited them to Aldric as they followed the trail: how the grass was bent by a dragging leg, how the distance between each blood-drop showed speed while their size showed if the flow was light or heavy. He could even tell the nature of the wound from their colour. It was dark crimson from a vein, though both of them would have preferred to see the vividness of arterial scarlet. But there was no need for any lecture in woodcraft to recognise the most important fact.

The Beast was running straight for Valden, and if it got inside the palisade there would be slaughter like a fox loose in a hen-house.

As that picture grew in his mind, Aldric ran faster than he should. Ten long strides later, he flinched away from a barely glimpsed blur of grey behind a gaping pink and white maw. Huge white teeth clacked like a bear-trap on the empty air where his left leg had been. Though that evasion save his leg it lost his balance, and as the ground came up to meet him his bow with its silver-tipped arrow went flying. He rolled hard and slammed one knee against the turf to lever himself half-upright, looking around for Evthan and the bow. There was no trace of the Jouvaine hunter.

But straddling the weapon was the grey bulk of the Beast.

He could hear its rumbling growl from where he knelt, see the ragged gleam of those monstrous teeth, and taste the copper sourness of fear on the walls of his mouth. He stared at the wolf as if his unblinking gaze alone might force it to retreat, knowing how desperate it must be to break its own unwritten rule and attack full-grown armed men.

One of those armed men wanted his longsword as much as he wanted his next breath, and knew he couldn’t reach it. Widowmaker was still strapped high across Aldric’s back, where it wouldn’t tangle his legs during the hunt – and where it couldn’t be drawn. First it had to drop to his hip, and the Beast wouldn’t give him time to do that so the taiken was as far away as in Valden, or Alba, or the far side of the moon.

Instead he grabbed for his taipan, but even as the blade left its scabbard the Beast sprang forward. It hit him square in the chest with a weight equal to his own and sent him crashing backwards with its jaws agape above his face even as Aldric ripped the shortsword through its neck…

*

Those jaws were still gaping as Evthan pulled the Beast of the Jevaiden aside and twisted his arrow from its skull. The wolf had died in mid-leap, and as that sank in, the hunter squatted by its corpse and ran disbelieving hands through the glossy fur. He didn’t even notice when Aldric scrambled shakily to his feet, but what he did notice made him beckon the Alban closer.

“Look here,” he said, one finger tracking pale hairs which marked the line of an old scar. “He couldn’t catch his proper prey when this was new, so he learned bad habits. Women and children were easier game, and he didn’t give them up when it healed. He’s our Beast.”

“Your Beast, Evthan. Not mine.” Aldric looked at the scar, such an insignificant little thing to cause such trouble. He lifted the wolf’s head by its thick-furred scruff and stared for a long time at the lolling tongue, the great fangs, the glazing eyes. Was this the unseen presence which was watching and stalking him in the Deepwood yesterday? Certainly it was as big a wolf as he had ever seen. Almost too big to be natural.

But only almost. When it remained a wolf and nothing more, he lowered the Beast’s head back to the grass with a small sigh of relief, tipped back his own head and drew a long breath of the evening air. High above him a star blinked through a tear in the fabric of the overcast, cold and clear and immeasurably distant in the dusk. There was no sign of the moon yet, and his mind returned to closer matters.

“Evthan?” The hunter glanced up from where he was flaying his kill. “We know one dog’s dead. Where’s the other?”

“I haven’t a notion.” Evthan’s voice was carefree. The Beast was dead, and he had killed it.

“Those brutes are dangerous,” said Aldric. “I’d rather have it leashed than running loose, but I’m not looking for it by myself.”

“How long will you stay here now?” Evthan’s question had nothing to do with Laine’s remaining dog, and there was an odd pitch to his voice, an edge Aldric thought he recognised. Go away so I can enjoy my fame alone.

“Tomorrow morning probably,” he said. “There’s no reason to stay longer.” The relief in the man’s eyes confirmed what Aldric thought. Evthan Wolfsbane was already growing jealous of his newfound status as Saviour of the Jevaiden and didn’t want to share it with anyone, least of all a hlensyarl. “I hadn’t much to do with this hunt anyway, except as tethered bait for your good shooting.”

He soon found his bow again, and as he checked it for damage he heard bracken rustling from lower down the slope where he had fallen. When he peered cautiously over the almost-sheer edge, he saw Gueynor forcing a way through the tangled undergrowth. Aldric frowned and backed out of sight. There were a mixture of emotions needing sorted before he spoke to her again, and now wasn’t the right time to do it.

“Who’s that?” asked Evthan, with the Beast’s rolled-up skin on his shoulder.

“Your niece,” said Aldric. “come to congratulate you.” Instead of pleasure at another witness to his triumph, the colour drained from Evthan’s face with shocking suddenness.

“Gueynor,” he whispered. “I told you not to follow me. I told you to stay inside. I told you to avoid the woods tonight—”

“Why tonight?” Aldric’s voice went sharp and his left hand groped for an arrow, any arrow, but before the man could answer, a bulky shadow emerged from behind a tree behind him and sank to a crouch. This time it wasn’t a wolf, but it was dangerous enough. “Look out!”

Evthan jerked around as the second Drusalan hound leapt straight for him, possibly misled by the smells of blood and wolf which hung about him or just crazed by the events of the hunt. He teetered for an instant on the brink, then toppled backwards into the gloom-filled valley just as the hound came thudding down on to the spot where he had stood.

The dog seemed undecided whether to follow its prey into the bracken-noisy darkness, but when it turned to glare at Aldric, he knew it had made its choice. Black lips curled back from sharp white teeth and it began a monstrous snarl that would end with those teeth in his neck. The snarl stopped short as he loosed a heavy broadhead point-blank through its chest. At such close range the arrow punched nock-deep; fletching, shaft, crest and all staggered the dog with its impact. The wild eyes dulled like wax-choked candles and it was dead even before its legs gave way.

Aldric rubbed a hand across his clammy forehead and listened to the hammer of his heart, already suspecting why the hound went for Evthan rather than himself, the stranger it had so clearly disliked during the day. He made sure the barb on his next arrow was a silver one, then worked his way past the dead dog and knelt to peer over the edge. There was no longer any movement among the brambles, and that puzzled him since it wasn’t overgrown enough to hold adults immobile. Perhaps Evthan’s clumsy fall had hurt Gueynor. Or hurt them both. Above his head the full moon slid free of its last rags of cloud to cast a pale, cold gleam across the forest, and he shivered without knowing why. There was a whimpering below him and an indrawn breath close to the sound of a sob.

*

Then a howl erupted from the ground almost at his feet. He flung himself backwards like a shocked cat, and only the way he kept a proper grip on his bow made the leap look like wariness rather than undiluted fear. The silver arrowhead glinted like a shard of sharpened ice in the same moonlight that illuminated a face rising above the valley rim. It had been human once, but now its jaw elongated to a tapered muzzle even as he watched. The skull flattened, the ears became triangular, tufted and twitching, dark fur spread like ink across the pallid skin and fangs glimmered as they sprouted from pink gums.

Why doesn’t it run? Why won’t it hide? Why is it letting me witness this?

He had never dreamed, even in his darkest nightmares, how intimate a skin-changing could be. The transformation was already almost done, but for just a moment the blue eyes remained unchanged, staring at him with a horrible and almost tearful pity. Aldric remembered the last time someone looked at him with pity, and his stomach turned over. Then the intelligence faded, overwhelmed by another, more feral impulse.

Hunger.

The eyes shone green now, phosphorescent jewels in the moonlight.

As the Jevaiden’s real Beast sprang on to level ground, Aldric could see that none of its humanity remained. There was just animal instinct. Pelt frosted by the moon, it was all lithe, swift wolf as it stalked clear of the hazard of the drop. Only a slight uncertainty of the forelegs betrayed any memory of walking upright. It raised its shaggy head to howl balefully at the glowing sky.

And Aldric shot his silver arrow deep into its throat.

The werewolf lurched but didn’t fall. Instead it stared at him, an impossible saw-fanged grin stretching the corners of its mouth as the arrow trembled, withdrew of its own accord and dropped to the grass. No blood stained the silver barb, there was no wound, and it gave a second howl made more eerie still by an undertone of laughter thrumming through it. Aldric forgot his peril enough to lower the useless bow, gaping in disbelief. What he had just seen was contrary to everything ever read or heard.

Then realisation chilled him with fear of his own death.

His silver arrowheads were useless, made from Drusalan florins he knew had lost their value, but he hadn’t thought of why until this instant. The Imperial economy was rotten, its coinage debased – and that meant silver coins without real silver in them.

With a snarl like rending metal the wolf sprang and slammed him to the ground, jaws snapping at his throat. An instant later it uttered an appalling shriek of anguish and leapt away, shaking its head like a dog singed at the fire.

Aldric guessed the cause at once. Like all high-clan Albans he wore a crest-collar, and his, unlike those damned coins, was pure silver. If it had been gold… He shoved that horrid thought aside as he rolled to his feet and drew his tsepan. The black dirk was no fighting weapon, its delicate blade was meant only for the single stab of mercy or suicide, but he didn’t want the blade. His clan colours were blue and white and his personal colour black, so the tsepan’s blade was blued steel, its sheath and grip were lacquered ebony…

And its pommel was solid silver.

The werewolf lunged again, low now for the belly. As Aldric dodged the rush, he slammed his mailed left arm between its jaws with a thud that jarred him to the spine and saw huge shearing-teeth crush down on the armour beneath his sleeve. Though its straps and laces creaked under the awesome pressure they held firm enough that when he twisted against the bite with his full weight behind it, at least one of the great teeth snapped off.

Unable to bite, unable to breath and panicked by this turning of the tables, the Beast whined and tried to break away. Aldric clamped his knees around its narrow ribcage with his trapped arm trapping its head in place, and slammed the tsepan’s chestnut-sized pommel down between the pointed ears. An ordinary steel pommel wouldn’t have done it, maybe not even a mace or a war-hammer. But the silver pommel shattered that thick skull like an eggshell.

The Beast kicked once, then died without a sound.

*

Aldric crouched above it, trembling all over, convinced there would be more. There must be more. It couldn’t be this easy. But it was. The tsepan’s pommel had done in a single stroke what every arrow in his quiver couldn’t have achieved. He still didn’t move, remaining as still as the dead thing beneath him, and only eased his arm out past the fangs when his limbs were steady again. He was well aware of what a werewolf’s bite could do, and only one knew better. That one lay at his feet with a caved-in head.

The outstretched corpse began a gradual change as the processes of life ran down. That was when Aldric backed away and looked away. Right now he wasn’t ready to learn who he had killed. It was almost certainly Evthan. Yet there were too many memories jumbled in his mind; words and images that took on a terrible significance when viewed with hindsight, strange, half-glimpsed expressions, odd behaviour, even a peculiar choice of phrase…

Did it know, when it was human, what it would become? If he suffered the curse of changing, would he know? And if he knew – his gaze flicked briefly to the tsepan still clutched in one hand – would he have the courage or even the speed to do what had to be done?

Aldric didn’t know the answer. He had stared into the eyes of the werewolf and seen a reflection of himself. They were kindred spirits. The thought frightened him. He hadn’t killed every killer in the Jevaiden woods, but had come to terms with one, the one asleep within himself that used a sword instead of fangs. He hoped understanding it would be enough. And in the knowledge of that understanding he turned, uncertainties cast aside, already sure who he would see.

Evthan of Valden lay on the moonlit grass, face-downwards in a puddle of his own blood. When Aldric gently rolled him over there was no trace of the gash along from that first steel-tipped arrow. It had healed and faded just before the hound attacked, when Evthan’s change came upon him within reach of the only person able to counter it. He might have been sure of that, or only hoped, but his hope was justified and he might have realised it at the end, for his face was peaceful and his mouth still held the merest shadow of a grateful smile.

“So this was your intention all along. Just as you told me. To find another hunter, yes, and one who could do what you couldn’t. When did you learn that two Beasts were haunting the same forest? You poor man. How much did it hurt, wondering which one took your wife and daughter?” A shadow fell across him and his head jerked up. Gueynor’s face was lost in darkness, but he felt her gaze bore through him as he got back to his feet. “I… I’m sorry.” How insincere that sounded. “Your uncle was—”

“I know what he was. I saw what he was. But he is still my mother’s elder brother.” There was no emotion in her voice as she held out a kerchief. “Clean your hands, then help me bring him home.”

“No.” The blunt refusal made Gueynor stare at him, caught between grief at her loss and anger at his refusal, but Aldric was already thinking fast and none of those thoughts involved anyone else learning what had really happened. “Will you wait until the rest of the village gets here? If not, then heed me and don’t argue.”

They shifted the corpse to lie in a way that matched the story he prepared. Evthan had tracked the Beast and shot it from close range, but its final throes flung him against a tree-root which dashed out his brains. Aldric had taken its skin as a last trophy and a memorial. That was all. That was enough. It was a hasty tale, full of holes, but better than the truth, even though he spoke that once and quickly before the villagers arrived.

“Your uncle saved my life,” he said. One of Evthan’s arrows still lay beside the flayed body of the Beast, with the hole it made plain to see in the back of the skull.

“And mine.” Tear-tracks down Gueynor’s cheeks turned silver in the moonlight, and whether it was pure silver or debased didn’t matter now. “When the change began I – I was right beside him. But he ignored me, and attacked you instead. And he was slow about it. You saw how fast he could move, yet he let you watch exactly what he was. But you don’t realise the truth of it even yet. Look at him, Alban! Look at him, and think of all the lore you know. Look at him.”

They had laid the hunter’s body in a dramatic sprawl at the foot of a tree, head against the root they would claim killed him, and his long limbs hung loose in the unconnected way of all dead things. The beautiful deep fur of his coyac was going dull on one shoulder, soaked with drying blood that would turn the fine pelt harsh and spiky.

The coyac he had been wearing all the time…

“Domne diu! From man to wolf and back again, he stayed fully dressed.” Aldric spoke that obvious fact as if it was remarkable, and it was. Every book and old tale said the same thing, that before any human transformed to a werewolf they stripped stark naked, bare even of rings or chains or jewels. Were-magic whether to wolf or any other animal was a skin change. While this was…

“He was a shape-shifter?” Aldric had seen it before. Duergar Vathach had prowled Baelen Wood beyond Dunrath in the form of a wolf, and changed men into crows to act as his spies.

“An unwilling one,” said Gueynor.

“Crisen did this to him simply because he struck an insolent soldier who wasn’t even in the Overlord’s service yet?”

“My uncle let you see him, Kourgath, so you would understand what you had to do.” Gueynor watched him as she spoke. The moon’s pale light washed all colour from his face and transformed it to a mask of metal, flint-eyed, with shadows deeply etched. Then he moved, and it was as if the mask had never been. “Because he hoped… No, not hoped. He knew you would kill him.”

“Ai, gev’n-au tsepanak’ulleth.” Aldric felt tired, and sick, and old as Death. “He used me as his release from life. It’s an honourable, charitable act.” He glanced up towards the mocking moon. “So what makes me feel so filthy?”

CHAPTER FIVE

That same full moon hung in the sky at midnight, its pale face licked by tongues of drifting cloud, but not a glimmer pierced the heavy velvet curtains across Sedna’s windows. Her only illumination was the wan yellow glow of six black candles, each one man-high and thicker than a strong wrist. They stank.

As her white-robed form moved through the incense-spicy air, smoke from many censers swirled and billowed in her wake. Patterns of power writhed across the dark red floor under her bare feet, and for many minutes Sedna compared each symbol and inscription with its original in the vellum pages of an ancient grimoire. At last she cleared her throat and began to read aloud in a rapid monotone, tracing each sentence with a grisly little gold-tipped wand made from the spine of a kitten.

“There had best be purpose to this playacting,” said someone well beyond the pools of candlelight. “I grow weary of it.” Without inflection, irritation or impatience, the words were still heavy with assurance born of rank and power, and armour clicked and rasped as one of the soldiers who enforced that power shifted uneasily. “Don’t think this waste of time impresses me,” the voice continued. “You aren’t indispensable. There are other sorcerers, most far more skilled than you.”

Sedna paused in her reading to shoot a reproachful look into the shadows, and the dry, artificial chuckle she got in response made her bolder.

“More skilled perhaps, Eldheisart Voord, but no more obliging, not with the Empire looking over their shoulders. And certainly no faster. This ritual – my playacting, as you’re pleased to call it – is part of the spell. And part of our safety, too. Mine, yours, everyone here. Best not to forget it.” That nervous rustle of armour was repeated, and a cold smile thinned her lips as she returned to the incantation.

“Your safety, spellmaker, not mine,” said Voord. “Best not to forget that. Tonight’s performance is for Lord Crisen alone.”

It was as if he had stabbed her with a pin. The insolence vanished like a burst bubble and, for just an instant before she controlled it, stark fear in her voice betrayed whatever well-concealed raw nerve Voord’s words had touched.

“No! Not tonight of all nights!” Then she collected herself and continued as calmly as if the outburst had never taken place. “This is just preparation for tomorrow. It’s not for now, at full moon of the summer solstice. I thought you understood that, Crisen. Tell him what I told you!”

*

Eldheisart Voord Ebanesh already understood a great many things, including her significant omission of Crisen’s title. He withheld comment on that just yet, but tucked it away for later reference. And he was far more aware of what had frightened the sorcerer – the witch, he corrected himself – than she imagined. On this night of all nights, except its dark twin at midwinter, enchantments would work crookedly if at all. They would be made doubly treacherous by the lowering presence of the swollen moon. It influenced the tides and the ravings of madmen; it made dogs howl and…

And it created other things that howled at night.

For all the time and care she spent over drawing circles and sigils on the floor, a summoning like the one Sedna was preparing could still fail completely. But with the triple influence of midnight, moon and solstice, the charm could be only partly successful, warping out of true as it took effect. If that happened, the thing Summoned might not be the thing expected, and those so-specific wards and holding patterns would be ineffective against it. That was a piece of information Voord wasn’t meant to know, but like so much else it was already filed away in his cold mind as potentially useful.

“Sedna’s right, of course,” Crisen said over the eldheisart’s shoulder, and from the warmth of his tone he was favouring her with an indulgent smile. “All this is for tomorrow. We’ve been much more careful since—”

“Since the last time your amateur conjuring went wrong,” Voord finished for him. “We have a proverb, back in Vlech: ‘The best time to stop playing with a knife is before you cut yourself, not after.’ A fumbled attempt at shape-changing, wasn’t it?”

“How did you—?”

“How do I ever? There are ways of learning anything, sooner or later. Instead of a changeling you could control, you created a werewolf with no control at all. Then you tried to hide your blunder by letting yet another wolf loose in the woods. That wasn’t very clever, since between the two of them they’ve slaughtered about thirty of your taxpaying peasants.”

“What’s a peasant more or less?” Crisen’s dismissive comment made Voord stare at him, wondering how he could be so stupid.

“In such numbers? What do you think? It makes certain people wonder. When they wonder they ask questions, and they decide in advance what answers they want. Then they do what’s necessary to get them. Your father’s rank won’t save you from that.”

“I’m a peasant, Crisen.” Though Sedna didn’t raise her voice it carried clearly enough, and Crisen Geruath grunted as if something had hit him.

“You’re what I choose to tell the world you are.” The declaration came out too loud and too fast, and when Voord glanced at his companion it was as well the eldheisart’s expression was hidden by the shadows.

“We need a private word,” he said, and tugged Crisen’s sleeve between finger and thumb in an exaggerated, fastidious manner as he led him from the room. In the corridor outside, Voord stared in silence for long enough that Crisen looked away, then tapped him hard on the chest. “Your priorities, my lord, have become confused.”

The two men were both of similar height, but there any resemblance ended. Crisen’s waist was thick from much good living, his florid, heavy-featured face already wore a network of cracked veins on nose and cheeks, and his unnaturally black hair was cut in the height of fashion at the Imperial court two years past. Voord looked austere by comparison, whiplash thin in both face and body, and though his skin was tanned by military service his cropped hair was so fair it was almost white. His thin mouth had a disdainful twist which he seldom tried to conceal, and it was more pronounced now than usual.

“What do you mean?” Crisen tried to bluster, but doing it to best effect meant noise and he retained enough sense to know this conversation needed kept low.

“You know well enough. Tell me, how much do you skim off the Alban stipend to your father? Thirty per cent? Forty?” Crisen cleared his throat nervously and looked furtive. “More? Father of Fires, how much more?”

“Last time,” the admission left Crisen’s mouth with the reluctance of pulled teeth, “I had to take twelve to the score.”

“Had to…?”

“I needed money!”

“So you stol— You subtracted more than half the gold your father receives from Rynert of Alba, and he didn’t notice?”

“He shouldn’t be getting any at all. The Albans keep paying, and receive precisely nothing in return. They still believe he supports Ioen and Goth—”

“Is that why they sent an envoy in near-secrecy to find out precisely,” Voord threw back the word with relish, “how King Rynert’s gold is really being used?” He glanced back to where Sedna still read and chanted, and that look spoke several eloquent phrases. “Or misused. You’d be better served spending more on your soldiers and less on your… amusements.” Crisen stared at him but said nothing. “They seem an unnecessary distraction.”

“For all their supposed secrecy, you could still find out what the Albans are doing.” It was blatant flattery and an attempt to evade the issue, but Voord was having none of it.

“Of course I could find out.” He didn’t say how.

“And directly you warned me, I sent a troop to deal with the envoy. They were disguised as…” Crisen saw Voord’s expression and his voice trailed to silence.

“As bandits. Yes, so I heard. How theatrical, and how useless! They still botched that simple task!”

“They killed the Vreijek guide.”

“But they weren’t sent after the Vreijek guide, were they? And I forbade killing. It’s difficult to question a corpse. Was that your intention – or your hope?” Voord paused just long enough for his implied accusation to sink in, but not long enough for Crisen to make up a coherent excuse. “Because it’s only difficult, not impossible. Now, thanks to the bungling of your bandits, the Alban hasn’t just eluded us, he’s vanished. And he was no ordinary courier.”

“What was he?”

“That ceased to be your concern when your men lost him!” Voord’s control cracked and his quiet voice became an angry rasp. “If it was ever your concern at all!” He took a long, calming breath and began calculating his odds with less emotion than an abacus. “Your father remains ignorant of all this, I take it? And I do mean all this.” Crisen nodded. “Then something may yet be salvaged, if I…” He broke off. “Go away. Go get drunk, go get some sleep, but get away from here and give me peace to think!”

Unaccustomed to such abrupt dismissal under his father’s roof, Crisen tried to gather enough nerve to assert himself, but Voord snapped his fingers and took away the chance. His honour guard were standing in silence further down the corridor, and ten quick paces brought them level. Flanked on either side by mailed troopers, Crisen Geruath held his tongue.

“Tagen, Garet, esauda moy,” said Voord in the Vlechan dialect Crisen didn’t understand. “Inar Crisen ya dar boet’cha vaj. Najin iyelos doestal svoda. Najin ostyu. Slijei?” The armoured men saluted with a precise double click and closed in. Crisen looked frightened, just as Voord hoped. Frightened people were obedient people. “Your escort will see you safe and uninterrupted to your room. Good night, my lord.”

When he could no longer hear their cadenced footsteps, Voord opened the door of Sedna’s chamber a finger’s width and watched her complete a diagram with carefully poured white sand, each line stark against the red-dyed wood of the floor. She crossed the room as she had done so many times before to check the pattern against its original in the grimoire, balanced now on a spindly lectern. Voord spent a few seconds in appreciative study of how the candlelight made her thin robe translucent, then shrugged. The Vreijek woman didn’t like him so seduction or persuasion were pointless, and raping her involved too much effort, noise and risk of interference. He couldn’t spare the time.

The key of the heavy door was within easy reach on its usual small shelf and Voord lifted it down, turning it over in his hands once or twice. “Such a waste,” he muttered. “If you’d listened when I warned you, I wouldn’t need to do this. But you had to be inquisitive, so I have to take precautions. Curiosity kills more than cats.”

He closed the door and locked it. From the outside.

*

Although he would never admit it, Voord was as frightened as Crisen Geruath. The sensation was unfamiliar, made worse by its novelty. Usually he had no reason to fear anyone or anything, and was more usually the cause of fear in others, but tonight the events he thought he controlled were overtaking him. That, too, was novel.

“Damn her!” he snarled softly. “Damn him! Damn them all to the black Pit!” Voord wasn’t given to profanity, he seldom needed it, but he often made promises and his voice had a dark thread of sincerity running through it now. His damnations weren’t a threat so much as a hint of things to come.

He had ordered four of Crisen’s retainers into the Deepwood on a certain errand late last night. Three of the horses had returned, but not a man of the four, nor the item described with such care to their weasel-featured leader, the self-styled Eldhertag Keeyul. Voord held reservations about anyone so insistent on using Drusalan military rank after leaving the Empire’s service, but gave him the benefit of the doubt. Now he was sure he should have heeded those doubts and sent a squad of his own guards instead. Hindsight gave a remarkably accurate view of things.

“Damned Jouvaines,” he said aloud, aware his oaths were becoming as repetitive if still less crude than those of any common soldier. “Damn Crisen!”

There was grim satisfaction in knowing it would happen sooner or later, fulfilled in a more literal way than most curses. Few men meddled with sorcery in the slapdash manner that Crisen did and lived long afterwards. What he did was madness. A Geruath family trait, it seemed, for the old man was hardly what Voord considered sane. Such insanity in the Overlord didn’t concern him overmuch – a man could be stark raving mad and rule the Empire without creating comment, it had happened once or twice – but when that same madness encroached on Voord’s neatly ordered schemes, somebody would have to suffer.

If Crisen’s peculiar experiments with that huntsman hadn’t been so slapdash, his own more esoteric researches in the small, select part of Sedna’s library would have gone unnoticed long enough for discovery to be unimportant. At least the Jouvaine showed enough wit to waken him when Sedna’s suspicions became action. The woman knew something of what was going on behind her back, behind the backs of everyone in Seghar, Voord was certain of that. He had been certain for at least three days now, more aware of a wrongness in her attitude than even Sedna herself. A man became observant after supervising enough interrogations, learning to spot the signs of deception and concealment. She had seldom spoken to him, and what little she said was always bright with a false, brittle gaiety that betrayed her as much as any signed and witnessed confession.

Voord had watched her perform many incantations through the concealed peepholes drilled not long after arranging Sedna’s introduction first to the Lord’s son then into the citadel, secret lessons that taught him far more about sorcery than Sedna would have done willingly. He made those spyholes with his own hands, not trusting anyone else with either the task or the knowledge of their existence. His match-making too was a masterstroke, giving him influence over Crisen Geruath that would advance both their careers but Voord’s most of all. It was a pity, having brought such a useful couple together, that he would also have to be the agent of their permanent parting. The echoes of his own brief, ugly chuckle startled him in the quiet, moonlit corridors and he fell silent, thinking once again of what he was about to do.

Voord reached the door of Sedna’s library all too quickly. Anticipation was sending repeated shivers down his limbs and not because he expected this to be pleasant, so it took three tries and two mistakes before he found the tile where Sedna hid her key. He had seen her opening the door just once, but once was enough. Since then the eldheisart had entered when it pleased him, and until this latest time he had escaped detection. After tonight, that would no longer matter.

The library was pitch-black inside, darker even than the incense-heavy cellar where he had left the Vreijek sorcerer, and Voord fumbled for his tinderbox. He had no wish to enter that gloomy embrace unprepared. Flint and steel struck together, and despite his vaunted self-control he caught a short, shocked breath as the flash of sparks reflected from polished metal, glass and fine gold leaf. To his guilty mind each small glitter seemed to be the accusing, unwinking gaze of creatures waiting in the shadows. He laughed once to show them how little he cared about them and heard instead the dry cough of a dying man.

After that, Voord didn’t laugh again.

Like Sedna before him he only felt at ease once every lamp and candle was lit. If any dark places remained, the tiny bright-eyed things would hide there to watch him, and Voord wanted no witnesses at all. There was another, more practical reason for him to flood the room with light. He had read that illumination was an extra ward against… His mind shied from naming it, and as he touched fire to the last lamp he wished there were more.

With rugs and furniture dragged aside to make a clear space on the floor, Voord went to work with a piece of chalk from his belt-pouch. The complex linked symbols meshed one into another, forming a pattern close-knit as any coat of mail. It served the same purpose, protection from harm, and any sorcerer looking at its interwoven curves and angles would have recognised what it protected against.

Then fled at once.

Voord didn’t go near the steel cabinet until the circle was complete, then withdrew a slender metal probe from a hidden pocket – hidden because the shape made its purpose clear to world-wise eyes – and used it to work the lock’s tumblers. The first time had taken him almost half an hour and five different lockpicks; now it was as if he owned a key.

Voord’s nostrils twitched. He had handled old books before and knew their distinctive scent of leather, parchment and ink, dust and age, but there was a different tang in what billowed out of the cabinet at him, a musky sharpness he couldn’t place at first. Then heat rose in his face as he blushed scarlet, recognising the fleshy, organic smell of his last visit to a brothel. It came from Enciervanul Doamnisoar, but when he steeled himself and reached out for it, what happened next brought him within a heartbeat of running away as any sensible man would do.

Because the obscene thing squirmed under his hands, in a way that reminded him all too clearly of a whore encouraging him with a display of feigned eagerness. And it was warm.

Voord’s courage almost failed him and he needed an extra effort of will before his fingers gripped the book hard enough to pick it up. It shifted as he took its weight as it had never done before, and its leather-bound spine pressed against his palms in a travesty of the way women stretched languidly beneath his touch. He knew now, without further proof, that all the stories heard about the making of this vile thing’s cover were absolute truth, and felt an acid burn as bile rose in his throat.

If the grimoire had continued to move when he stepped inside the boundaries of his spell-circle, he might well have flung it down and abandoned his purpose. But it stopped as he had hoped it might, with a final abrupt shudder, before lying cold and inert on his cringing skin as any ordinary book might do. Voord’s wavering determination returned in a rush of relief, almost as audible as the gasp of pent-up breath released from between his clenched teeth.

He set the book down on a complex triple whorl of thin chalk lines which acted as the core of the circle’s power, then straightened up and squared his shoulders as he hadn’t done since the last time he was on parade in Drakkesborg. As if still on that parade-ground he walked with brisk strides to the end wall of the library and threw back the curtain shrouding it from floor to ceiling. There was more force in the sideways jerk of his left arm than he intended, more weight in the thick velvet than he recalled, and both factors combined to send folds of the heavy fabric careering along their rail with a hiss and a staccato clash of bronze rings. Voord started at the unexpected burst of noise above his head, then took a rapid pace back, less to do with the noise than a reaction to what he had uncovered.

When he first invaded Sedna’s private sanctum he had explored every cupboard, every drawer, every nook and cranny with the thoroughness of long training, and guessed the function of the thing behind the curtain as soon as he found it. In another place and time Voord had heard a similar object called a ‘Mirror of Seeing’, but the one spoken of then was small enough to hold in one hand. It was nothing like this.

On the first occasion Voord saw it, the entire wall-space behind the curtain had been a single monstrous sheet of some dark, shining substance. Black mica or quartz perhaps, or obsidian sheared so thin that its pigmentation barely tinted the reflected image of whoever looked into its surface. Except that there had been no reflection whatsoever.

And there was no reflection now, even though the mirror’s surface was no longer dark but as bright, smooth and flawless as a bowl of quicksilver. It should have reflected something, at least so logic dictated, but instead it stood there and defied all logic by not flowing in a liquid stream across the library floor. Voord stared at it, and while he stared a series of slow, concentric ripples began to spread outward from the centre of the mirror, as if it was a glassy, undisturbed pond and his intent gaze the stone dropped into it.

The hackles rose on his close-cropped neck and Eldheisart Voord almost ran to the insubstantial security of his spell-circle. It was only when he was once again secure within its boundaries that he dared breathe a little easier, though his heartbeat was still racing and the roiling queasiness in his belly was back. With great care that the chalk-marks weren’t disturbed or, far worse, erased, he sank down cross-legged. Voord shifted his weight until he was as comfortable as possible on the hard floor.

That comfort was more important than it seemed. Earlier ventures into the Art Magic proved he needed a degree of physical ease or he could never attain the light trance his ill-trained mind required for sorcery. At last, gathering his concentration as a man might form a snowball, he visualised a shaft of mental force projected at the huge mirror. Voord had once joked, as far as his atrophied sense of humour could joke about anything, that such effort was like knocking a door with a stick except there was no stick.

For almost a minute nothing happened. Then more ripples crossed the mirror’s surface, faster now and much more violent. There should have been a noise to go with the activity, like a breeze stirring wheat or waves breaking on a shore. Instead there was only silence. He could hear the muffled drumbeat that was his own heart and the rasp of his breathing, but all other sounds were muted.

Then the silvery surface cleared. As the ripples swept across the mirror they drew a swirling pearlescent greyness in their wake, each less dense than its predecessor, as if they were warm breaths blown on an opaque, frost-sheathed window. At last the wall was transparent, a mirror no longer but a window indeed, for peering into other places. An image formed in its depths, condensing out of nothingness just as clouds are born from unseen vapours in the air, and it was a place Voord knew well, somewhere that had been at the forefront of his thoughts for a long time.

At first it was a miniature scene viewed from far away, but it expanded just as the ripples had done until it filled the mirror, filled the wall, filled Voord’s vision with a shifting, living picture. As he hoped, but never dared believe aloud, the Mirror of Seeing gave him access to a place not just far away but shrouded by many thicknesses of stone. It was Sedna’s workroom, not a picture of the past drawn from memory but things that were happening right now. The viewpoint was still his own, as if he had never left the room but still watched from the place where he stood a full quarter-hour before. The only difference was a lack of sound.

Sedna walked to and fro, drawing, checking and chanting. Her preparations were almost complete, and she would soon go to the door, soon find it locked. What she would do then Voord didn’t know. He hadn’t left the key in place, so if she had one of her own his plan was already at risk. Even if she didn’t, a sorcerer would have a way of opening the door, a way of finding who locked it, and many ways of expressing displeasure at what they did. Despite the trance dulling his outer senses a protracted shudder racked his limbs and Voord knew he was still afraid.

He withdrew further into himself and his heavy-lidded eyes rolled back in their sockets until only two moist crescents of white remained, making it impossible for him to see, never mind read. Yet he reached down with the fumbling movements of a sleepwalker to the book on the floor in front of him, threw back the cover, then leafed through its pages with a swiftness and a surety which belied his self-imposed blindness. Voord didn’t realise that a book whose name was On the Summoning of Demons might not need the aid of human hands to find a proper place to open. And he wasn’t aware, as Sedna was, that the opening-place might not be what he originally intended. The rustling of pages ceased, and he straightened his back.

“Hearken unto me, ye dwellers beyond the portals of this world.” His voice was flat, toneless, and far deeper than his own. “I would name those that have no name. I would look upon those that have no form. In token of good faith and as sign of my most earnest wishes, I make this offering of blood.”

Voord took a leaf-shaped sliver of flint from his belt-pouch, because the ancient powers wouldn’t take kindly on any offering made with cold iron. It was slate-blue and cream, with scalloped, serrated edges as thin and sharp as any razor. He touched the stone knife to his left hand and with the lightest possible touch drew a careful line across the palm, hoping to escape with little more than a shaving-cut.

But sharp though it was – he had tested it earlier this very evening on a piece of leather – the flint slid across his skin with only a faint bloodless indentation to mark its passage. His eyes opened, stared at the pale groove which faded even as he watched, and went dull with the nauseating anticipation of agony. Pain suffered in the heat of combat was one thing, but this brutal premeditation was quite another. The Powers beyond the Portals might have blunted his blade to judge his strength of purpose, and if they took enough notice to create the test, it was already too late to refuse.

Gritting his teeth, Voord cut again with as much pressure as he dared risk, and cried out in a thin, nasal whine like a hurt dog as the stone edge bit in at last. Frantic to reach the end of this self-inflicted torment Voord leaned harder, sliced faster—

And suddenly the flint was murderously sharp again, shearing far deeper than intended until it ploughed into and through the mosaic of bones that made up the structure of his hand. He shrieked, a sound filled with as much surprise as anguish, and collapsed forward over the mangled flesh. The hand was irreparably crippled; dislocated bone and severed tendons were already drawing the fingers into that crooked claw he knew so well from supervised interrogations. It throbbed and burned as if he had dipped it into molten lead.

It hurt so much…

There was more than enough blood splattered across the floor to satisfy any summoned spirit, and even while his mind teetered near a swoon Voord knew why the ancient powers were sometimes called ‘The Cruel Ones’. They feasted on pain, on wounds to the spirit as much as to flesh and blood, and it must give them extra satisfaction to make a torturer torture himself.

Voord rocked back and forth, hugging his mutilated limb close to his chest as if it was a child, sobbing with the shock of what he had done. All the ritual words were forgotten now. There was no longer any room for such coherent thought in his reeling brain. But no matter how much he regretted it, the sacrifice was made.

And accepted.

Between one jolting heartbeat and the next, a tearing crash of thunder shattered the midnight silence. It boomed and rumbled across the heavens until even the dust-motes drifting in the air vibrated with its echoes. Yet there were no clouds in the moonlit sky, and no rain since late that afternoon, nor even the brief flicker of summer lightning which needs no storm to give it birth. There was no reason for the thunder whatsoever. No natural reason, at least. Even if his chilly mind was calm and unfogged by torment, it could never have convinced him that mere weather was the thunder’s cause.

The library grew cold, then colder still, until Voord’s breath smoked white around his face and coils of steam rose from the blood which still pulsed sluggishly between the unhurt fingers cradling the ruined ones. With that grinding chill came an end to pain and bleeding. Voord’s left hand went corpse-pale and the flesh beneath the nails became a sickly skimmed-milk blue as if, from wrist to fingertips, it was drained dry.

The eldheisart’s shock-taut body sagged. With nothing for his will to fight against, he felt sure he was about to faint, but unconsciousness eluded him as surely as the power to tear his gaze away from the Mirror of Seeing. He stared at it like a bird at a snake, trapped and fascinated, unable even to blink, and in a time with no beginning that would never have an end, he learned what it meant when mortals gained the attention of those who dwelt in the void beyond the world…

*

Sedna heard nothing of the thunder. She completed a final diagram, bowed low and weighed the relative merits of tidying up against those of going to bed at once. She was tired. Then she coughed, a long racking bark that left sparks floating before her eyes and tears running from them, and when she straightened up again she decided on a third alternative: something to drink. An acrid taste lay on her tongue thanks to the bitter aromatic smoke filling the room, and her throat was harsh from chanting interminable formulae in a rasping contrabass voice ill-suited to a woman’s – to anyone’s – vocal organs.

So much trouble over a small spell, she thought wryly, and pressed both hands hard against the small of her back in the vain hope it would somehow ease the aches of repeated stooping.

Wine would be good, cool white wine from the southland to refresh her mouth, soothe her throat, relax her muscles and calm her nerves. Perhaps, if she drank enough, it would even give her courage to take Crisen Geruath to task about his stupid experiments. But not to challenge Eldheisart Voord. No wine in all the world, no beer, no ale, not even the smoke-laced grainfire from Elthan in Alba could make her brave enough for that.

There had always been wine in this cellar. Before she came to Seghar it was full of kegs and barrels, fine imported vintages in glass and stoneware flagons of the dry, rough local red. Now, depending on her mood, there might be a silver pitcher and goblets, or a simple jug and cups of red-ware.

