The Horse Lord

Peter Morwood

The Book of Years Series, Part One

© Peter Morwood copyright 1983, 2016

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 1983 by Century

This revised edition published in 2016 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

For my father, who had to leave early.

And always,

To Diane

With acknowledgement and thanks to:

Alistair Minnis and Diana Wynne Jones;

Charles Redpath and David Lavery;

Rosemary Freel and Patricia Burns;

And my mother and sister, who put up with it all.

With additional thanks to the test readers of this revised version:

Michelle Drayton-Harrold, Jim Fleming, Phil Nanson, Harry Payne, Kari Sperring and Mike Whitaker

and especially to Becky Ottery and John Welch, for editing duties above and beyond.

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

“…bye virtue of his lady wyfe.

In this yeare also, being but ye eighth of ERHAL-OVERLORDE his holding of his Seate in ye citadel of Cerdor, was there war and stryfe in ye north through ye Malice and foul Usurpationes of that Sorcerer since ynamen Kalarr cu Ruruc.

ERHAL-OVERLORDE having setten him forth with an hoste being of soche numberes as fyve thousandes of Horse and of Foote ten thousandes, he did bring defeate to his enemy and ruination utterly by force of armes at Baelen Fyghte.

But in that field did fall and perish ERHAL, most Noble and Gentle of LORDES (this of an Arrow betwixt ye Harness joyntes) and with him dyveres soche Honourable men as ykepen oath even unto Deathe, to ye numberes of seven thousandes both hygh and humble. And of hygh-clan yfallen are…

…And this is all their names that be yknowen slaine. Now to their sonnes hath ycomen fell Ambition where-bye each hath ycraven landes held of another for his own, and hath ytaken seizen of full many an halle and fortress each from another. Now indeed doth red War make of ALBA his dwelling-place to the dolour and exceeding Heaviness of all honest folke, and noble LORDES do slay those that were their hearth-friendes not four monthes agone.

May-be by HEAVENES grace this lande may be delivered from sore Travail, and by ITS Endeless Mercy the people may be ysafen from blood and pestilence to live again in Peace…”

- Ylver Vlethanek an-Caerdur

The Book of Years, Cerdor

PROLOGUE

Boots thudded in rotting vegetation and slapped in patches of slushy snow. As the sound grew, a solitary figure came stumbling through the forest gloom, slumped against a tree, then slid face-downwards into the dirt and wet dead leaves.

The runner was twenty years old, and sick with fear. His tunic was open despite the chilly air, and the neck of a once-fine shirt hung loose. Sweat glistened on his face and body, sticking sodden clothing and tails of wet hair to his skin. His chest heaved, veins beat in his throat and temples and his whole frame quivered with exertion.

He listened, holding his breath as he lay still. At first there was nothing but the patter of raindrops and the slamming of his heart. Then he heard what might be a soft, ponderous sound, not quite drowned by the whisper of wind through autumn-bared branches. As he struggled upright his left shoulder slammed against the tree trunk, an impact that wrenched an agonised moan from between his clenched teeth.

The broken-off arrow had stopped hurting hours ago, when all feeling left his arm, and until this new stab of blinding pain he had almost forgotten its presence. Just as he had all but forgotten how long he had been running. Exhaustion spread its seductive warmth through him, inviting sleep and cramping fatigued muscles even as he gulped the air that made them work.

A flicker of lightning etched the world stark black and white. Brief seconds later its thunder came growling like a vast beast above the trees while images of nameless slavering things scuttled through his imagination, sniffing the air for their quarry’s scent.

His scent.

He fled again through another flurry of rain until something struck at his leg and made him flinch, almost tumbling headlong before he recognised his own taiken longsword. The scabbard had worked loose while he ran, and another minute would have slipped it free from his weapon-belt. Though he fumbled to run his hand into the complex hilt he didn’t dare stop, even though his left arm was powerless to halt the weapon’s crazy wavering.

Its blade was barely drawn when he fell.

The storm was to blame. Great banks of cloud had drifted up in silence to vent their fury in thunder and lightning directly overhead. Blinded and deafened, he didn’t even see the tree-root that jerked both feet from under him. His out-flung hand wrenched sideways as his sword dug deep into the mud with most of his weight behind it. A ringing metallic snap told its own story. Only a jagged splinter of steel remained in the hilt; the rest had gone. With a sound half sob and half curse he flung its remnant away and reeled on.