Sedna had been drinking more these few days past. Since Voord and his soldiers came, she realised, as if the knowledge was new. Fear did it. No, nothing as crude as fear. Apprehension was a better word. Crisen became a stranger when the Imperial eldheisart was in Seghar, and she muttered brief thanks that his visits were always short and infrequent.

Tonight there was an elegant carafe three-quarters full of straw-pale Hauverne, and two stemmed glasses made from crystal, all in the simple, understated style popular at the Summer Palace of Kalitzim and just as costly. Sedna splashed wine into one of the glasses, drank it down and took a deep breath to help the fumes mount quickly to her head. More glasses followed the first, until with slight surprise she saw that the carafe was almost empty. She hadn’t meant to do that. Not really.

“So what if I did?” she said in response to a meagre pang of guilt, but already her voice was slurring. Sedna could see, with the unfocussed clarity of sudden drunkenness, what needed done for her own safety’s sake. Self-respect, peace of mind, honour – if sorcerers were allowed such an aristocratic foible – might go by the board, but at least she would sleep sound at night. She would leave. Leave Crisen, leave Seghar, leave the Jevaiden and all the Jouvaine provinces far behind her and go home, back to Vreijaur where men and women had honest, normal vices and where the animals which roamed the woods were only that and not…

Not more than they seemed.

“Leave all this luxury?” Sedna asked herself, staring at the spearpoint candle flames caught and refracted in the facets of her crystal cup. “Why not? You can live without it. You did before.” She refused to voice the thought which flashed across the wine-distorted surface of her mind, that if she stayed here much longer she might not live at all.

“Crisen can make his own magic,” she said as decisively as she could – Father, Mother, Maiden, I’m truly drunk tonight! – and even as she said it, began to wonder why Crisen had asked her to prepare a summoning spell. Last time she did that he had learned unwanted things about his ancestry, so why do it again?

Then the wine turned to hot acid in her stomach, for a stark-edged shadow – her shadow – suddenly stretched across the floor and up the wall before her. The shadow was as black and dense as pitch, and the greenish radiance that made it danced at Sedna’s back, above the centre of the circle drawn with such care on the crimson floor. Sweat broke out all over her body, gluing the thin robe to her skin as it soaked up the moisture. Slowly, as if reluctance kept reality at bay, she turned around.

Her crystal goblet exploded into shards as the hand holding it clenched to a fist, and though splinters drove deep she felt nothing. No pain, at least. Only terror.

The spell-circle held more than just light. Compressed into a towering unstable column by the restrictive limit of the holding-pattern was a thing she had never seen before in all her life. But she had looked between the woman’s-leather covers of Enciervanul Doamnisoar not twenty hours before, and the memory of the pages seen – and one not seen, just a ragged fragment along the spine where the rest was torn out – still burned like a dark hot cinder in the shuttered places of her brain.

Even though this Thing had neither definite shape nor constant colour she knew what It was, well enough at least for a name. Ythek’ter auythyu an-shri. Warden of Gateways, Guardian of the portals which lie between men and the void. It was the Herald of the Ancient Ones. It was Ythek Shri.

“Who has called thee now?” Sedna managed the question only after three attempts, knowing such entities were bound by certain rules and one was the answering of questions. There was no immediate response and in that brief time she realized she didn’t want to hear Ythek’s reply. She only wanted rid of It.

“You came in obedience,” she said, fighting down the quaver in her voice because she knew it owed no such obedience to her. “Depart in obedience. Return to your proper place. Go back to the Void. I, Sedna ar Gethin, command it!” Once the words were out she realised they were a mistake, giving the demon a gift of her name. In sorcery, names mattered. Sedna choked down bitterness, recited a charm of dismissal and made the swift gesture which sealed it, then watched the shadowy mass shift a little, bulging and contracting, swirling in and out of itself like ink poured into water.

But it didn’t fade, didn’t vanish, didn’t alter at all.

Sedna repeated the charm again and again, stammering in her haste as she varied the rhythm and order of its phrases. Still they had no effect. Blinking sweat out of her eyes, she walked as steadily as she was able towards the lectern where she had left her grimoire and began leafing through its pages. She tried to stay calm, to avoid panic, and yet could feel the need to run trembling in the sinews of her legs.

Don’t run! Never run, never show fear, not even when dread has turned the marrow of your bones to meal…

The whole cellar vibrated as if a deep-sea swell was rolling past beneath the floor, and the air within it became cold. It wasn’t the sharp, exhilarating chill of a bright day in winter, but a heavy rigor like the inside of a long-forgotten tomb, a cold which penetrated flesh, blood and marrow until they could never feel warm and alive again. Sedna’s damp robe frosted over, white rime on white silk, until it became so stiff that each fold crackled as she moved.

She also felt a sense of malice emanating from the core of the slowly twisting pillar of darkness. Muted tones of dull green, grey and sullen blue slithered across its convoluted surface, and with the malevolence came a low, moaning wind. Sparks whipped from the smouldering incense, the candle-flames fluttered and fingers of moving air lashed her face with strands of her own hair.

Sedna fought through the distraction, if that was its intent, and found her page at last, an exorcism held to be effective against all demons. The words were archaic, difficult to pronounce and complex in their nuances of meaning, so she muttered them under her breath before daring to speak the incantation aloud. Ythek Shri congealed from an amorphous cloud to something more clearly defined and in doing so gave her a brief, appalling hint of what its true shape might be.

Otherwise her spell of banishment did nothing.

Again panic bubbled up inside her, gripping her entrails in an icy clutch that made breathing difficult and full of effort. With a shocking oath she flung the useless spellbook at the circle and its occupant. As Sedna should have guessed, her curse did nothing. Only the book had any effect, and it wasn’t the result she intended. When hurled with the strength of terror, fifteen pounds of leather and parchment were more than enough to topple one of the tall bronze censers and send perfumed charcoal spraying across the floor.

It made a huge smoking breach in the patterns of the circle’s double rim.

The wind gusted to a screeching gale and stopped. Not faded, not fell away, just stopped. Only a single candle remained alight, its unsteady flame doing eldritch things to the many shadows which now crowded the cellar. Sedna wasted no time staring, but ripped the tops from jars and drew protective signs around herself in coloured dust then linked them into a broad, unbroken ring of power. Again there came that lurching sensation of an ocean wave surging under the floor and its boards rose and fell like the deck of a ship, sending a rack of bottles crashing to ruin.

Sedna stared fearfully towards the dark column. The cloudy mass no longer swirled, but hung immobile as a rag suspended from the ceiling. Yet there was movement near its base.

The solitary candle showed no detail and only the vaguest of impressions, its feeble light falling into the darkness that absorbed it as a sponge drinks water, but there was enough for her to realise what was happening. When she did, the horror of it brought vomit to the back of her throat. Whatever was confined by the holding-pattern was spreading the scattered ashes, using them to erase the lines of force which penned it in.

Enlarging the gap which she had made.

Something grotesque tore free of the darkness, paused, then with a mucous sucking sound forced itself a little farther out. Nothing was visible except the candle-flame’s reflection from shiny moving surfaces. Its distorted yellow gleam shifted in another long, slow heave as the shape slid inexorably from its confinement.

Sedna wiped her mouth and cursed herself for not running when she first had the chance. It was too late now. Talons extended across the floor, clicked, flexed and gouged deep in search of anchorage, sinking through floor-timbers into the solid stone beneath. Within her circle the sorcerer cringed. Home seemed very far away.

The ponderous mass that was Ythek an-shri came loose in three rippling contractions, swayed on slender limbs and rose upright in utter silence. There was a slight, harsh scraping as a length of spike-tipped tail coiled around the demon herald’s claws. Then there was silence once more. The silence of the grave.

Scarcely daring to breathe, Sedna studied the entity for a long time. It seemed exhausted by the effort of dragging itself into the world of men, after the exertions of mother, midwife and child all at once. Perhaps it was asleep, or the air of this world was proving poisonous. A muscle in her thigh jerked and quivered in protest at her lack of movement and she winced, massaged the cramped limb and measured her distance to the door. That heavy lock would be strong enough to hold it shut while she fled, not just from the cellar but from the fortress, from Seghar, from the Jevaiden itself. She would waste no time warning the Geruath household, for if the demon was held secure there would be no need, and if it broke out – the thought was callous but correct – they would learn about its presence soon enough, without any need for her to tell them.

If only she had known how long the thing would take to enter the world…

If only her blind rage and terror hadn’t breached the circle in the first place…

If only…

With infinite care not to disturb her own circle’s fragile outline, she stepped across it with both eyes fixed on the irregular blot of blackness. Nothing happened. There was no snarl, no sudden murderous burst of life. Ythek Shri remained as still as any lizard on a stone.

Sedna took another step towards the door. Then a third. They were long strides, as quiet as her bare feet could make them, and each one took her closer to escape but further from the circle.

A fourth step.

There were, she judged, four more to take before she reached the door. Halfway. She glanced to where the demon crouched like a gigantic upright insect. Though the thin limbs wrapped around its hunched body looked as strong as a battleram’s anchor cable, Sedna couldn’t see even a rhythmic movement of breathing to show it was alive.

Five steps from the circle, three from the door.

Another nervous glance, this time back over her shoulder. The demon squatted in the shadows of its own making, a grotesque gargoyle shape, placid and still. New perspiration soaked into the silken robe, thawing the crust of frost until the garment clung close as a chilly second skin.

Six steps and two.

There was an awful eagerness in the long, bubbling hiss when at last it came. Sedna’s heart seemed to stop, and she hesitated for the barest instant then flung herself towards the door and heaved at it with all her strength. The stab of betrayal when she found it locked was a physical hurt, swamping even terror for the brief moment it lasted. She should have – no, she had expected something like this, despite a small, foolish hope she might be wrong. And she was wrong indeed, wrong to ever believe that anything besides treachery and death was possible in Seghar…

There was no time for regret, for subtlety or finesse. With a mental wrench that caused her actual pain Sedna dredged the words and patterns of the High Accelerator from her subconscious and flung the fierce spell at the lock. The whole door jolted on its hinges as lock, hasp and part of the jamb were hammered loose in a twisted mass of metal and fell clattering into the corridor outside, yet the demon hadn’t moved. With trembling hands that were bruised and sore from channelling the spell, Sedna clutched the weakened door and dragged it wide—

Then spun half around and almost fell as something blurred past her head, jerked the door from her grasp and slammed it shut with awful finality. The reverberations of its closing faded down the corridor, mocking her imprisonment with their escape. An enormous talon at the end of an impossibly long, sinewy limb had lashed over Sedna’s shoulder with piledriver force to end her hopes of freedom and of life. A little to one side, and it would have smeared her frail human body across unyielding stone as she might squash a bug. But it had not, and the implications behind that merciless compassion were worse than any sudden death she could imagine.

Timber split and tore as great crooked claws pried one another loose, each of the three digits flexing like the legs of a spider. Once free they reached for Sedna’s face with all the delicacy of a lover’s caress. She whimpered and shrank away, her own hands raised in a useless gesture of supplication. Another spell would prolong the inevitable, no more. It wouldn’t avert it. Wouldn’t save her. Nothing would.

She was lost, and none could help her now…

The enamel-glossy black triangle that was the being’s eyeless, armoured head dipped closer, as if to study her. Four shearlike mandibles which ended that head slid open with a metallic sound like scissors, and an errant flicker of the candle revealed a vile array of spiked and bladed teeth. They champed together, glistening, as Ythek Shri grinned down at her from its full fifteen feet of height.

Sedna screamed just once. She had no time for more before the demon plucked her from the floor, and while it toyed with her, the sounds she made were nothing as structured as a scream. Those dreadful noises continued for a long time, but never quite drowned out the patter of blood and the snap of bones, or the sodden rip as flesh gave way. At last the demon tired of its torn and broken doll, and secured the feebly squirming bundle of tatters while its razor-bladed mandibles gaped wide. Then they shut in three protracted crunches.

Frenzied shadows flickered across the walls and ceiling as Sedna’s legs danced ten feet from the ground. Then they kicked spasmodically, and apart from reflex shudders dangled still and dead at last. Only liquid droplets moved now, dribbling from the demon’s meat-clogged maw. One sparkled ruby-red as it descended.

The solitary candle hissed, and choked on blood, and died…

*

Fog boiled across the surface of the mirror until Voord could see no more, as if he hadn’t seen enough already. The Vlechan’s face was like his hand, almost drained of colour. Almost, but not quite, though what remained was just the pallid green of a nausea suppressed by pride alone. To vomit would be to show weakness. In his time as an inquisitor Eldheisart Voord had authorised, witnessed and even personally inflicted torments just as ingenious, so why retch at this?

He had watched everything shown him by the mirror with a cold, almost clinically professional interest, aware with every mutilation that an unseen brooding presence was watching him, noting his reactions, assessing whether he deserved its aid. Voord felt shock, disgust and that ever-present crawling fear, but showed or felt not the slightest touch of pity.

And yet, though he had watched everything, he still saw less than Sedna. His eyes were not her eyes, and his knowledge of sorcery was sparse. Where he beheld only a monster formed from armoured darkness, she had realised what the Summoning really was; not the demon itself, but what it represented.

Ythek Shri was known by many names, many titles, born of the awe and terror commanded by its mere presence – Warden of Gateways, Devourer in the Dark – but the most appropriate to those who knew its meaning was simply ‘Herald’. It was a herald indeed, an emissary, an ambassador between the world of men and the planes of the Abyss, and its purpose and duty was to encourage human wizards in their summoning of the ancient Demon Lords. A lock worked often worked easily, a portal opened often opened easily, and forgetting to close and lock doors was always a human failing. No matter what it had been to Sedna ar Gethin, summoning Ythek Shri by accident or design was not an ending.

It was a beginning.

Voord Ebanesh remained ignorant of that, and of much more. The only mouth which could have warned him was shredded meat. His ignorance was overlaid with shock, with pain, with an undertow of fear he wouldn’t admit, and perhaps other, more malign influences. He gabbled his way through the final part of his conjuration, but when he made the Pronouncement of Dismissal, he fumbled it. The error might have been a word wrongly pronounced, or a gesture left incomplete because his ruined hand could no longer make the whole movement, but the result remained the same.

Ythek Shri was loose, and the portal through which it passed stayed open.

The surface of the mirror swirled in upon itself, heavy spirals of movement like stirred water. With ever-increasing speed it became a whirling slick-sided funnel, a grey gullet leading into darkness. Voord’s balance reeled, and vertigo tugged at him. If he had been standing he might have taken the few unsteady steps needed to tumble in, but he was still kneeling and slumped forward instead, taking his weight on both hands.

Agony seared him as his mangled palm slapped hard against the floor and blood flowed again. The spiralling grew even faster until it was a whirlpool of mist, a maelstrom that threatened to suck away his life and soul. But he couldn’t move, couldn’t be enticed, and with juddering abruptness the spinning vortex stopped. With a sound like the breaking of the world the Mirror of Seeing cracked from side to side, and its surface turned jet black.

Crouched on hands and knees, Voord raised his head and saw darkness seeping like smoke from the fissure in the mirror’s substance. It didn’t dissipate, as true smoke or true vapour would have done, but became denser, heavier, as if it was taking physical form. As Sedna had done before him, Voord wondered what that form would be. But he wondered only for an instant, then apprehensive curiosity gave way to abject terror.

He sprang to his feet at last and fled.

CHAPTER SIX

Aldric spent a sleepless night in Evthan’s house.

The rejoicing villagers knew, for he had made it plain enough in a few harsh phrases, that he had no desire to celebrate his evening’s work. An Alban kailin-eir could and was expected to grant the gift of death, if it was the only way within his power to end the pain of a body shattered beyond repair by accident or battle. That was what a tsepan was for, and to prove it wasn’t murder, that was why, though Aldric had removed his long ago, each tsepan had its owner’s crest set into the pommel. Sometimes the death brought by the black dirk was its owner’s, yet it was never a deed done lightly even to an enemy. No matter what pious or scholarly opinions were voiced, no matter what emotions were displayed or hidden, regardless of how just or justified the act might be, taking a life left scars on the life of the one who took it.

Aldric had killed before, but this one left him feeling soiled in a way few others had done. It was as if he had executed an innocent. Would it be that way with Crisen? If the king’s command to kill him was unjust, but Aldric carried it out through obedience, would that obedience absolve his own guilt in the matter? He was ilauem-arluth, kailin, eijo, all the Alban words that could mean sudden death for enemies, but he was neither an assassin nor an executioner.

Worst of all was a feeling he had killed the wrong man. All the responsibility for the Beast rested on Crisen Geruath’s shoulders and Aldric’s mind, concentrated by his brooding, had sifted what he knew of the Overlords at Seghar again and again until he almost sickened of it. Round, and round, and round, like a cat chasing its tail. And a cat doing that is practicing for live prey.

What the Geruaths had done to Evthan hadn’t been punishment for striking Keeyul. That had been the reason given, not the reason why. Even the ferocious beating he had suffered was to conceal the traces of shape-shifting sorcery laid on him by the sorcerer with the Vreijek name, ar Keth-, no, ar Gethin.

Aldric wanted to have words with her.

He wanted words with Crisen too, and with the Overlord himself. Aldric Talvalin was a clan-lord and a king’s confidant, and that meant he had responsibilities no matter how much he tried to ignore or avoid them. He could pretend there was nothing immediate about his sworn Word and travel carelessly for just so long before those duties overtook him one way or another, as they had done now. Better by far to turn and meet them.

But he was alone here, the Geruaths ruled this province, and there was nothing to prevent them disposing of an intrusive nuisance then making an excuse to cover it, like the ‘bandits’ who had killed Youenn Sicard. Someone had attempted such a disposal once already, so it would be best if he sent a message back to Alba as insurance, a message whose existence would provoke thought and make hasty violence less appealing. Or a way to achieve vengeance from beyond the grave. Either way, it would need to be in the keeping of someone he could trust, and with Evthan dead there were few enough of those.

Gueynor had stayed beside him for most of the night, perched on her usual cushioned stool close alongside his chair, which had been Evthan’s chair. He had done no more than stare into the glowing heart of the stove, while she held his hand in a grip which seemed her only link to a world where things made sense. She had walked to the door beside him, straight-backed and dignified, but once that door locked behind her and no one else could see, she had broken down and cried bitterly for her dead.

Now she huddled in uncomfortable sleep, her head resting half on her own crooked arm and half against his knee. He couldn’t move, and wouldn’t move until she did. If this was the only support and comfort he could give, he would give it all night if he had to. In the morning he would suggest she leave this house, even leave Valden, and never come back. Aldric knew only too well how memories refused to heal when surroundings and places and faces refreshed them every day. Oh yes, he knew.

But it puzzled him that no soldiers had come to the village yet. Twenty-four hours had passed, long enough for the sole survivor of the tomb-fight to reach Seghar and make his report, more than enough for a troop of cavalry from the garrison to descend on Valden. Unless… A slow smile of relief spread over Aldric’s face as what had been an idle notion, almost dismissed as too unlikely, became more probable each time he reviewed it. The last man had been very young, and very, very frightened. When he ran from what must have seemed his own inevitable death, it would have been easy to keep on running, away from the mound in the forest and out of the Jevaiden, back to whatever farmstead in the Empire he had come from.

It was the only possible reason for there being no reaction from Seghar. Neither of the Geruaths seemed like men who would indulge in any subtle, cruel game of cat-and-mouse. Their reprisals were immediate and severe, like the execution of that talkative Tergovan merchant Evthan had mentioned, wrenched limb from limb the day after saying something the lord’s son didn’t like. What would they do to a foreigner who killed the Overlord’s retainers?

Aldric had no idea and no wish to broaden his education.

Yes indeed, it would be best if he sent a letter to Dewan ar Korentin. Gueynor could take it to the coast, his Drusalan florins were acceptable that far, and see it safe aboard a ship. By the time she returned he would have—

That was when his flow of ideas stalled for lack of information. He would have done something positive, anyway. First, he would see the Vreijek sorcerer…

*

Night crawled to its end at last, a cold, wet, miserable dawn that would never have a sunrise, and Aldric reached down to gently shake Gueynor out of sleep. She was confused at first, stiff and sore from her uncomfortable posture, and her eyes were still red-rimmed from too many tears.

“It’s morning,” he said. “Like any other day.” Gueynor glanced at the wan grey light beyond the shutters and closed her eyes again.

“Like any other day. Except that on this day we lay my uncle in the earth.” Aldric’s face didn’t change. It wore the same hooded, inward-looking, thoughtful expression as when she awoke, except now it was more like a shield to hide behind. “The Beast is dead. I thought I would feel different.”

“Nothing changes in a night. Not love, not grief, not hate.” He went to wash, shave and then put on the only formal garment in his saddlebags, a blue and silver elyu-dlas crest coat marked with the Talvalin eagles and worn over full black battle armour. The people of Valden could take from that whatever they pleased.

Evthan Wolfsbane was in his old hunting leathers, with the Beast’s pelt for a pillow. There was no coffin, shroud or winding-sheet; instead new-sawn wood floored and lined his grave, and a faint scent of resin hung in the damp air. It was raining slightly, a weeping drizzle from a dull, lead-coloured sky. Gueynor and her aunt, also weeping, stood together at the graveside with the rest of Aline’s family.

Aldric kept a tactful distance away as many hands helped lower Evthan’s body into the ground. The sight made him uncomfortable. Albans were used to the swift, bright closure of fire and burial was an alien concept. When two of the villagers lifted spades and walked to a heap of loose earth, he bent his head forward a little. It looked like a gesture of respect, but it also meant the drip-rimmed peak of his helmet hid what they were doing, while he tried not to think of damp, dark earth and the creatures in it that would…

“Avert,” he muttered and was ashamed. From somewhere in the woods beyond the village palisade came the howling of a wolf, small, ordinary and of no account. That mournful sound slid down the scale to silence, punctuated by the rustle and thud of shovelled soil. He raised one mailed arm, half in salute and half in farewell, and turned his back on the funeral.

Darath the headman stood between him and the houses. Aldric didn’t want to be disturbed – the gloomy day and its grim events had struck a sympathetic chord within him – but the Jouvaine’s courteous bow obliged him to at least give the man a hearing.

“Honoured sir,” Darath said, the apprehension in his tone suggesting he had misread the glint in Aldric’s shadowed eyes, “we would give you money if we had it, but you know how poor the folk of Valden are. We can only offer food and a warm place to sleep for as long as you need it.” He no longer sounded like a village leader, just an old man afraid his offer was inadequate. “And… And this, as a keepsake. To remind you of a man who would have been your friend, had he lived. He would have wished it so.”

The thing in his arms was swaddled like an infant, and though Aldric anticipated what it might be even before the wrappings came off, the sight of it sent a little shiver along his steel-sheathed limbs. Evthan’s wolfskin coyac had been washed clean of blood, then dried and brushed to restore the lustrous sheen of its dark fur. Like all else exposed to the fine drift of rain, the long guard hairs of its pelt swiftly frosted with silver, but that did little to ease Aldric’s mind when the headman offered him the garment. He stared at it, then at Darath.

“What made you think I would want this?”

“It is black, honoured sir.” The headman bowed again, nervous in case he gave offence to a known manslayer. “Like your armour and your horse. We hoped it would please you.”

Aldric wasn’t offended, well aware of how nervous gossip could enhance a reputation, and took the gift with a small bow of his own and a few meaningless words of thanks. After all, along with his board and lodging it was no different to any other payment-in-kind for services rendered, and it wasn’t Darath’s place to know how reluctantly that service had been given.

*

Whatever reservations he might have had about it, Aldric’s acceptance of the coyac brought far fewer complications than Gueynor’s reaction to his plan for she refused it outright.

“I won’t be sent away, and I won’t be treated as a child!” If her voice had been as shrill and petulant as a child’s he might have known better how to deal with her, but she was quiet and controlled, firm and decisive. He could well believe her father had been Overlord in Seghar.

“Not even for your own safety’s sake?”

“My safety’s not at risk.”

“What about the village?”

“Valden’s in no danger. You gave Keeyul what he deserved the night before last and yet, no soldiers. The Geruaths would have sent men here at once if they knew. If. Therefore…?” She glanced at him and raised her eyebrows to cue a response.

“It seems they don’t know.”

From the sound of things Gueynor had matched his own thoughts of last night, despite having so much else to concern her. That made her someone worth watching as much if not more as she was clearly watching him. There was a single-mindedness about her, because he recognised it in himself. All the weeping for her uncle had already happened. Evthan was in his grave, no tears would change that, so there would be no tears. Now the focus of her attention had shifted to another matter: revenge on the Geruaths. Aldric wondered if he had shown similar intensity when his thoughts turned to Duergar Vathach and Kalarr cu Ruruc. What plans had she already made? And where, inevitably, did he and his sword fit into them?

“What do you intend?” An unfamiliar listener like Gueynor heard only idle curiosity, but anyone who knew him well enough would have become most suspicious. His genuine disinterest was never so obvious.

“To come with you.”

It didn’t surprise him, and he adjusted part of his armour-lacing before bothering to react. The last thing he wanted was company. There would be enough risks in protecting himself without looking after a young woman who, regardless of where she was born, had spent the past ten years as a peasant in a peasant village. At least Tehal Kyrin carried a sword and a sling, and could look after herself with both.

“Oh? And where had you in mind?”

“Seghar. That’s the next place you’ll be going, Kourgath. You have an interest in the Geruaths.”

“I concede the point. But what if someone there knows your face?”

“I doubt it. I haven’t been within the walls in years, and I’m just Evthan the hunter’s niece. A peasant, not worth noticing.” The bitterness in her voice was a raw, ugly sound Aldric didn’t like. Such a festering preoccupation with rank could prove dangerous.

“You insult yourself. You insult me. And you insult the eyesight of every male old enough to appreciate what he’s looking at!” The irritable snap of each word negated any flattery. “I don’t care about what you are, or what you think you should be. You’ll be noticed.”

“Don’t patronise me, Alban—”

“Patronise? It’s just the truth. You can’t change that.” If you do come with me, he thought, I’ll expect you to be of use. Someone I can rely on. Not someone who attracts attention by the way they behave. You already do it enough by the way you look. “How well do you know the place?”

“Well enough, unless it’s been torn down and rebuilt.” She stared at him, into his eyes and through them as if reading the workings of the mind beyond. “I’ll be of use, don’t worry.” Aldric blinked, then smiled the wry wincing smile of any man whose secret thoughts don’t seem as secret as he hopes.

“Even so,” he touched her pale blonde hair in a gesture that fell well short of affection, “it would be better if you were someone else. The sight of Evthan’s niece in the company of an armed stranger might raise too many questions. We’ve both guessed at what that soldier did when he ran away from me.” Aldric shrugged, a click and rasp of armour adding metallic emphasis. “But it’s only a guess. What I know is that he’s still alive somewhere. If that somewhere is Seghar, and he identifies me, it’ll implicate you and this whole village as well. I told Darath I made them all a present of Evthan’s name. How many Evthans are there in the Jevaiden? Is it a common name?”

“Not common enough.”

“You see? And you’re his niece. After other details fade, this,” he ran his fingers against her hair again, and this time it was much closer to a caress, “is how people will remember you. I said you can’t change the truth. You can. So change this distinctive colour to something less memorable.”

“Dye my hair?” Gueynor jerked away from his touch as if each finger glowed red-hot. “Are you seriously considering disguises?”

“Yes. People have already tried to kill me. The first time they killed my travelling companion instead, the second time… You already know about the second time. I don’t intend to offer anyone a third chance, and that’s justification enough to become serious. Besides, a mercenary should look the part—” The flippant words left his mouth just before Aldric’s teeth closed with an audible click, not fast enough to catch them.

“But you aren’t…” Gueynor began in surprise. Then she stopped because the tensed muscles at the corners of his jaw and the anger in his eyes told their own tale. “You’re no sellsword, Aldric Talvalin, and you never have been.”

He might have said ‘Who?’ and tried to brazen it out, but oddly enough he was glad she knew. Aldric had felt increasingly deceitful, an uncomfortable sensation between bedmates, even casual ones, but after telling one person in Valden that was enough. There was an old Elthanek saying: share often with one, share seldom with two, share never with three or share with the world. This was a dangerous part of the world to share secrets in, yet Evthan must have told his niece, maybe in the knowledge of his own impending death, or because he and Aldric might kill each other. Whatever the reason, it no longer mattered.

“Gueynor-an,” he said, giving her name its courtesy form whether she understood it or not, “I’m only who and what I say I am. For both our sakes I trust you’ll make the proper replies.”

“Aldric-ain,” she evidently knew enough Alban for a less-mannered but warmer reply, “you trusted my uncle. You can trust me too.” Aldric wasn’t sure how to take what she had said or the way she said it, so dismissed the several hidden meanings with a faint, unfinished smile.

“Disguises needn’t be elaborate, just enough to deceive, and the first element of disguise is to change what’s most obvious. My scarred face, your fair hair. I’ll go a little darker too. We might as well match.”

“What do you plan to do about the scar?”

“An eyepatch. Mercenaries collect things like that almost as often as their wages, and it’s a convenient hook to catch inconvenient memories. They’ll remember a one-eyed man and his buxom brown-haired lady—”

“Buxom?”

“Padding here, here and—”

“Keep your hands to yourself!”

“You weren’t so shy before. That should give casual watchers something else to notice and remember, and when we remove the padding, patch and dye, we’ll be two different people.”

“You’re mad!”

“I told you before, I’m not. But if I am, it’s an entertaining madness.”

“It could see us both dead.”

“So could walking barefaced into Seghar citadel, and much faster.”

There was no arguing with that, and Gueynor didn’t even try.

*

Aldric studied his reflection in the disc of polished bronze which had served Evthan as a mirror. The eyepatched face staring back at him was familiar, yet not the one he knew. Its skin – all his skin except the scar on his cheek, which looked more dramatic than ever – was swarthy now thanks to yet another mixture of oils and nut-juice from Gueynor’s aunt Aline, a woman whose eccentric knowledge of herb-lore made him glad they were leaving Valden. Nobody in this damned village was quite what they seemed, and he had become one of them.

He hadn’t tried to look foreign, just different to whatever description might be circulating. The deep umber skin of an Elherran like Hervits Barrankal, the cheerful big shipmaster who had accidentally broken his ribs, would need both a knowledge of the language and the rounded features of its people. Aldric didn’t speak more than a word or two of Elherran and his own features, never rounded at the best of times, had become leaner than usual from anxiety and lack of regular food. So instead he had the weatherbeaten look of someone who didn’t care what others thought, who spent a lot of time in the open air, and who didn’t wash often enough. For a fastidious Alban that part was another layer of disguise all by itself.

After a rinse, if that was the right word, with Aunt Aline’s dye-stuff his hair was dark and greasy, and the fair streaks which were a legacy from his father’s side of the family had gone. His late brother Baiart would have been sarcastic about that, as he had been sarcastic about most things until he learned better. Aldric reached out and shifted the mirror, his uncovered eye narrowing at what he saw. All the accumulated alterations, each small by itself, together produced an image he disliked even though it was what he had hoped for. He looked ruthless, and perhaps cruel. Nobody would ask someone with that face too many searching questions. And nobody would trust him at all…

Other than those few details he had changed nothing, not even his claimed nationality. Anyone hearing of an Alban mercenary within the walls of Seghar would try to see this newcomer at once and, having seen him, not recognise the man they sought and leave him alone. Or so he hoped.

At least they would be unsure. Or so he hoped…

Aldric grinned without humour. If his mind worked on that track for long enough he would finish by avoiding the citadel entirely. At least there was no need for a different voice. Feigned accents were all very well in their proper place, but that place wasn’t the fortress of a suspicious Overlord.

Gueynor’s transformation to a mercenary’s lady took her almost two hours, and even then it was quicker than he had expected. She still regarded his scheme with scorn, an elaborate children’s game of dressing-up enhanced by adult reasoning, yet had done her best. She wore wide-legged, baggy trousers tucked into short boots, a high-necked tunic, and a knee-length hooded riding coat. There might once have been an embellishment of crests at the shoulders, but now they were safely anonymous leaf-patterns worked in contrasting colours although there was little enough to contrast with. Everything was fawn, green and brown, humble self-effacing shades not meant to attract notice.

Her blonde hair had become rich dark russet, like a freshly fallen chestnut, and was braided close around her head instead of hanging loose as customary for unmarried Jouvaine women. Shadowed with a dark paste on upper lids and lashes, the girl’s blue eyes were startling in their sapphire brilliance as they stared at Aldric, daring him to utter any comment about her lack of the suggested padding. Wisely he said not a word.

“You look well,” he said and bowed. It wasn’t the slight inclination of his upper body she had seen once or twice before. Instead he made a sweeping bend low over one extended leg, accompanied by extravagant flourishes of his left hand. Gueynor might have laughed at such a theatrical gesture, but that dark, one-eyed face and the right hand poised at the hilt of his longsword took the humour from it.

“You look sinister.”

“Good.” Aldric straightened and hitched Isileth Widowmaker up across his back as he walked once around Gueynor, looking thoughtfully at her and the long coat. It would have been too big for an eight-year-old girl, so Evthan must have worn it when he took her away from Seghar. Now she was wearing it for her return, no longer a child, not even the young woman he had met just two days ago. She was no longer the same either outside or in.

“You’re wearing a riding-coat, so can you ride a horse?” There was an awkward little pause that answered the question. Or almost answered it.

“Not well. I haven’t been on a horse since… Since the last time.”

“You’ll remember.” With no intention of riding very far or fast he let the matter drop, except for a private hope that events wouldn’t alter his intention.

*

There was no rain when they rode out of Valden. It was still a little before noon, something which surprised him until he recalled that this was midsummer day, an Haf Golowan, the longest day of the year. Last night, though it had seemed years long, was the shortest night. He had been awake before dawn, Evthan had been buried at sun-up if any sun had been visible through the featureless overcast, and now he was leaving. The speed of it all seemed wrong. What had happened here should have taken longer than two days, with a little more dignity about it. Then he shrugged, because there was nothing more to do. Nothing in Valden, anyway. What might happen in Seghar was another matter.

Gueynor sat astride his pack-pony’s back better than expected, though giving her a mount needed the redistribution of saddlebags and Lyard resented his enforced used as a baggage horse. Any stallion’s resentment was hard to ignore, and with this one a trained war-courser his irritation made for a lively few minutes. The big Andarran had settled now, expressing disapproval only with resigned snorts and grunts, but Aldric still kept a wary eye on him. Riding a high-spirited horse meant the horse often had its own notions of when to display them.

Except for Darath the headman, none of the villagers watched them go. It was as if Valden wanted to forget them both – or Aldric at least – as fast as possible. Only Evthan had ever made him welcome, and now he was dead. Aldric couldn’t blame the rest. Even the most wooden-headed peasant could see how he and Gueynor had changed their appearance, and the less known about why, the better. So be it, then. Aldric didn’t care; not so anyone could see, at least.

Out of consideration for Gueynor’s inexperience he held to a leisurely pace, little more than an amble, and glanced over now and then to see how she fared. He had improvised a bridle, but she had to perch on nothing more than a folded blanket without girth, stirrups or pommel. It meant her seat was rigid and inflexible, her backbone was like a poker that transmitted every jolt, and her knees had clamped to the pony’s ribs like pincers. After years cradled in the reassuring embrace of a war saddle, Aldric himself wouldn’t have felt much more at ease.

They spoke seldom, each wrapped in private thoughts, although he sometimes glanced suspiciously at the sky. He was familiar with this changeable summer weather and, despite Aunt Aline’s assurance that the greasy dye of their disguises was waterproof, he had no intention of getting caught by an unexpected downpour. His worries were groundless. The remaining clouds thinned then cleared until even in the shadow of trees it was hot. The afternoon sun blazed overhead and mere branches offered little shelter to travellers on the narrow forest trails. Wisps of vapour curled like fragile skeins of cobweb from the damp undergrowth, and the warm air grew close and sticky. There was no wind.

“How far to Seghar?” Aldric was soft-voiced now, influenced by the vast humid stillness that surrounded them. Even the horses’ hoofs no longer seemed to fall so heavily, reminding him of that first day’s hunt with Evthan. And of all that had followed it.

“One long day’s walk from Valden. Less on horseback, I’m sure.”

“At this speed? No less, and maybe more. We might get there before full dark.” A thought struck him, of being locked out after curfew. “If we don’t, will they let us in?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Then we’ll stop for a while. If the guards let us in we’ll get in, and if not it’s already too late to hurry.”

Aldric kicked both feet free of the stirrup irons and let them dangle as he stretched backwards as far as the tall, curved cantle would allow. A stream had been running close beside the bridle-path for maybe half a mile now, chuckling over half-seen rocks as it flowed down from the higher reaches of the Jevaiden plateau, and once in a while it formed wide pools alive with golden light and bronze-green shadowy depths. The twinkling of a thousand sun-shot ripples looked cool and inviting to someone who felt hot and tired. Hungry, too. After last night’s waking vigil nothing seemed urgent any more.

Nothing at all…

*

In the first half-hour since the path beneath his pony’s hoofs dried out enough to give off dust again, Marek Endain’s carefully dressed hair and beard had turned to greyish rattails. His round-bellied, short-legged beast was refusing to hurry through such heat and, with similar proportions himself, its rider could only sympathise. The skin under his richly embroidered garments was gritty, and his nose reminded him he was sweating as much as the little horse, though its employers never relied on smell for a good first impression. He tugged sticky silk out of his armpits, eyed the nearest pool and decided that regardless of how cold the water might be, a bath and change of clothing was long overdue.

He dismounted from the relieved pony, hobbled its forelegs and removed saddle and saddlebags before leaving it to crop the grass while he washed. A dabble with one hand proved the water was even more shockingly cold than expected, so he used an approach which for obvious reasons happened only when alone. It involved a long run-up, a yell of anticipation and a leap that ended with his explosive landing backside-foremost in the deepest part of the pool. A column of foam-streaked water rose and fell but the pony, who had seen and heard it all before, merely snorted and went back to grazing.

What paid far more attention to the uproar was a clump of bushes upstream, jerking as if every branch was shocked out of a deep and comfortable sleep…

Sitting in the shallows, Marek scrubbed himself all over with gravel from the riverbed until he glowed with cleanliness and friction, then rinsed off by swimming across the pool. Like many fat men he was buoyant and confident in water and, once the initial chill became more refreshing, he floated on his back and watched the dragonflies as they flicked and hovered over him. For all his idleness his mind was working hard, not thinking about anything new, just repeating what had passed through it so many times before.

I shouldn’t have accepted this commission. It’s probably dangerous, and I’m getting too old.

He wondered how long his unenthusiastic search would have to go on before he could had enough reason to abandon it and go home. Then something passed his head with a quick swish that ended in a sharp choppy splash and the dragonflies scattered. It might have been a leaping fish or a diving bird, even though his presence should have scared both away. Marek ducked beneath the water to see better, what he saw made him gasp, that made him inhale a lot of river, and that made him submerge for several seconds before he broke surface again.

Instead of a fish or bird there was a long, slender arrow drifting slowly upward, wreathed in a cloud of tiny, self-made bubbles. The sharp steel head whose weight pulled it from the horizontal glinted as it rose, as malevolent as the eye of any pike and much more threatening.

As he coughed and spluttered, he raked wet hair from his eyes as if that would help him spot who had shot the arrow. It didn’t. All he could see was forest, either the pillared tree trunks or an impenetrable tangle of undergrowth. But someone could see him.

“Get out, come here, and bring my arrow with you.”

Despite the risk of another impatience-provoked shot, Marek took a few seconds for modesty before following that emotionless voice to its source, and wrapped himself in the blanket he used for a towel. He was trying hard not to think about what had just happened. Either it was an example of skilled archery, or the bowman had meant to kill him and missed. Neither alternative was appealing.

He got another start only seconds later when a large black horse appeared without warning from behind a tree. The animal wasn’t hobbled, and it watched him for a moment or two before wandering back into the shade.

The archer, presumably the horse’s owner, was lounging under an oak tree, booted feet crossed on top of his saddlery and gear. A young woman sat with equal comfort by his side, although her back was tensed and her face uncertain. If her companion felt that way he concealed it well, because the shadows cast by low, leaf-heavy branches masked his features and it seemed unlikely they fell just-so by accident. There was a book set upside-down on the grass to keep its place while its reader folded his arms and dozed, or embraced his lady…

Or shot at unsuspecting swimmers with the short heavy bow in one hand, which already had a second arrow nocked to the string.

At first sight everything appeared casual, almost disorderly, until a second, more careful glance revealed purpose behind the chaotic scatter. That purpose was swift access to a disturbing number of weapons. Besides the shortbow and its arrow-crammed case there was another full quiver hanging from the saddle footstool, a pair of telekin spring-guns holstered either side of the pommel, a dirk and shortsword at the man’s belt and a longsword propped within easy reach.

Hilt and harness, boots, bow and breeches were all stark black, just like the wolfskin rolled into a cushion between the stranger’s head and the tree trunk. His white shirt was open and its sleeves rolled up like any man taking his ease on a hot day, but there was a thumb-ringed shooting-glove on one hand and a leather bracer on the other brown forearm. Silver glittered in the hollow of his throat, a thick collar with a pendant talisman, and that was the first thing of all his accouterments to make Marek relax.

“What did I do that you find calming?” The archer still spoke Drusalan, but now, closer, there was the undertone of another accent.

“Silver.” Marek nodded towards it, relieved his voice own was so steady. “At least you’re not—” he gave a quick insincere grin to prove he wasn’t being serious “—a forest demon.”

“Now there’s a strange greeting, Kourgath,” said the woman, and the suspicion in her tone was all too clear.

Too late now to abandon any commission, thought Marek as he looked at the bow, the telekin and the longsword. He feared for his safety, then for his dignity since the blanket round his ample waist was working loose. He tugged at it, grateful for something to do with hands that threatened to tremble at any moment, and when he looked up realised he was being examined by the single grey-green eye of a face much younger than he had expected to see. That face was clean-shaven, darkened by sun and weather, and marked with the stark diagonal of a patch across brow, right eye and cheekbone. As he returned stare for stare with the advantage of two eyes on his side, the archer’s gloved right hand came up to ease his patch a little lower, as if hiding something.

That implied a recent mutilation, and lack of age and experience would make him quick to counter any challenge from a world which might think him weak or incomplete. Any challenge at all, real or imagined. That meant he was as deadly as a coiled viper. Yet there was something about him which sounded a near-forgotten chord of memory. His hair wasn’t close-cropped like the Imperial military and it was almost black, but it was still cut short enough to be…

The memory hovered an instant longer, then vanished.

“No demon, eh?” The single eye blinked lazily, like a cat’s. “There are plenty who would argue. I’m eijo. And what are you, besides a man of Cerenau?” Those last words were in pure Alban, coloured by the Elthanek burr that had made his fluent Drusalan sound so strange.

“Is my accent so obvious?” said Marek and laughed, having to force it a little. An eijo, before Heaven! It explains the hair and the Three Blades. But it didn’t quite explain the tiny memory that came nagging back.

“Are you a priest,” the girl asked, “that your first words concern demons?” It sounded innocent, too innocent, and he wondered how much of that wide-eyed curiosity was just an act.

“Not a priest,” he replied with as much hauteur as his slipping towel would allow. “My name is Marek Endain, a demon-queller. The demon-queller.” His bow was jerky, laced with aggressive politeness, and the eijo replied with a perfunctory gesture of greeting and a grin. Even though it was as brief as his salute, that flash of teeth disarmed the situation.

“Demon-queller, eh?” There might have been awe or respect in his voice, but Marek was inclined to doubt it. “You can call me Kourgath. I’m a traveller and mercenary. Just a mercenary. My lady is Gueynor of…”

“No fixed abode?” suggested the demon-queller generously.

“Ternon,” Gueynor finished for him. “A few years back.”

Not too many, thought Marek. Babes in arms don’t leave home alone. I wonder do your parents know about it? His eyes flicked briefly to the eijo’s face. No, probably not.

Already over the worst of his fright and despite appearances, Marek Endain didn’t frighten easily, he was beginning to suspect why this young couple were so jumpy and suspicious. The lad was in his middle twenties, the girl not twenty, both well-spoken but expecting and fearing pursuit. A handsome mercenary and perhaps a wealthy merchant’s daughter, not abducted by the look of her, just taken in by too many romantic tales. Marek felt warmly sentimental, remembering an occasion when he too had been young and foolish. The time for a sensible lecture might come later, but for now…

“Your secrets are safe with me,” he announced, hitching his towel to a new anchorage higher up the majestic curve of his belly. Kourgath and Gueynor looked at him, both wearing the same expression, then at each other. Then the towel slipped and Marek’s grab for it was just a little too late.

Kourgath laughed, Gueynor put one hand in front of her mouth and blushed, but the demon-queller was beyond blushing even though the Jevaiden plateau obstinately refused to open and swallow him.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, carefully avoiding anyone’s direct gaze, “I’ll dress now.”

“I don’t mind at all,” said Kourgath, “and neither does my lady. In fact we’d consider it a wise decision. Very wise indeed.”

*

“Do you think we can trust him?” Gueynor asked once the Cernuan walked away, wrapped in dignity and not much else.

“Yes. At least I hope so.” Aldric wasn’t smiling now. “Because the only alternative is—”

“No! I told you before, I won’t agree to murder!”

“Except for the Geruaths.” His voice was nasty. “So call it self-defence.”

“Why? Because it sounds better?”

“If he turns out dangerous, it sounds just right.”

“Thanks to you shooting at him!” Now her amusement had faded, Gueynor was still angry about that. “If you hadn’t been so hasty he’d have passed us by!”

“I doubt it.” Aldric didn’t want to explain about the sixth-sense feeling that made him certain Marek’s route would have brought the demon-queller and his pony right on top of them. It had been only good tactics to make the first move, gain the advantage of surprise and, as things turned out, gain an unsuspecting ally as well.

“Did you see his face?”

“What about his face?”

“He thinks we’ve run away together.” Gueynor made a disbelieving noise, but Aldric smiled. “He sized us up, saw you weren’t my prisoner, and assumed that anyone looking for us would look for you first.”

“You might be right.” She conceded the point reluctantly, sounding unconvinced. “But what difference does that make?”

“It means he’s formed his own opinions, and they’ll be more credible than anything I might feed him. He’s forgiven me for that arrow already – at least he didn’t mention it – and I doubt he’ll betray us to anyone now. Marek thinks your family is chasing us. He’s a romantic at heart, I think.”

“You think!”

“I think.” Aldric had been accused of the same thing. “But I’d still go bond for his silence.”

Gueynor stared at him for a moment, then reached out to adjust the black patch over his eye. He had raised it to shoot, muttering something about not judging the distance accurately otherwise, and had been twitching at it ever since as if it itched.

“Don’t go bond for anything,” she said. the waspishness gone from her voice. “You might lose more than money.”

What then? he almost asked. Life? Honour? No, not honour. That was long lost. He had employed deception with practised ease yet again, letting an innocent stranger accept him as something he was not. It was a dishonourable thing for any Alban warrior, and for a clan-lord should have been unthinkable. It had been unthinkable for him, but in a different way. He hadn’t thought about it at all. Maybe if Marek had been from somewhere else it wouldn’t have mattered, but he was Cernuan. It meant he was South Alban – though if he was like other Cernuans Aldric had met, he wouldn’t care for that name – and a fellow-countryman of sorts in this foreign province. Maybe Gueynor was right, and he was a little mad after all if being mad meant no longer caring about his own self-respect.

Was that why he had helped Evthan in his hunt for the Beast? And why he now hoped to help Gueynor? Because he was trying to recover something, to prove something to the world and to himself? Prove he could have saved his father’s life and his own honour if he had come home in time? And would he always have to prove it by killing and deceit, down all the days of a life that seemed sometimes already far too long?

Aldric’s mouth opened, but no words emerged and it closed again with a snap of teeth that Gueynor could hear. Instead he got to his feet, almost flinging himself upright and away from the comfort of her hand, her presence, her sympathy. He seized the black wolfskin coyac and drew it on over his shirt, hesitating a moment as he felt its weight settle on his shoulders, then moved away to stare unseeing down into the ripples of the uncomplicated pool while he tried to come to terms with the complications raising ripples inside his own head.

*

When Marek returned he was wearing a splendid cymar over-robe, scarlet patterned with whorls of gold and black. There were two stoppered wine-jars secured between the fingers of his left hand and three turned-wood drinking bowls in the right. He glanced warily towards Gueynor as if aware his earlier appearance had provoked some sort of argument, and was reassured when she patted the ground and smiled at him.

A few seconds later there was the distinctive sound of a cork being drawn, but he shook his head to refuse the offered bowl. In his present mood the last thing he needed was to start drinking, well aware from past experience where it could lead. He had been down that road before, and with less reason than now. So no wine. With his resolution settled, he counted breaths for several moments more before he turned round.

Gueynor and Marek were already deep in conversation about anything and everything except, he reckoned, eijin who shot at perfect strangers in the middle of their ablutions. The demon-queller looked a lot more elegant and capable now than the dripping, towel-wrapped figure who had stood before them not so long ago. His mobile, intelligent face was quick to smile, framed by the silvered chestnut of hair and full beard, and though he seemed fat, most of his surplus weight was in his belly with the rest stocky rather than plump. There was considerable strength in those thick limbs. As Aldric looked with the eye and mind of one attuned to deception, he realised the Cernuan deliberately cultivated this image of a harmless, middle-aged fat man over-fond of food and drink. And that meant he was nothing of the sort.

“What does a demon-queller do?” asked Gueynor. When Marek finished putting hair and beard to rights and drew a long breath, Aldric recognised the symptoms.

“Briefly, please,” he said. Marek Endain let out that gathered breath with a sharp, slightly outraged gasp. Nobody had ever asked him to edit his customary long-winded introduction before, and he had the air of a man who didn’t want to. “Leave out all the long words,” Aldric added. “That should help.” His expression hadn’t altered, making it impossible for Marek to tell if he was joking. The Cernuan decided not and played things safe, though it took a few seconds for him to reorganise his thoughts.

“I quell demons,” he said at last, mostly to Gueynor, and got an old-fashioned look from Aldric. “They slip through cracks in the walls between realities and make mischief where they’re not wanted. Some fool of a wizard makes an error in ritual, or mis-aligns a symbol, or breaks a control circle, and it’s enough to let all hell break loose. Often literally.”

“You see?” Aldric smiled. “Brevity didn’t hurt, did it?” Then he put the question which had been nagging him ever since he first heard Marek’s accent. “What brings a Cernuan to the Jevaiden woods? Isn’t it rather far to travel?”

“Is it any farther for an Alban eijo?” asked Marek, and Aldric grinned to acknowledge the fair hit. “I was visiting a Jouvaine lady associate,” now Gueynor stifled a laugh, “and she told me there was trouble in the Deepwood.” The laughter stopped as if cut by a knife. “A wolf was what she said. A werewolf was what she meant.”

“This isn’t the Deepwood,” said Gueynor.

“No matter. I’ve heard nothing more anyway, so it was probably just peasant exaggeration.”

“Not exaggeration.” Aldric’s gloved right hand stroked the soft fur of the coyac, leather and fur, black on black. “There was a werewolf. And a real wolf, too. They’re both dead.” There was a brief, uncomfortable silence and Gueynor’s eyes gleamed with the risk of unshed tears. She swallowed and cleared her throat.

“So what now for you? Back to your associate?”

“No need, lady. There was a full moon last night, and that has influence on more than…” Marek shied away from a sensitive subject. “Well, somebody, somewhere might need my services, and it’s as likely here as anywhere else.”

“You seem very sure,” said Aldric, and the Cernuan waved one hand in the air, indicating places vaguely eastward.

“Kourgath, I am sure. We’re not far from the Imperial frontier. Sorcery is strictly banned within the Drusalan Empire, but those edicts can be ignored by men with the power to do so.”

“Like Grand Warlord Etzel.” Aldric regretted his words the instant they left his mouth, for the suspicious look on Marek’s face made it clear that bit of common knowledge wasn’t as common as he’d thought. “At least so I’ve heard.” It was a lame finish, and would have been better left unsaid.

“You must have heard some interesting conversations recently.” Marek didn’t pursue the matter further, though he stared for long enough that Aldric had to evade the demon-queller’s gaze by developing a sudden interest in the lacing of his boots. “Anyway,” the Cernuan continued at last, “these Jouvaine border provinces are haven and home for many enchanters, whose skills are for hire to anyone with enough wealth.”

“Lord Crisen Geruath ignores the edicts, and he has the wealth,” said Gueynor. Aldric wished she had learned from his own slip, but it was too late now, far too late. Though he was in no position to criticise, at least he’d avoided prompting more questions.

“Lord Crisen who?” asked Marek.

“The lord’s son at Seghar. His father’s the Overlord.”

“I didn’t know. Tell me, why mention his name?”

You can’t tell him anything! Aldric wanted to shout. You come from Ternon! You don’t live here! You don’t know about any of this!

“Because his mistress…” A little of Aldric’s silent pleading seemed to reach her at last and she faltered, looking realistically shame-faced. “I should have told you that this is gossip from the last village we passed through, and they asked us not to repeat it. My mistake. I wouldn’t give it too much credence, anyway. Peasants chatter like starlings.”

“Chatter or not,” said Aldric, “you should tell him about the Vreijek woman.” With the damage already done, letting Gueynor talk too much was better than letting Marek Endain ask too much.

“Oh, her! They say Lord Crisen’s mistress – he calls her a consort! – is a sorcerer. They say she makes all manner of spells to entertain him. Or rather, to give him,” Gueynor put one hand in front of her mouth and coughed daintily, “pleasure. So they say.”

“They say a great deal.” Marek smiled a tight little smile. “But who are ‘they’?”

“Oh, everybody.” Her brightness was becoming more artificial with every second. “All the people—”

“—Are in terror of their opinions being overheard,” Aldric interrupted. “It’s the sort of thing they’d love to talk about, but daren’t.” He gave Gueynor a quick, one-eyed glare. “Only the women can’t keep from prattling, not to save their lives or anybody else’s. Though there was a merchant who—”

“I heard about him.”

“Then you’ll know why it happened.” Aldric nodded towards the wine-jars. “I’ve changed my mind. May I?”

Marek nodded and filled another bowl which Aldric lifted casually, raised to his lips and just as casually set down again untasted. He didn’t drink with those he distrusted. Instead his left hand came up to rub the back of his neck as to ease a cramp, then eased down inside the collar of his shirt to the little dagger hidden there.

“And if you know why it happened, you must also know what Gueynor just told you.” His gloved right hand made a small distracting gesture towards her, and Marek’s eyes followed it for half a heartbeat. “So why ask again?” And suddenly there was steel jutting like a serpent’s tongue from between the fingers of Aldric’s left fist as it jabbed towards the Cernuan’s neck.

“Aldric, no!” Gueynor’s gasp wasn’t loud, but it carried well enough, and the punch-dagger stopped just underneath Marek’s chin with a warning upward jerk that stung him and drew blood.

“You fool!” Aldric’s voice, his face, his whole being had gone cold and deadly, and no one was sure who he had called a fool. Marek for asking too much, Gueynor for saying too much, even himself for thinking too much and letting matters run out of control until they came to this. Like it or loathe it, he would have to kill in cold blood because now the demon-queller knew his name. Not the full name, but enough of it. Too much of it. His fingers tightened around the small dagger’s hilt.

“Aldric?” Marek’s face was the colour of old cream and he had to force the word past dry lips, up from a throat restricted by the blade against it. But he had to say something, anything, and say it quickly. “You’re Aldric-erhan Talvalin?” Aldric flinched as if struck in the face, and a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth.

“Speak again without permission and—” The knife stung again, a reminder, before drawing back in a leisurely fashion like the paw of a cat. “Gueynor, sit down!” Aldric’s one-eyed stare hadn’t shifted from Marek and she was on his blind side, but she sat down again regardless. “Better. Now, Marek Endain, demon-queller, you have permission to speak. So do it.”

“Ar Korentin sent me. He told me where to find you, and your foster-father showed me how.”

“Ar Korentin.” Aldric drew in breath through his clenched teeth. “Well, it shouldn’t come as a surprise, but I wouldn’t have thought Gemmel-altrou would play along with his tricks.” His attention settled back on Marek, intense as the grip of a falcon’s talons. “That’s easy to say. Where’s your proof?”

The demon-queller’s hand moved with the sluggishness of spilled honey as it reached inside his robe, and the tiny strip of parchment he withdrew looked absurd in his big hand. It would have been less out of place around the leg of whatever pigeon had originally carried it. “Will this do?”

Aldric glanced at it. There were minute words written on it in black ink, and though the hair-fine characters were in cipher, it was one he knew.

“You could have killed the real courier and stolen this.”

“I could have, but I didn’t.” The demon-queller glared, and his voice grew harsh. Knife or no knife, threat or no threat, his patience was running out. “Nor could I have stolen knowledge from within a man’s head. For now I say to you the word suharr’n, and I say to you the word hlaichad, and I make in your sight the pattern Kuhr-ijn.” His fingers traced an elaborate gesture in the air and a faint webwork of blue fire, almost transparent in the sunlight, hung a moment in their wake before dissipating like woodsmoke. “And what do you say to that, Aldric Talvalin?”

*

Aldric said nothing. His body stiffened and his eye glazed, its grey-green iris becoming as lifeless as a sliver of unpolished jade, while the hand with its still-poised dagger sagged slowly until it hung motionless by his side.

“What did you do?” Gueynor didn’t know whether to be frightened of losing her protector, or relieved that the threat of violence during the past moments had subsided.

“Nothing. This was done to him before he left, and with his full consent. From what I heard. I merely closed the circle before its proper time, and I should have done it at once rather than taking such risks with such a man.” He touched the still-oozing nick in this throat and winced. “They warned me about what he was, and I should have expected such a reaction. He’s frightened…”

“Frightened? Him?”

“Inside, where we can’t see. And more frightened of showing it. Most kailinin are alike that way. It’s what makes them so dangerous.” Aldric still hadn’t moved, hadn’t blinked, had barely breathed, and showed no sign of hearing what was being said less than an arm’s length away from him. “We’ll take this foolish patch off first, so I can be absolutely sure, and… Yes, that scar confirms it. Not by much, but distinctive enough to the right people. And to the wrong ones.”

Gueynor sensed the Cernuan was talking more to himself than for her benefit, but she didn’t interrupt him by so much as a sudden move. He evidently trusted her, otherwise she too would have been motionless and silent. She didn’t like to look at Aldric. It was shocking that one so active could be struck as still as stone by two words and a gesture. Despite Marek’s reassurance and no matter who had placed it there, she couldn’t believe he had submitted to whatever spell was on him without a protest.

Marek shaped another complex, writhing symbol in front of that expressionless face and the ugly, mindless glaze cleared from Aldric’s eyes. Intelligence returned, but it wasn’t the same intelligence Gueynor knew, the man who had shared her bed and her body. Except for their unaltered colour these were the eyes of a stranger, and she could almost see the thoughts swimming in them like tiny, wise fish.

Then he spoke, forming each word carefully as if considering it before letting it become audible, and his voice had changed. The Elthan burr was gone, and even the rhythm of his speech belonged to someone else. “By this man, my honoured lord and trusted messenger, I give salute and greetings to the high and worthy Goth, Lord Gener—”

“Hush, my lord, and be still!” said Marek, and even though his voice was sharp and hasty it was also courteous, a request rather than a command. Aldric closed his mouth and his changed eyes as he seemed to fall into natural sleep. Marek watched him for a moment then passed the back of one hand across his forehead, smiling sourly. “I should not have heard that, my lord,” he muttered, “so the words are already forgotten.” His head turned a fraction towards Gueynor. “By both of us.”

“Know me, Aldric-eir,” the demon-queller said. “I’m a friend, sent by friends to help you.” He spoke in a slow, hypnotic monotone, and Gueynor couldn’t be sure if what he said were persuasive lies or honest truth. She was almost past caring. “Sachaur arrhathak eban, Aldric. Yman Gemmel; yman Dewan; yman Rynert-mathern aiy’yel echin arhlathall’n.”

Aldric should still have been incapable of movement, so the demon-queller started when his eyes snapped open, staring and unfocussed. But Marek himself went motionless himself when he heard what the Alban’s voice – his real voice – whispered before trailing into silence.

“Lost… Lost… I am lost…”

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” The words cracked in Marek’s gullet and he coughed to clear his throat of the nervous constriction blocking it. He was nervous not for himself but for Aldric, in case his hurried attempt to reach whatever secrets lay buried in the younger man’s subconscious had severed the binding of soul to body. Long ago and far away he had witnessed that error happening to someone else, an image seared so deeply into his brain that he sickened at the thought he might have caused it now. Not death, not even undeath, but unlife, mere existence. As mud exists.

“There are no stars…” Again Marek heard the almost inaudible, cobweb-fragile thread of sound. “Night surrounds… No stars… I am lost… None can help me now…”

The blood in his veins seemed to become ice-water despite the warmth of the day. He had read those words before, but never heard them spoken aloud until now, and a swift shudder racked his limbs as his skin grew pallid and clammy cold. Losing one man’s soul dwindled to insignificance compared with the potential enormity hinted at by those words – if they were only hints and not something far worse. He didn’t dare make the leap of imagination to what lay beyond, for that way lay unspeakable things, and could only wait for what came next. Aldric’s voice was already losing coherence, his words faltering more often now, stumbling over one another and no longer making sense.

The name ‘Kyrin’ meant nothing to the Cernuan demon-queller, though Gueynor turned her head away at the sound of it, and as the deep, regular breathing of heavy slumber replaced those disturbing broken phrases, Marek could relax again. He was overwrought, that was all. Too many things had happened to him in too short a time, without enough rest to compensate. There was a small thud as the punch-dagger fell from relaxing fingers on to the grass at Aldric’s side, and his spine lost its rigidity so that his head lolled heavily forward.

“Wake him, please,” said Gueynor. “I don’t like to see him reeling about as if he was a drunkard.”

“Then look away,” said Marek, sounding abrupt whether he meant to or not. “His mind will be disordered for a while yet, because I had to rummage through it in something of a hurry.” The Cernuan dabbed blood from his neck again. “Don’t forget, he pulled a knife on me. That’s never the best way to make friends.”

Aldric let out a long sigh and collapsed, first to his knees then forward until the side of his face struck a tree root. It made an unpleasant sound. Before Marek could move, if he even intended to, Gueynor was on her knees by Aldric’s side, rolling him on to his back so she could cradle his head in her lap. Except for a thumb-length of scraped and broken skin along his temple he was unharmed, and the few beads of blood dotting it matched the dagger-made cut under the demon-queller’s chin closely enough that she glared at him.

“You bastard! You let that happen, to pay him out!”

“I can’t make people fall the way I want them to.”

“But you would if you could.”

“Not always.” Marek touched his neck one last time and the trickle of blood stopped. “But sometimes, yes.”

*

Whether he was dazed by the spell or stunned by the fall, or just faking either of the two, not even Aldric knew for certain. The only certainty at present was the sensation that ebbed and flowed inside his ringing skull. It wasn’t pain, not exactly, because he knew enough about pain to recognise it. This was like a swirling fog, first hot then cold and as noisy as waves breaking on a gravel shore, but there was no smell of the sea. Instead, for just a moment, he could smell roses. He could see them too, roses like the one buried deep in his saddlebag, great dark-red blossoms armed with jagged thorns. And then, between one blink and the next, they had gone and he was back.

“I beg pardon,” Aldric said, his voice steadier than he expected it might be. “For what I did and… And for what I almost did.” Marek Endain laughed at that, disinclined to humour but amused despite himself.

“Beg no forgiveness of me, Aldric-eir. It’s Dewan ar Korentin who should ask pardon from us both. It was his crooked mind that engineered this confusion.” The demon-queller reached down, plucked grass blades and twisted them between his fingers. “After all this, do you still want my company? Or my help?”

Aldric felt Gueynor’s fingertips prodding at his shoulder, trying to attract his attention, trying to prompt him to refuse whether politely, angrily, rudely or any way at all. Just so long as he said ‘No’. He ignored her as best he could and thought instead about Sedna. When he finally spoke to the Vreijek woman, Marek would prove useful.

“Do you still offer them?” he asked, trying to read what he could from the Cernuan’s face, and that was little enough. Marek’s mind was turning over what he had heard. Not King Rynert’s message to Lord General Goth, for politics held no interest at all, but the words which had followed and horrified him. They couldn’t have been spoken by accident. No delirium, no dream whether born of drink or drugs or sorcery could create those phrases out of nothing. Marek recognised them as disjointed fragments of a warning, and the recollection still chilled him because he knew too well what they warned against.

“Yes, I still offer them. Without reservation.”

“Then I accept the offer.” Aldric gave him a casual bow, just an inclination of the head, then a crooked little smile. “We could be friends eventually, if I draw no more steel and you cast no more spells. So tell me, friend, what do you know about Seghar…?”

CHAPTER SEVEN

The shadows of dusk were lengthening in Seghar town as they approached it at a leisurely walk. Torches and ornate lamps had been lit at intervals along the outer wall and their effect, like a string of jewels, did little to offset an all-too-plain dilapidation. Marek Endain had described it well enough, but the seedy reality was worse.

Reining Lyard to a halt, Aldric glanced over his left shoulder for Gueynor’s reaction and saw what he had expected: shock, disbelief, and finally outrage that the fine place of her cherished recollections had been reduced to what they saw now. The indignant lines of her face softened and collapsed towards tears.

“Stop that!” The snap in his voice was to attract her attention before her behaviour attracted someone else’s and put them all at risk. “You’re a stranger here, you’ve never seen the place before, so you’ve got nothing to cry about.”

He almost said ‘not yet, anyway’ but closed his teeth on the heartless phrase before it left his mouth. If Dunrath had degraded as far as this place must have done from Gueynor’s ten-year memory of it he might have cried too. Seghar was old, and that was excusable for Dunrath was also old, but it had no time-mellowed dignity, only the decrepitude of age. Its stonework had crumbled, then been quarried as house-building material or just rubble to pave roads, and the few attempts at repair were haphazard, incomplete and altogether ugly.

More depressing still were the echoes of long-faded grandeur, scattered like discarded rags among the buildings of the fortress proper. A sprawl of overgrown parterres almost covered the gravelled walks of a formal garden, weeds choked its ornamental ponds, and the once-neat trees and bushes that lined its avenues were slowly degenerating into tangles of dying vegetation. Yet not everything was failing. Even at this distance Aldric could detect the heavy scent of roses on the evening air, a cloying perfume he was coming to associate more and more with the name of Seghar, and one he was starting to detest.

“Cowards,” Gueynor whispered. “They didn’t dare destroy what my father had made of Seghar, but they let it fall into this…”

He looked beyond her at Marek Endain, saw the demon-queller frown, and knew the demon-queller was recognising what he had already seen. All this wasn’t because of poverty or apathy but a policy of deliberate neglect, proving the Geruaths capable of far greater subtlety than he had expected. The gardens were all that remained of past overlords, and letting them go to ruin before removing them was someone’s notion of doing the same to the memory and reputation of those who had planted them. Whose idea had it been? Overlord Geruath himself? Or was it Crisen? Now there was a man he had never met, but already disliked as much as the smell of those damned roses.

“Mind what you say about this dump,” he warned. “Compliments will fool nobody, and insults are dangerous.”

A few armed retainers mingled with the travellers as they drew closer to the town – there was a midsummer fair in progress, if their gaudy dress was anything to go by – and attracting attention by strange behaviour or incautious observations would be unwise. The fate of that Tergovan merchant suggested eavesdropping was common in Seghar, with ill-chosen words promptly reported to where they would do most harm. No lord, not even one so bereft of pride as Geruath appeared to be, would care to hear such descriptions of his demesne as took shape inside Aldric’s head. Out on the Jevaiden plateau this fortress might be the centre of affairs; anywhere else it would be a slum or an abandoned derelict.

The inner citadel was primitive, a mere fortified manor house which had sprouted spires and turrets in a jarring, unmatched variety of architectural styles. It was in the same sorry state as the rest of the town, unpainted for the most part and lacking great areas of the plaster which had once smoothed its raw stone. The whole building seemed to cringe into the landscape rather than dominate it as donjons were meant to do.

There was also a solitary wooden tower so incongruously archaic in style that Aldric had never seen one in reality, just pictures in old Books of Years, yet this one was a recent build from clean new timber. He studied it as he rode closer, but was no wiser about its function by the time he reached the gate in the town’s southern wall; the Summergate, it was called. Yet an elusive something, words or a picture, drifted in the inaccessible reaches at the back of his mind, and if he could have just a few more seconds of concentration he would catch—

“You there, stand fast!”

Aldric jerked back to reality at the harsh command and irritation replaced his attempted trawl through memory. Even an eijo was unaccustomed to that tone of voice, more appropriate to addressing servants, and it took half a breath before he recalled that a presumed mercenary swordsman was anybody’s potential servant.

Not that he would have made objection anyway. The two gate-guards in scale and leather armour carried gisarms, cutting-spears as effective as any battleaxe and with a longer reach. Though the weapons were at rest they still warranted wary attention. The kortagor standing between them was a tall man, his spade-shaped grizzled beard jutting pugnaciously from between the cheekplates of his helmet, and the blackthorn baton that was his mark of rank pointed straight at Aldric.

A twitch of Lyard’s reins stopped the big Andarran courser an easy spear’s-length from where the man stood, neither too far away nor too close. It was always best, whether playing a part or not, to avoid annoying those with the power to make life unpleasant. That was why, instead of snarling one of the several irascible responses which would have been in character, Aldric gave the man a crisp, neutral salute before dismounting. He gave another after his feet hit the ground and, a calculated interval after his salute, he bowed as well. It wasn’t the low sweeping insolence he’d used to tease Gueynor, but low enough, gauged to convey respect without servility with the finely tuned politeness at which Albans excelled.

He stayed quite still as the officer strolled closer, inspecting him as he would a soldier on parade. Given his chosen role that was close enough to the truth. The man was unsure of what he saw and confused by the mixture of signals he was reading, which sometimes agreed and sometimes contradicted. Whether that confusion would be helpful, hindrance or threat was something Aldric was likely to find out before too long.

*

Kortagor Jervan had become a good judge of men during twenty years with the Imperial military, and it wasn’t chance which had brought him to this particular gate. He made it his business to inspect every stranger who stayed in Seghar for more than his own arbitrary limit of two days, and on certain occasions advance warning meant the inspection took place at once. This was one such occasion. Jervan’s assessments were so seldom wrong that he didn’t like uncertainty, least of all where it concerned a man who carried a small private arsenal of lethal weapons.

As if conscious of his gaze, the horseman’s hand came up to tug at the patch he wore. Jervan had seen such a movement before. Men were often embarrassed by disfigurement, especially when they were like this one, younger than the usual run of mercenaries. Armed so heavily, he could be little else. There was a hard set to the features, no doubt an act meant to impress, but there was something else about him which didn’t fit. It was as if he was more used to giving orders than getting them. As if he was accustomed to respect.

“You’re Alban.” Jervan used the baton to point out a dirk and shortsword worn in loops through the rider’s belt, and a longsword hilt rising like a scorpion’s tail above his right shoulder. Both times he stopped before contact to avoid the risk of insult, then grounded the blackthorn’s metal-shod tip with a hard, bright clank on the paving stones between his feet.

“Once,” the young man said. “But not any more.” Even though no question had been asked about them, his hand mirrored Jervan’s gesture towards the longsword and the short, but bypassed the black dirk. “Now I rent these and my expertise. In case you were wondering.”

Jervan examined him thoughtfully. There was no insult in the soft-spoken words, or if there was it had been so veiled that the kortagor chose not to waste time searching. He was a strict man, as required by his rank, but as fair-minded as decency dictated. If One-eye wanted to enter the Overlord’s service, it was the Overlord who would command him to go or stay. Interference from his garrison commander wasn’t needed until after that decision was made.

“He calls himself Kourgath,” said Marek. “And he answers to it readily enough.”

Jervan’s head snapped round and his beard seemed to bristle with annoyance at the interruption, but the fat man sitting on a fat pony just smiled at him.

“Who might you be?”

“Marek Endain, demon-queller.” Jervan blinked and his eyebrows went up, but the fat man continued talking with a fat man’s affable unconcern. “Kourgath here is my hired bodyguard. What with bandits and wolves and who knows what else, this province can be a dangerous place, Kortagor…?”

“Jervan. Garrison commander of Seghar.”

“Then Jervan, garrison commander, I wish you well this fine evening.” Marek made an expansive gesture more like a benediction than any greeting or salute Jervan had ever seen. He stared for a moment, debating whether more questions were required, then decided to direct them where they would do more good.

“What about the woman?” he said and took an ominous step closer to her. “Do you also speak for her, or can she talk?”

*

“Don’t call her ‘the woman’,” said Aldric. “Her name is Aline.” He pitched his voice loud enough for Gueynor to hear and hoped she would take the hint, because he had seen shock and horror cross her face when she saw Jervan. Although he didn’t know the cause, something distracting needed said before the soldier noticed too and wondered why. Jervan’s head swivelled back towards him like the turret of a battleram warship, and for an instant he regretted saying anything to draw this man’s attention. There was a half-humorous glint in the kortagor’s eyes, a toleration of insolence up to a point, and that point had just been reached. This time when the blackthorn stick jabbed out it didn’t stop short. The impact on his chest was no heavier than that of a pointing finger, but it carried a deal more emphasis than any finger ever could.

“Let the, the lady say her piece, Alban. If I want your contribution, I’ll ask for it. Until then, hold your tongue. Now, my dear young lady…” Jervan turned his attention back to Gueynor, and Aldric would have felt far happier if the approach hadn’t smacked so much of Dewan ar Korentin at his most suave and devious. “Tell me a little about yourself.” Gueynor’s response to such a question should have been to freeze like a rabbit confronted by a stoat. Instead she collected her wits and gave the officer a shy little smile.

“My name is Aline Havarel, sir, and my husband Berek used to have a shop in Ternon. We sold such pretty things there, silks and fine lace, velvets—”

“I might know it.” That was the usual opening for a man about to ask a maze of questions which ended by confirming there was no such place, but Aldric also regarded him with another emotion than mere wary distrust. He wouldn’t have admitted feeling jealousy, even to himself, but it was there all the same. Gueynor recovered well and covered better than he expected, proving what he already knew, that there was more to her than met the eye. Just like her uncle.

“I don’t think you would, commander,” she replied, becoming a little sad. “Not this two years past, anyway. I married young, you see—”

“You’re still young,” said Jervan. His gallantry might even have been genuine, but Gueynor ignored it and continued without heeding his interruption.

“—And I was widowed young. There was an accident. My husband had gone for bolts of cloth from the weaver…” She took a breath and spoke fast, like someone repeating a story told too many times already. “Our horse took fright. It bolted. The cart rolled over. Berek was, was under it. And he… Died.” She made a sound like a sob and lowered her head as if controlling tears, turning back with a tired expression and a little sigh that conveyed more than many words. “The town guild wouldn’t let me run the shop alone, or buy anything to sell. By the end I couldn’t even afford rent and food at the same time. So I left, and now I travel with anyone who… Who pays for my company.” The performance was masterful and understated, it imitated reality to perfection and provoked sympathy rather than suspicion.

“We have no such accidents in this town, lady,” Jervan assured her with a look that held only pity. “Horses aren’t permitted beyond the inner walls.” Aldric wasn’t prepared to let him take credit for that.

“An Alban custom, Kortagor?” he asked, daring the soldier to deny it. Jervan didn’t.

“I also travel, Kourgath-eijo, though less than I would like. That custom struck me as sound. So did others.” What those were he didn’t say, but it was clear he knew the significance of Aldric’s short-cropped hair. “Marek Endain, a word with you. In private.”

The Cernuan dismounted, following Jervan under the shadows of the gate-house and out of earshot. Aldric could guess what that private word involved. Himself, and as much of his history as Marek knew, and whatever other details the garrison commander of Seghar might find interesting. He had told the usual story about fighting on the wrong side in Alba that spring and being forced to leave, but hadn’t embellished it with surplus detail. Simplicity was safer, and easier to remember.

When Jervan said ‘in private’ he meant it, because neither of the lord’s-men went with him. Aldric had hoped they might, but when they made no move to obstruct his first couple of steps he walked rapidly to where Gueynor sat astride his pack-pony, face sweaty and ashen like someone about to be sick. Anyone who had heard her story would have attributed that reaction to recalling unpleasant memories, but Aldric knew otherwise. The girl was sick indeed, sick with fright. Her hand trembled so much that he could feel it flutter like a little bird through the leather of his glove, and when he helped her down the skin of her cheek was cold with more than the onset of evening.

“What’s the matter?” he murmured into her ear, trying to appear as if he was comforting her. “What scared you?”

“J – Jervan…”

“Jervan? Light of Heaven, why? He’s the nearest thing to a human being I’ve ever met in Imperial armour.” That wasn’t as impressive as it sounded. Aldric’s limited sampling didn’t entitle him to such sweeping statements. So far he had encountered only two Imperial officers, a battleram commander and an eldheisart of the Bodyguard cavalry, though Dewan ar Korentin’s desertion should have disqualified him from inclusion.

“I know him, Aldric—”

“Shush! Call me Kourgath!” It shouldn’t have been possible to shout in a whisper, but he managed.

“I know him! He’s the man who let me leave. With Evthan. When the soldiers came to Seghar. It’s the same man, I tell you! Tall, with a black beard…”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m certain! I know him!”

“So you keep saying. But does he know you?” One open hand pressed to her lips created welcome silence. “Because I don’t think so. Listen, Gueynor! Listen to me! He was a grown man then and can’t have changed much since, except for his beard going grey. That’s why you still recognise him. But you were a child and now you’re a woman, so calm down and don’t worry about it.” Aldric wished he could feel as confident as he sounded. Whether she was right or not, she had convinced herself and now risked renewed curiosity just from that.

Jervan’s private word with Marek had developed into a full-scale private conversation, so it was a nerve-racking twenty minutes before the two dark outlines re-emerged from the Summergate. It was more night than evening now, with the sun well set, but its fading afterglow meant lamps were still useless. The delay gave Gueynor time to get herself under control, while the poor light hid where colour hadn’t quite returned to her face. She still looked unhappy, but no more so than when she had spun her tale for Jervan.

“You’ll stay where I can find you,” the kortagor told Marek, “at The Crossed Pikes. Nowhere else. One of my men will escort you there.”

“Why nowhere else?” Aldric wanted to know. “So you don’t waste time if you decide to arrest us?”

“Hold your tongue, man!” Marek sounded like every irritable employer rolled into one. “Unless you think you can find another job before the night’s out?” Aldric subsided and Marek muttered a few words to Jervan that made the officer laugh before turning on his ‘bodyguard’ again. “As you would have found out with patience not insolence, it’s because the Overlord may want to speak to me. To me. Not to you.”

It was the most reassuring rebuke that Aldric had ever heard.