Rain began to fall in earnest, drumming a knee-high haze from the ground and laying curtains of shifting grey across the forest. When a tree loomed suddenly from that murk, the crooked branches that raked his back tore a renewed spatter of blood from his wound, a ragged scream from his throat and the last strength from his legs.

The running was over.

Death hung at his hip; a shortsword for them…

And a black tsepan dirk for himself. A dirk whose presence shamed him, because he should have used it hours ago while there was still honour in the act. Instead he had been afraid. Instead, he had run away. Now all its needle point would grant was escape from being taken alive.

He straightened with an effort, wanting to be standing when they found him rather than grovelling in the dirt. Though he fell again twice on ground hammered to greasy mud by the downpour, at last he remained steady enough to draw his remaining blade. Not the dirk, not yet. That still waited in its sheath. There would be no dignity in its use, no ceremony or ritual phrases, only a single hasty stab. It would be enough. They would be cheated.

And then he waited, and nothing happened but the steady fall of rain that washed away the little courage he had left. Even his curses were swallowed by another long rumble of receding thunder. His shoulders drooped and at last he began to cry, softly, like a child.

Suddenly he stiffened and wiped his face with one muddy sleeve, aware he was no longer alone. Panic welled up again, and he would have tried to run one last time, if only he knew which way was safe.

Then a hand out of the darkness gripped his injured arm. With a croaking gasp he lashed out and staggered away, but made just two swaying strides before his knees gave way and a deeper black than the night closed in around his eyes.

Footsteps padded closer, but even as they stopped beside his head the sound faded to silence…

CHAPTER ONE

Autumn sunshine warmed Gemmel’s whitewashed cottage and gilded its thatched roof. It made him smile, because in the fifty years since he’d first come here he often compared the modest dwelling with his other home beneath Glaselyu Menethen, the Blue Mountains that shaded the western horizon. On days like this such criticism was out of the question.

The locals called him an-pestrior, the wizard, and he was content to let them do so since the Alban language had no words to adequately describe the real power he could command. Yet in the past few years he had done little to warrant their title, caution or respect. Gemmel Errekren had retired from active sorcery, and he was bored. During his years of exile he had performed spells, had travelled known lands and some unknown, had learned the martial arts of half a dozen kingdoms, had…

There lay the problem. Everything had been done, was completed, past tense, and now tedium gripped him in soft and cloying paws.

The sun dipped behind a cloud and brought him yawning out of his reverie. He eyed the changing sky and decided it was time he at least prepared something to eat.

*

Outside was dark and blurred with rain, a curtain of drops briefly sparkling as they passed through the wash of lamplight from the cottage windows. Inside was snug and smelling of hot food as the master of the house sat down to his meal.

Then Gemmel hesitated with a cup of wine halfway to his lips, because a sound from the distant forest had nothing to do with any storm. It was more like the howling of a wolf. He set the cup down with a sharp little click and turned to stare out into the night, because there were words in this wolf’s howl. His eyes glinted green in the lamplight and a smile curved the thin mouth framed by his neat white beard. Perhaps the world was less dull after all.

He stood up, took a sheathed dagger from where it hung over the fireplace and hooked it to his belt. The razor-edged blade, iron rather than steel and inlaid with glyphs of pure silver, was effective against any foe human or otherwise. There were several other weapons, though he had vowed long ago not to use them without good reason, and even those sounds from the forest were insufficient justification to unclip such dreadful things from their racks. But before he stepped out into the rain-swept night he drew the dagger, just in case.

The noise continued barely long enough for him to guess its source. Then it faded away and the hiss of falling water filled his ears once more. Despite the deluge he moved slowly, ready with sharp metal or matter-ripping spells if anything sprang from the darkness. Neither was needed. A new sound reached him and Gemmel hesitated, then sheathed his blade and walked on, peering warily through the gloom for the source of that heartbroken sobbing.

It came from a ragged figure crying like a hurt child as the sky opened overhead. Moved to pity, Gemmel put one hand to the stranger’s arm, and almost lost fingers when a shortsword hacked at them. The muddy-faced young man wrenched away and tried to run, but after only two wobbling paces went down in a heap.

Gemmel blinked, then with a surge of strength ill-matching his venerable appearance he lifted the slack-limbed body and bore it carefully back to his house. At every stride he felt warm blood soaking through his sleeve.

The evening was more interesting already.