*

To Aldric’s slight surprise and considerable relief, the inn where Jervan had sent them was just as reassuring. From the name of their destination he had half-expected a blocky fortified building with iron grilles over the windows and a garrison of spearmen. Instead, the only pikes in sight were a pair of fierce toothy fish painted on the sign above the door.

As they walked through the streets after stabling the horses – and sneaking things out of his saddlebags that were no-one else’s business – he had seen several other taverns and eating-houses, so they were being sent to The Crossed Pikes for a reason beyond being easy to find. One would be to make it easy for observers under each tavern’s roof who watched and listened for careless opinions expressed after too much to drink, though Jervan might have learned more if he hadn’t been so obvious. This would be an evening for careful best behaviour.

Aldric had taken more comfortable walks. One of the kortagor’s soldiers led the way, the other followed close behind, and even though neither did or said anything threatening, their gisarms were threat enough. He felt far more at ease when they left the busy tavern and took their weapons with them. Its patrons had the prosperous look of successful merchants, dressed to impress those who knew what to see, yet soberly enough that speculation about robbing them was more of a gamble on whether they were worth it.

Just because the soldiers had gone didn’t mean there were no weapons or people able to use them, and Aldric’s eyepatch and Three Blades were a good match for the other hard-faced men and women in the tap-room. These bodyguards played their own part in discouraging theft, capable of breaking bodies as easily as guarding them. If they thought it unusual that the one-eyed new arrival dined with his plump master and a young woman of uncertain status, rather than drinking with the other servants, nobody voiced a comment. A few raised cups in salute, the rest registered his arrival with a nod or a thoughtful stare, but none of them ignored him. The message was clear: ‘We see you, but this is our time off. Don’t cause trouble and neither will we.’

There would be no trouble. There had already been no trouble, since Jervan’s men had made getting stalls at the livery stable and rooms here a simple matter. Maybe it implied that Aldric’s small party was important enough for an escort and should be treated accordingly, maybe it hinted at something more ominous. But until those hints and implications became clearer, they were ignored in favour of more pleasant concerns, and the air of the tavern was full of them. It smelt of roasting and grilling, the skilled ways of cooking meat and fish that Aldric had missed most. Fish charred by the unruly flames of an open fire or leathery dried sausage toasted awkwardly over embers were not the same at all.

Aldric Talvalin enjoyed good food, and after the past year he had learned to appreciate its associations even more. They were associations of a time when his life was peaceful, when he might have worn his Three Blades just as a sign he’d grown up, not as a constant necessity to defend life and honour. And of a time when he was not the last of his line.

He shook off that instant of gloom as Marek gave instructions for food and wine to a pot-boy. From the shape of him and the sound of his order, the Cernuan demon-queller liked the pleasures of the table just as much as Aldric. He listened with considerable respect as Marek ordered saffron soup, pork simmered in ale with sour plums and pepper, carrot and garlic fritters fried with bacon, braised cabbage with nutmeg, cream and chestnuts, then cheese and anchovy tarts to finish. They were elaborate dishes a traveller couldn’t make for himself or expect to find in villages and country inns, the dishes a man who relished them would miss.

Gueynor was doing the same, though Aldric could see she was torn between indulging half-remembered tastes and reminding herself that whoever she pretended to be wasn’t accustomed to them. That was a feeling he knew well enough. She was probably also remembering the near-siege fare in Valden, and feeling guilty to be dining so well now. Well, the village should be improving already, now it was safe to go back into the Deepwood, and whether she ate well or just nibbled a dry biscuit wouldn’t make that improvement go any faster. Aldric already knew how he intended to eat. The kitchen of The Crossed Pikes wouldn’t be cooking like this just for him, so guilt wasn’t needed for seasoning.

It was an impressive bill of fare for any eating-house, and for one among several in a small town at the unfashionable end of the Jevaiden plateau it was astonishing. A lavish use of wine and spices told Aldric how much trade came through here, with the cream of each transaction no doubt skimmed off the top by the Geruaths and the sour remnant sent to the Empire with a sweetening of excuses. It reminded him of The Seventh Wave in Erdhaven, whose Valhollan owner sourced his most expensive supplies through smugglers…

No, not smugglers, he reminded himself. Merchant venturers. Kyrin was always scrupulous about that, even though the venturers might have no more scruples than they could get away with. I wonder where she is now…

Aldric stamped on that thought and ordered wine – white Hauverne, very cold, because if it wasn’t at its best here, then where? – before strolling towards the open cooking area that provided the house specialties from a long iron grille steeply slanted in front of a bed of charcoal. At first he made just an idle inspection, though edged with genuine appetite for the various meats and fish laid out ready for cooking. Then his eyes narrowed and his next assessment was much more careful.

His wine-flask was on the table when he returned, condensation from the cold-cellar beading on its sides, and the full platter in his hands drew an amused smile from Mark but a wary frown from Gueynor. She looked from the plate, containing only cuts of meat, to the black wolfskin coyac he still wore over his own clothes, and even with one eye he could see doubts surfacing like nervous fish.

“No, nothing like that,” he said as he sat down and opened his cutlery-case. “I like grilled meat, and cooking it over an open fire is harder than the storymakers claim. But there’s something odd about all this. Do you see?” Gueynor took several seconds before she shook her head; Marek took a little longer, then pointed with his knife.

“Is that pork?”

“No. It’s wild boar. The green stuff is wild onion tips and wood-sorrel.”

“Then I do see.” The demon-queller pursed his lips in a brief silent whistle and took a swallow of his own wine, then resumed eating as if nothing had happened. Gueynor looked from one to the other then at Aldric’s plate, and frowned again at still not spotting the answer.

“Is someone going to tell me?”

“It’s game,” said Aldric. “All of it. Wild boar, venison, partridge… They even had pike, as you’d expect in a house named for them. Not for me, not today, but you can’t raise pike in a fishpond. You catch it in a river, and I saw no river running through this town. Everything’s from the forest, even the herbs, and it’s too soon for anyone in Seghar to know…” He hesitated, knowing the next words would hurt, until Gueynor gave him a wan little smile and a nod. “They can’t know the Beast is dead, not yet. So unless the Geruaths send out an armed escort with every hunter, the woods around Seghar have always been safe.”

*

Marek’s predicted summons came sooner than anyone had expected. They had been eating in the pleasant common-room for less than half an hour when a crest-coated retainer came in, asking for the demon-queller in Lord Crisen’s name. And at once. Marek nodded to the messenger and continued to eat. This retainer had no gisarm, no armour, and since he was maybe fifteen years old, he commanded rather less respect than Kortagor Jervan’s empty boots.

“At once, sir,” the youngster repeated with all the authority he could muster. “My lord was most insistent on that point.”

“That’s as may be.” Marek made a sweeping gesture, taking in the cluttered table, the flasks and the platters while almost taking out Aldric’s freshly filled cup. “I’m just as insistent that I finish my supper. I’ve attended meetings with any number of lords in the past, and apart from insubstantial dainties they never include much to eat.” He hesitated, then smiled. “Though the wine is often excellent.”

“You’re making this summons in Lord Crisen’s name,” said Aldric, looking the young retainer up and down. “Why not his father, the Overlord?” Knowing what he did about Crisen Geruath’s consort, there was more than idle curiosity in the question.

“It was Lord Crisen who sent me, sir. But I’m sure the Overlord—”

“Of course.” Aldric doubted that the Overlord would agree, or whatever declaration the retainer had been about to make, but decided not to make an issue of it.

“What about us?” Gueynor asked. After her encounter with Jervan she was clearly doubting her own wisdom in following Aldric to Seghar. “Do we stay here or come with you?”

“Well?” Marek spoke with his mouth full, either deliberately rude or just as deliberately casual. “What about my companions? Are they included?”

“No, sir. My lord asked only for the demon-queller Marek. No other names were mentioned.”

“You realise they’ll eat all the food? Probably drink all the wine while they’re at it. And you know who paid for this, don’t you?”

“Sir, please…” Marek looked at the young man all but dancing on the spot with impatience, and grunted morosely.

“All right.” He stole a chop from Aldric’s plate between finger and thumb and stripped the meat in two bites, washed it down with a long draught of wine, belched his appreciation then spent several dainty minutes wiping his mouth and fingers before he was ready. Aldric watched, wondering how much of this was an act and how much was really Marek. It had occurred to him that the demon-queller might not be just be playing the role of portly indolence, but living it.

“Will you be safe enough without a bodyguard?” he asked.

“I should think—” Marek began just as the young retainer interrupted, eager to say something pleasing at long last.

“But you have a guard, sir! They’re waiting outside. My lord sent four soldiers as an escort for your honour’s sake, to show your importance.”

“Ah,” said Marek. “That was very…” He searched for a word which wouldn’t betray his real feelings. “Very considerate of him. Yes. Considerate. Very.”

*

Aldric was almost alone in the common-room when Marek returned from the citadel. He was also the only person still awake, with the amount of food and drink still on the table showing how much he had lost his appetite. Gueynor, unaccustomed to the potent Elherran sweet-wine she had begun drinking after Marek left, snored softly on a settle near the fire, wrapped in a blanket with the black wolfskin cushioning her head.

There was another flask of wine near Aldric’s elbow, but he knew he couldn’t relax unless he followed Gueynor’s example and preferred not to fuddle his wits for the sake of sleep. The thoughts drifting to and fro in his mind didn’t help much either. There was such a thing as having read too many subjects in too little detail, enough for his subconscious to work on but not enough to calm it again.

He was far from a typical kailin, but despite Baiart’s long-ago mockery he was a typical younger son of his generation, passable at many things, good at few. He had once been an inveterate scribbler of drawings, of snatches of poetry or song, of scraps of gossip or anything else which might prove of later interest. There had been small chance for that in recent months, but the habit remained, one of several small accomplishments drawn upon at need. Despite the kourgath forest-cat on his crest-collar, he knew he was more like a well-fed house cat, catching mice when it wants rather than because it must. So now, leaning back in a chair with one booted foot propped on a stool, he scratched idle sketches with a scrap of charcoal and appeared at ease.

Marek looked over his shoulder at what was taking shape on the sheet of rough paper. It was the face of a woman with fair haired and high cheekbones, not a portrait but a study in light and shadow where shadow predominated. Her gaze was turned away into darkness.

“From imagination, Kourgath? Or from memory?”

“Both. Neither. It’s sometimes hard to be sure.” Aldric crushed the paper in his fist then flung it clear across the room and into the fire. “But mostly memory. One best forgotten.”

“So that was the Valhollan woman ar Korentin mentioned.”

Aldric went very still, and the stare he gave Marek was enough to make the demon-queller take an involuntary step backwards. It was a reaction that made him think, no, made him sure Dewan had mentioned more than just Kyrin. There had almost certainly been warnings about him, about his temper, and above all about his sword. Dewan might have guessed it alone, or been advised by Gemmel; either would have prompted caution. Isileth Widowmaker had an old reputation as a gortaiken, one of the ‘hungry swords’ whose mere ownership provoked bad-tempered strife and let them fulfil the role for which swords were made.

Kyrin had thought so too. It was one of the reasons why she left him.

Aldric himself didn’t know what to think. Anyone as vengeance-driven as he had been would have brought ill-repute to anything from a battleaxe to a paring-knife. That it was a taiken – this taiken – was just coincidence. Wasn’t it?

The scabbarded longsword was propped within easy reach of his chair, where it had rested all evening except for the times it had ridden in peace position across his back. Kortagor Jervan hadn’t asked him to surrender it, or any of his Three Blades, which was just as well because Aldric would have refused. Then Jervan would have insisted more emphatically, for the sake of discipline and the respect due to his rank. Aldric’s second refusal would have been just as emphatic, and the inevitable next step would have been bloody. Fortunately it hadn’t happened. Whatever else Jervan knew about Alba, he was aware of the respect due to an armed man and his Blades.

“For a man entrusted with secrets,” Aldric said quietly, “Dewan ar Korentin can have a damned loose mouth.” His chair scraped back and he stood up, dusting charcoal from his fingertips. “Well, later for that. What did their Lordships want with you?” It was hard to tell if Marek’s expression had to do with his own careless words or Aldric’s question, but the demon-queller glanced round the room before risking a reply and when he did, it was evasive.

“Have you checked on the horses yet, or do you trust Seghar’s stables with your black Andarran?”

“Now you mention it, no, and no. I haven’t checked, and I only trust Lyard with myself.” Aldric lifted an apple from the fruit-dish and studied it a moment, then polished it briskly on his sleeve. “How about a walk in the evening air to aid digestion?” It sounded more like an order than an invitation, but Marek nodded.

“Why not…?”

*

After they had left the lamps and firelight of the common-room a prudent distance behind, Aldric removed the cloth patch covering his right eye and slipped it down round his neck like a narrow scarf. Widowmaker wasn’t across his back but already hooked to his weapon-belt and he gave the long hilt a slight twist, loosening the blade in its scabbard for a fast draw.

“Are you expecting trouble?” asked Marek.

“No. At least, not at present. But just in case,” a handspan of taiken-blade glinted in lazy threat then slipped back out of sight, “I like to be ready.”

There was a bonfire smouldering at one end of the stable-yard, its surface crawling with the red rats’-eyes of sparks while threads of acrid blue smoke coiled up into the night. Somewhere out of sight a bucket’s handle clanked, and a broom began its rhythmic swish on cobblestones in time to a tuneless whistle. It was all very ordinary.

If the stable-yard was ordinary, the stable-block was not. It was built of clean timber and biscuit-coloured stone, well-drained and well-ventilated yet snug and laid out, as far as Aldric could see, according to the diagrams of an Imperial cavalry manual he had read years ago. There was no stale reek of dung, only the warm friendly smell of the horses mingled pleasantly with fresh hay and straw and the incisive granary tang of oats. He ran a critical eye along the line of stalls. The grooms had been at work with brushes, mops and water as if they had anticipated his inspection, and perhaps they had. Jervan would have performed an inspection of his own, rummaging through any baggage left unattended, and Aldric was glad he had taken the Echainon spellstone from its wristband and hung it out of sight around his neck.

Bedding rustled as Lyard scented a familiar presence and shifted in his loose-box. Aldric examined the big Andarran with approval. He had been combed, brushed and all but polished by a stableman who knew good horseflesh and how to bring up the best points of a fine animal, and now his coat shone with the midnight lustre of crushed coal. The horse whickered, regarding Aldric with eyes and ears and flaring nostrils until he click-clicked tongue against teeth and held out the apple. Lyard nudged his hand, snuffled at the proffered fruit and crunched it up with relish.

“Four-legged eating machine,” Aldric said, but he patted the big courser’s whiskered, apple-sweet muzzle with more affection than his words suggested. “Dewan, you have something to tell me?”

“I couldn’t at the inn. Jervan sent us there for a reason.”

“Yes, I’d guessed that one for myself. The place must be full of his eyes and ears. And he must have realised we’d guess. Why not just say ‘I’m putting you somewhere you’ll be watched’ and have done with it? Or let us pick our own place and slip spies into that one later? He would have heard more.”

“Aldric…” said Marek. Aldric’s head snapped round a fraction before completing the turn in a more casual manner, but there was still anger in his eyes and he made no response to the name. “Tomorrow morning we’re being given quarters in the citadel.” Aldric said nothing. “There’s been an accident.” Aldric still said nothing. “Sedna is dead.” Even in the dim light of the stables Marek Endain saw his companion’s face go pale, until the only colour that remained was the dye-stain on his skin.

“When?” Aldric’s voice was flat, revealing nothing. “And how?”

“There was an accident last night. When the moon was full. She was preparing a conjuration and something went wrong.”

“How?” Aldric repeated, suspicions seething inside his head like maggots in dead meat. “What happened to her?” The demon-queller’s mouth twitched under his full beard as if he was tasting something foul.

“All right. All right… The something wrong pulled her apart. And ate the pieces. I know. I saw.”

“What was it, this something?” Aldric persisted. “An animal? A werebeast?”

“It was a demon, damn you! A demon!” Marek’s eyes were wide, and now they glistened with the unshed tears of horror he had held back so well. “Before you ask, I don’t know what sort! But it was enough to wrench a human body into chunks. The way you would with a chicken!”

“You would, maybe,” Aldric said, screening his own shock with callousness. “I have better table manners.”

Marek hit him. Not just a slap of indignation at his attitude, but a full-blooded swing that caught him unawares and almost knocked him off his feet. The print of the demon-queller’s palm and fingers flared scarlet from ear to chin of Aldric’s pale face. He staggered against the door of Lyard’s stall with a boom that sent the high-strung beast skittering backwards in a thumping of straw-muffled hooves. For an instant his knees seemed to give way, and he sagged a little as one hand slapped against his leg just above the boot-top. Then he surged upright again, and that hand had a dagger in it. This time there was no attacking lunge, but the bared blade was enough for Marek.

“What was it you said? ‘We could be friends eventually, if I draw no more steel.’ So much for that!” It was a sneer of contempt, but Aldric looked at the dagger as if it was a venomous reptile. Certainly it had come from its hiding-place as fast as a striking snake.

“I might have killed you,” he said.

“You might have tried.”

Despite Marek’s bold words they both knew Aldric spoke the truth. If he had gone for his sword instead of the hidden dagger he would have cut in the same motion as the taiken cleared its scabbard, a response so long-trained that it was as much a reflex as swatting a fly. He wouldn’t have intended to do it, but by that stage intent or the lack of it wouldn’t have mattered to Marek.

“You shouldn’t have hit me.” Aldric touched the livid mark, not accusing, just stating the painfully obvious. “You’re Cernuan. You should know better. Kailinin aren’t hit by anyone, not even by their lords. Never.” He was thinking now about Widowmaker, about the blinding speed with which he could draw that long starsteel blade, and about some day in the future when a reflex action outpaced the second thoughts that should have stopped it. “I apologise for what happened. All of it. For what I said, and what we both did.” He gave Marek an apologetic little bow and in the same motion returned the dagger to its sheath in his boot, then took a deep breath. “But I think, I’m almost sure, that what happened in the citadel was no accident. She was killed to keep her quiet.”

“Why?”

“Because of me and what I am. What I really am, not what I pretend to be.”

“And where does the other girl – Gueynor, or Aline, or whatever she calls herself – come into all this?”

“She doesn’t. That matter’s separate and private—”

“So keep your pudgy fingers off, eh?” Marek managed a laugh that earned him a thoughtful look and the ghost of a smile.

“At least you’re getting your sense of humour back.”

“If I didn’t laugh—”

“You’d cry?”

“I’d go mad.” There was such sincerity in the demon-queller’s words that Aldric subsided again. He turned away and fussed with Lyard for a while, gentling him with a buzz of nonsense that required no thought on his part.

“I’m glad Crisen Geruath wants you to destroy this… Whatever it is. I hadn’t credited him with that much sense.” There was an expression on the Cernuan demon-queller’s face with no right to be there, and Aldric’s eyes narrowed. “That is what he wants, isn’t it?” Marek stared at the stable floor and pushed a single stray wisp of hay back and forth, back and forth with the toe of his boot.

“Not – not quite destroy…”

“Then what in the nine hot Hells does he want?” For the horse’s sake Aldric held his impatient shout in check, but it required a conscious effort and anger still thrummed behind the words because he was afraid he already knew the answer.

He was right.

“He wants it captured. Tamed. Broken to his will like a horse. And he thinks I can do it.”

“But you can’t, can you?” Marek shook his head. “Then don’t you think you ought to tell him? Or do you want to end up the way Sedna did?”

“What the Geruaths want, they usually get.”

“This time they may get more than they expect.” Aldric walked to the stable door and looked out, at where the Overlord’s tower reared its stark outline against the star-shot summer sky. “He must be insane.”

“I’ve seen him, Aldric. He is. They both are, in their different ways. And that’s why I daren’t refuse. Not openly. Not yet.”

*

The apartments set aside for them in the citadel of Seghar were much superior to those at The Crossed Pikes, but Aldric doubted he would sleep any better. There were too many guards, though few in the Imperial harness worn by Kortagor Jervan. The sentries he had seen were part-time troops, a militia made up from the citadel servants and paraded before him to impress by numbers alone. He had been more impressed by their core of mercenaries, the Drusalans and the Tergovans Gueynor had mentioned. He had already met a few of those in the chieftain’s burial mound. But there weren’t enough to justify the amount of Alban gold which had passed within these walls.

Aldric had a fair idea of what stipend the Lords of Seghar received to foment rebellions against Grand Warlord Etzel. Now he knew where the Geruath sympathies lay, he had expected to see traces of misspent wealth: opulent furnishings, luxurious buildings, a well-equipped retinue and other evidence of extravagance. Yet there was nothing. The citadel close up looked even more dilapidated than from a distance. It was as if Alba’s funds were going somewhere else, and that was strange because all the records claimed it had come here. And then vanished.

Stranger still was Lord Geruath himself.

They had barely unpacked the few belongings in their respective rooms when they were commanded – courteously, Aldric noted with a kailin’s eye for such niceties, but still ordered rather than invited – into the presence of the Overlord of Seghar. That presence wasn’t imposing, for Lord Geruath was gaunt, scrawny to the point of emaciation, but he endeavoured to counter his physical insignificance with the first truly splendid clothes Aldric had seen so far. If those garments had been only half as rich they would have been twice as magnificent, for they were so overdone as to be ridiculous. As with his clothes, the Overlord had shown no restraint with perfumes and the mingled scents of musk and civet, lavender and roses hung around him so heavily they were almost visible.

Beneath it all was a man of middle age, sick in mind and body and terrified of growing old. Lord Geruath’s hair might well have been a distinguished iron-grey or dark on top with elegant tags of silver at his temples. Instead it had been dyed a hard, unreal black, sleek as polished leather, and to match its mock-youthful darkness the lord’s face was rouged and powdered to resemble a ruddy-featured healthy man of thirty.

It should have been laughable, perverse or simply decadent, but to Aldric’s eye it was almost sad.

Geruath’s weapons were another matter. They were a matched set of long sabre, shorter fighting-knife and dagger, and their hiltwork and scabbard mounts were the most elaborate he had ever seen. That made them the most costly, for such workmanship didn’t come cheap even in plain steel, and these were gem-encrusted gold. They were works of art as much as weapons and, if their blades were equivalent quality, then apart from Isileth and two or perhaps three other ancestral high-clan taikenin noticed after the battle for Dunrath, they were the finest he had ever seen.

An Alban mercenary like the one he portrayed wouldn’t know proper local manners, so Aldric gave a punctilious Second Obeisance such as he would offer any clan-lord in his own hall. The courtesy received a curt nod, nothing more, so it seemed that Jervan had already reported his status as Marek’s bodyguard and a servant beneath noble notice. Geruath paid him no further heed and spoke instead to the demon-queller, in a Jouvaine version of the affected courtly dialect favoured by Baiart Talvalin so many years ago. That meant elaborate, meaningless flowery phrases, laced together far too infrequently with plainer words, and soon it became only an irritating background noise.

Gueynor also showed no understanding of what was being said. Her father might not have used court speech, or enough time had passed that she had forgotten what little a child could have known. She had copied Aldric’s obeisance, not just to appear a foreigner but to give herself something to do besides glare hate at Lord Geruath. It had covered her initial spasm of detestation and Aldric doubted if, at her age, he could have hidden his feelings so well. He had spent his four years of exile out of sight, being himself. She had spent her ten years in plain sight, pretending to be someone else. Except for occasional cracks in the veneer, she did it well.

If the guards around the fortress and the outer citadel had been unusually numerous, here they were unusually few despite Geruath’s fondness for ostentation. A troop in full battle armour wouldn’t have been out of place. Instead there were only two soldiers flanking the Overlord’s high seat, wearing crested coats like the boy who had come to the inn the previous night. But both carried gisarms and looked like they knew how to use them.

Seated a little way to one side was an elderly man, balding and harassed-looking. He wrote in a large, leather-bound book at great speed and with many blots, but seemed always at least two sentences in arrears of what the Lord had said. The hall scribe, Aldric guessed: an Hanan-Vlethanek, the Keeper of Years. He seemed to be making, or trying to make, a record of everything said and done here as any normal Archivist would do. But this wasn’t Alba or any normal place, it was a border province of the Drusalan Empire and one could never be sure for whose eye the information was intended.

Aldric rubbed his own eye through the cloth which covered it. He had already decided it had been ‘injured’ rather than lost and was healing rapidly, because the patch was uncomfortable and even downright dangerous. He always had a blind side now, he had been startled more than once by Marek or Gueynor at his elbow when he hadn’t heard them approach, and he found distances so hard to judge that bow and telek were useless. Soon he would dab soap into the eye, a necessary evil to make it red and inflamed when he uncovered it, and after that revert to full vision again.

Soon, but not yet. That resolve was strengthened when the old scribe glanced in his direction, chewed at the frayed end of his pen and scribbled a brief description of the Lord’s guests. No, not just yet.

The walls of Geruath’s audience chamber showed where at least part of King Rynert’s gold had gone. They were filled to excess and beyond, in the overlord’s usual style, with a quantity of weapons that was too much for any room but an armoury. The array of polished wood, lacquer and enamel, the worked bronze and tooled leather and above all the steel, blued and burnished, etched and plain, would have done credit to the Hall of Archives at Dunrath, or Gemmel’s private arsenal in his labyrinthine home beneath the Blue Mountains.

Whether sword or spear, axe or mace or crossbow, all were of superb workmanship and a few, like those worn so ineffectually by Geruath, were masterpieces. Someone back in Alba, maybe ar Korentin or the king himself, had told Aldric about this, and then it had been buried by a torrent of other information. ‘He searches out old weapons,’ the forgotten voice had said, ‘and collects them in his tower at Seghar.’ Those half-remembered words should have prepared him for what happened next. Half-remembered wasn’t enough.

“Kourgath!” The sharpness in Marek Endain’s voice made Aldric realise this was the second time his supposed employer had spoken to him. Perhaps even the third…

“Sir?”

“Lord Geruath Segharlin wishes to speak with you.” Apprehension flickered beneath Marek’s neutral expression as he leaned closer, slipping momentarily from Jouvaine into Alban. “He’s being pleasant, before Heaven! No matter what happens, try to do likewise.”

Aldric wondered why the Cernuan had felt it necessary to make such a request, and wondered too what had disturbed him so much that it showed through his schooled exterior. He soon found out.

“Show me your sword,” said Geruath.

The Overlord might have sounded pleasant to Marek’s ears, but not to Aldric. Of all the elaborate courtesies which governed high-clan Albans, the most elaborate concerned taikenin. Any insult to his sword was an insult to its wearer, and any insult to its wearer was answered by his sword. Nobody demanded to see a taiken, as a man who collected weapons with Geruath’s indiscriminate passion must have known. It meant the blunt command might be a test, checking a supposed servant’s reaction to something that shouldn’t offend him. And if it was a test, Aldric failed it with a single word.

“No.”

“I want to see it,” Geruath repeated.

“No.”

“Kourgath, for the love of Heaven!” Marek was almost pleading with him, but he could sense Gueynor’s silent approval and support. “Kourgath!” the demon-queller said again. Aldric looked at him, at Gueynor, then at the Overlord.

“No.”

The exquisitely bundled, painted and perfumed apparition that was Geruath rose to his feet, his breathing coming quicker now and an unhealthy flush darkening his powdered cheeks. Bony, veined hands heavy with rings gripped the arms of his chair, clenching like a falcon on its perch except that falcons had more dignity. The storm brewed, plain in his staring eyes and flexing fingers, but it didn’t break.

“Leave me.” Instead of the expected shrillness his voice was low and almost controlled except for a tremor at the back of it. “And you,” he swung on the hall-scribe, “give me your book.” The old man sidled forward apprehensively, then cried out as Geruath snatched the Archive from his hands. Lips moving, the Overlord traced what had just been written, his finger following the words and smearing the still-wet ink.

“You’re slow on every other day, yet you wrote all this down fast enough.” The scribe cringed back, anticipating a blow, but instead Geruath gripped the latest page by its outer margin and let the heavy volume fall free. There was a momentary jerk like a hanged man reaching the end of his drop, then threads snapped, the binding gave way and the Archive thudded to the floor with the offending page left in the Overlord’s fist.

Geruath glared at it. He ignored everyone else, whether they were the old man trying to recover his book without getting too close to his lord’s feet or fists, or the two disinterested guards watching a scene played out with variations far too often. He even ignored the cause of his anger as Aldric, this time without a bow, obeyed his final order and strode from the audience chamber with Marek and Gueynor following as quickly as they dared.

Instead the Overlord flopped back into his chair and began tearing the page apart with manic care until its shredded fragments were too small for him to hold…

*

Marek Endain said nothing during the long walk back to their apartments – his mind, guessed Aldric, was far too full for words – but out of the demon-queller’s sight Gueynor had squeezed his hand. Whether she felt gratitude, or satisfaction, or merely a need for human contact, Aldric neither knew nor cared. No-one but another high-clan Alban would have understood why he put pride before expedience, but however these foreigners interpreted his actions – and in kailin-eir affairs, Marek Endain of Cerenau was a foreigner – it was most likely wrong.

It hadn’t been a show of independence, nor an insult to the Overlord for insult’s sake, nor a display of tacit support to please Gueynor. It had been because of honour, his own and that of the sword which defended it. ‘A man without honour is not a man,’ according to one old adage. What would the writer of that simplistic saying have made of his own uniquely flexible honour, or the way he was willing to twist it to suit the needs of the moment?

Aldric’s present needs were more practical than philosophical. Despite his outward calm the meeting with Geruath had left him tense and sweaty, with certain schooled responses wound as tightly as the drive-ropes of a catapult.

“Exercise,” he muttered to no one in particular, “then a hot bath. There is a proper bath-house in this mausoleum, isn’t there?” Marek neither knew nor cared, and said so. Even the way his door shut and locked behind him sounded out of sorts.

“I’ll walk in the gardens for an hour,” said Gueynor, and Aldric glanced at her.

“Why? You saw what they look like now.”

“But I remember what they looked like then. That reminds me of other things.”

“And after your walk?”

“I want to talk. Privately.” She jerked her head towards the demon-queller’s door. “And alone.” Aldric’s answering grin was a quick baring of teeth with sardonic humour in it but no real amusement.

“He has bottles in there. We won’t be disturbed.”

“Good. I—” She broke off and sent a sharp look down the right branch of the corridor crossway. Aldric had to turn his head half around before he could follow her gaze, and when he saw the servant standing idly at the far end, he realised the man could have been there all day without his knowing it. That was when he swore and tore off the eyepatch once and for all.

“Is that wise?”

“The wisest thing I’ve done so far today.” He knuckled savagely at the socket to make the eye red and justify its being covered up, trying to rub away the unfocused blur which still clouded his vision on that side. The blur became a shifting mosaic of incandescent sparks before he stopped, and when that faded the retainer was still there, watching without seeming to, listening likewise. Convenient for me, thought Aldric as he signalled the man with a peremptory gesture. Yes, you bastard, I want you here… And convenient for Geruath or whoever had set him there to spy.

“Enjoy your walk, Aline,” he said for the servant’s benefit, pitching his voice low enough to sound like an exchange of confidences. Or intimacies. “If I’m bathing when you come back…” He let the words trail away and stroked one open hand along Gueynor’s neck.

“If you are, Kourgath, I’ll take another stroll.” She caught his wrist, turned over the hand and kissed its palm before releasing him and walking away.

“What are you staring at?” Aldric demanded when the servant got close enough. He used stilted court Drusalan, aware that a local retainer would show blank incomprehension of the language but one of the hired mercenaries—

“Nothing, lord!”

—Would understand well enough. Aldric stored his discovery away for future reference as he issued rapid instructions then, after a brief visit to his packsaddle for three taidyin – wooden staff-swords, each of a different weight – he followed the servant to a roofed courtyard near the stables. It was lined with targets for all kinds of weapons, and he had expected nothing less. Geruath Segharlin might be a crazy old man, but he wasn’t a collector whose collection was just ornamental. Every weapon on the audience chamber’s display racks had been ready for immediate use.

He had done his best to push both Lord Geruath and his as-yet-unseen son to the back of his mind, but fetching the practice swords had reminded him of them all over again. In the short period between arriving in Seghar citadel and ending that awkward interview with its lord, his saddlebags and pack had been searched, or more likely searched again after a first and second time at the town livery stable and The Crossed Pikes. This time it was so neatly done that nothing was crumpled or out of place, but the searcher’s arrogance was such that none of the bags had been closed afterwards.

Aldric had sworn under his breath, but that breath had also carried a small sigh of relief and he closed buckles and retied laces with surprisingly steady hands. This was why the Echainon stone in its leather pouch was an uncomfortable weight on a cord round his neck, and likely to stay that way. For now he was being taken on trust, accepted as what he claimed to be. If there had been any doubts at all, he would have been spied on and investigated until the truth came out. No disguise could ever withstand hard suspicion. The real trick lay in not provoking it. Though he intended to relieve his feelings about the Overlord, he would do it in a way no-one could criticise.

He could relieve them about this new violation of privacy at the same time.

*

The stinging crack of taidyo against target brought several curious observers to the courtyard. A few laughed indulgently and went away, but others stayed to watch. Aldric didn’t object, since whatever news they carried to Lord Geruath would serve as an unsubtle warning that at least one of his guests could take care of himself. But not as well as he should, for a muscle spasm high in his shoulder betrayed cramps from lack of proper use. Lack of practice, lack of exercise, lack of too many things. He treated the arm gently as he moved through his exercises from light staff-sword to heavy, from guard to ward to cut to thrust, working away the small pain as muscles warmed and tendons stretched, and he thought…

He thought: if only everything was so simple that a sword could solve it.

He thought: I carry life and death given form in steel, to grant or to withhold as I see fit.

And even as the thoughts flickered through his mind like the turning pages of a book, he knew they were only thoughts, not desires, not wishes, not even dreams. Death came far too easily already. No man who lay with a woman could create life as fast as a man who bore a blade could end it, and keeping ebbing life within a ruined body or death from one determined to embrace it was impossible. He knew. He had seen it happen too many times: Haranil his father and Baiart his brother, Lord Santon, Evthan Wolfsbane, even the nameless soldier poisoned in the tomb…

Aldric’s fingers flexed around the heaviest taidyo, one he had been using for half an hour until his muscles ached with effort. Both hands were on the long hilt and the chequer-cut pattern of its grip bit into his palms. He was sweating far more now than when he left Lord Geruath, but it was honest sweat born of exertion, not stress. The length of polished oak poised above his head in the Eagle’s Guard and his tensed arms, his body, even his spirit quivered with a craving for release.

He thought, and the thought was cold: What is a sword? A symbol of honour, of rank, or just of death? The past can’t be undone. The spoken word and the loosed arrow and the swung blade can’t be recalled. You can never turn back time. You can never go home again…

The taidyo became a blur, sweeping down in a perfect Eagle’s Strike against the wooden target. It had endured more than two hours of constant battering but now it split asunder along a raw-edged gouge as straight as the stroke of a razor. Slivers pattered against the sand as it twisted, then sagged backwards like something newly dead.

A small smile crossed Aldric’s face as he heard the murmuring provoked by his final cut. All the fury bottled up inside him had disappeared, channelled from his body through the wooden sword into the wooden target. And into destruction. That was how Duergar Vathach had died, burned and blasted by the dark forces of hatred held too long in check…

“Enough,” he said and laid the notched, dented taidyo aside.

She waited an arm’s length from where he stood, resting on a simple pine rack, patient as the night awaiting dawn, stark black and gleaming against the grained, blond wood.

Isileth Widowmaker.

Aldric made a small bow before he lifted the taiken, respecting her twenty centuries of age and the purpose for which she was forged all those long years ago. Some swords were made for ornament, others for parade; this one was for killing. He unwrapped the scabbard’s shoulder-strap from where it coiled like a serpent below the complex hilt, looped it over his head and made the longsword secure on the weapon-belt at his left hip. The touch of his fingers when he settled her weight was a caress such as one might use to stroke a favoured hawk.

A man had said once, years past, that Aldric loved his sword as he might love a woman. That had been an insult, answered with violence, but in Widowmaker’s case it was true. Almost true, anyway, and perhaps not love, but trust more absolute than he had given any human being since Kyrin walked away.

Ignoring the critical eyes across the courtyard which followed his every move, he made the drawing cut called the Boar’s Strike, out from the scabbard and diagonally up across an invisible enemy’s belly. At the top of the sweep his left hand joined the right in Falcon’s Guard then brought Isileth down onto that enemy’s opposite shoulder, two cuts that flowed together in a single precise, controlled and seemingly effortless sweep. Both had taken less than half a second, and each had enough focussed force to open a human torso to the backbone.

Aldric had seen it. He had done it.

He knew when Geruath Segharlin entered the practice yard, with no need to see the men on the fringes of his vision coming to attention or making their bows. His strange and unreliable sixth sense of warning had alerted him before all that, for the Overlord’s presence and his gaze wasn’t just a mental shadow. It was more like a physical pressure between the shoulder-blades. He turned slowly, matching Geruath unwinking stare for stare, and it was the Jouvaine who looked away first. Then, and only then, Aldric slid Widowmaker out of sight. There was something almost modest in the way he sheathed her blade, as a lover might cloak his lady to preserve her from the lewd gaze of passers-by. But his right hand remained around her hilt.

“Good afternoon to you, my lord,” he said, and his bow was a studied hairsbreadth short of true politeness or real insult. Aldric had no patience left for the hypocrisies of false courtesy.

Overlord Geruath may have realised as much, for his own bow was impeccable. Someone had perhaps advised him about what eijin were: high-clan warriors who for reasons of their own had set aside their ranks and titles, and with them most of the restrictions of law or honour. They were men as careless of their own lives as those of others, and stories painted them in dark colours, the crimson of blood and the black which Aldric wore. Such simple portrayals weren’t entirely true. But they weren’t entirely false.

“Kourgath-an, I wish to speak with you.” Geruath used good Alban with the proper honorific, and his voice was as suave as a courtier’s.

“Again? Then speak. My lord.” Aldric tacked the title on as a studied afterthought, but Geruath ignored its rudeness.

“In private.”

“This is private enough for me, my lord. What word in particular had you in mind?”

“The word is ‘taiken’.” Geruath had more sense than to reach out for the object of his desire, even though the longsword was close enough to touch. Aldric watched him, deciding how many severed fingers would count as a reasonable response. “That taiken.” The finger he used for pointing wasn’t one at risk. Not yet. “I offer you a thousand Imperial crowns for it.”

“The Empire’s currency has become a little debased of late.” Aldric chose his words with the care of someone picking strawberries from a patch overgrown with nettles. “It no longer has my confidence. So no crowns, my lord, not even if the sword was for sale. Which it isn’t. I already told your Kortagor Jervan I’m no sellsword. The most I do is hire.” He might have saved his breath, for Geruath let the quiet refusal go by unheeded.

“Then the same in Alban deniers.”

The Overlord of Seghar had just confessed to a total stranger that he possessed a small fortune in gold coins. He might have been lying, but Aldric doubted it. The money was available somewhere close, or Geruath wouldn’t have used it as an enticement. A thousand deniers was the hire of a fair-sized contingent of mercenaries, and here it was being offered for a sword by this petty lord of a backwoods fief. The whole business stank of corruption like a month-dead sheep in summertime. And where did the demon fit into it all? First a werewolf in the woods, now this thing somewhere in the citadel. Aldric didn’t like the images taking shape in his mind, and liked still less the words that came with them.

Issaqua sings the song of desolation

And I know that I am lost

And none can help me now…

What, he wondered, would Geruath’s reaction be to hearing those words spoken? Or would Crisen understand their meaning better? He shook his head to dislodge them as if he had walked into a cobweb, and the Overlord took his gesture for refusal.

“Two thousand then. Or five. I can offer ten if you’re prepared to wait.”

“I don’t care about your money, my lord. It makes you think No means Maybe. I’m not interested, and No means No.”

Geruath considered the refusal for a protracted second, then tried to seize Aldric’s arm and missed. The younger man snapped one step backwards, right hand crossing, gripping, drawing. Isileth Widowmaker leapt from her scabbard, and not all the swords of all the retainers who sprang forward in that instant could have saved Geruath from the cut that hovered unfinished at his neck.

“Be advised, my lord.” Aldric’s voice was as harsh as the grating of stones. “Call off your vassals.” The longsword gleamed as he shifted position. “Now!”

Lord Geruath glared down from his full gaunt height at the Alban’s expressionless face, reading nothing from it and seeing his own death reflected in the taiken. He gestured to his guards with one hand, and they fell back.

“There’s no danger,” he told them, even though both voice and hand were shaking. “Merely a… A demonstration of technique. Nothing more.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Aldric, and bowed. As he straightened, he waited for the inevitable parting shot that came only after the Overlord had walked a little out of reach, but not yet out of earshot. Men like Geruath Segharlin always liked to have the last word.

“Kourgath-eijo,” said Geruath, “you may yet give me your blade, freely and of your own will.” Aldric smiled at last, brief and chilly as a crack in ice.

“Surely you must have noticed, my lord. I almost did.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

The gardens of Seghar were no more than a memory. Only the scent of flowers remained, and that too had changed. Uncared-for, it was overly rich, nauseatingly sweet and had a faint, foul underlay of rot. But what Gueynor saw as she walked through the confusion of weeds and dying plants was a ten-year memory, and it was enough.

“I am Gueynor Evenou,” she said in bitter reminder. “I am the daughter of Lord Erwan Evenou, and the true-born ruler of this desolation.”

The building on top of a small hill had once been a roofed summer-house, overlooking what had once been a view. This had been her secret realm when she was six years old, and at first sight it was untouched by the ruin which surrounded it. That was before she reached its veranda and saw the doors hanging from their hinges, the shattered filigree of the windows, the damp white moulds and fungi that exist on rottenness crawling across its wooden walls. The stink of decay prickled at her nostrils and, away for once from Aldric’s well-meant cynicism, she felt free to weep.

“Yes, lady, it deserves your tears,” said a voice where none should have been. “This was once a pleasant place.” Gueynor turned, startled, to where Kortagor Jervan stood outlined in the doorway, no longer armoured but dressed simply in boots, breeches and a belted tunic. He gestured at the garments and gave her a smile that might have been shy, or something else entirely. “Every soldier comes off duty sometimes, even garrison commanders. My lieutenant has the afternoon watch.”

“But why come here?”

“Because I like to. I knew these gardens when they were gardens and not wasteland.” Jervan paused, looked at her. “And because I saw you.”

“Why would that be of interest?”

“I have eyes, and the wit to use them. You interest me Mistress, er, Aline. You interest me a great deal.” Gueynor stared at him and wished Aldric Talvalin was here, cynicism and all, because he carried sharp steel as well as a sharp tongue. She hadn’t so much as a dagger.

“In what way do I interest you, garrison commander Jervan?”

“In many ways.” He moved out of the doorway to leave her escape route clear, “Except the one you seem afraid of. I’m a married man. Oh, that doesn’t make me immune to lust, since I’m ‘a beast in armour’ – or are we called something else nowadays? But when a man has two daughters of his own, it can sometimes change how he looks at the daughters of other men.”

“Sometimes?” echoed Gueynor warily.

“I see them and my wife just once a year. Once a year for the past two years, then back to this dung-heap where…” His eyes searched her face and were satisfied by what they saw there. “Where two mad gamecocks compete for the heights to crow from. Despite his faults, your father was sane.” Gueynor managed to limit her response to a quizzical stare and brows raised in curiosity.

“How could an Imperial officer know anything about a peasant huntsman?”

“Masterfully done!” Jervan grinned and clapped his hands. “Such control!” The amusement faded from his bearded face almost at once, and again Gueynor wished she was armed. “You recognised me, that evening at the gate. Didn’t you?” There was no point in denying it now, and Gueynor nodded.

“Just so. Half-familiar faces pass in and out every day with a set of features, a way of wearing hair, a style of walking that wakens echoes of seeing it before. Mostly they’re just coincidence or imagination, but you…” Jervan nodded at her. “You knew me, and the way you showed it made me sure I knew you too, but I couldn’t remember where or when. Until I sat awake thinking about it for most of last night. The thing about having daughters is that I’ve seen how a girl changes as she grows. You’ve changed considerably, but you’re not as old or worldly as your painted face suggests, and at long last I remembered the child who left by the Westgate with her uncle, that day ten years ago…”

“Who else knows?” Gueynor’s voice was very small.

“Nobody.” The kortagor laughed. It was a short bark of mirth as if length of laughter was controlled by regulations. “That kind of puzzling is best done alone, or even the politest fellow officers start to wonder.” He tapped his head. “There’s a saying current in Seghar garrison: ‘such-and-such is getting lordly’. It’s an insult. They don’t say crazy now, nor insane, not even plain and simple mad. Just lordly. They’re just troopers, ordinary men, not very clever – but not stupid either, mind you… What I mean is, they’re not witty, not quick with words. But whichever of them coined that description knew exactly what he was trying to say.”

“We saw the Overlord this morning.”

“Then you understand.”

“I do.” Gueynor took a deep breath and discovered she was no longer afraid. Whatever Jervan intended to do, he would do whether she was scared or not, and she wanted to find out what it might be. The best way to find out, as Aldric had taught her, was to ask. “Commander Jervan, please come to the point.” He saluted and didn’t grin to dilute it.

“You’re also growing lordly, but not in the fashion meant by my soldiers. Very well, Lady… Gainore?”

“Gueynor.”

“Gueynor. The records were in dialect, not spelt as it’s spoken. How much do you know of what has been happening here?”

“Crisen’s consort was a sorcerer who made a mistake in a spell and got killed because of it. Those bare bones are all I’ve heard. People in Seghar don’t talk much to strangers.”

“Or to anyone else, not about subjects like that. What you heard is close enough. Lady Gueynor, what I—” When Jervan broke off to peer out of the summerhouse, Gueynor realised he wore a long, broad-bladed knife in a sheath across the small of his back. That discovery didn’t frighten her as much as it might have done. It was for show more than use, unlike the murderous small daggers Aldric favoured, too big and with fittings too ornate for a concealed weapon. There was even a hunting-scene tooled into the leather of its sheath. “The advantage of this place,” he said, turning back, “is that it gives an excellent view of landscapes and flower-beds. Also of anyone in them.”

“You command here, so why should you worry?”

“Hear me out then ask again.” He pointed to a seat running round three of the small building’s five walls. “That’s not as dirty as it looks, so sit down. What I have to talk about may take time.”

“What do have you to talk about?”

“Conspiracy, usurpation and treason, though the words vary depending on who uses them. You may have a kinder vocabulary. I hope you do.”

There was no deliberate threat in the way Jervan spoke but, taken together with his subject, Gueynor couldn’t be sure. Once again she wished Aldric was with her, an armed presence to make anyone think twice. She wondered where he was and what he was doing, then set the thought aside as Jervan began to explain the situation in Seghar.

*

Aldric was immersed to the neck in water so hot that the slightest movement teetered between pleasure and pain.

He had wanted a bath before Geruath arrived in the exercise yard, but there was something about the Overlord’s craving for his sword which left him feeling grubbier than all the sweat of exercise. Dewan ar Korentin would have made a filthy joke about it and prompted an embarrassed laugh to make him feel better, but Dewan wasn’t here. The same sensation meant he had taken Isileth Widowmaker apart for a thorough cleaning. Pommel, guards and grip were freshly polished, the long smoke-grey blade oiled, and even the gleaming silvery edges stroked a time or two with a whetstone. Now, with the buckskin bag that contained the Echainon spellstone hung from her crossguard, the taiken waited for the next time she could leave her scabbard and dance with Aldric’s enemies.

He stared at the sword through whorls of steam, seeing neither steel nor leather, just considering what he had done. Facing down a provincial Overlord in his own home and before his own men was rash enough. He had also thrown away any chance of using Geruath as his means of introduction to Goth and Bruda. Whatever Gueynor’s plans might be for the Overlord, his favour had been vital to King Rynert’s mission. Half-demented or not, the lord of Seghar still carried a thousand times more weight within the Empire than any Alban ever could, and without him Aldric’s duty to his king was fraught with difficulty and risk. Without Geruath’s formal introduction he was as likely to meet an Imperial Prokrator or a Lord General as to fly rings around the moon.

As the intense heat of the water soaked into his muscles, it melted away innumerable small aches and left pleasant languor in their wake. Aldric was surprised to find the civilised amenity of an Alban bath-house and deep tub in the pest-hole that was Seghar, and even more surprised to find it in good repair with an adequate supply of water. Most likely it had been installed by Gueynor’s father Erwan, because the Geruath interest in Alba seemed restricted to its gold.

Erwan? How close is that to Evthan? His mind played with the similarities of name. In Alba it would have suggested blood-relationship at some remove, so Evthan the hunter, a lord’s bastard brother, might have been Gueynor’s uncle in truth as well as name. That set Aldric to wondering what had become of Gueynor herself. She should have joined him by now, though not in the bath itself. There had been momentary attraction about the concept, but not much more.

That they still shared a bed and slept together were statements of fact, not euphemisms for anything else. Except for occasional handholds for companionship and an arm around her shoulders for comfort in the night, he hadn’t touched her since she paid him for her uncle’s release. Nor had he wanted to. Simple lust or idle amusement with a stranger wouldn’t have concerned him but, no matter how noble the sentiment, knowing her embrace held the price of a life made it disturbing.

There was always another face over Gueynor’s anyway, as if she wore a mask. Strange how he always seemed to want, to need, the unattainable. Tehal Kyrin would be married by now, perhaps already carrying Seorth’s child. Whatever. She was lost to him.

“I know that I am lost…” whispered a distant, uninvited voice at the back of Aldric’s mind, and a thread of chill seemed to run through the bathwater.

What was taking Gueynor so long to walk through a ruined garden? A feeling that wasn’t quite fear but far stronger than mere apprehension crept over him. Whether it was a sixth-sense stab of warning or his own mind overheated by the overheated water, he didn’t know for certain. But he did know the matter needed resolution if he was to have peace.

With an effort Aldric threw off his lethargy, surged from the tub and reached for a towel.

*

There was an interval of silence when Jervan finished. A breeze chilled the air and as the day grew a little darker, he glanced towards the sky and nodded.

“It’ll rain soon, yet ten minutes ago there wasn’t a cloud. Even the weather here is moody.”

“Jervan, what you’ve just said is all about your conspiracy and your treason – but whose usurpation? And why tell me?” Despite her question, Gueynor remained wary of being told too much. Ornamental or not, the knife at his back was a swift, simple way to keep those secrets from going any further.

“Haven’t you guessed? There’s a look about you, lady. I’ve been a soldier twenty years, and I know the look of violence held in check as well as anyone. Not delivered by your own hand, maybe, but… Well, your Alban companion is a dangerous young man.”

“He is not—!” What began as an outraged denial cut off short, for when Gueynor considered the little she knew of Aldric Talvalin, Jervan’s estimation was correct. It was strange that she had never thought it of him.

“So you agree with my appraisal? That’s good. Second thoughts are often wise ones. Now, are you sure he’ll kill at your command and more important, that he won’t kill when you don’t want it?”

I should tell him nothing, Gueynor thought. It’s not my place to say what someone will or won’t do.

“Can you trust this Kourgath with life and death?” Jervan persisted. “Or with anything at all? Even his name? That cropped hair tells the world he’s eijo – in Alba he’s landless, lordless, friendless – so whatever else he tells it may be… Let’s say unreliable. And a kourgath is just a small wildcat which lives in the Alban woods.” That was enough. She couldn’t, wouldn’t allow such allegations to continue, but even then she took care that no hint or hesitation rose to Jervan’s trailed bait about false names.

“Kourgath may be eijo, Commander Jervan, but Marek Endain and I both trust him as a man of honour.”

“Of course he is. He must have been kailin at the very least, one of their warrior class, before he was an eijo. One becomes the other if events require it. That means his honour is as much part of him as the blood in his veins. Honour is loyalty, duty, obedience, honesty, bravery.” Jervan’s mouth twitched a thin smile at his own litany. “All the Alban virtues. It also justifies many of their vices. When your friend had a lord, loyalty bound him to obey that lord’s commands even if they were cruel ones.”

“No different to any other soldier, then.”

“Different enough. The Albans are a strange people. If he disobeyed an order, or failed in his duty… You’ve seen the black-hilted knife he carries?”

Gueynor nodded. Aldric never let it stray beyond his reach in any circumstance. Yet he was the same with the black-hilted sword Lord Geruath wanted so much, and Jervan didn’t seem to think it worth a mention. That was a mistake he might regret.

“It’s a tsepan, to kill himself if honour requires it. All Albans carry one, a few of them even use it. But he’s still alive, so what he did to make him crop his hair wasn’t dishonourable, or he decided that life is better than respect. For now, anyway. If he ever has second thoughts, I wouldn’t care to be near him in case he wanted company on the dark road…” Jervan shrugged, letting Gueynor fill in the rest of the uncompleted thought for herself. “Lady, it’s said of Albans – especially kailinin-eir, men of the high clans – that they make the best friends in the world and the worst enemies. But an eijo’s honour isn’t that of a kailin. The demon-queller Endain told me something of your friend’s past. There was trouble in Alba this spring, and your friend fought on the wrong side.”

“Stop calling him my ‘friend’ in that meaningful way, Commander.”

“What then, lady?” Jervan’s steady gaze didn’t leave her face. “Companion? Bodyguard? Lover? Friend is good enough, and friendship might be more than he deserves. He’ll have lost everything else. If he had wealth or rank or title, they’re all gone now and he’s lucky to have his life.”

“What trouble was it?” asked Gueynor, intrigued. When Aldric mentioned his home, and that was seldom enough, he spoke only in veiled hints as if recalling events in detail hurt him.

“I know little enough, lady. It was small and far away, and the doings of foreigners take second place to my present duty here. It seems that one lord stole the lands and fortress of another and there were a few killings, but not enough for the thief’s security. The defeated lord’s son survived, instead of cutting his own throat.”

“Cutting his throat?” Gueynor was incredulous. “Why?”

“He wasn’t there when his father was killed, so he didn’t fall in his defence and—”

“And you’re telling me that because this lord’s son wasn’t killed with the rest of his people, he was expected to do it himself?”

“He was a coward who broke his oaths and lost his honour. Death by his black knife would have restored it. I told you, they’re a strange people. Instead he returned earlier this year at the head of an army, reclaimed his lands and fortress then did some killing on his own account.”

“What happened then?”

“I’ve heard it said he turned religious, that somewhere in the Blue Mountains lives a monastic hermit who owns a goodly chunk of Alba. But I doubt it. Once he’d taken his revenge and proved he was no coward, he probably turned his black knife on himself at last.”

“Who was he, this self-willed son?”

“The last of a high clan, so they say. Aldric Talvalin.”

Gueynor felt a sudden tic flutter in her left eyelid. She had half-expected Aldric’s name, but hearing it linked to this particular traveller’s tale was still a shock. She had shared her bed, her body and her secret hopes and fears with the man travellers’ tales called The Widow Maker – for though the kortagor had small time for gossip, peasant villagers gleaned both news and entertainment from such stories. Yet her uncle, entrusted with his true name, hadn’t made the connection. It was, she thought more calmly, not surprising. Aldric didn’t look like a killer, nor act like one. But Evthan, and Keeyul and the other soldiers in the old tomb, had all learned the nickname was well-given, though none of them lived long enough to benefit from their education.

“I thought you were going to tell me something of yourself, Commander Jervan. And why I interest you.”

“As I said earlier, haven’t you already guessed? You interest me because of who you are, and who your father was.” He chose an area of the summerhouse wall that was both dry and reasonably clean, leaned against it with both arms folded across his chest and legs crossed at the ankles, and looked the picture of a gentleman taking his ease for an inconsequential chat. Except there was nothing inconsequential about what Jervan had to say.

“There are two powers in this Empire, lady. One is the Grand Warlord, the other is young Emperor Ioen. Lord Geruath’s lack of diplomacy and tact – and the foolishness of his son – has lost the friendship of both. Alban money enters this town each month, not gold but credit scrip drawn on the merchant guilds. It’s meant to finance unrest, uprisings, anything to keep the Warlord’s attention from Alba, because without war, what realm needs a Warlord? Instead it buys Lord Geruath his weapons and Lord Crisen his sorceries, his women and his wines. There’ll come a time when a force arrives to stamp this place into muck, and it won’t matter if it’s sent by Warlord Etzel or the Emperor. The result will look the same.”

“Get to the point!”

“The point, Lady Gueynor Evenou, is that if you took this citadel and held it – held it well – for one side or the other, both would regard you with favour. As a stabilising influence in unstable times, shall we say?”

“Say whatever you like, just say it quickly!”

“You would restore peace to Seghar and avenge your father and your mother. I don’t know which you would value most. There’s a similarity between yourself and the Alban lord I mentioned, except that you waited ten years while he waited only four.”

“What advantage,” Gueynor’s voice was icy, “do you expect to gain from this enterprise?”

“Ah, lady, now we get to the real point. Advancement, of course, the favour of the new Overlord, and—”

“And if I say no? What then?” Jervan’s eyes opened wide for an instant, reminding Gueynor of a startled hawk, then his right hand moved to the knife at his back, not drawing it yet though the possibility was there for the very immediate future.

“You wouldn’t live long enough to betray me,” he said. Gueynor hid her brief fear with an arched eyebrow and a thin cool smile like those she had seen Aldric use.

“I said nothing of betrayal, Kortagor Jervan. Only refusal. What will happen to the garrison commander when one or other of the Great Powers stamps this place to – to muck, wasn’t it? Will they strike off your head or simply hang you as a common criminal?” Her shot struck home.

“Lady Gueynor, I think you’ll make an admirable Overlord.” It wasn’t a compliment.

“Overlady, Commander.”

“The title is neutral, it doesn’t change gender to match whoever holds it, so Overlord I said and Overlord I meant. For all the years you spent consorting with your peasant friends you remain aristocratic enough.”

“Do you mean lordly?”

“Not the way my men would mean it, but haughty and arrogant enough for any Princess. Even the Emperor’s sister.” That wasn’t a compliment either.

“Would you speak like this if I was your Overlord?”

“No, lady, I would not – though any sensible lord should have a trusted advisor who would. But until then I’ll do it myself, because you understand the reasons why.”

“Very well. So what’s your plan?”

“Simple and direct. Leave matters to your eijo—”

“He’s not mine.”

“And let events take their course. The Overlord collects weapons and has done so for years, yet he remains stubbornly ignorant of the etiquette surrounding them. From what I hear there’s already been one confrontation about the Alban’s sword.”

“Are you perceptive, Commander, or do you have a network of spies throughout this fortress?”

“I guess, Lady Gueynor. I guess correctly, and I add up those guesses to form a conclusion. Kourgath carries a longsword of master quality, and Geruath wants it. The next time he asks will be more forceful, and the Alban will respond in kind. Geruath may not survive that refusal.”

“What about his guards? The citadel is over-full of soldiers.”

“Soldiers whose wages are months in arrears. All that keeps them here is the hope of getting part of it, and one of my duties as garrison commander is to make sure they’re paid enough to guarantee loyalty, if only from week to week. If you pay any more than that, lady, they’re yours to command.” Gueynor’s heart was beating fast. Though Jervan’s proposal was frightening, it was also far more constructive than anything Aldric had ever suggested.

“And how many months’ back pay would a garrison commander expect to receive from his magnanimous new Overlord?”

“I’m owed nothing.” The kortagor tried and failed to hide a foxy, self-satisfied grin, then caught the look in Gueynor’s eye and his grin became a frown. “Yes, because I have access to the pay-chests – but not the way you think. I took only my due, not a copper more. Albans don’t hold the monopoly on personal honour. I’ve served the Empire faithfully for twenty years, and I should be hautheisart by now, or eldheisart at least. Instead I’m still just kortagor, and the garrison commander of this!” A sweep of his arm took in the ruined gardens, the tumbledown buildings and the grimy towers of the fortress. “What I want is what money can’t buy. Respect. Is that so unreasonable?”

“Respect in your lifetime or respect for your memory?” said a quiet voice behind him. “Which will it be?”

*

What forced Aldric from the heat and comfort of his bath had begun as just a tickle of apprehension at the back of his mind. As his bare feet hit the stone floor that feeling expanded to a gut-churning sense of something wrong which came close to physical nausea.

He stood naked and dripping in the bathhouse as racking shudders tore through him like the strokes of a mace, then flung his unused towel aside and fought his way into clothes that clung to wet skin every inch of the way. With each passing moment he grew more certain that events in this fortress involved Gueynor far more than she thought, would try to involve him, and would take him off-guard if he gave them any chance.

Marek Endain might have thrown light on the matter, except there was no sign of the demon-queller anywhere. It was like Gemmel in Dunrath when King Rynert laid out his plotting, as if the one man he most wanted to talk to, from whom he most needed reassurance, was deliberately avoiding him. Given the Cernuan’s mood when they parted, that wasn’t a surprise.

It was then he began asking after Gueynor, and it wasn’t coincidence which brought him to the summerhouse. Two servants had given the same answer to questions about ‘Lady Aline’s’ whereabouts and the second, by way of helpfulness, had added that Commander Jervan was asking similar questions just a short time past.

Natural caution brought Aldric into the sad gardens on soft feet – when he put his mind to it he could move as quietly as the kourgath cat of his crest – but the fluttering under his breastbone made that stealth as quick as possible. As he approached the tumbledown building he expected to hear sounds of interrogation, threat and protest, something of that sort. Not civilised conversation. No matter that it seemed dominated by Jervan’s deep voice, what few words he heard spoken by Gueynor seemed relaxed, even confident. Certainly more than he was.

He waited for an opportune moment, aware it smacked somewhat of melodrama, then stepped through the door to speak his entrance cue. Just like an actor, Aldric thought sardonically as two heads turned towards him, but in what play? A tragedy, or the blackest of comedies?

“The plotting which goes on in the Drusalan Empire never fails to astonish me.” He spoke as if from vast and weary familiarity with Imperial policy, more concerned with internal scheming now than at any time in its history. “And I was only curious about a werewolf.”

The kortagor’s eyes opened wide, and Aldric wondered if this was the first time anyone had dared to speak that word aloud. Jervan had the look of a man who knew more than he dared to mention, but he was suddenly willing to say a great deal more than he had told Gueynor. It didn’t take long before Aldric decided the man was either very perceptive, or so well-informed because he really did have spies everywhere. If that was the case they were most likely for his own protection, gathering evidence to save his neck when saving became urgent.

Aldric had heard, or at least overheard, much of it before he made his presence known, but when Jervan mentioned the hunter dragged before Lord Crisen for striking a mercenary soldier, his gaze flicked to Gueynor’s face. She stared back, expressionless and dry-eyed as if the tale concerned someone else, and scarcely even blinked as it trailed to a close.

“I hear you claim to be good at guessing, Kortagor Jervan,” said Aldric. “So here’s a guess of my own. Crisen had that shift-spell laid on the forester as a punishment. A cruel and unusual punishment, as the lawyers have it.”

“Cruel yes, but not unusual, not for the Geruaths. And not even a punishment. The man was available when Crisen wanted to witness a shape-changing, and Voord suggested him. Otherwise a sheep would have sufficed.”

Aldric’s mouth quirked as if he had drunk vinegar. Despite increasing suspicions he had wanted to believe Evthan’s curse resulted from ordinary brutality, as might be expected from a lord who had people quartered by ox-teams for speaking out of turn. Sorcerous experiments from idle curiosity were far worse. The thoughtful look he gave Jervan from under his brows would have worried anyone who knew him better, but the commander remained ignorant of its threat.

“Who is Voord?

“An eldheisart, one of Lord Crisen’s friends. He’s about your age. From Drakkesborg.” That came out as if it had some significance, and Aldric guessed it mean Voord had the usual defence of friends in high places. “And he’s much more.”

“What?”

“If you met him, you wouldn’t need to ask. Call it a gut-feeling. The same as when you see a snake.”

“I know little about Imperial ranks.” Aldric knew more than enough to lie about it. “But eldheisart seems—”

“High? Yes, far too high for such…” Jervan’s voice became a sneer. “Such tender years!”

That confirmed what he had overheard outside. Seghar’s garrison commander resented young men with influence rather than talent being promoted over his own more-experienced head, and Aldric had the example of his own brother Baiart to prove how dangerous envy and ambition could be.

“Unless he’s something special,” he said, and the thought More than he seems, like Evthan, slid unbidden through his mind. Maybe it was Voord and not one of the Geruaths who was meant to ease his access to Imperial inner circles. “Where is he?”

“Gone.”

So much for that. If he asked this garrison commander anything more about a man he disliked and Aldric shouldn’t know, it could raise other questions better left unanswered.

“All right. I overheard something else, Kortagor Jervan, something I didn’t understand. About a new overlord in Seghar.”

“Servants who eavesdrop get beaten—”

“Not this one. Don’t try it.” The ruined summerhouse went very quiet and nobody moved for a full second, then Aldric made his mouth form a brief smile. “And bodyguards who eavesdrop are doing their job.”

“It concerns the lady,” said Jervan, and Aldric shot another glance at Gueynor. Her expression remained as unreadable as blank parchment.

“Until she says otherwise, what concerns her wellbeing concerns me too. What is it?” He stared at Jervan, who said nothing at first. It seemed he hadn’t told Gueynor everything and was in two minds about doing so even now. Then he took a deep breath.

“Independence,” he said. “with both Powers in this Empire protecting us from each other. If such a thing could be established it would work! I know it would!”

Aldric disliked Jervan’s enthusiasm. It sounded too much like several times in his younger days when one friend or other shouted ‘Watch this!’ just before they suffered the consequences of whatever ‘this’ turned out to be, but the commander was in full flight.

“Seghar is too small to be a threat to either side,” he said, “and a neutral province with a neutral Overlord—”

“A female one? In Alba yes, but the Drusalans don’t allow—”

“She would be acceptable. With trustworthy advisers.”

Oh, indeed…

“That’s just wishful thinking.” This time Aldric didn’t have to force his smile, though there was still no humour in it. “Never mind a female overlord, separation from Imperial rule isn’t permitted in case other lords start thinking the same way. You’re in the Drusalan Empire, not the Drusalan League of Friendly Cities, and an Empire has ways of making sure it doesn’t fall apart.” Aldric had once entertained a rather foolish noble notion about restoring Gueynor to her father’s place, but now, faced with the complex realities of the situation, he shied away. Her new chilly demeanour didn’t help. “You seem to have forgotten your uncle easily enough,” he said.

“One cannot live for revenge alone,” she replied primly, then hooded her eyes with half-lowered, heavy lashes.

“No? You had a different attitude not so long ago, and I still do. Crisen Geruath should pay for what he did, and not for… Political expedience.” That was for Jervan’s benefit. “I’m thinking of Evthan, and thirty others whose names I never knew. I’m sure you knew them. And if you choose to overlook them now, I pity you.”

“Keep your pity, Alban!”

Aldric knew that sound and showed his teeth in a quick hard grin. His reproach had struck Gueynor too close to home, and she disliked the sensation.

“Well, lady, it seems this is where our paths diverge. I don’t like the smell of intrigue, it’s already robbed me in too many ways. But your nostrils seem less discriminating. You may not see me again, and we both may be the better for it.”

His exit was even more dramatic than his entrance, for as he walked out to the garden a jagged flicker of lightning scratched across the lowering sky, flinging his shadow back into the summerhouse with a vast dry crack of thunder hard on its heels. In the right mood he would have laughed aloud. Instead he merely grimaced and lengthened his stride to reach shelter before the real storm broke.

*

Aldric watched the rain slant down like arrows, distorting a view hard to see even in fine weather. The window was more lead strips than glass, with the glass itself thick and full of bubbles, not so much for looking out of as letting light through a wall. It was a greenish, wavering, underwater light in keeping with the sound of overflowing gutters, yet there was a dry-damp parched smell on the air, a prickling of electricity on his skin, and a dull anger that nagged like a headache and refused to go away. First Ilen, then Kyrin, now Gueynor. Either they had played him for a fool, or watched while he acted like one.

When the door clicked behind him he snapped around with his hand on Widowmaker’s hilt, and it stayed there even when Marek Endain laid out his burden of cups, wine-flagons and a platter of savoury-smelling meat pasties.

“What’s troubling you, boy?” asked the Cernuan, and Aldric released his sword at last.

“Nothing,” he said, not even objecting to ‘boy’, at least not this time. “Nothing important, that is.”

“Why not tell me anyway?” The tone, not quite paternal, was certainly avuncular. “It might make you feel better. Gemmel told me you brood too much.”

“Gemmel told… Well, that makes everything fine.” Aldric’s mouth twitched and if its expression was a smile, it was as mirthless as a shark’s. “You know what they say, don’t you? ‘Confide in one, never in two; tell three and the whole world knows.’ I’ve already told one too many and I can’t do anything about it. Matters were simpler years ago.” This time his fingers closed on the black grip of his tsepan. “Much simpler. One way or another.” Part of its blade gleamed free for an instant, then smacked back into its sheath more roughly than any tsepan should ever be handled. “I’ll have a drink at least.” Marek watched half a cup of wine go away in a single swallow and as Aldric reached out to top it up again, he gave the younger man a thoughtful look.

“Why not tell me what makes the bottom of a wine-cup so welcoming?”

Aldric took another mouthful, smaller this time, and swirled it around as if rinsing away a bad taste. “Any number of things,” he said. “Like misjudging how a woman thinks for the third time in my life. You’d think I might have learned by now.”

“Only three?” Marek laughed and raised his own cup in a toast. “It could be far worse than—”

“Than three for three? Or did Dewan forget to tell you that?” Marek’s laughter cut off short as he blushed, and three attempts to say something apologetic stumbled to uncomfortable silence.

“Well, you’re lucky,” he managed at last. “Some men never learn such an important lesson. I didn’t until I was, oh, twice your age, and it took a lot more than three women to convince me.” Aldric raised an eyebrow at him. “I wasn’t always this old or this shape, and even now… But never mind. How did you misjudge Aline, or Gueynor, or whatever her real name is?” When Aldric told him, the demon-queller whistled between his teeth. “Not quite the distressed damsel you believed.”

“She may have been this morning. This afternoon, so much. She’s changed, Marek. It might be the atmosphere of this damned place,” Marek nodded but said nothing, “or Jervan sounds a lot more convincing to her than he did to me. He may think he’s being clever, but he’s walking a dangerous path. A commander who can betray one lord might betray another, and this new Gueynor won’t give him the chance. She’ll have his head off first and think of a reason afterwards.”

“That’s why there’s food to go with the wine. Hungry men have short tempers, and I remember what happened in the stable. Even after a good meal you can be, let’s call it abrupt and say no more. As if you’d rather let steel do your talking than—”

“Why not? A blade means what it says.” Marek blinked at that flat statement and floundered for a few seconds. Aldric Talvalin with his taiken by his side was a cool, assured and deeply disquieting companion.

“If you’d been more short-tempered with Lord Geruath today—”

“But I wasn’t. Not even when he tried again.”

“Again?”

“You weren’t there.”

“There? There for what?” Marek’s voice was rising almost to a bleat. “What happened? What did you do?”

“He said he wanted Isileth again, I said ‘no’ again. And this time he understood me.”

“He could have had you killed!”

“As you said in the stable, he could have tried. And we both know what would have happened then. This entire fortress would have known. Geruath knew too. He didn’t press his luck, and that’s just as well because it’s all but run out.” Aldric patted Isileth, a light, almost reassuring touch as if the taiken was a hawk or hound needing calmed, and without thinking Marek took a step backwards.

“What will you do?”

“Nothing more here. I meant to help Gueynor, to do for her what nobody did for me, and there was a passing notion of honourable revenge for Evthan and all the others.” Aldric showed his teeth. “I’m good at revenge. Now she has a new champion, one who understands the situation here better than me, and from what they have in mind the Geruaths will get their due soon enough.”

“The Geruaths were supposed to help you complete your duty for the King.”

“There are other ways to do that. Ones which don’t include staying in this cesspit until Crisen Geruath’s summoning tears him apart and—”

Aldric bit off the rest of his irritable outburst because he recognised the expression his words sent flitting across Marek Endain’s face. It had crossed his own more than once, when he confronted a huge bronze-armoured warrior, and watched a sickle-winged monstrosity skimming the waves, and most of all when he heard a metallic scraping in the Cavern of Firedrakes like a thousand swords all drawn at once. The burly Cernuan’s wine-drinking and false bluster was an attempt to hide how frightened he was, not just of risking his life but of dying the way Sedna ar Gethin had done.

“When you told Gueynor what a demon-queller did,” said Aldric, “I thought it sounded like some sort of rat-catcher.” Marek was old enough to be his father, yet he spoke to the Cernuan as casually as if their ages were reversed. Too much emphasis on fear, maybe even acknowledging it at all, and misplaced pride would take the place of common sense. There were more ways to die of honour than with a tsepan through the ribs. “Well, you’ve got a very big rat to deal with. Could you use help from a very big cat with very big claws?”

Marek looked at the silver kourgath wildcat on Aldric’s crest-collar, then at the Three Blades on his weaponbelt, and the look of gratitude on his bearded face gave an answer with no words needing said. So Aldric said none. Instead he examined a pasty as if he had never seen one before.

“Are these good?” he asked, and took a bite that sent crumbs flying.

“If the kitchen made them the way I instructed, they should be excellent. Mutton, onion and vegetables, seasoned with thyme and plenty of—” Aldric made a sound halfway between a cough and a sneeze and his eyes scrunched shut, “—mustard and pepper, then wrapped in pastry and baked. In my part of Cerenau we like food to fight back.”

“I think this might be winning,” said Aldric, and reached for his wine.

Marek laughed. The big man was already recovering his good humour because he wasn’t alone any more, or because like many people interested in a subject, he could throw himself into it to the exclusion of all else. And Marek Endain’s subject, as borne out by his shape and complexion, was the pleasure found in feasting-hall and kitchen.

“It is good,” said Aldric, “at least once you get over the mustard shock. But after what you ordered at The Crossed Pikes, it’s a bit…”

“Plain and simple? When a man thinks of home, simple is best.”

And when a man thinks he might die soon. Aldric didn’t say that aloud, Sometimes plain and simple was indeed best, like friendship and support offered without conditions. They continued talking, about food and drink, travel and history, music, songs and stories. The demon-queller seemed willing to talk about anything except his profession and the task which had brought him here, now with a more final conclusion than Crisen Geruath hoped for.

They also finished the pasties between them, and felt better for it.

*

The rain lessened towards evening and the sun broke through the lowering banks of cloud, filling the western sky with the colours of a bruise. Normally Aldric might have appreciated such subtle shifts of tone and pattern, but now the sullen reds and purples looked ominous. The prickling sensation on his skin hadn’t lessened as the storm passed, and his entire body still tingled as if brushed with nettles. It was a petty irritation, one he tried to ignore because, despite that promise of aid to Marek, every discomfort and oddity about this place brought back his desire to leave Seghar and the entire Jevaiden plateau far behind.

Marek had sent a servant for more wine, but when the man reappeared in the doorway what he bore was a summons from Lord Geruath. Aldric’s stomach clenched. He had expected this for hours, and now here it was.

They followed the retainer out to the courtyard of the citadel, under the shadow of its tower. It was a fitting place for an execution, or an ambush ordered by an outraged Overlord, and it already held two files of helmeted guards who fell into step behind them. But if that was the plan, then the summons was careless beyond belief. He still wore Isileth, no-one had tried to take the taiken from him, and now its blade was loose in its scabbard, as ready to fly – and as eager to kill – as a falcon with jesses untethered.

Geruath was waiting for them on the steps of his strange old-new tower. Unlike the guards he was in full armour, bulky old-fashioned battle gear that made his thin frame look thinner still, and the ring of torches surrounding him sent twisted whorls of smoke up into the still-damp air. It was clear he meant to start after the demon at once and his gaze, squinting past the broad nasal of his helmet, rested on Aldric for an instant then slid away as if he didn’t exist.

Or was already dead.

Aldric could guess what that meant. From now on he would have to guard his back from more than just whatever was haunting Seghar. He looked from the newly-made ancient armour to the newly-made ancient tower and realised what had puzzled him when he first saw it as he rode towards Seghar. The fortification was from a time before the Drusalan Empire had established itself, when Drusul, now the heart of Empire, was just one of many petty kingdoms scrambling for supremacy. Its style, and that of Geruath’s armour, suggested the Overlord was thinking back to those times in a way the powers at Drakkesborg wouldn’t like.

Jervan had suggested the same thing to Gueynor, but they had been talking about an inoffensive neutral arrangement. Hinting in broad strokes that there was no Imperial influence in Seghar was quite another matter. It suggested defiance, and Aldric was well aware how the Empire responded to defiance. Gemmel had told him. The response was called ‘correction’, and while no-one in the corrected area survived to learn their lesson, everyone else who heard about its teaching learned it very well.

He wondered briefly about Eldheisart Voord, that over-promoted officer, and what part his friendship with Crisen Geruath had to play in all this. Voord had already ignored Crisen’s violation of Imperial law about use of the Art Magic, and from the sound of it had encouraged him. That raised many questions. Was he letting Crisen tangle himself in a web of obligation, or gathering evidence for his own purposes to use against the Geruaths so he would be appointed Overlord in their place?

Or was he using Seghar as a private retreat to indulge his own fondness for the more twisted forms of sorcery? There were plenty of people in the world who believed that rank or authority gave them freedom to indulge their most unpleasant inclinations, and Aldric was world-wise enough to know his own small vices were insignificant compared to some.

Someone offered him a lamp, with a stout metal casing as a reservoir for oil and a lens that bulged like a fish’s eye from the centre of a polished reflector. Aldric cast its spot of yellow light across the rain-glossed ground and hefted the considerable weight. Not only did it give better light than a live-flame torch, it made a better weapon.

An outburst of raised voices from the foot of the wooden tower made him glance up. A heavy-set man was arguing with the Overlord, which was unlikely, and getting the best of it, which was improbable. That and his matching armour let Aldric put a name to the florid, shouting face.

“Crisen…” It passed his lips on a released breath, but there was enough edge to the single whispered word that Marek’s head jerked round to see what had provoked it.

“Yes, that’s Crisen Geruath,” he said. “Why so interested? I thought you were leaving that business to Jervan and Gueynor.”

“I am. I was. Though with the right opportunity…” Aldric said it without thinking and got another of Marek’s shocked stares in response. “What?”

“You’d murder him?”

“Murder, no. Kill, maybe. Or maybe not. What are they arguing about?”

“Remember what I said about the…” He made a sign to avert evil and Aldric understood his reluctance to say more. To name the thing was to call the thing. “The intruder?”

“That they want it controlled?”

“Yes. I’ve already changed my mind about that. Now the Overlord is also having second thoughts, and his loving son,” acid dripped from Marek’s words, “is trying to strengthen the old man’s resolve. It’s not working…”

*

“I bet that one isn’t waiting for his pay,” muttered one of the troopers with a brief nod towards the man in black with all the weapons at his belt. He managed the old soldier’s trick of speaking without moving his lips, but what he said carried well enough.