*

Gemmel’s guest lay on a hastily cleared table while he boiled water and rummaged for long-forgotten jars and bottles. Once filthy clothing came away from the injury, he swore at how earlier attempts to free a deep-driven arrow had mangled its clean puncture. He also damned the oversight that had left his best healing materials under the mountains, then shrugged and resigned himself to the means at hand. A groan made him turn around. The young man’s eyes were open, wide and white in a mask of bloodied mud.

“Get out!” he gasped. There was unlikely authority in that weak voice, enough to make Gemmel stare. “Followed! Can’t lose them! Kill me clean… And… Run…!”

The warning took his last reserves of strength, because the staring eyes unfocused and rolled shut as his head thudded back against the table. Gemmel didn’t doubt him. He seized a few items and ran from the house. But not to escape.

He was, after all, a wizard.

The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and wind was shredding the remaining clouds. Instinct mingled with forlorn hope raised the old man’s gaze toward the remote glint of stars, searching…

Then he snorted and strode around the cottage, muttering under his breath. At each compass-point he stopped, drew a pattern in the air and flicked pinches of dust from each of the leather bags he carried. Pattern and dust both glittered like sparks for an instant afterwards. At the front door he raised one hand as he pronounced one of the lesser Charms of Concealment, and a haze the translucent blue of alcohol flame shimmered briefly as the spell took effect. When it faded from sight Gemmel felt more at ease. Now he had enough time to patch up his visitor so they could both get clear of whatever was out there. But charm or no charm, once inside he bolted the door.

Before long the broken arrow was out, the wound stitched and bandaged and his blanket-wrapped patient settled in a chair by the fire. Apart from the cleaned shoulder where he had been working, muck still caked the young man’s skin and clothes. Knowing Albans better than they knew themselves, Gemmel went out to stoke his bath-house stove, turn the pine tub right-side-up and make up the couch in his small library with sheets and a clean quilt. When he re-entered the front room his guest’s eyes opened again, then squeezed shut as pain seared his torn back. Gemmel offered a wooden beaker.

“Drink this,” he ordered. “To ease the effects of the surgery.” The young man put back its bitter contents in a single face-twisting gulp, and Gemmel watched him relax as the throb of stitched muscles faded to no more than a dull ache.

“It works,” he said. “For shelter freely given and aid unasked, I offer you my tha-ngh!” The attempted bow and decorous phrases stumbled on a grunt and click of teeth as one last twinge from torn flesh worked through the drug, but he managed a wry little smile. “Excuse my poor manners. I can’t—”

“Save your manners until you’ve rested.”

“And bathed. I stink.”

“You’re the one to mention it, but yes. You do. Now tell me, as a courtesy from guest to host. Who are you?” Gemmel had thought the young man’s eyes were a hazel-green colour; now he watched the warmth leach from them until they were grey and cold and flinty.

“Who wants to know?” A sharpness to the demand, for it was no less, made Gemmel check that no weapons were within reach.

“The man who took a broken arrow from your back.”

“I beg pardon.” A blush coloured the pale, mud-smeared face, as if the words had been harsh criticism instead of a mere reminder. “That was—”

“Understandable.” This time the young man did make an awkward bow despite how the action hurt him, and Gemmel wondered what he would say next. It came as a surprise.

“My name is Aldric. I’m a… I was a kailin-eir of clan Talvalin.”

Gemmel was glad Aldric hadn’t been watching his face. The expression which flicked across it like the shadow of a bird’s wing might have prompted too many questions. He felt his breath catch in his throat, and wondered what trick of fate brought a highborn warrior of that clan to his door after so many years.

No bad blood lingered between him and the Talvalins, or he wouldn’t chance living where he did. He had parted from them with gratitude on the Alban side, combined with a freezing politeness that showed they would be equally grateful never to see him again. Gemmel had taken the hint to heart. It was best not to antagonise people with short tempers, long swords and a newly-reinforced distaste for the Art Magic. Any mention of him would soon have been erased from their Book of Years, and later generations would know nothing of it.

He hesitated a second time as his house-guest’s appearance took on new meaning: not the mud or the blood so much as what was beneath them. Kailin-eir he claimed to be, and highborn he certainly was, but young enough that even a highborn wouldn’t be allowed such clothing and accoutrements. So he wasn’t merely highborn, he was high clan, and that meant a relative whether close or distant of Lord Haranil himself.

Aldric didn’t look the part, yet little details indicated rank and status. That flash of chilly arrogance, then a literally-painful apology; the excellent quality of shortsword and dirk; a tunic where ornamental stitching glinted gold wherever mud had dried enough to flake away; and a crest-collar showing as its wearer moved. Only his hair was wrong. Instead of three neat high-clan braids, it was an untidy mop hacked crudely short at ears and neck.