“Silence in the ranks,” said Hertag Tolnar more sharply than required; his rank-bars were still so new and bright that he sometimes needed to give their authority an airing. Then, more quietly, “Do you think he’d even be here if he was? The Geruaths have paid in advance for once.”

“I wish they’d pay us in advance.” Raden was harping on his favourite string, and Tolnar would have been more surprised if the man had stayed silent. Then we’d only be, oh, three months behind. Or is it four?”

“Silence!”

It was just the usual grumbling. Tolnar heard it on every parade and every time he assigned the sentry roster. He had done plenty of it in his time, but paid more heed since his promotion in case there was a change in the usual resigned tone of voice. Commander Jervan had put all his officers, even the most recent like Tolnar, on notice to report any signs of genuine unrest. The whole garrison was in arrears with their half-pay nicely judged, enough to keep them waiting in hope, not so little or so much that they would walk away. Eldhertag Keeyul and his squad had seemingly done it, but nobody else.

Not yet…

Kortagor Jervan feared mutiny, but Tolnar and the other junior commanders knew better. Their men wouldn’t wake up one morning and tear Seghar apart looking for hidden cashboxes; if they existed at all they were long empty. Most were farmers’ sons like Tolnar himself, and the joshing they would get when they gave up soldiering and returned home would be no worse than this. It was far more likely that Jervan would be the one to wake up and find his barracks as empty as its pay-chest.

“Attention!” Tolnar and his squad straightened from stand-easy to parade rest as the Geruath lords and their two companions went by. “All right, lads.” Someone laughed, someone else made a rude noise. Every one of the squad was older than their Hertag and calling them ‘lads’ rang hollow, but Tolnar persisted. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re back off duty.”

“I was off-duty. And asleep.” Raden faked a yawn. “So I should get extra for this. Double time.”

“If Jervan hears you,” said Tolnar, “the only double time we’ll get is round the square until we drop. And if you’ve found a drinking-den that takes extra nothing for their ale, let us all know where it is. Fall in, march!”

*

Aldric watched as the Geruath argument ended in an abrupt word of command that sent the column off through darkening streets. Lord Geruath was in the lead but, perhaps significantly, Crisen brought up the rear. They re-entered the citadel at what seemed its oldest point, clattering down a winding flight of worn stone steps into a place familiar to Marek, new to Aldric and equally unpleasant to them both.

There was a cross-corridor at the foot of the stairway, and the door halfway along its left branch was secured by many bolts, all new. The original lock was gone, smashed out of the timber as if by the stroke of a siege-ram, with only a semi-circular hole edged with ragged wood and twisted metal to show where it had been. Something inside had wanted out and had succeeded.

The soldiers who drew the bolts went about their task in a scared manner that suggested Crisen’s meddling with magic wasn’t such a well-kept secret as he hoped. Like everyone else, Aldric backed away when the door opened, even though nothing more than a sickly smell of stale incense came drifting out towards them.

The room beyond had been completely wrecked. What little furniture it contained was reduced to shreds and splinters, and the lamplight revealed many triple gouges in floor, in walls, even in the ceiling almost twenty feet above their heads. Half-erased magical scribblings covered the floor and, even from where he stood, Aldric could see how the larger of the two circles were broken by a broad spray of ashes. Then he grimaced when he noticed the blackish-crimson shreds strewn across the floor. It looked like dried meat, and he remembered what Marek had told him after his first visit to this grim place.

It was dried meat. Of a sort.

“Do you see any more than last time?” demanded Overlord Geruath, paying the grisly fragments little heed.

“No, my lord,” said Marek. “I told you before, Sedna drew this circle slowly and with care, but that one yonder in great haste.” Heads turned to look at it. “She wasn’t expecting a dangerous Summoning and I doubt she was making a Summoning at all, not on that particular night. I told you why she—”

“What was it?” The Overlord’s voice was irritable and impatient, as if he no longer had time for theories. As if he had other things to do before the night was out. “I said, what was it? Can’t you tell?”

“My lord, I can’t. And I won’t guess. But I ask once again, will you allow me to start a Dismiss—”

“Until my son permits it, no,” said Geruath and turned away. Aldric saw his face, and an expression that was little more than a collection of facial tics.

“Is he as mad as he looks?” he asked Marek once the others had moved out of earshot.

“Not only mad, but a fool,” said the demon-queller grimly. “Sedna had a library somewhere, but he and Crisen won’t let me near it. If I could see what books she had, I might at least be able to—”

“Guess? You just claimed you won’t do that.”

“Don’t joke about these things. It isn’t funny. Not now. But… But you said something when we first met. When you drew that first dagger on me and I encharmed you to save my neck. Say it again.”

Aldric knew what Marek meant, yet couldn’t speak the words which had tormented him for so long. It was as if something was impeding his tongue. His face went red with effort and sweat broke out on his forehead, enough that it trickled like great tears down his temples.

“No,” he whispered, “I can’t. Not here.”

“You must!” Marek insisted. “Otherwise more people will die! Say the words, Aldric! You have to say the words!”

His real name made Aldric twitch as if pricked by a thorn and his lips moved, forming words that Marek couldn’t hear, couldn’t read, couldn’t recognise. There was a thread of blood running from between the fingers of his clenched left hand, where his nails had driven through the skin of his palm. It was as well no one was near, for it would seem to any other observer that Marek’s young companion was in the throes of a fit. And then the fit was past. Aldric’s eyes, which had squeezed tightly shut, reopened and he summoned up a smile from somewhere. A genuine one.

“M-my m-mind is my own,” he stammered. “S-so is my m-mouth.” The smile widened fractionally as he took a deep breath. “And no bloody intruder will interfere with either.”

“Do you know what you just did?”

“Gave myself a headache.”

“I said before, don’t joke! You’ve just thrown off a Binding.”

“A what?”

“Binding. Our uninvited guest doesn’t want to be talked about. Gemmel must have mentioned the charm.” If he had Aldric couldn’t remember, but he nodded cautious agreement all the same. “And you broke it!”

Aldric could guess how. The Echainon spellstone was in its bag inside his jerkin, and he could feel the heat against his chest. Yet its augmenting of his own meagre will hadn’t left him weak and shaky the way it had before, and a brief stumble in speech was nothing by comparison to that.

“Does this Binding tell you anything about what set it in place?”

“The only thing that will tell me is—”

“Is what the Binding kept me from telling you. There’s an old burial mound in the Deepwood. I was inside it, never mind why. It had been broken open, but it was clean, and there were roses. Such roses, Marek. Huge!” The dream that was a nightmare coiled itself about the inside of his skull like a thread of incense-smoke, but Aldric continued without even a tremor in his voice. “And there was a sheet of parchment that must have come from here, because I met lord’s-men sent to retrieve it.”

Marek didn’t ask about their fate. With Aldric’s reputation he could guess. The opened mound-grave concerned him more, for such places had an evil name in demon-lore. They had been a focus for great emotion in their time, sorrow or joy or simple relief, and that focus was easily redirected for other things.

“Parchment?” he prompted. “As in pages from a book?”

“One page.” Still unwilling to let his conscious mind dwell on it too much, Aldric cleared his throat. “It was a rhyme,” he said. “A poem, or a prophecy maybe. It was something like this: ‘The setting sun grows dim…’ ”

Marek listened and felt the hackles rising on the nape of his neck as they hadn’t done in many a long day. The significance of the roses was clear now. All too clear. He only wished this hadn’t come in his time.

“ ‘…Despair and death to all,’ ”Aldric finished, and shivered as if ice had pressed against his neck. “I only read it once but it’s been with me ever since, even though I could never memorise poetry when I was young. What does it mean?” Marek didn’t want to tell him, and to put off the inevitable he changed the subject.

“It’s two nights past full moon,” he said, as if the thought had just occurred to him. “Two nights since Sedna was…”

“Eaten.”

“Eaten,” Marek echoed. “So I can only guess what this thing is or looks like.” He produced a small taut smile to keep the admission company. “But I’m much more sure of how it feels.” Aldric’s mind raced along that particular unpleasant track and reached the same conclusion.

“It’s hungry.” The next step of reasoning was an ugly one. “And the Geruaths are bringing unarmoured men against it. Or should that be for it?”

When they caught up with the Overlord and his retainers, several troopers were hammering at the end wall of the corridor while the rest, Crisen among them, stood well back and watched. A blow rang hollow, the concentration of impact altered slightly and within a minute the outline of a doorway appeared among the rough stones of the wall. Aldric nudged Marek and as they retired a judicious distance down the corridor his left hand slipped inside his jerkin, fingers tightening around the spellstone hidden there.

When the door burst open with shocking suddenness and gulped three soldiers into the blackness beyond Aldric’s muscles spasmed, wrenching the spellstone off its cord even though the plaited leather bit deep into his neck before it broke. Only his closed fist and the thin covering of buckskin prevented an eldritch glow of power from illuminating the corridor from end to end. Then the men reappeared, grinning sheepishly as they dusted themselves down. He relaxed again and tucked his deadly handful out of sight.

“Why should we be looking here?” he asked the demon-queller. “If this thing’s a true dem–, a true thing, then it won’t need tunnels. Will it?”

“It’s become flesh of a sort. It must move as fleshly beings move.”

“Can this flesh-of-a-sort be cut?”

“Probably not.”

“We’ll see.”

There was a passageway beyond the hidden doorway, no doubt a sound piece of work, but its design gave Aldric the shudders. Unlike even Dewan ar Korentin, a man nobody could call a coward, Aldric was at ease below ground. After Gemmel’s home beneath the Blue Mountains, after the Lair of Ykraith and the burial crypts under Dunrath, he should have been well-used to the subterranean. But all of those places had been well-lit and familiar, or at least vaulted and spacious.

This tunnel crouched around him, only an arm’s length overhead at most. Its walls weren’t raw stone or lined with wooden beams; these walls were curved, and their metal arches curved with them. Outlines once hard and artificial had blended through over many years with red clay and pallid fungoid growths, until now the glistening passage looked like a colossal gullet frozen halfway through the act of swallowing.

When Geruath moved his soldiers further down the tunnel Marek had followed, leaving Aldric alone with his imagination and his lamp. One formed glutinous images just beyond the edges of the other’s light, furtive half-seen movements that ceased before his eyes could reach and focus on them. Moisture gathered on a squashy growth above him, then drooled with salivary stealth towards his face.

Aldric wasn’t actually running when he caught up with the others. Not quite.

The tunnel divided at that point. After brief, muttered discussion between the Overlord and his son, they and four men went one way while a six-strong squad went along the other fork. Aldric stayed with the Overlord. In sight or out of it he distrusted Geruath, and he intended keeping a close eye on Crisen. Besides, whatever route those two chose was probably the safest, and for the time being courage and honour could give way to common sense and caution.

He wondered if the same notion had prompted Marek, but doubted it. The Cernuan was that rare and often dangerous thing, a brave and dedicated man. But dedicated to what? Duty? Principle?

Or just self-preservation like all the rest...?

*

Hertag Tolnar gave his boot-straps a final tug, wriggled his toes inside the leather and straightened to find himself alone. The squad had warned him almost in chorus that they wouldn’t wait, but he thought they were joking. He was wrong.

Tolnar swore under his breath. So much for showing respect to a superior, even a very new one. There was a lot less glamour to serving as a lord’s-man than he had thought; fewer plumes and parades, more standing guard in the rain then polishing his armour afterwards. The hertag’s bronze bars for his shoulders had been promised weeks ago, like his arrears of pay, but though the rank arrived eventually, the pay did not. Keeyul and his men had done the right thing when they left, and Tolnar decided to follow their example as soon as he was able.

Another division in the passageway told him why the others had disappeared so fast, and he opened his mouth to call them. Then shut it again, not wanting to seem a panicky fool. And for fear of what else might be listening. There were many rumours current in the barracks, all different and all variations on a single nasty theme. But there were footprints in the russet muck coating the tunnel floor, and they at least were more tangible than rumours. After a moment’s hesitation Tolnar followed them.

And the clinging velvet shadows swallowed him.

A bare ten paces further on he stopped, shivering with more than the dank cold because the whole situation reeked of danger. His solitary walk had a horrid inevitability about it, like the fifteen steps from cell to scaffold he had watched other men and women take. If he walked on, he would die. Yet his vulnerability felt so overstated that it was self-defeating and the shivers died away as assurance of his own reality warmed him. He was a man, he existed, he wasn’t a puppet dancing when another hand tugged strings in a preordained pattern. And he was armed.

He groped at his back for the slung crossbow, taking comfort from its cool weight, and slid it around into the cradle of his left arm. The weapon had a spring-steel prod thicker than his thumb that would send bolts into and through a target with appalling force. Into and through any target, even one armoured in proof metal. Any target at all…

There was something hanging from the ceiling just ahead of him, and he froze with all his fears rushing back. Then he breathed a sigh of relief as the yellow light of his lantern played across its surface. A rock had slipped free of the all-embracing clay, and its enormous weight had buckled the props without being heavy enough to break through them and fall to the soggy floor. He sidestepped the massive boulder, staring warily at it the whole time. What he could see of the surface was rounded and smooth, glossy as enamel from the moisture filming it. Never mind the monster of the rumours, a rock like that dropping on a man’s head would take him off the barrack roster with no need to involve magic.

Tolnar breathed a soft oath and strode on, his curse hanging on the cold air of the tunnel as pale-grey fog. Then he jerked to another halt and this time sweat-beads popped out all over him, for something just out of his lantern’s range had moved.

“Bloody wet fungus!” he muttered. “Scared of a bloody reflection!” The words didn’t reassure him, and the hands which spanned and loaded the heavy crossbow were shaking as he lined the weapon on the lantern’s pool of light. Whether it was imagination or a real movement he saw it again and jerked the trigger. His bolt ripped sparks from stone and rang its way down the tunnel’s oozing throat with enough noise to drown out any other furtive movements.

Tolnar turned and ran back the way he had come, not daring to reload or even look back. Not wanting to know what might be at his heels. If he could make the hanging boulder fall and complete the cave-in, it might bring down enough rubble to block the passageway. Or make a barricade to hide behind. Or something…

As his lamplight swayed across the rock’s slick surface it seemed to move and shudder, but became comfortingly huge and stable when he stopped beside it. It would be big enough to shelter him, if only he could knock it free. He swung his crossbow like a pickaxe, felt the impact slamming up his arms and heard the wooden stock crack in protest. Part of the mechanism gave way, but the boulder shifted slightly. He hit it again, then a final time with all his strength and jumped sideways out of its path.

Nothing happened.

His lantern showed him where the rock had settled a little against its metal props like someone shifting in bed. A trickle of fragments pattered against the ground, but stopped before more than a handful had fallen. Tolnar cursed as anger swamped fear for an instant, and stepped forward with his makeshift bludgeon hefted in both hands.

It was then he saw the fragments more closely, and his gorge rose. They were soft, some pallid but others a rich crimson like things he might see on a butcher’s slab. These chunks of meat were far, far fresher than any butcher’s cuts, so fresh and warm that they steamed in the trembling lamplight. It took two beats of his frantically pumping heart to realise this was the rest of his squad. The wavering lantern slashed shadows and moist reflections from the curving, claustrophobic walls until at last its light settled back onto the curves and angles of the boulder. Except that it wasn’t a boulder, but something – some Thing – curled up in a cradle of its own long limbs, asleep, or dormant…

Or digesting.

Now it dropped, not as a stone falls but like a cat, unfolding crooked joints to land spider-light for all its spiked and jagged bulk. The air grew colder and frost formed on Tolnar’s helmet. That cold air stank of blood and death. Triple-taloned feet grated down through mud on to the stone beneath as Ythek Shri took a single precise, raking step forward.

The lamp fell with a clatter and in that distorted light the demon’s bulk loomed larger still as it leaned down, head opening like a grotesque blossom in a fanged, horrific yawn…

*

Aldric wasn’t the only one to hear the low cry, more of disbelief than anything else, which reverberated hollowly along the tunnels and faded into disturbing echoes before anyone could do more than guess at its source. But he was the only one apart from Marek to be sure about its cause, and despite his sardonic view of honour versus courage when demons were loose, he was the only one at all to make a move towards it.

He had taken just six strides down the passageway when a shriek of pure animal terror cut through the darkness before him, trailing away to silence like the wavering wolf-song which had mourned Evthan’s funeral. Again the wail throbbed in his ears, more piercing now, impossibly high for any masculine throat, a sound that was fear and agony given voice.

It stopped incomplete with shocking abruptness and he started running. Even with the stone of Echainon to explain his foolhardy confidence, it was Widowmaker that filled his hand when he slithered to a halt, nostrils filled with a warm slaughterhouse reek and the incongruous faint scent of roses. He pivoted on one heel to sweep the lowering tunnel with lamp and eyes, taiken poised to strike at anything that moved. There was nothing but the distant firefly dance of approaching torches. Nothing living.

Aldric braced himself, then turned the light and his accompanying gaze downward to the slimed and stinking floor.

Marek had done well for a fat old man, outrunning all but the few troopers who fidgeted in the background. They were staring at Aldric, who was staring in his turn at nothing. His face was pallid, its skin drawn taut over clamped jaws, and when Marek met his shock-dilated eyes the demon-queller looked away from the horror there. Instead, and most unwisely, he glanced down.

“Oh merciful…” he said then faltered, knowing even as he said it that there had been no mercy here. When Geruath strode up, Marek seized the Overlord by one elbow regardless of the armed retainers flanking him and dragged him towards the pulped obscenity sprawling at their feet. “That, my lord,” his voice dripped contempt, “is what your demon does. Do you still want it controlled?”

Geruath licked his lips, an unconscious aid to thought but in the circumstances hideously inappropriate. Then he shrugged, undisturbed by the atrocity, and even smiled.

Aldric’s own lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl which would have done credit to the kourgath-cat on his collar. He knew the Overlord’s son could see him, and that his expression could be read by a half-blind man, but he was past caring, past diplomacy, past dissembling. All the Talvalins hated well, but the last clan-lord of all had more practice than most. Something would die for this.

“When I’m done here,” he said, “I will arm myself properly. Then I will obliterate this demon.” Isileth Widowmaker flashed in the lamplight as she poised at her scabbard’s mouth. “And anyone who tries to hinder me.” The blade hissed out of sight.

“When you’re done with what?” said Crisen. Aldric ignored him.

“Someone give me a helmet,” he said. “Now leave me. Leave me alone.” It wasn’t a request but an order and it was obeyed at once, even by Marek.

Once they had gone Aldric took out the Echainon spellstone again. He knew this was wrong. He had seen one long-buried body in the ancient mound, had watched another lowered into its grave. Jouvaines gave their dead to earth, not fire, but enough foulness had been visited on this poor corpse already. Aldric had the power to make his funeral clean. When he removed the stone’s buckskin covering there was no billow of blue fire, only a soft shimmer like a luminescent fog that drove back no shadows, yet was somehow comforting. There was no dishonour or impropriety in its use. Not for this purpose.

“Abath arhan.” He whispered the brief invocation like a prayer and as the Echainon stone responded, misty swirls of light coiled around his hand. Once those swirls had blazed with the heat of hatred, now their ultramarine translucence was warm with pity and compassion. The spellstone’s power were his now, pulsing with the blood-flow in his veins, concentrated by the wishes of his mind.

Behind him, a vast stooping shape moved in ponderous silence from the shadows, and a crooked three-clawed talon reached out.

“Alh’noen ecchaur i aiyya,” Aldric said, and all was sudden brilliance as clean hot flame poured from the crystal’s heart, engulfing, consuming, purifying in a single instant. Had he looked back he would have seen the demon clearly, revealed in the glare of his own making. But he saw nothing as it fled with long heron-strides back into the friendly darkness.

Aldric dropped to one knee as the expected weariness flooded over him, but it was less than before. The Echainon stone had used his emotion, not his energy, and that emotion was directed out, not in.

“An-diu k’noeth-ei,” he said, and traced the blessing of farewell above the still-warm remnants on the tunnel floor. Gathering them together, just dust and ashes now, he poured them into the helmet and inclined his head a little for respect. The spellstone’s fires had died to a slow sapphire writhing in the centre of the crystal, and with the helmet set aside he returned it to its leather bag. Before it went back inside his jerkin he hesitated and glanced sharply down the passage in response to a faint tingling of unease. There was nothing to see, or hear, or smell. That didn’t mean nothing was there.

Aldric knotted the several ends of its broken leather braiding together again and hung the bag around his neck. But this time he didn’t put it inside his shirt, out of sight. Leaving it in the open felt more comfortable.

And more comforting.

*

Back among the Overlord’s retainers, Aldric approached one man and gave him the ash-filled helmet. The soldier saluted and took the makeshift urn with infinite gentleness, speaking rapidly in the dialect Aldric had heard so often here but still couldn’t understand.

“He thanks you,” Marek Endain translated. “For the way you acted towards one who was a lord’s-man and a stranger.” Aldric bowed in response.

“Thank him for his courtesy,” he said, “and apologise that I can’t do so myself.” Marek did so, and as he turned back, he caught a certain look in Aldric’s eye. An instant later he was clutching the younger man’s sword-arm in case that threat of violence turned real. Aldric stared at Overlord Geruath and his son for a few seconds more, a cat watching an out-of-reach mouse, then glanced at Marek. His mirthless grin was cruel in the lamplight as he peeled the demon-queller’s grip from his sleeve one finger at a time.

“No,” he said quietly. “Not yet. Not in the midst of their retainers. But soon. I don’t have to look for any more reasons.”

He had enough and more than enough. And they were no longer the intangibles of a king’s command, or a promise made in bed to a capricious woman. They were the same dark, personal justifications which had brought fire and death to the fortress of Dunrath. Revenge for self, revenge for the dead, hatred, loathing, and knowledge that some men were born to die just as he was born to kill them. All he needed now was opportunity.

Once through the secret doorway, Aldric waited until two soldiers heaved it shut, then rose from the corner where he had crouched on heels, watching with lantern in hand.

“That door was open the whole time we were under the citadel. The demon could have been out and away long before we caught up with it.” He watched Marek realise how open and exposed the cellars were by comparison with the low, cramped tunnels. Yet the thing had eluded them even there.

“Do you think—?”

“I don’t know what to think, and it’s not as if I even know what to look for. So I will ask you about it again.” Aldric flashed the lantern’s beam about to push the shadows back, though never far enough. “But not now – and definitely not here.”

CHAPTER NINE

“The demon-queller is right. This abomination must be destroyed.”

Lord Geruath was talking mostly to himself while his son kept out of the way, watching him stride about but saying nothing. They were alone in the Overlord’s private chambers, and Crisen had just watched his father drain half a flask of fortified wine without perceptible effect. Even the tremor in Geruath’s voice came only from restrained fury.

“Do you always accept what a hired servant tells you?” Crisen ventured at last.

“When they’re hired to talk sense, yes, I do. When it concerns me, yes, I do. Whether it’s an unnatural infestation released by my fool of a son—”

“I didn’t—”

“—Or that same son’s convoluted plotting for the future of Seghar.” Crisen’s eyes widened, his mouth opened but no sound came out, and he looked sick. “Oh yes, I’ve heard about your plans. Kortagor Jervan mentioned it some time ago, as was only right and proper. He’s responsible for keeping me safe, and that means more than just commanding the garrison and watching the gates. A neutral city-state free of all allegiance, was it not? But arranged in such a way that both the Warlord and the Emperor accept it? Most intriguing. We must discuss the matter at a later time.”

“You know nothing about it!” Crisen burst out.

“Nothing?” the Overlord echoed. “On the contrary, my secretive son, I know a great deal. Give me results I can see, can touch, can profit by, and I promise to ask no questions about how you achieved them. Fail, and I won’t lift a hand, not a finger, to save either you or that reptile Voord you call friend.”

“You’re mad.” It wasn’t an explosive protest but a disbelieving little whimper as the preconceptions of years were overturned. “You are. Everybody knows it…” Geruath’s chuckle was soft, urbane and very sane indeed.

“Lordly is the current euphemism,” he said. “You’ll learn, Crisen, you’ll learn. Things can often be different to what they seem.” Lord Geruath looked his son up and down and favoured him with a sly smile. “You of all people should know that.”

“Then why did you do it, father? In the name of the Fire, why?”

“Your lamented mother didn’t ask such foolish questions. She accepted what I did as right, and saw the profitable proof. One of the wisest things a man can do is to appear a fool. Fools aren’t trusted, but they’re not distrusted either, just ignored as harmless.”

“They’re laughed at.”

“And tolerated and humoured in ways a clever man can never hope to match.” Geruath took another, more controlled sip of wine, then hunted about until he found a cup to drink from. “We could have been in this citadel ten years ago,” he said as he played with the silver goblet, turning it over and over in his hands. “Your mother could have died an Overlord’s lady. But she understood my caution, because your dreams of an independent seat at the Imperial Council are mine as well. Just not as crudely executed.”

The revelation startled Crisen. Voord had suggested it a year ago, with Geruath as Overlord of Seghar, Crisen the true power behind him and Voord as their personal representative in Drakkesborg. Now it looked as if the plan had been pre-empted by a full decade. A headache started pounding through his temples.

“What about the armour, the tower, the weapons…?”

“Visible signs of harmless eccentricity. Who worries about the doings of an old fool exiled to the edge of an unimportant province? It might offend a few of the shallower minds at court, but I still have friends there. More powerful and better placed than yours.” Geruath’s smile turned cold. “Remember that, my son. If you or Voord try to discredit or replace me in any way, I’ll see you both trodden out like grapes.”

The words hung heavy in the air while Lord Geruath drank more wine. Crisen didn’t question them. They weren’t a threat. Ever since he was a child he had learned his father never made threats. He made promises.

“I knew Seghar was well placed as a hub for trade,” the Overlord was saying “And where trade goes, diplomacy can follow. All they thought was of somewhere to put the crazy man and his whelp where it would look like a reward for service, and where his ravings and chasings after swords couldn’t do any harm. Then the Albans cultivated me, I accepted them, and for once in my life I had enough gold with nobody the wiser. But listen to the wise words of a madman, Crisen. If your fellow-conspirator, confidant and friend Lord-Commander Voord believes he can do this all alone, he’ll make sure you follow the Vreijek woman Sedna down something’s throat.”

“Sedna?”

“Play the fool all you like, my son, but don’t start now, and don’t start with me. Of course Sedna! You were besotted with her—”

“I loved her, father!”

“You were besotted, like a drunkard with his bottle, and it affected your efficiency. The Drusalans are most insistent on efficiency. Voord killed her to remove your distraction, and so it would appear an accident he used sorcery. He used spells from the books you bought to have her torn apart.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I have eyes, and I have wits, and I can use them both. You saw, in the library, yet you chose not to see. And now, to vindicate yourself in the eyes of your Imperial friend, to prove what he thought of you was wrong, you hope to use this obscenity again. Yet you still claim you loved her.” Lord Geruath’s mouth curved in a sneer. “If that’s love, give me honest hatred. Voord left with unusual haste and without farewells, didn’t he? Either he knows what he summoned up, or he doesn’t know and has no wish to find out. It’s certainly beyond your small competence. This is no shape-shifted wolf.”

“You know about…?” Crisen didn’t finish. The expression on Geruath’s face gave him his answer. “But – but why not use this opportunity anyway, father? Listen to me! The empire’s tearing itself apart. Ioen and Etzel are so busy trying to avoid an outright war that nobody will notice an ambitious man using the chaos to further his own ends. Especially you.” Lord Geruath raised his eyebrows. “It’s well know you detest sorcery more than anyone still at court, so who would suspect you of all people of being the man who controls a demon?”

“They would more likely suspect you!” snapped Geruath, but his criticism didn’t halt Crisen’s flow of words even for an instant.

“Kill three other Overlords along the frontier,” he suggested half a dozen in as many breaths, “then wait a while before you move as you did with Seghar, and you wouldn’t be a usurper but the man who saved their domains from anarchy. With that new revenue it would be easy to bribe someone in Drakkesborg to confirm possession, and it would convince the Albans that their money isn’t being wasted.”

“No! I should never have listened to you in the first place. When I saw the remains of that lord’s-man my stomach almost shamed me before the two hlensyarlen.”

“Did it really? You weren’t so squeamish about Sedna, or Erwan Evenou ten years past. People always die to further great schemes, father, so why worry? This demon is no more deadly than a sharp dagger or a poisoned cup of— What was that?”

Crisen’s head snapped round and cocked on one side to catch whatever faint sound which had attracted his attention; but to no avail. He strode to the chamber door with hand on sword-hilt and paused there an instant before reaching out to wrench it open. There was nothing outside save an empty corridor.

“What’s the matter with you?” demanded his father. Crisen looked uncertainly over his shoulder towards the door and rubbed fingertips to forehead. “Nothing… I think.”

“And if it was something, what would you think?”

“Music. One note.”

“A bell? A gong? A flute?”

“A voice. Many voices, singing.” Crisen listened a little more, then shook his head and shrugged. “No. It really was nothing.”

“That’s an extravagant description of ‘nothing’.” Geruath’s voice was different now, and a sneer twisted what might have been mere bantering. “Forget it! And forget your plans for Seghar – at least, these plans. Using sorcery gives potential opponents too much leverage, and without support to offset that leverage, Ioen or Etzel may well spare time from their own squabbles to snuff us out.”

“But the demon could give us so much power—”

“I said forget it. If I’m dealing with Rynert of Alba, I must have a little honour left.”

“Honour is a word that weaklings hide behind.” It came out without thought and Crisen bit his tongue too late. Lord Geruath stared for a long second at his son’s face, then smashed the back of his hand across it with all his strength.

“Never speak to me like that again! Never! You’ll rule here only after I’m dead and I assure you, my health is excellent. Remember, I am Overlord of Seghar! I should have known you had no honour in you when you broke into the Kingsmound—”

“You weren’t backward about plundering it for weapons!”

“I didn’t enter like a thief!”

“No, you stood by and let me do that for you.”

“And why did your friend Voord go creeping to it in the dead of night, eh? Answer me that!” Crisen shook his pounding head and winced as he rubbed his throbbing jaw. The old man was talking nonsense now, because Voord had never gone near the opened tomb. “Why did he decide to clean it, eh?” Lord Geruath demanded. “You haven’t got an answer to that, have you?”

“Eldheisart Voord did not—”

“He did!” Geruath lashed out again and Crisen flinched to avoid the bony knuckles. They missed, but a gemstone-heavy ring struck home and split his lower lip wide open. Ignoring a bloody shred of his own son’s flesh clinging to the jewel on his hand, the Overlord kept on shouting. “I know, because I had him followed! I had him watched! He sent a file of my best mercenaries there on one of his cursed errands, and not a man of them came back! More sorcery, may the Father of Fires burn him black! Eternal shame on House Segharlin that my son calls him friend!”

Geruath’s face was white with fury now, the rouge on his cheekbones a blazing contrast to the ivory skin beneath it, and the saliva clinging to his teeth was growing frothy with the frenzied movements of his mouth.

“Get out of my sight!” he shrieked. “Get out and take your filthy plots away with you! I order the demon destroyed, and I-will-be-obeyed! Then I’ll attend to that insolent Alban bastard.” His voice dropped to a slavering whisper thick with anticipated atrocities. “Have it done. No. You’re my son. You do it. Now!”

Blood trickled from Crisen’s slack-lipped mouth and dripped unheeded from his chin as he gaped in shock and hate and horror at the slavering, screeching thing which was his father. Geruath had played the madman’s part so well and for so long that role and reason and reality had jumbled past the point where they were separate. Crisen reached the decision he had toyed with for far too long, and left the room without another word.

*

The lord’s-men were long gone, and with their departure a great stillness filled the empty courtyard below the citadel of Seghar. It remained unbroken until at last Marek moved to follow the vanished soldiers.

“Where are you going?” Aldric Talvalin’s voice was very quiet, barely carrying to the demon-queller’s ears, but something about its tone stopped Marek in his tracks.

“Out of here,” he said without turning round.

“Away from here, but not out of it. Not until you’ve told me what’s going on. You were never in the Jevaiden just because of a rumoured werewolf, were you?” Marek turned his head a little, just enough to see Aldric’s face out of the corner of one eye.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not in this place.”

“Yes, in this place. Because men were killed in this place. Men who might still be alive if you weren’t so evasive. Did you sacrifice their lives to make a point? Or were you curious to see what the demon could do?”

“No!” Outraged by such a suggestion, the Cernuan swung around to face his accuser. He might have expected to see anger and maybe a trace of contempt. Instead he saw regret.

“So you say. I hope it’s the truth.”

“It is the truth.” Aldric stared at him, and Marek had the uneasy feeling he was being weighed in the balance. Weighed against what, he didn’t dare ask.

“You wanted inside Sedna’s library, didn’t you? Where is it?”

“I told you, they refused to let me see it! The place is locked and guarded—”

“Lead the way.”

“We won’t get in!” Aldric glanced at him and smiled, a twitch of muscles that drew his lips taut for an instant.

“Marek Endain, you’re a wise, wise man, but you’ve still got much to learn about me. Walk on. You can tell me all about demons as you go.”

“But what about the Overlord?”

“What about the Overlord?” Aldric repeated in a flat voice. Marek looked, and listened, and shrugged expressively. What indeed?

“I know – augmented by guesswork – what happened here,” he said, then flushed as Aldric clapped his hands together in soft, ironic applause. “If you’re going to mock me…” the Cernuan started to say, then shrugged. “Why bother? You… You’re what ar Korentin told me to expect. And you’re not a religious man.” Though it wasn’t a question, it needed a reply.

“I respect the Father of Fires and the Light of Heaven, of course,” Aldric said cautiously. “But I don’t think you could call me holy.”

“I wouldn’t. Not for a minute. But your education is second to none.”

Aldric grimaced at the back-handed compliment, for it was a part of that education which had sent him here. Rynert had said it plainly enough: “You are a wizard’s fosterling, my lord, and his over-apt pupil. You have few compunctions about using the Art Magic. You must prove you are bound by the Honour-Codes if you are to be trusted. The task I set you now will make plain if you are worthy of the title ilauem-arluth Talvalin…”

Task. A small, neat word for what the king required. Murder was more accurate. Murder in cold blood. He had killed before, but never like that, and Aldric doubted he could do it even to Crisen Geruath.

“I’m not an executioner…” he muttered, repeating the old litany, then realised Marek was staring at him.

“I thought,” said the demon-queller with over-heavy dignity, “you wanted me to tell you what I know of demons?”

“I do.”

“Then grant me the courtesy of listening.”

“I’ve been listening all along.” Aldric wasn’t in the mood for an argument. “And you mentioned my education.”

“Yes, I did,” said Marek, slightly appeased. His voice dropped to a whisper, even though Aldric was the only one listening, to keep the things he said from being overheard. “If you heeded what Gemmel taught you, then you should already know how the gods of one religion become the demons of the next. It’s their first step from faith through myth into oblivion. Once men ceased worshipping them, the old gods that are not our Gods—” Aldric jerked his head round at that, unsettled at dead Evthan’s words repeated by someone who had never heard them, “—were cast down, and their shrines destroyed. It’s far easier to attract the notice of a demon than a god. One hears constant prayer, the other must be grateful for any small attention that staves off descent into the forgotten dark. But they have no love for the men whose ancestors put them aside in favour of another. If even ordinary mortals brood over a rejection, how much more—”

“Are you making game of me?” The sudden rasp in Aldric’s voice was like nothing Marek had ever encountered before. It wasn’t provoked by memories of the Jouvaine girl Gueynor, for what had happened then had just turned him harsh and irritable. Now he sounded deadly. Almost too late, Marek recalled the young man’s first lover Tehal Kyrin of Valhol, who had left him in circumstances never explained. Gemmel Errekren and Dewan ar Korentin had warned him to avoid that topic at all costs, yet when Marek mentioned her once by accident it earned him just a warning glare. Now for the sake of effect he had done so on purpose, and from the look on Aldric’s face he wouldn’t get away unscathed a third time.

“The page you found,” Marek said hurriedly, “was a warning—”

“As is this. Never play with my past again. Ever.” Aldric had one hand on his longsword’s hilt, but even now it wasn’t a threat, more a reaching-out for something familiar, something – if the word applied to a taiken – comforting. Then he let out a long sigh of breath and his anger went with it. “So what did the page warn against?”

There was another moment’s hesitation while Marek set his jumbled thoughts in order. He had thought he knew Aldric by now, though the young eijo was still full of disturbing surprises, and thought too that such knowledge might make his companion easier to understand and less dangerous. It worried him to discover just how wrong he had been.

“It’s a chant, a song without music, which has been part of demon-lore for centuries. Issaqua,” Marek blessed himself, “was one of the discarded gods. Joybringer, Summerlight, was a bright being of flowers and growing things…”

“Flowers?” echoed Aldric, and though there was only cool dryness in the air of the corridor, a faint thread of rose-scented perfume seemed to touch his face with the gossamer but flinch-provoking contact of a cobweb.

“Now it has degenerated to Issaqua the Bale Flower, Dweller in Shadow, He who sings the Song of Desolation. There are many formal epithets for him. Or it.” Marek thought a moment and amended his pronunciation slightly. “I mean Him, or It. Deity or demon, such things deserve respect if only for safety’s sake.”

“The Song of Desolation?” I know that I am lost, whispered a voice in Aldric’s mind. “Then it was Issaqua who tore apart the soldier…?”

“No. Understand me about this, and you should do so more readily than any other man in this citadel. Issaqua is a demon lord. It won’t answer a direct summons any more than a clan-lord would. The entity which did the killing is an intermediary, a herald, one with power to pass beyond the Void. It bears messages of reverence and worship. It bears invitations to the Ancient Ones. And it bears sacrifices. Six men went down that tunnel, one came out alive, and yet you found just one corpse! Five soldiers died to prove that accepting this invitation is worthwhile.”

“They were bait?”

“They were appetisers.” Marek’s voice was bleak. “A foretaste of the banquet.” Aldric’s mind veered in revulsion from the images conjured by those words.

“What is this herald?” he demanded. “What does it look like?”

“I don’t know. But get me inside Sedna’s library and I might—”

“Quiet!” Between one step and the next Aldric snapped to a halt, his head tilting backwards and his eyes narrowed with concentration. Marek knew a listening posture when he saw it and mouthed What can you hear? with enough clarity for Aldric to read each word as it was shaped.

Then Marek no longer needed an answer, for he heard it too.

The sound was almost inaudible. There was a high, sweet purity in the upper register and a rolling bass sonority in the lower, but both sounds were almost beyond the limits of human hearing. Yet they harmonised, as the howling of wolves will harmonise in still winter dusk across a field of virgin snow, and it was that choral harmony which sent a tingling shudder through every fibre of Aldric’s body. Not fear, not cold, but exaltation that was almost sexual in its intensity. The sensation faded as the note which had brought it into being died away, dwindling to a caressing vibrato and then to a forlorn and yearning silence.

Aldric drew in a tremulous breath and wondered if that was how Evthan had felt when, transformed to a wolf, he flung back his head and wailed at the silver full-moon sky. He turned to see if Marek felt as he did. The demon-queller looked as if he felt sick. That look washed Aldric’s reeling euphoria clear away on a rip-tide of ice-water, and there was no real need for either man to speak. It was Marek who did.

“Issaqua sings the song of desolation…” he quoted.

“And fills the world with Darkness…” Aldric finished. “Where’s the library?”

Marek was already running.

*

There was one sentry on guard outside the door, armed with the inevitable gisarm, and he stiffened apprehensively when the two hlensyarlen approached him along the gallery. Their smiles did nothing to reassure him, for both men were breathing hard as if they had stopped a headlong dash just out of his sight and the smiles clashed with ill-disguised concern on both their faces. In any case he wasn’t disposed to be friendly towards anyone right now. The strange atmosphere inside Seghar citadel was making his head ache, his relief hadn’t arrived to take over, and he was hungry, so there was little courtesy in the way he brought the polearm round and down, and even less in his bark of challenge.

“What do you want?”

“We want into that room!” Aldric snapped. He used Drusalan, but if he had hoped an officious voice and commanding attitude would do the trick, he was disappointed. The gisarm shifted from a posture of vague warning to levelled at his chest.

“That’s forbidden. By the Overlord’s command!”

“But it’s by the Overlord’s command that we go inside,” Marek protested, and the sentry’s attention shifted to him. “He wants me to examine several books. Lord Crisen himself gave me confirmation for the order.”

“Show me.” Now the gisarm wasn’t pointing straight at anyone but wavering a little, as its owner tried to make up his mind between acceptance of new orders and unquestioning obedience to old ones.

“I think you have it,” said Aldric to Marek, and as the man’s eyes shifted to see what the Cernuan’s reply might be he took one step forward and another sideways. Instantly the gisarm’s blade snapped towards him again. “Haven’t you?”

“I thought you had it.” Marek copied the two steps. Now they were that much closer to the sentry while widening the field of view he had to cover. “Wait, though.” He thrust his right hand inside his robe, reaching for a document or perhaps a hidden dagger, and the gisarm jerked round to counter the potential threat. “No, not here.” Marek’s hand withdrew, empty, with fingers spread. “Give it to him.”

As the gisarm slashed back, far too late, Aldric’s armoured left forearm blocked the haft below the blade. His right hand moved too, a sweep across the sentry’s midriff that would have been insignificant – if the hand hadn’t held a knife. The man dropped his gisarm and doubled over, but was slammed upright again then back against the wall with the knife-blade gleaming in front of his eyes.

“Not Lord Crisen’s confirmation,” said Aldric, “just mine, but effective all the same. Now you have a choice.” The knife dropped again, back into the long clean cut which had laid the man’s crest-coat open from one hip to the other without even breaking the skin beneath. Yet. “You open the door, or I open your belly.” The man cringed back as far as the wall would allow. The blade followed, pressed harder and drew blood for the first time. “Have you ever wondered what your own liver looks like?”

It might have been no more than a bluff, but it was convincing. With a hand that trembled the sentry pulled a heavy, complicated key from the pouch at his belt.

“Wise man,” said Marek, with an uncertain sidelong glance at his companion. Aldric probably wouldn’t have carried out such a brutal threat, but the demon-queller was no longer willing to stake his life on it. Or anyone else’s. The key fitted and turned in silence, and the door swung back to reveal the darkness of the unlit room beyond. As Marek stepped inside there was a meaty thud behind him, and he whirled around with horror on his face.

The soldier was sliding down the wall towards the floor, but there was no blood either on the floor, his clothes or the knife. Instead the only sign of damage was a livid bruise beneath one ear, where the edge of a plated gauntlet had chopped him senseless. Aldric dragged the loose-limbed body past Marek and heeled the door shut behind them.

“You said you wanted inside Sedna’s library,” he said. “So here you are. Now do what you have to do and let’s get out again. What we’ve just done will need elaborate excuses, and right now I can’t think of any.”

*

“Do you really want to see him again?” asked Jervan. “It will only bring more grief.”

“I told you, Commander, it was my fault,” Gueynor insisted yet again. “I was in the wrong and gave him no chance to hear my explanation. I’ve been a peasant these ten years past, and when I played the high-born lady I tried too hard!”

The two sat on opposite sides of a table in the Garrison Commander’s quarters. Jervan had insisted on it after Kourgath’s storm-enhanced departure from the summer-house in the ruined gardens. He had felt a pang of jealousy at the way Gueynor had stared after the young mercenary, then reminded himself severely of his own wife and the daughters who were both no older than this Jouvaine girl. His interest was material and political, not physical. There was too much else to lose for that.

“It doesn’t matter if you stay on friendly terms with this hlensyarl. What he intends to do won’t be because you want it, but because he wants it. All you need is to be close enough to take the first advantage.”

“Like a buzzard waiting for something to die.”

“If you like.” Jervan wasn’t ruffled by the comparison. “Eager or not, impatient or not, everyone expecting an inheritance fits that description. And you should be very eager, lady. Crisen Geruath owes you many lives.”

“Not me. My uncle. And through him, the Alban.” She raised the blonde head from which Jervan had persuaded her to wash the dye. “I want to leave Seghar, Commander. I want to go home again. I don’t want to be a lady any more.”

“No!” Jervan’s hand thumped the table-top and he half-rose from his chair, then produced an apologetic smile and subsided again. Softly, you fool… “I mean, why not wait a while and see what happens?”

“Are you afraid of losing the privileges you haven’t yet received, Kortagor?” There was no scorn in Gueynor’s voice, none of the mockery justified by his own eagerness. Just regret. “If that’s so, then I’m sorry.” She seemed to mean it, but right now sincerity had no value for Jervan.

“Damn your sorrow. You, my lady,” the title was a sneer now, “are my means of gaining respect for myself, for my position here, for my family. And I won’t stand aside and watch while your… Your finer feelings rob me of it.” Jervan paused, pushing the heel of one hand into an eye-socket as if that pressure would relieve the headache which had filled his skull with pain for the past ten minutes. He could feel the blood pounding in his temples, and the faint high noise of the headache ringing deep inside like the cry of innumerable bats.

“Understand this. I won’t harm you, but I won’t let you go. Not until matters are settled to my satisfaction.” As he spoke Jervan backed from the table to the door, taking its key from his tunic pocket. There was only one window to this room, the outermost of his tower apartments, and it opened on an eighty-five-foot drop to the fortress courtyard.

“Don’t try to get out. You’ll be quite comfortable, I assure you…”

Jervan stepped out and snatched the door shut behind him as if he feared the slender girl might leap at his throat as her uncle Evthan would have done. As he twisted the key and shot the deadbolt across she was shouting something, but the sense was muffled by two thick layers of oak planks set cross-grained to frustrate assault by axe. Otherwise her words might have caused him some concern.

“When he hears about this, Aldric Talvalin will kill you…!”

*

Killing was very far from Aldric’s mind as he knelt motionless on the balcony outside his room and watched the eroding disc of the moon through half-closed eyes. The notes of a Jouvaine melody drifted through the darkness, played with passable skill on a bowed fola. Music was the last thing he had expected in this grim, ominous fortress, and the sound could have come from another country, or another world. Its shivering, protracted chords helped him think of other things, or even not to think at all.

His battle armour was laid out before him and a thousand tiny moons reflected from the surfaces of helm and war-mask, from mailed and plated sleeves and from the scales of his lamellar cuirass. Except for the Talvalin blue-and-white of silken lacing cords, everything was a hard and brilliant black which gave it a faint air of menace even in repose. With the scabbarded length of Isileth Widowmaker resting on his thighs so did Aldric. He could still hear the demon-queller’s voice echoing in his memory, and it made the sword even more of a reassurance than usual.

*

“Whatever fool performed this summoning is lucky to be alive!” Marek had snarled the words as he pointed to a chalk-drawn circle on the library floor. There were things within its perimeter he didn’t intend to touch, but he approached and knelt and studied them with an air of distrust Aldric could read as clearly as any amount of swearing. There was a broken flint blade, new-made or a survivor from ancient days, there was a blotch of dried brown blood, and there was a book. “If they are alive,” the Cernuan corrected. “This was inadequate, hasty preparation, and then to make a blood-offering in the old way with stone, and,” he glowered at the book, “this foul thing…”

He opened his cymar robe at the neck and pulled out a medallion on a fine chain. It glittered as it spun back and forth level with his heart. Marek gripped the little metal disc between the finger and thumb of his right hand, then swept his left arm down and across between himself and the book.

“I bind you, I secure you, I restrain you,” he recited. “I wrap you close with chains of power, I pen you in with bars of force. Harken and obey.”

“You’re giving orders to a book?” Aldric sounded incredulous, but he was too wise and too experienced for instant disbelief. He stalked towards the kneeling Cernuan, placing his feet with care in the uncertain light of the solitary lamp which was all Marek had risked lighting. The demon-queller glanced up at him.

“Your foster-father would do as I have done,” he said, reaching out to lift the heavy volume. “The stories claim this grimoire can choose what’s conjured through it. And I’m inclined to believe anything I read about Enciervanul Doamnisoar. Until I learn otherwise, belief and the caution it creates is safer.”

“Avert!” Aldric said and matched gesture to word. He knew the book’s name, as Marek obviously suspected, and had heard it spoken in another time, in another place, by another voice. Gemmel-altrou Errekren had mentioned this vile text just once, and had blessed himself as ordinary men did when he pronounced its title. On the Summoning of Demons was evil held captive, malice netted by written words and a wrapper of human leather.

“No man in his right mind would use this foulness simply to commit a murder, and not even a madman would overlook Dismissal. But the man who made this pattern has done both. He knew what it was he did, but not whose will he did.” Marek stood up and looked around in case he had missed any vital detail. “Issaqua’s influence pervades this fortress: cruelty, hatred, fear and madness. Even you drew a blade on me. It’s the Bale Flower’s work: to make a time that profits wolves and ravens, when friend turns on friend and the father hates his son.”

A time for wolves…? Did Evthan kill his wife and daughter after all? Aldric’s mind flinched from the thought. And when King Rynert sent me into this potential slaughterhouse to do more killing, how much did he know?

“This place is the focus of the conjuration.” Marek took in the chalked, bloodied floor with a single weary sweep of his arm. “It drew down the Warden of Gateways and permitted It to enter. And without Dismissal, the Warden was free to call upon its own Master, Issaqua. What began here could fill the world with Darkness. And only we can stop it.”

It was what Aldric had been expecting, with a kind of horrid, inevitable anticipation. He didn’t protest, or make excuses about his other duties. All that was past.

“The Warden of Gateways?” he wondered aloud in a voice which to his own surprise was free of tremor.

“Ythek’ter auythyu an-shri,” Marek said. “The Devourer in the Dark.”

*

Ythek Shri…

Five days ago, he would have laughed. The Devourer was a childhood bogy, a harmless horror that lurked in the shadows cast by bedroom furniture or hid behind sleep-heavy eyelids. It was a dream. A nightmare. But too many nightmares had become reality for Aldric Talvalin. He no longer laughed. Perhaps that too was a form of madness: to know that one’s most secret terrors stalked to and fro beyond the light as they waited for nightfall.

The melancholy whining of the fola faded into a patter of applause and then silence. Lights and shadows shifted in the distant room where it had played. And much closer, in his own room, something moved.

Behind him. In the dark…

“Is the demon-queller with you?” asked Crisen Geruath. It was several seconds before Aldric’s heart slid back from his throat and down to his chest where it belonged, and several more before he trusted himself to speak.

“He is not.” Even though his brain was jangling with alarm both from the fright he had received and from an ominous sense of warning, the reply was calm, controlled, as remote as if the mind behind the voice was far away. Only a slight movement of one hand which loosened Widowmaker in her scabbard betrayed awareness of anything at all. Crisen ignored the movement. Instead he sat down on the balcony and tried again.

“Will he come here later?”

“I doubt it.” As he spoke Aldric’s hooded eyes opened, staring at the Overlord’s son. Their pupils had expanded in the dim light of moon and stars until only outlines of greenish iris remained around a dark, infinite depth, and they regarded Crisen with a predatory consideration which would have made anyone nervous, even the innocent. “What do you want?” The Alban’s tone was flat and disinterested, and when no answer was forthcoming, he yawned with the luxurious, studied insolence of a cat. “Then good night, my lord.” His eyelids drooped once more, declaring the brief conversation over. It was not.

“Would you kill a man?” asked Crisen. Aldric’s sword-hand flexed, but he kept his voice controlled.

“Who? And why?”

“A-a man whose death would benefit—”

“I need a name and a reason, my Lord Crisen Geruath Segharlin.” Although Aldric spoke the name and title with deceptive gentleness Crisen had grown sensitive to intonation and caught his breath at what lay beneath like the deadly undertow in a quiet river. He glanced towards the door as if seized by second thoughts, then his own words tumbled over one another in their breathless haste to escape his mouth.

“I want you to kill my father. There’s a name. As for a reason, it’s because he hates me. And I hate him. I want him dead before he does the same to me!”

A time for wolves… said Aldric’s memory. He set Widowmaker aside and got to his feet, walking indoors with no sound but the faint creak of his arming-leathers. “There’s the door, my lord.” The leathers creaked again as he pointed. “Leave.”

“What?”

“Get out. Now.”

“But you’re eijo!” Crisen protested. “I saw the way you looked at him. You want to kill—”

“I don’t. I won’t. I may be eijo, but I’m no murderer.” Aldric hesitated, knowing the irrevocable weight of what he was about to say. “I’m no man’s hired assassin.”

And with those words he knew once and for all that everything had been in vain. All the striving and suffering, the blood and fire and pain, all the deaths that could be made worthwhile by one more, and this one so well-deserved. All of them wasted. Aldric could see the pulse of life in Crisen’s neck, the fragility of eyes and temples, the rise and fall of an unarmoured chest.

Only reach out, ilauem-arluth Talvalin. Reach out with steel or just your bare hands. Reach out, and snuff out, and you are clan-lord without doubt.

The melodious enticement of the Song of Desolation whispered in his ears, promising, cajoling, reminding him of other times and other sensations. The brief jarring resistance as steel clove flesh. The hard crisp noise as bone parted beneath a perfect stroke. The smell of blood as it spilled from someone else’s veins. Then the moment afterwards with limbs whole and unhurt, and the first breath of renewed life…

Aldric clenched his hands into fists and clenched his jaw until the muscles ached, making the creak and grind of his own teeth drown out the Song for long enough to step back from that brink. The eijo – for he was truly eijo now, landless, lordless, exiled by his own choice – bowed his head, not to Crisen standing by the door but to someone only he could see.

“Forgive me, father,” he said. “Once again I break my Word. But I can’t do this.”

Crisen made no excuses, nor attempted any of the suicidal things which might have tried to cover his indiscretion. Though the Alban’s longsword lay out on the balcony, there was still the ever-present dirk pushed through his belt. But with one hand already on the latch, he looked back in desperation with fear scored into his face.

“Please… Please don’t tell my father—”

The door opened.

“Don’t tell me what?” asked Lord Geruath. Aldric stared at him for a second then glanced at Crisen.

“Ask your son,” he said. “You should find the answer interesting.” Geruath waved away the guards who would have followed him into the room, then shut and locked the door. He kept the key in his left hand.

“Well, Crisen? Interest me.” His son wiped dry lips with the back of one hand and retreated two steps, curd-pale with terror.

“It isn’t important. Father, I promise…”

“I will judge its importance. I always do. So tell me. Tell me at once!”

Such contempt had been honed to a fine edge over many years. Geruath clearly despised his son because of what he had become, but more probably because he had never measured up to some unattainable ideal. There might have been beatings, for small offences or no reason at all, but most of the punishments would have been less painful yet more protracted. Welts on flesh were easier to salve and quicker to heal than those laid on the spirit. Despite himself Aldric felt a small touch of pity, for Crisen would have spent his childhood and youth in a constant miasma of fear, waiting for the next time he did something wrong and never knowing what it was. And now he was that frantic child again.

“I asked. I wanted. He was to. To do a task. For me. Nothing more. Nothing. I swear it!”

“What task?” Geruath moved forward, hunch-shouldered, violence brooding in him like the threat of thunder in still air. “What task, my son? Answer me. Or must I—”

“No! I-I mean I can’t. Please…”

“Tell me, Crisen. What have you done this time?”

Aldric could barely catch Lord Geruath’s words through the eerie moaning of the Song, and a heavy scent of roses swamped his senses with a reeling perfume richer than the fumes of wine, sweet and sickly as no natural flower should be. Dear Light of Heaven, can they not hear, can they not smell? His gaze flicked from son to father and back to son, knowing something frightful was about to happen. He backed away—

And that slight movement registered on Crisen’s bulging, panic-stricken eyes. He turned, arms flung wide as if in supplication, and one hand touched the tsepan-hilt at Aldric’s waist. The dirk fitted snugly in its sheath and always, always needed a slight twist to free it. Except for this time of all times as Crisen’s fingers closed around its grip and the blade came out smooth and swift…

Lord Geruath’s expression changed from rage to outrage the instant steel gleamed in his son’s hand. He spoke, but the words were lost in a choked gargling as the dirk jabbed underneath his chin to open veins and windpipe. It wrenched free, and a long spurt of vivid crimson followed in its wake.

Geruath’s head lolled forward, his mouth opened and a wide ribbon of blood flowed over its lower lip like a bright red beard. He might have meant to ask a question, but it turned into a surprised cough that misted the air with a fine spray of scarlet and freckled Aldric’s face with minute warm droplets.

Then Crisen stabbed him again. In the belly, under the ribs. Stabbed him a dozen times in half as many seconds. And ripped the blade out sideways after every one.

There was no smell of roses now.

The Overlord staggered, then collapsed, and Aldric felt the dead-weight’s sodden heat as his arms supported it a moment before it slithered to the floor in a tangle of slack limbs and open torso. The fingers of one hand clawed at the floor, nails scratching louder than anyone could have believed possible, then trembled once and didn’t move again. Aldric knew there was blood all over him: on his hands, on his face, smeared across the black of his leathers. And Crisen was watching intently with eyes that were far too bright.

Horror froze him to the spot for a second too long. Not horror at the violence, for he had seen and done much worse, but because a father had been butchered by the hand of his own son. That crime above all others was anathema to Albans. It was unthinkable, and beyond belief that he had witnessed it yet done nothing. Crisen saw the expressions chase each other across a face too stunned to hide them, and drew a long breath.

“It seems,” he said, with only the faintest quiver in his voice, “that the task I required of you is done.” The tsepan touched his left palm and sliced across it in a dramatically bloody superficial cut, then he clutched its blade in sticky fingers for all the world as if he had just snatched it away at great risk to himself. Realisation flared within Aldric’s shocked and sickened eyes. “So I no longer need you.” Crisen laughed softly, then screamed “Guards!” until the door burst in.

The soldiers outside had been expecting trouble since Lord Geruath first summoned them, and acted on what they saw without demanding explanations or excuses. The haft of a gisarm slammed into Aldric’s stomach, punching the air from his lungs and folding him over the impact. Another swept his legs from under him so he fell with a wet slap into the glistening, warm morass which had once been Geruath the Overlord.

Despite everything he didn’t resist. It would only compound his apparent guilt. Seghar’s magistrate would surely know an eijo would need only that single mortal thrust to the throat, and anyone could tell him that no Alban with a shred of decency would use his tsepan as a murder weapon. Aldric coughed, wincing at the pain it drove through his bruised stomach muscles, and raised a head spattered with blood and the foul residue of opened guts. Then a new, cold fear churned inside him as he saw the soldiers salute and bow. They were giving respect to their new Overlord.

Who was also the magistrate…

Crisen Geruath, Overlord of Seghar, Executor of High and Common Justice, reached out his injured hand with a lordly air while a retainer bandaged it. Over the servant’s shoulder he smiled down at where Aldric crouched in the mire of a dead man’s bowels. All who saw that smile would think it a display of courage in the face of pain and grief.

All but Aldric, and who would listen to anything he said?

As they marched him out, arms wrenched high between his shoulder-blades by makeshift bonds, Crisen stopped the escort and waved them to one side. Aldric stared dispassionately, guessing that this new lord shared the old one’s penchant for a parting shot. He was right. Although Crisen spoke too softly for anyone else to overhear, he leaned so intimately close that Aldric swayed back in disgust.

“When I see an opportunity,” the Jouvaine murmured, with self-satisfaction lacing every word, “I take it. With both hands.”

CHAPTER TEN

“I know the man, and what you tell me is hard to believe.”

Marek’s opinion was a dangerous one, but it needed said, aloud and before witnesses, even such unlikely ones as the armoured retainers standing to either side of the Overlord’s great carved chair. Marek noted the metal being worn where crested coats had been enough before tonight, and wondered if the men had been ordered to wear it or decided by themselves.

Crisen Geruath gazed at the demon-queller and cleared his throat, serene and confident in his own power.

“I have a title now, hlensyarl,” he said.

“My Lord,” Marek responded, after a pause long enough to make his disapproval plain.

“Hard to believe or not, Marek Endain,” Crisen continued in the same placid voice, “it’s true. Your Alban friend slew my poor father with that black knife of his.”

If the new Overlord had been more observant, he would have seen real suspicion appear on Marek’s bearded features. There had been uncomfortable close encounters with blades the eijo carried, but never that one. As the demon-queller said, he knew Aldric well enough, and though Cernuans had no love for the Horse Lords, a man so scrupulous about honour wouldn’t dishonour his tsepan. There was only one proper use for the black dirk: killing its owner either to end the agony of a mortal wound or in tsepanak’ulleth, the ritual of formal suicide. It was never, ever used for simple murder. Marek knew for certain what he had only suspected before: Crisen Geruath was lying.

“My lord,” he asked, respectfully for once, “may I see Kourgath? Before this murder he was my friend…”

Crisen nodded and waved dismissal both to Marek and two more soldiers standing with ostentatious nonchalance beside the door. The demon-queller glanced at them and kept a frown from his face with difficulty, for he would have much preferred to forego the ‘courtesy’ of an escort. It was becoming clear that in Seghar a guard could also be an executioner. As he left the audience chamber with the soldiers falling into step behind him, he heard the Overlord’s voice and wondered why it seemed so irritable.

“Bring Kortagor Jervan in here at once…!”

*

The two soldiers didn’t speak at all until they reached a heavily barred door, when after a few seconds fumbling with locks and obviously mismatched keys, one of them asked for Marek’s help. The Cernuan came close to outright laughter at such studied clumsiness, but contained himself and pretended ignorance until the second trooper made his move.

It took the unsubtle form of a gisarm lunging at his chest.

Marek twisted from the weapon’s path, brushed its point aside with one arm and slapped the other open hand against the soldier’s chest. It was a heavy blow, yet not heavy enough to explain why the armoured man went flying down the corridor with the print of that hand driven deep into the metal of his breastplate.

The sonorous thrumming in the air should have warned the second guard that he had more to deal with than just the fat man he was to kill, but even without magic it was far too late. He feinted with the gisarm-blade, then whirled its spiked shaft up from ground level at Marek’s head. It was a crafty move, but not crafty enough, and he didn’t expect the demon-queller to duck so fast. Or what happened next.

In his youth Marek Endain had trained with both the straight spear and the curved, and required no aid from sorcery to read the shifts of balance, hands and eyes that signalled what was coming. As the stroke wasted its force an inch above his head Marek’s own fist stabbed out, and one extended finger touched the soldier’s midriff with a sharp, high crack. This time, with all his inner energies concentrated in that single finger, it folded his opponent like a broken twig and hurled him upwards high enough to smash with stunning force against the ceiling. When the metallic clatter of the man’s descent faded, Marek listened for a moment but could hear no other sentries.

“So two soldiers are enough to deal with a fat old demon-queller, eh? I’m insulted.” Marek had a sore finger to show for it, but wasn’t even out of breath. He considered the already-blackening fingernail and guessed he would likely lose it. Better that than his head. “But why kill me at all?” The Cernuan’s subconscious supplied his answer in a single word.

Ythek.

Crisen Geruath had certain plans afoot and wanted no outside interference. Marek, the self-proclaimed queller of demons, personified such interference and the nasty practicality of the Empire’s logic dictated his removal. Yet even nastier to his educated mind were the implications of what had prompted such a drastic course. He regretted not giving way to his first impulse and put a cleansing fire to work on his grim discoveries in Sedna’s library. They were the books secured in a blued-steel cabinet, locked at first but not for long. Books. Such a simple word to describe them. Accurate, too, until closer inspection revealed what books they were.

That closer inspection, just reading two titles, had set him shaking with revulsion and he pronounced the Charm of Holding with more fervour than he had ever summoned up before, his grip on the medallion at his neck tight enough to dig the thin antique metal into his palm. The books were old, with the mustiness of age about them as pleasing a scent to any scholar as the bouquet of fine wine. Yet there was another subtle odour, born of much more than the passage of years. It was – what had the young Alban said? – the stink of written evil.

Yet these books were so rare, almost irreplaceable. Enciervanul Doamnisoar he had already seen, and not in the Vlechan editions so mutilated, expurgated and corrupted down the years. Corrupted? That thought had made Marek laugh a mirthless laugh, for how could anything totally corrupt be corrupted any farther? Sedna’s copy was a – the – near-legendary Jouvaine translation, and priceless. On the shelf beside it was Hauchttarni, ‘High Mysteries’, and The Grey Book of Sangellan. They and others like them had been destroyed by the ignorant and frightened for centuries, to such effect that in several cases there were no records to confirm they had ever existed. The scholar within him had rebelled against burning such books, but he wasn’t a scholar now, and it was a grimoire like those in Sedna’s secret library which had made him take up the demon-queller’s mantle ten years earlier, when…

Marek closed his mind to that pain-filled memory, then closed and locked the cabinet, unable to destroy its contents but equally unwilling to leave them for untutored hands and eyes. Now, standing before another locked and bolted door, he realised with uncomfortable certainty that he hadn’t done enough. Locks could be unlocked and doors opened.

He half-doubted this was Aldric’s cell at all. It was far more likely he was in a deserted part of the citadel where murder would go unnoticed. But with his mind almost made up, Marek didn’t take time to wonder what might be behind the door. Still lost in his own thoughts he reached out and slid back a bolt, deciding that he might as well – another bolt – make sure that there was nothing to see inside. Certainly – his fingers closed around the handle – there was nothing to hear. The heavy door swung back. Beyond lay darkness.

That was when Marek realised the depths of his own folly, and in the instant of realisation something unseen blurred past his head to strike the wall behind him like a hatchet. He could hear the rending of a fine-grained pinewood panel as its fibres split from top to bottom.

Beyond the gaping doorway, darkness moved…

*

“Enough of this.” Crisen’s voice was lazy and laced with malice. “I already know where she is, the important word was what. Quite a different question and requiring quite a different answer. So why the deviation, Kortagor Jervan?”

Jervan looked up from his uncomfortable, unaccustomed kneeling position – garrison commanders didn’t kneel, they stood up straight like soldiers – and tried to read his new Overlord’s expression. It didn’t work.

“Come now, you took her to your room, so you must have found her interesting. In one way or another.” By the look and sound of things, Crisen was enjoying himself. “And you the most happily married man in the garrison. So-called, and self-styled.” He leaned closer with a conspiratorial smile. “Between the two of us, man to man – how was she?” Jervan reddened and the Overlord’s smile stretched wider. “Oh, I see. She was a virgin. Is she still?” The eagerness with which he asked that final question came from much more than simple prurience, but it was a subtlety lost on Jervan’s burning ears.

“Dammit, I don’t know!” the Kortagor snapped, then remembered who he was addressing and added a hasty “My lord,” before trying to vindicate himself further. “I swear I didn’t touch her. She’s young enough to be my daughter!”

“What difference does that make?” Crisen’s unfeigned astonishment said more about him than Jervan wanted to know. The Overlord steepled his fingers and studied their interlaced tips before resting his chin on them, laughing. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. Then he looked beyond Jervan to where there was more movement at the back of the hall. “Well?”

“It was as you suspected, lord. The commander’s door was locked.”

“Then what?”

“We broke it open, lord.” There was a pause, more noise, and Gueynor’s voice raised in frightened outrage that made Jervan’s stomach turn over. “We found the woman inside.”

“Why lock the door, Commander?” The voice was a caressing murmur, but Crisen was the last Overlord’s son and if he was anything like his father, Jervan knew how easily gentleness could become rage. Rather than say something wrong he said nothing at all, and even managed to ignore what was going on behind him. “Oh, come now.” Crisen settled back in his high-backed chair, at ease and in control. “I asked you a question, so you could at least try to tell me entertaining lies. Were you hoping to keep this pretty morsel for yourself? That would be a credible human failing. Or did you hide her because she and Kourgath conspired together in my poor father’s death?”

“Then he killed the old swine after all?” shouted Gueynor. “It’s a shame that piglets run so fast – Ow!” The sharp sound of a blow punctuated her words and this time Jervan did turn, half rising to his feet.

“Let her alone, damn you!” His parade-ground bellow shattered the ugly tension in the hall for a moment, and the two retainers standing nearest Gueynor fell back by reflex alone. The red mark of a hand glowed on her pale face.

“Yes, let her alone,” said Crisen. “Until I tell you otherwise. Step forward, girl, and let me see what provoked such uproar.”

Gueynor walked with stiff-backed dignity for half a dozen paces, aware of the blatant lechery in the soldiers’ eyes because she and they knew both what Crisen’s ‘until’ meant. But her control faltered when she came close enough to see the strange expression on his face, then broke completely as she ran to Jervan’s arms.

“How touching! But Commander, I don’t recall permitting you to rise. Get down on your knees in the dust where you belong!”

Jervan tightened his embrace on Gueynor, reassuring her as he would one of his own children, before swinging slowly around to face Crisen. There was pride on his face now, the haughtiness of a man who had served in the Imperial military machine for twenty years.

“No,” he said. “What you intend to do, you’ll do whether I obey or not. So I defy you.”

“A pretty speech.” Only Gueynor and Jervan were close enough to see the sarcasm was a veneer. Crisen might seem confident, but only when that confidence remained unchallenged. It was his streak of cruelty that ran much deeper. “And of course you’re right. I’ve already decided what to do, not so much with you as with the lady. Aren’t you even slightly curious about that?”

Gueynor’s eyes widened, and she pressed closer to Jervan as if he could protect her. As if… Both were unarmed, unprotected, and even the oppressive atmosphere was a weapon in Crisen’s favour. There was more clattering as another retainer came in and marched hurriedly toward the Overlord’s high seat. He carried a book, held like a tray in outstretched arms because of its size, its weight – and because he clearly didn’t want the thing too close.

“My lord,” the man said, “two things were not as you said: the iron bookcase had been locked and the sentry—”

“Never mind that,” Crisen cared about only one thing, and the sentry played no part in it. “Give that to me.” The heavy volume changed hands with relief on one side and an unsavoury display of fondness on the other, for Crisen Geruath hugged the book against his chest as a man might hug a child. Or a bedmate. He stroked its cover, and even that gesture seemed heavy with unpleasantness. “Do you know what this is, Jervan?” The kortagor shook his head. “I didn’t expect you would, though you might have said ‘a book’ or something just as witty. No matter. Thanks to Lord-Commander Voord we have an unexpected guest in Seghar, a guest whose favours I want to cultivate. So I intend to make a gift—”

“No! I won’t let you!”

“How will you stop me? Besides, she should be honoured.” Crisen stared at Gueynor and the tip of his tongue ran once around his lips. “Are you sure she’s a virgin…?”

“I told you,” Jervan forced his voice to stay low, reasonable, convincing, “I don’t know.” Crisen seemed so eager for a positive answer that he racked his brains for convincing negatives, and they were there: good, sound explanations. “I doubt it. She was married. When I questioned her at the Summergate, she said she was a widow. And she’s been keeping company with Kourgath, so…” He finished with a dismissive shrug that should have convinced the Overlord, except he seemed not to care any more.

“A pity,” Crisen muttered, patting the great book now resting across his knees. “But such a petty detail shouldn’t matter.” Gueynor uttered a tiny, piteous whimper without even knowing she had done so, and Crisen favoured her with a wide, benevolent smile. “In every other respect this gift seems most accept—”

That was when Jervan sprang on him.

The sudden assault from a cowed inferior took the Overlord by surprise, and that was what saved his neck from being snapped between the kortagor’s outstretched, clawing hands. Surprise made Crisen jump backwards in his great chair and that small, violent movement was enough to upset its balance. When Jervan’s impact sent it toppling backwards like a felled tree, the fall broke his half-formed grip and spilled both men to the floor in a tangle of limbs. Crisen’s squeals brought lord’s-men running from their places around the hall. One of them seized Gueynor, the rest set about their erstwhile commander with panic-driven boots and gisarm hafts until he was almost unconscious and his left arm had snapped.

Only then did they pick Crisen off the floor and dust him down while he stared fixedly at the kortagor. Long red gouges scored his pallid face where Jervan’s nails had clawed away long ribbons of skin, and his lack of expression was far more frightening than if he had raved as his father would have done.

“Stand him on his feet.”

The Overlord watched Jervan dragged upright by main force, agony hissing through his clenched teeth as they used his shattered arm to lift him from the ground. Crisen seemed to notice neither the commander’s pain nor how his lord’s-men inflicted it to impress their new master. Instead he walked once round the kortagor’s sagging body, studying it with the chilling air of a butcher sizing up a carcass, then glanced straight into Gueynor’s terror-clouded eyes and allowed himself a smile. His hand reached out, cupped her chin as she turned her head away and dragged it back to face him, squeezing until her cheeks were puffy and congested with dark blood.

“The Devourer will enjoy you,” he whispered so softly that only she could hear. “And will reward the giver for the gift. But this…” Crisen released her, half turned and held out his empty right hand. “This is for me. Knife.”

When the chequered wooden hilt of a military dagger slapped into his grasp, he looked at its chisel point and single razor edge then stroked one finger along the blade, gazing at where it sliced skin and meat until the ruby beads of blood welled out. Then he studied Jervan once again. His eyes were unfocused, seeing nothing, or seeing things denied to other men.

“Now hold him,” Crisen took a long shuddering breath halfway to a sigh of pleasure. “Hold him steady…”

*

Aldric looked very different to the elegant figure Marek had last seen, whose appearance and opinions gave the lie to everything he claimed to be. He was still dressed in black, but where beforehand the sober colour had been contrasted and relieved by polished metal, white linen and clean skin, almost everything here was a dingy russet brown that stank. Until he emerged from the darkness of the cell he was one with its shadows, and only a glitter of eyes showed that there was anything beyond the light. When he saw Marek, and the slumped unconscious bodies on the floor, his face literally cracked a smile that sent a fine web of fractures crisscross through the crust of blood masking his features. It was mostly Lord Geruath’s blood, but not all. Crisen’s retainers hadn’t been gentle.

“I didn’t kill him,” he said after a moment’s silence. Aldric hadn’t expected to see any human faces again except the soldiers sent to finish him. Though he hadn’t intended to be slaughtered like a sheep – the metal dish sunk half its diameter in the panelling bore witness to that, its rim sharpened by grinding against the stone cell floor – he had resigned himself to dying. Marek had given back his life.

“I know,” said Marek. “If you had killed Lord Geruath, Heaven and King Rynert both know you’re capable, you wouldn’t have made such a mess. And you wouldn’t have dishonoured your tsepan by using it.”

Aldric acknowledged the words with a slight inclination of his head, then eyed the corridor and the two men sprawling in it. One retainer was lying on his back, with blood around his nostrils and the print of a human hand driven into his armour as if hammered there as a decoration.

“You favour the High Accelerator,” he said, glancing in Marek’s direction. The demon-queller gave him a long, hard stare.

“When this is over,” he said severely, “you and I must have a little talk.”

“When this is over. It isn’t yet, and my gear is here somewhere. I heard them carrying it past, but I don’t know which room they put it in—” a score of bronze-faced doors lined the long corridor, “—and I haven’t time to search them all.”

“No need.” Marek Endain grinned a hard, toothy grin reminiscent of Aldric’s foster-father Gemmel, and gestured with one hand in the air. “Acchai an-tsalaer h’loeth!” he said, then clenched his fist and opened it. There was a shrill whining sound like a monstrous mosquito, so it shot up beyond hearing and Aldric winced as it stung his ears, then jumped as one door burst outward off its hinges and clanged against the floor. Marek nodded towards it. “In there,” he said.

All the equipment was in an untidy heap rather than laid out in orderly fashion as it had been in his room, and Aldric made a swift inspection to confirm nothing was missing. Then he scrambled into his battle armour with a speed born of long practice, checking straps and laces as he drew each one tight, and Marek watched as the young man built himself piece by black steel piece into an image of war. There was a subtle scent which clung to an-moyya-tsalaer, the Alban Great Harness. Usually that odour of metal, oil and leather wasn’t unpleasant, but to the demon-queller’s sensitive nostrils it combined with the eijo’s past reputation and present smell to become the stench of sudden, violent death.

Aldric looped Widowmaker’s crossbelt over his shoulder and made her scabbard secure on the weapon-belt about his waist, then fitted a steel and silver cuff around his armoured wrist and locked the Echainon spellstone into its socket. Marek watched, wondering if he would get an explanation for it, but the look on Aldric’s face warned him against asking questions now. Or maybe ever.

“Aldric,” he said. The name came out louder than he intended and drew a curious glance. “Aldric, when you left the library I… I went back to the cellar. The room where Sedna died.”

“I hadn’t thought you were prone to morbid curiosity.”

“Not curiosity. Necessity. Once I was certain what…”

“Enough ambiguity, Marek. That ended when you found out this thing was the Devourer.”

“When I knew it was Ythek Shri, I knew what I had to find. And I found them.”

“What?” Aldric was getting impatient again.

“Bones. The bones are what anchor the soul to fragile flesh, so the bones of someone slain by unexpected violence—”

“Violence is usually unexpected.”

“From an executioner’s sword, after due process of law? No. We both understand my meaning, Aldric. These have power.” The small pieces of bone which Marek took from his belt-pouch looked insignificant, but he held them with such care, almost reverence, that Aldric moved close enough to have a better look.

“Knucklebones,” he said. “You’ve cleaned them.” He recalled the other human wreckage on the cellar floor, and despite the carapace of armour Marek saw him shudder.

“The knucklebones of Sedna. They might be of use. A dead sorcerer can still have influence against the one who killed them.” Marek looked down at the small, ivory-pale fragments. “Several people in the fortress told me about her, about how pretty she was. As dainty as a doll.”

“But now she’s dust. Bones, and dry dust. Like my father and my mother and my brothers. We’re all dust, Marek, and soon or late we return to it.” Aldric pulled on his mail coif and buckled his helmet on top, but it was only when he locked his war-mask into place that the last vestige of humanity disappeared.

Marek remembered the first words he had spoken to Aldric Talvalin: At least you’re no demon. Now he wasn’t so sure. There were more demons than those in the books of Sedna’s library. A faint sound like a metallic intake of breath reinforced his thought as Isileth Widowmaker glided from her scabbard, and a flicker of reflected lamplight ran along the taiken’s edges.

“We have overdue business with Lord Crisen,” said Aldric.

Marek was sure that ‘we’ hadn’t included him.

*

The most likely place to find any Overlord, even one as unconventional as Crisen Geruath, was the great audience chamber at the heart of the inner citadel. And yet there were none of the guards, none of the retainers, none of the servants such an important hall should have required. There was no movement at all, and the fortress seemed empty from top to bottom.

“What’s the hour?” Aldric spoke quietly, and not because he was trying to pass unnoticed. This place felt like a holy house, with an atmosphere that discouraged loud voices. After a heartbeat’s pause, Marek realised the question wasn’t merely noise for its own sake to break the eerie silence. Aldric had been locked in that lightless cell long enough to confuse him, as if the beating whose marks showed on his face hadn’t caused confusion enough.

“After midnight,” he said. “No, after one in the morning. I think.”

“You think. Well, that explains the lack of people. Even servants have to sleep sometime.” Neither man noticed a shadow moving across the distant corridor junction, or they might have wondered how one so dense could be cast with no light behind it. That shadow was blacker than the darkest darkness, it moved without a sound and by the time Aldric looked around mere seconds later, it was gone.

Marek was already an incautious few steps ahead, and as he turned the next corner he collided with a group of lord’s-men moving so cautiously that he hadn’t heard them. Their caution might have been natural in this part of the fortress, or from fear of what else might be roaming the gloomy corridors; but whatever the reason, there was no room for retreat on either side. For an instant, no one moved.

That instant was enough.

The clatter of impact and outburst of startled swearing brought Aldric round the corner at a run. With surprise on his side the odds mattered far less than they should, and this was a chance to release his pent-up anger at Seghar, its crazed lords and even its soldiers. They were only doing what the Overlord commanded them to do, but too many showed excessive brutal relish in the way they did it. Then he saw what this group were carrying. Four held their usual gisarm cutting-spears, but the fifth had a two-handed sword whose long, wide blade ended in a squared-off tip. Aldric knew what such swords were for, and in this place, at this time, he knew who it was for. There was no more thought of restraint.

Gemmel Errekren had trained his foster-son in taiken-play for four long years, and trained him well, yet when he saw the training put to use it had shocked him. Marek hadn’t heard about that. He knew Aldric Talvalin was a skilled swordsman and had been warned he was dangerous. He had even been threatened by hidden daggers drawn almost too fast to see. But none of it prepared him for what happened next.

Marek had seen horrors enough in his career as demon-queller; they were part of his chosen life. This was not. He remembered Aldric as a young man who appreciated the good things in life, who could make entertaining conversation, who had enough artistic talent to draw a portrait. Cynical, and with good reason, but urbane and self-possessed despite that.

Now something else possessed him, a demon that scythed men like wheat. Marek kept thinking of all he had heard and read about gortaikenin. The hungry swords were things from Alban legend, but a demon-queller was the last person to dismiss their existence because of that. He flattened himself against a wall and almost threw up when a warm spatter of someone else’s blood hit him in the face.

Widowmaker cut right then left in an unbroken sweep of destruction, the Boar’s Strike low to high then the Eagle’s Strike high to low. On one side a torso split from crotch to breastbone and spilled entrails across the floor. On the other side a ribcage came apart like a wicker basket and the sheared lungs it contained exhaled bloody foam.

Neither man had even readied his own weapon.

The taiken flicked out in the Cat’s Strike and this time missed its intended target by inches as the soldier ducked. It did him little good. Instead of taking the point through his throat, he took it through his eye socket instead. Widowmaker wrenched free and whipped sideways to send the next man down with his gullet sliced to the backbone.

That left the last one, with the heading-sword, and he was already swinging it. But such blades were balanced only for the horizontal cut used on a scaffold, with no need for swift recovery into block or ward. Aldric dodged the stroke with an ease that bordered on contempt and sent the execution sword flying down the corridor.

Both the would-be executioner’s hands went with it, still tightly clamped around its hilt.

He was armoured, they were not. They hesitated, he did not. That made all the difference. Hesitation had already cost him far too much, and at some stage in the darkness of his solitary confinement Aldric had decided he would hesitate no more. He would act. Now the consequences of his darkness-born decision flowed across the floor of Seghar citadel and dripped from walls and ceiling. Though they were his enemies and he despised them, Aldric held no deep burning for any of these men, nothing as intense as the destruction wrought on Duergar Vathach. They were like him, both doing what they had to do.

He was killing, and they were dying.

But not all of them. One huddled by the wall, hugging himself with the stumps of bloody arms. Aldric wiped Widowmaker’s blade clean with a rag of unsoiled cloth and stared down at him.

“Where’s your Overlord?” he demanded. Deep in shock, the retainer made no sound. “You still live. That can change. I can change it in ways you won’t like. Where is Lord Crisen Geruath?”

“Aldric! Have you no pity, man?” Though still horrified by what the eijo could do, Marek was unwilling to tolerate this. “Remember what you are, not what you pretend to be!”

“Hark to my conscience.” Aldric straightened, leaving the soldier in painful peace to live or die at his own speed, and if he was shamefaced it was lost within the steel-cast shadows of mask and helmet. “Of course I have pity. But not here. Not now.”

*

The Overlord’s apartments were beyond the audience chamber. Aldric knew that much with no need to carve the information out of anyone. He unlatched one side of the great hall’s double doors, swung it open and peered inside. A few stubborn sparks glowed and crawled in one of the hearths, scenting the air with pine resin, but nothing else moved in the darkness. There was another smell besides burnt wood; it was the same tang of incense which had tainted the air in Sedna’s ruined cellar. And an all too familiar metallic stink of blood.

Sword in hand, Aldric strode towards the dimly outlined door at the far end of the hall, ready to kick it open. Halfway there his feet kicked something else, lumps of something soft, then skidded beneath him on a slick film covering the floor. Under his black armour the hair rose on his forearms and the nape of his neck.

“Marek? Marek – give me a light!” But even as he made the request, and it was a request rather than an order, Aldric knew there was no need. The things scattered across the floor were better without it. All he could recognise was the head with its jutting beard. Everything else was only meat, butchered with more force than skill. The slimy mass had once been Jervan, had once been human, but now it was a mass of chunks and gobbets glued together by congealing blood.

Aldric stared at it and felt his stomach heave, not because of what was just an elaboration of something he had already done four times over, but because of what it implied. Jervan had died like this for a reason, and the only reason he could think of was one involving Gueynor. A concern close to fear uncoiled inside him like a cold black snake, concern he had doubted ever feeling for her again. If Crisen could do this to his loyal garrison commander, then what in hell might he do to her?

What from Hell might he do to her?

Aldric’s boot smashed against the door alongside its lock and he felt timber give beneath the impact. A grey haze of smoke billowed out at him, and he coughed as it stung the back of his throat. The light within came from half a dozen fat black candles, each one taller than himself.

Crisen Geruath knelt on the bare floor of the room with an open book before him, mumbling to himself and tracing the words he spoke with a golden reading-wand. It scraped loudly as it moved back and forth across the roughness of the page’s vellum surface, keeping time with the cadences of his voice. Head bowed forward, intent on what he read, he gave no sign of knowing death stood in the doorway.

Gueynor lay before him, spread-eagled on her back.

Her outstretched limbs were secured at wrists and ankles to four heavy ring-bolts, so recently sunk into the wooden floorboards that their tops still showed bright dents from the hammer which had driven them home. A chalk-drawn pattern writhed around her body, and yet more marked the white silk smock which covered her. Lines of Jervan’s drying blood crisscrossed skin and silk alike, used instead of ink or paint to write the words of consecration on Crisen’s offering. The blood had smeared, the chalk-marks had scuffed, yet Marek could read the wards clearly enough to see their effectiveness was unchanged.

They were, and always had been, useless.

Between Gueynor’s fingers were two bloated black-red roses, their rich fragrance threading through the sweet smokiness of incense and the faint slaughterhouse smell from outside. A third lay between her breasts, its great thorns made more vicious by their contrast with her fragile flesh. The sombre blossom was as brilliant and baleful against pale skin and white silk as heart’s-blood spilled on snow, and it moved with her breathing, petals trembling as she trembled.

As if they too had life.

“Gueynor,” said Aldric, purposefully loud. She had turned away when the door burst open, not wanting to see the form her death would take, not wanting to watch it stalk across the threshold, unable to even to scream around the cloth stuffed into her mouth and tied there. But when she realised his voice wasn’t a trick played by Crisen’s hellborn monstrosity the look she gave him wasn’t fear or even relief, but simple gratitude. A single crystal tear ran down her face, and for Aldric it was as if all the hard words between them were never said.

‘You’re a romantic.’ That was what Kyrin had told him. It was better than most of the other things he had been called and doubtless would be called again. But it didn’t make him kind or careless. Not any more. He took a wary step forward with his attention focused on the Overlord, but Crisen paid no heed. Rings flashed as the man’s hands made elaborate gestures in the bitter air, and their hard, gemmed sparkle reflected in the gleam of Aldric’s eyes.

There were things he could have said about treachery, about tyranny, about blaming the innocent. Or about the dead, so many dead. Youenn, Evthan, Geruath and now Jervan. Light of Heaven, those were only the ones he had met! What about Gueynor’s parents Erwan and Sula, or the thirty devoured by the Beast? Even Sedna, for if Crisen hadn’t arranged her killing personally he had connived at it.

“Crisen of Seghar, your life is forfeit to me and I will…” Aldric began the formal announcement spoken by generations of Alban kailinin as they confronted their enemies for the last time, then stopped with a shrug. Why waste time and breath? Just do it.

Even when Widowmaker’s point reached out to touch the mad lord’s face there was no reaction, for he was mad indeed. Marek, kneeling knife in hand to cut Gueynor free, had no more doubts. Only a madman would sit there with Enciervanul Doamnisoar at his knees and mouth the phrases of a major Summoning in a room bare of protective wards. The demon-queller saw Aldric’s longsword stroke along the Overlord’s jaw, moving for the great vein underneath his ear. It was the right thing to do, but he didn’t want to witness yet another death, especially one so coldly delivered as this.

“Aldric, for the love of—”

Aldric turned slightly and stared without saying a word, but the candlelight reached inside his war-mask and what little it revealed of his expression was enough. Marek shut his mouth at once and kept it shut, even after the taiken slithered into her scabbard.

“For the love of what? Honour? Because of Isileth’s honour I won’t foul her with this man’s blood. Because of my own honour I won’t let him live. He wanted sorcery. He can have it.”

He spoke the words which brought life to the Echainon spellstone in his left hand, and its piercing whine reached into whatever otherworld Lord Crisen’s mind was wandering. The sound dragged him back to a semblance of sanity, and awareness that after so many deaths he too could die. His glazed eyes flickered, then went wide as they focused on the hot blue haze of leashed force dancing like a marsh-light around Aldric’s mailed fist. The Overlord’s slack-lipped mouth hung open and a thread of saliva drooled unnoticed into his lap.

Aldric’s own mouth twisted with distaste and he wished Rynert the King was here to see this. He would gain nothing by obliterating such vermin; nothing political, nothing personal, nothing honourable. But likewise he would lose nothing. Aldric raised his arm and tendrils of flame swirled along its steel-sheathed surface.

Then something rattled at the door.

He spun around, clawing Widowmaker out again with his free hand. Nothing burst into the room, but the heavy door swung slowly open on well-greased hinges. Outside, silhouetted against the darkness of the audience chamber, was a lord’s-man in a crested coat standing with both hands clasped behind his back. The retainer looked familiar, and his affected nonchalance was too suspicious, too obviously false. It screamed warning of a trap. Yet the man was alone, watching him through dull eyes, his breathing jerky and shallow. Then one arm swung round—

And was only an arm, with its hand missing. Aldric had sheared away that hand bare minutes earlier, and now alarm tocsins shrilled in his mind as he threw himself clear of the doorway with the speed of the fear of death. In that same instant the lord’s-man exploded from neck to crotch, his body ripped asunder by what came slashing through it.

An enormous talon at the end of an impossibly long, sinewy limb blurred with pile-driver force into the space Aldric had occupied a bare heartbeat earlier, and its three claws snapped shut on nothing. As the mangled decoy flew aside in a flailing tangle of arms and legs and entrails, a glistening black bulk beyond it filled the doorway.

Aldric rolled and rose to one knee as Ythek Shri tried to force a way inside. Wood cracked and plaster crumbled as its massive form squeezed across the threshold into the place from which its Summons had come. Most of the candles had gone out, choked by dust or toppled by falling debris, but there was still enough light for him to see the Warden of Gateways. Even in pitch darkness he could have seen too much for peace of mind or dreamless sleep until this thing was dead and he had seen it so.

Ythek was vaguely insectile, slightly reptilian, and totally hideous. Slimed and shiny surfaces glistened as the being moved. In a room where the stench of burst intestines had replaced that of scented smoke, it was repulsively at home. And it had laid a trap for him.

Why? Why?

As the Echainon spellstone throbbed and burned against his hand, Aldric realised the answer. Light and darkness, heat and cold, spellstone and demon; all were ancient adversaries, and when he carried one he became an enemy of the other.

As Ythek advanced through a cloud of dust and fragments its head swung from Aldric on one side to Marek on the other, sizing them up, considering which one was the more immediate threat. And there was also the gift so carefully prepared to welcome it. Gueynor didn’t scream when the demon looked at her, if a being without visible eyes could look at anything. She didn’t faint and didn’t even turn away. Instead she stared at the Devourer with awestruck horror, like a doomed rabbit watching the final dance of an approaching stoat.

But when its attention turned to the one who had Summoned it, Crisen Geruath cringed beneath the weight of icy malice brought to bear on his cowering frame. With a repellent shearing noise the demon’s maw gaped wide in, what on something more remotely human might have been a grin of satisfaction. It would have accepted the offering for lack of better, but those who made such offers were always more appealing. That was why sorcerers took such care with their protective wards, and why mistakes were fatal. It ignored the others and took a long stride forward to the one who would most please its Master.

Aldric gritted his teeth against the pain of power he had never experienced before, a pain which froze with heat and burned with cold, then raised his hand and released the force pent up within the spellstone. Thunder hammered through the small room, blowing out its windows, and the demon’s leisurely advance became an impossible leap away from danger. It moved faster than his eyes could follow; one instant in line with his outstretched arm, the next elsewhere in a blinding bound of speed. Despite the purple-glowing afterflash which blocked his vision, he had Widowmaker poised and ready before anything else could happen.

Nothing did.

Marek had one arm protectively round Gueynor’s shoulders, the other making a gesture of dismissal. The only other door out of the room was a mass of shattered timber which still swayed from twisted hinges. Ythek Shri had vanished, and Crisen Geruath had gone with it.

“He called it,” Marek said shakily. “He called it, and it came, and it took him.”

Aldric bent double, hands on knees, panting for breath as if he had just run long and hard. All magic has its price. For an instant his left hand throbbed as if he had plunged it into boiling water, yet there was no sign of injury and the pain was fading fast. This time the Echainon stone had used him, and the physical vigour borrowed by that focussed blast of power was returning in great surges, pulsing back from the talisman through every sinew of his body. At its peak he felt as if he could tear Seghar apart with his bare hands until he found the demon, then crush it between finger and thumb like a beetle. That feeling was glorious, but also terrifying, and Aldric was relieved when the tide of energy receded to a normal level. Perhaps too normal. A little extra power would have been encouraging, for he might need it in full measure before the sun rose. If he lived to see it rise at all.

“Why did it ignore me?” Gueynor’s voice was like that of a child woken in the night by a bad dream. “Crisen was going to – to give me to it. Jervan tried to stop him, so he… He had his men hold Jervan while he took a knife and—” She pressed her head against the demon-queller’s chest and for a few dry, ragged sobs she hovered on the edge of tears. The next breaths were slower and steadier, until when she straightened up again Gueynor Evenou was once again the daughter of a legal Overlord with any weakness concealed from view. “What he did, I will repay tenfold.”

“Ythek Shri may do it for you,” said Marek. “Crisen thought a ceremonial sacrifice would let him make bargains. Why, I won’t even guess. But from the very beginning of this affair none of the rituals were correct. None at all. Ythek has been free all along, without obligation to anyone. Everything it does, everything it has done, is to please its true master Issaqua.”

“Then why take Crisen?” Aldric nudged the scorched and tattered remnants of Enciervanul Doamnisoar with his boot. The spellstone’s flash of fire had charred it to a cinder, and he wondered if Crisen Geruath had suffered the same fate.

“As a more acceptable gift,” said Marek. “Issaqua feeds on evil, and who here was the evil one, this young woman or a son who stabbed his father and laid the blame on someone else?”

Aldric looked at his sword, at the hand which held it, and at the glistening still-wet blood on both of them. That blood was all over his arm, his helmet and most of his battle armour. It was a memento of four sudden deaths, but it was only the most recent memory to cast its shadows in his mind. There were so many others: helpless men he had threatened to kill, others he had left alive when his kailin-code expected him to end their pain, still others he had tricked then trapped so they were roasted by a firedrake.

He stared at Isileth Widowmaker, trying to see past the blood and recognise something to confirm the reality of a gortaiken, an accursed object that could take the blame for what he did. And he couldn’t find it. All he saw was a weapon which had saved his life many times, well-balanced, functional and elegant. So if the hungry need to kill came from within its wielder, what did that make him?

“No, Aldric,” said Marek, breaking into his reverie, “you’re not.”

“Not what?”

“Not evil. You’re an Alban, a people who link honour, violence and revenge as closely as the rings in a coat of mail.” There was a touch of disdain in the Cernuan’s voice, but Aldric let it pass. He might have corrected the accusation and insisted he was Elthanek, but there was no point. “You have a short temper kept on a tight leash, and that thing,” Marek nodded at the taiken, “cuts the leash too easily. But you’re not an evil man. I’ve met them. You aren’t one.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“You’re still here. Not taken along with Crisen Geruath.”

What if Crisen hadn’t been here? What then? Aldric didn’t say it aloud. Those were questions better left unasked, their answers better left unheard.

“And you can put your blade away,” Marek continued. “Nothing from this world can harm the Herald.” A short bark of humourless laughter caught the demon-queller by surprise.

“After everything else they told you about me, did nobody think to mention this?” Aldric raised the taiken slightly. “Or tell you its full name?”

“I’m no judge of taikenin. I’m sure Widowmaker is a fine sword, but still just a sword.”

“This sword is Isileth.”

“Isileth?” Marek repeated the name, one well enough known to anyone familiar with history as it faded into legend. He didn’t try to hide his doubts as he stared at what was visible of the longsword’s bright-edged, smoke-grey blade under its film of blood. He glanced at the loops and bars of black steel that made up its guards. “It can’t be,” he said, and then with more confidence, “because it’s not old enough.”

“Think again, and look beyond the hilt. A sword’s furniture can be renewed as this has been, many times, but the blade remains unchanged. You should know the writing on it. ‘Forged was I of iron Heaven-born. Uelan made me. I am Isileth.’ Widowmaker is Isileth, and Isileth is mine. What do you say now?”

“I say you’re as mad as were the Overlords of this place. But you may be right. I hope so, for all our sakes. Not least your own.”

*

Beyond the broken door was a gallery where the Overlord could walk in rainy weather, its walls adorned with tapestries and paintings of military subjects. It gave a clue to where the passage led, and Aldric turned to Gueynor. He stopped short of giving her a reassuring hug, the time for that hadn’t returned yet, but he rested one hand on her shoulder instead. It left a smear of blood and ashes in its wake.

“You,” he said firmly, “will stay here. This—”

“Is something I intend to see through. Right to the end.”

“You aren’t being stubborn, you’re being stupid!”

“Why? If I come with you, we’ll each know where the other is.”

“We had this argument before.”

“And you remember the outcome, I hope?” Gueynor’s voice was calm and reasonable, though it still trembled. She had seen and suffered things tonight which would trouble her sleep for months, and only by witnessing the conclusion could she be sure that the world was a safe place after dark. She didn’t appeal to Marek either as arbiter or advocate; the Cernuan stood to one side with arms folded and said nothing until, finally, Aldric shrugged.

“It’s your choice. I wash my hands of it.” Gueynor glanced at the stain one of those hands had left on her shoulder and said nothing. “Just remember this: don’t be heroic; don’t even be brave. Right now that’s just foolhardy. Staying alive may be difficult enough, so if I tell you to run, run.” Aldric glanced along the gallery at the light ornamental armours which formed part of its decoration, and then back at her body in its flimsy smock. “I’d like to see you as the Overlord of Seghar, so put on something that might help you live to do it.”

*

The gallery ended at the foot of a staircase which spiralled upwards out of sight, its treads gashed by the betraying triple gouges of Ythek’s claws.

“Into Geruath’s weapon-tower,” muttered Marek. He stared back along the passage. “Why, I wonder? Best stay down here until I—” No one was listening. No one was there. “Father of Fires, Talvalin! Do you never heed your own advice?” One hand on the medallion at his throat, Marek started up the stairs with all the speed he could muster.

Younger, fitter, faster and already at the top, Aldric and Gueynor stared at a door which bore all the signs of the demon’s passage.

“Wait for Marek,” he said quietly. “I’m going through.” Gueynor shifted in her unfamiliar plated mail and hefted the light battleaxe in her right hand.

“Then I’m—”

“You’re waiting here. Gueynor, wearing armour keeps harm at bay, but it doesn’t teach you how to fight. Stay back, please. I can’t defend us both.”

There was as much force in his words as he dared. Too much and they would have the opposite effect, because it wasn’t false bravado driving her but the honour-enhanced pride that overrode fear for long enough to do what had to be done or die trying. Aldric had felt it enough times himself to recognise it now. But beyond the door he could protect only himself. And perhaps not even…

He pushed that incomplete unpleasant prospect out of his mind, eased open the claw-mangled door and slipped silently into the tower.

It was dark inside the tower, but each spike and blade and polished surface on the pick and pride of Geruath’s weapon collection reflected stars and a setting moon three nights past full. The other light was harder to identify. It was a strange ruddy luminescence as if each mote of floating dust was a glowing red-hot spark, although the air in which they hung was cold beyond the worst midwinter of the world. And then he saw it.

A rose, of course – but such a rose.

It hung unsupported on that icy air, its outlines vague and misty like an image sketched by frost on glass, and it was huge. Issaqua the Bale Flower was a monstrous, overblown blossom as tall as a full-grown man, its great curving petals pulsed with all the shades of red from incandescent scarlet and vermillion down into crimson and the black of ancient blood. Its thorns were the size of taipan shortswords, its perfume was an intoxication overwhelming human senses as a spring tide overwhelms sand.

And it sang.

So close to its source the Song of Desolation was one note in many voices, one note of such purity that it burned with the brilliance of a solitary star on a winter’s night. But this night had no stars. The Darkness has devoured them with its black mouth… The shadows around the Bale Flower were absolute, so distant and so cold that they drained Aldric’s mind of everything except bleak futility. I know that I am lost and none can help me now… That mind was prone to brooding grimness. Better to end things at once than live in despair and die unloved. Despair and death to all…

His hand closed around his tsepan’s hilt.

And that was when Gemmel’s dry, amused voice said, “Cheer up, boy – nobody lives forever. Think of the boredom!” Where the old enchanter’s words had come from, he didn’t know. But they made him smile with honest humour, and no man could smile like that while considering his own self-inflicted death.

Another light began to fill the tower. The steady radiance of the stone of Echainon brought not heat but warmth – the warmth of friendship, of comfort, of pity and compassion, of an embrace. Kyrin, O my lady, O my love. It was the warmth of humanity, with all its errors and its faults. And the soul-crushing coldness of Issaqua began to fail…

Then something moved beyond the monstrous rose and Aldric went very still. It should have been lost in the darkness beyond the conflicting lights, but it was blacker than the deepest shadows. Ythek’ter an-shri was coming to aid its Master. The demon Herald was aware of him, and he felt the scrutiny of an intelligence so alien that he could think of no comparison, not even Ymareth the firedrake. All the memories of its strength and speed and savagery came flooding back, yet any predatory beast had those, even the Beast. Even Evthan. But this was Ythek Shri, and it had more powers than any beast.

Talons like burnished iron lifted towards him, and even twenty feet away their size and power were awesome. But the entity remained immobile, with the light of the Echainon stone reflecting from its surface. Then it hissed and closed its claws.

A gale came out of nowhere and rose to a shriek as it slammed against Aldric like an invisible siege-ram until armoured or not, braced legs or not, he was flung backwards against the wall and almost off his feet. With a mocking whistle the wish-wind died away and Aldric regained his balance. He drew Widowmaker’s scabbard up across his back, well clear of both legs. Until this matter was concluded one way or the other, the taiken would not need it again. The demon seemed to radiate malevolent amusement at his preparations as he assumed a defensive Wolf’s Guard and waited for what was coming next. His wait was short.

Between one breath and the next, Aldric’s perception of the world went strange. It began as a multi-coloured phosphorescence dancing around the outlines of things previously lost in shadow. Then even that weak hold on reality warped out of existence and vertigo hit him like a blow. Up was no longer above him, nor down beneath his feet.

Instead there was a deep gulf which yawned warm and inviting less than a step from where he stood on nothing. Iridescent light twirled in languorous coils far down in its glowing amber throat; small bright specks of pastel colour rose towards him and glided past his face with a faint hot rush of perfume. The chasm hummed cajoling lullaby sounds, sweet tones of half-heard melodies mingled with the distant tinkling of tiny bells.

Aldric could hear the double drumbeat of his own heart slow and deep in his ears, in his bones, in the core of his reeling brain. All that remained constant and unaffected was Widowmaker’s long silvery sheen and a jagged black thing which moved sluggishly at the bottom of the pit.

As it writhed towards him, Aldric shut his eyes.

*

Marek forced the wind-jammed door aside and blinked at what he saw: the beautiful, dreadful Bale Flower of Issaqua – and Ythek Shri advancing with slow, measured strides on an armoured figure who seemed not to know it was there. Gueynor pushed into the doorway behind him, realised what she was seeing and screamed a warning at the top of her voice.

Aldric’s eyes snapped open and focused on the gleam of his blade, the one steady thing in a world of flaring colours and twitching blackness. The giddiness which had almost claimed him, which had almost spilled him into the Abyss, was still there to claim him if he weakened. But he had enough control to poise Widowmaker double-handed by his head and wait for a target, any target, to come within its reach. He could no longer see the colours. A shifting, squirming blackness blotted all else out. The taiken trembled not with fear but with tension, for the muscles of his arms were taut as a full-drawn bowstring and as eager for release.

Secure in its own invincibility, Ythek the Devourer leaned towards him…

Marek Endain raised one hand and spoke the phrases of a spell…

Something made a slavering sound…

And flame scorched the shadow-crowded tower, leaping from Marek’s outstretched hand as he unleashed the Invocation of Fire. Although it could do no real harm, Ythek’s malign concentration wavered, and Aldric struck with all his strength.

There was a ringing, chopping noise as Widowmaker’s blade sheared through… Through something. The blow caused a bubbling screech and a clatter of ponderous movement. Cold flowed down the sword, chilling Aldric’s hands until the sweat on them crackled into ice, and despite somehow wounding the demon he was terrified rather than triumphant. A hackle-raising fear rose from it, almost visible, like fog lifting off stagnant water on a frigid morning. Other enemies might attack his flesh and bone, but the black steel tsalaer guarded them with scales and plates and close-linked mail.

Ythek menaced his sanity and soul, and against that he had no protection.

The demon Herald launched a far more tangible attack and its talons almost took him in the chest. Aldric twisted to one side faster than he could have dreamed possible, and the great hooked claws screeched across his battle armour’s surface instead of punching through as would have happened had he not rolled with the blow. Even then the impact spun him right around and hurled him across the room again, with all the breath bruised from his lungs. But there was no second attack, no pounce while he was helpless to defend himself.

For this time Ythek Shri had gone for Marek.

A dim flickering of balefire hung about the Cernuan; whether it was the outward sign of attack or of defence, Aldric didn’t know. Crouched low on spread, well-balanced legs like a swordsman, the demon-queller fixed his unwinking stare on the approaching Devourer. He had nothing else with which to stop it yet, incredibly, the black reptilian bulk slowed its raking predatory stride and even seemed to hesitate.

Marek took a long deep breath which seemed to expand his entire body. He stretched out his right arm, all his power focused through the extended index finger. There was no noise, no violent display, but it was as if Ythek had walked into an unseen wall. When Marek took one step forward it retreated that step back, even though he made no gesture of threat and had drawn no talisman or weapon. There was only a raised hand with a rigid, pointing finger black-nailed as any peasant’s, surrounded by a haze that shimmered as if they were made of heated metal.

The knucklebones? thought Aldric through his own roiling nausea. No, not the knucklebones, Gueynor had those now, taken from the demon-queller with quiet words of sympathy for a woman she had never known or met, and who had not escaped as she had done. Marek was holding back the demon with only the force of his own will.

And that will was failing.

“Aldric…” The Cernuan’s voice was a fragment of its former self and shook with effort. “Aldric, help me! I can’t hold it—”

“Abath arhan!” The words came out like a war-cry, like a challenge, and let the stone draw on the power it had granted him, reclaiming it all and more until his senses swam and his legs grew weak beneath him. In ears and mind the Song of Desolation grew loud and triumphant, then louder still, rising to a ululating paean praising darkness and despair. The air was frigid and white crystals of hoar-frost formed on his battle armour, blurring the stark outlines of the metal. As he exhaled, Aldric could see the fog of his own breath hang before him like the smoke-drift from a firedrake’s jaws.

The great armoured triangle of Ythek’s head swung to survey him and, as the full weight of its regard pressed down on his cringing brain, he understood in one appalling instant just what Marek Endain had faced. The Herald’s maw gaped wide, leering at him with an infinity of teeth. Saliva wove a glistening web between them, oozing from their needle points in steaming corrosive threads that splashed and scarred the wooden floor. Pain spiked Aldric’s staring eyes, bored into his mind and the world slid out of focus…

Time stopped.

Gueynor was beside him, her hand about his wrist, but even through the armour, layers of steel and leather, he could feel that her grip was different. As if her fingers were longer and narrower, as if the hand he saw was not the hand he felt. Aldric turned so he could look her in the face, but that too was changing. Like a painting on thin silk, another face overlaid the one he knew; delicate as fine porcelain, ivory pale skin framed by dark, dark hair, great sad eyes. Though he had never seen the face before he recognised it from descriptions, and in the same instant realised what Gueynor held so tightly in her clenched left hand.

The knucklebones of Sedna.

“You have power, Alban.” Even the familiar Jouvaine voice was husky with an unmistakable Vreijek accent. “Give it to me. Let me direct it.” Moving stiffly, like an automaton, Aldric removed the loops of silvered steel from his left hand. Without the warm pressure of the spellstone in the centre of his palm he felt at once lighter and younger, somehow incomplete, and desperately vulnerable.

“Take it,” he said to the sorcerer who spoke through Gueynor’s lips. “Take it, and use it, and bring it back.”

Time began again.

The slight blonde figure, which was at the same time tall and dark, walked out to the middle of the floor. Beneath her armour, Gueynor still bore the markings of a consecrated sacrifice. She was an unclaimed victim going willingly to face her would-be slayer, but within her and around her was one who had been neither consecrated nor willing. One whose life had been stolen, and whose death violated the Balance of things…

Ythek Shri bent over her, and Aldric held his breath. Then the Devourer backed away. As he watched in disbelief it bowed low, abasing itself. Behind and above its Herald, the demonic flower-form of Issaqua throbbed like a beating heart. Its song was very quiet now, the scent of roses barely perceptible.

Marek Endain, the queller of demons, let his hands hang down by his sides as he watched. This thing had passed beyond him, leaving his much-vaunted knowledge far behind. Like Aldric, like Ythek, like Issaqua, all he could do was wait.

Then the tower, the citadel, the whole world seemed to explode. A searing lash of energy poured from the stone of Echainon where Sedna held it high in Gueynor’s hand. Light met darkness, heat met cold, and life met death. The blue fire wrapped Issaqua the Dweller in Shadows with coils of brilliance until no darkness remained, even in the crimson heart of the Bale Flower’s being. With enough light, there can be no shadows. With enough warmth, cold cannot exist.

Ythek Shri howled its anguish, beating its monstrous talons against the floor as if a self-inflicted pain could cancel one beyond its control. The Warden of Gateways shrieked as a Gateway not of its own making gaped wide to draw its substance back into the Void. Then the dreadful lost howling shredded to thin squeals like a pig as Ythek’s form wavered and dissolved, dissipating like ink on wet paper. An unclean translucent fog swirled through the withered petals of a crumbling, faded rose…

And then there were no more demons.

*

“My lady…!” Aldric used the honorific with sincerity for the first time ever, his voice shockingly clear in the vast stillness which no longer thrummed with the Song of Desolation. His ears had grown accustomed to that constant sound in the background of anything he heard or said or did, and now it was silenced he seemed able to hear even the rush of blood in Gueynor’s veins.

She turned in answer to his voice and she was Gueynor Evenou, Evthan’s sister’s daughter. Not Sedna ar Gethin the Vreijek sorcerer, not half-and-half, but Gueynor again, whole and entire. She held out her hands without saying a word, and Aldric took them as they opened. In one glowed the spellstone, its fires now the butterfly flutter of an alcohol flame, while in the other there was dust. All that remained of the knucklebones of Sedna.

Only dust…

“There was little enough for obsequies,” said Marek, looking at the fine white powder with a sad smile before pouring it into a leather pouch. “But these poor bones received a more worthy funeral than any I could give.”

“You?” said Aldric. “But you didn’t even know her.”

“She was a sorcerer, I’m a demon-queller. That makes us siblings of a kind. And I give respect to a sister.”

“So it’s over,” Gueynor said. “At long last.”

“Not yet.” Both Marek and the girl looked at Aldric, who returned their stares without embarrassment and jerked his head toward the darkness of the tower. “We haven’t accounted for Crisen yet.”

“Crisen is dead,” Marek said quietly. “Ythek took him.”

“But did you see him dead?” persisted Aldric. “I have my reasons for wanting to be sure.”

“No,” Marek admitted. “I didn’t see him. Because…” He hesitated, reluctant to introduce ugliness into the peace of afterwards. “Because if he died as I believe he died, there would be nothing left to see.”

“Aldric, please let it go.” As he unlaced war-mask and unbuckled helm and coif, Gueynor touched her fingers gently to the sudden vulnerability of the young eijo’s scarred cheek. “Dead is dead.”

“Maybe so.” Aldric remained as unconvinced as King Rynert would be. Then he stiffened and his gaze slid past Gueynor to focus on the shadow cast by a rack of weapons. As the shadow moved he moved too, taking a swift step forward as Isileth came up to a guard position. “But half dead is still alive.”

If only just.

Crisen Geruath had spent only a matter of minutes in the company of demons. Long enough to be obliterated, if that had been their intention, yet not long enough for even Ythek Shri’s tapered talons to amuse its master Issaqua with the infliction of much delicate damage. But damage had been done. Crisen lacked a great deal of flesh, all teased in artistic patterns from his chest and belly, thighs and buttocks, where its removal wouldn’t be fatal. One eye was missing, not both, and with a little shudder Aldric guessed that vicious mercy was so he could continue to watch his own gradual dismemberment. It went beyond mere physical harm. He had seen the expression on Crisen’s lacerated face before. Then it had been a hunting dog, driven beyond endurance by the Beast it pursued – but man or dog or any other creature, the vacant glare had only one meaning.

Crisen had gone so far beyond sanity that there would be no coming back.

“Finish it, Aldric,” whispered Gueynor. “Kill him.” Aldric glanced sideways, lips skinning from his teeth in a small, humourless smile.

“Kill that? No. If he was still Crisen the Overlord I would kill him willingly, but that is nothing. Less than an animal.” He looked her full in the face “Less even than a mad wolf.”

“What would killing be except a kindness?” Marek said, with a long straight stare at Widowmaker. Aldric caught the look and shook his head, turning the taiken so that starlight shimmered up and down the blade as he released the scabbard strapped across his back. “A kindness,” the demon-queller repeated, with no more attempts at subtlety. Aldric watched him for a moment, and studied Gueynor for the same brief time, while Isileth Widowmaker whispered softly as she slid out of sight.

“So show kindness if you want. I’m not inclined.”

They stared at him, then at Crisen, and both huddled unconsciously closer to each other in the presence of demon-born insanity and the unremitting hate which was its cousin. The Overlord watched them all. His one remaining eye didn’t blink, he scarcely seemed to breathe and even the blood which streaked his lacerated form had long since ceased to flow. There was only dreadful immobility.

“My god…” he mumbled. “My god…” It might have been an oath, or a prayer. “My god…” Crisen said again. And then his voice rose to a scream. “You killed my god!” He was charging forward now, a reeling, staggering run on flayed and broken feet, and there was a battle-axe clutched in his ruined hands.

Aldric didn’t reply – words were useless – but his arms thrust out to either side, pitching Marek and Gueynor out of Crisen’s way and gaining space to move. It was just in time. A scraping sound of metal on metal came from his armoured shoulder as he sidestepped from beneath the falling axe and let it waste its force on empty air.

Crisen let a formless wailing like a dying dog as he stumbled past, and Aldric turned with him, right hand already on Isileth’s hilt. With a viper’s hiss he long blade leapt free, up and around in an eager arc of steel. Half a second more of preparation would have made it a proper Justice Strike, the horizontal sweep at shoulder height that echoed what was done by headsmen. Instead Crisen’s head stayed on his shoulders and there was hardly any sound of steel striking home, a slight metallic thud and nothing more. But it was effective enough.

The Overlord went down as if his legs had been hacked from under him, crashing full-length against the floor and skidding with his own momentum. Where the base of his skull became the nape of his neck was a razor-thin gash that scarcely bled at all. But it had passed between the linked bones of his spine to snip the cord within. Now Crisen lay face downward with arms, legs and body all useless now, and he was as good as dead. But all three heard his voice in the instant that breath left him.

“Oh god,” he said. “Oh father.”

And said no more.

“The father he killed?” wondered Marek.

“Or the Father of Fires?” said Gueynor. Aldric looked down at the corpse as he cleaned and sheathed his sword.

“Perhaps,” he said, and stared out at the pallor in the sky which would become another day. “But what would make him ask for either? Or think that they would listen?”

*

Aldric checked his saddle-girth and glanced up towards the sky. It was clear blue: no clouds, no rain, no threat of thunder any more. A summer sky at last.

“So,” he said in a quiet voice meant for no one’s ears but Lyard’s and his own, “the sun can also rise on a Gate of the Abyss.”

“Seghar is not a Gate.” Marek, standing beside Gueynor on the steps of the inner citadel, had either heard the words after all or read them off Aldric’s moving lips. “Not now. The way is closed.”

“Is it?” Aldric looked towards them across the big Andarran’s withers. “Marek Endain, you above all people should know closed doors can be unlocked.” His right hand touched his crest-collar, and though his voice didn’t alter, the full weight of his rank and title were in his next words. “Stay here, until you’re sure that what you claim is true.”

Marek didn’t bow outright, a pointed reminder that he was Cernuan not Alban, but he inclined his head to acknowledge the order as he would had it come from King Rynert himself.

“Will you not stay, Aldric – even for a little while?” There was a note of pleading in Gueynor’s voice, and Aldric’s resolve wavered for an instant. So like Kyrin, he thought. Then he shook his head.

“No. I have to go. Too many of my duties are unfulfilled, and now I have a new one. Setting right what happened here.”

“But Aldric…!” As he set boot to stirrup and swung into his saddle, Gueynor hurried down the stairs. “Aldric, what will I do?”

“Rule. Or run. As of now you’re the legitimate heir to Seghar, by right of succession and by right of conquest. You’re its Overlord. The place is yours, to do with as you will.” Aldric leaned low enough to take her outstretched hand and raise its fingertips to his forehead in respect for her newfound rank. “But I ask one thing only. If you do hold Seghar, then give thought to your dead. Honour them. And hold it well.”

*

Gueynor stood beneath the sheltering arch of the Summergate with Marek at her back, and watched as the man on the black horse dwindled slowly towards the forest. Aldric didn’t look back as he rode away, not even once. That was as she had wished. Yet when the distance-thinned wail of a wolf came drifting down the wind from the Jevaiden, he stiffened in his saddle and made to turn around. Instead, recalling his promise, he raised one arm as he had at Evthan’s funeral.

Half in salute, half in farewell.

Then he shook Lyard to a gallop and was swallowed by the trees.

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