“Indeed. Then Aldric-eir, I grant you the shelter of my house, and protection from the troubles of the world outside. Food would only make you sick after the pain-ease, but there’s hot water for the tub and clean linen on the guest-bed.”

“Why?” The single word was laden with puzzlement, but not as much suspicion as before.

“I’ve received similar kindness in the past. It’s only right to return it.” The wizard waved a dismissive hand. “Wash and sleep. You’ll have more questions in the morning, and I’ll be more inclined to answer them.” He opened a jar, stirred a spoonful of its contents into hot water, added some honey and held out the potion. “This will help. It might even bring pleasant dreams.”

It occurred to Aldric as he undressed, with much hesitation as jabs of muscle-deep discomfort cut through the pain-ease, that he hadn’t asked his benefactor’s name. He dismissed the matter. If the lean old man with the white beard meant him harm, there had plenty of opportunities. The bath was as pleasant as he could manage when he still hurt all over, and washing off away the dirt and the sweat and the smell was worth a few aches.

When at last he lay back on the couch and pulled its thick down quilt to his ears, he fell asleep almost at once.

*

Gemmel glanced towards the silent guest-room, put more logs on the fire and settled back into his cushioned chair. There was a generous pinch of ymeth, dreamdust, mixed with the sleeping-draught. Simple, fast, and proof against lies, it freed an unconscious mind and memory for probing by any wizard with the necessary skill. It also caused a splitting headache, which Gemmel was willing to tolerate. Not asking his guest’s permission was also tolerable, though what the Alban would say if he ever found out would be another matter. There had been occasions in the past when ruthless expedience had saved both time and lives, and Gemmel suspected this might be another.

The art of using ymeth required great delicacy. Probing a mind too deeply was a vile intrusion, but too shallowly lost useful facts in the blur of idle daily thought. Gemmel was a scholar, a historian, and of necessity a master of the art. His breathing slowed and his eyes went cold and dead, green crystals reflecting not even the dance of flames. The logs sank to crawling embers, and were a crumbling pile of ash before life returned to his face.

By then he had learned all he needed to know.

*

At first there was only the beat of two hearts in dark warmth. Then came light and cold and a kaleidoscopic whirl of colours. Faces drifted like images projected on fog, voices swam together in a confusing babble, there were names meaning nothing and yet significant. But every now and then, like an echo of reality, the sounds and images of important memories grew clear.

Swords glittered in sunlight. A voice issued crisp instructions. Steel grated, its shrillness deadened by hot, heavy air as blades met and scraped and slithered with harsh percussive music again and again.

Watched by his eldest brother Joren, Aldric Talvalin went through the exercises of longsword fighting. Once taiken-ulleth had been a martial skill where blade and body, hand and heart and mind and eye all worked as one, and many taiken longswords were as famous as the warriors who bore them. Now, with the last true master over two centuries in his funeral urn, taikenin were just ordinary swords – if blades which had their own name and fame were ever ‘ordinary’.

Aldric was fourteen now and in Joren’s opinion growing very skilled, although he hadn’t said so aloud even after almost five years’ tuition. Praise from Joren Talvalin was hard-earned and not freely given.

“Enough for now.” He waved away the guard who partnered Aldric’s exercises, acknowledging the man’s salute and his brother’s bow with the same quick wave. Then he frowned as Aldric stuck his practice sword into the ground, and kept his stern expression until the blade was withdrawn, cleaned and sheathed. Custom required the honourable treatment of honourable weapons, even imitation ones.

“Joren,” the word came out in a gasp as Aldric slumped cross-legged onto the grass, “it’s too hot for this. I’d rather swim.”

“Swimming later. Sword-work now.” Joren glanced at the sky, then at a big sandglass on the ground by his feet. “You’ve another half-hour to go. And sit up straighter. Look neat.”

Aldric flopped backwards, untidily comfortable, grinning as he raked his fingers through sweat-darkened brown hair, cut to boy’s length as it would remain for six more years. “When I’m kailin-eir like you I’ll be proper and correct, I promise. But I can relax now, so I will.”

Joren eyed him with mild disapproval, touched his own warrior’s queue and high-clan side braids, then shrugged. He’d come of age and become kailin just that spring, and in all fairness his insistence on propriety sometimes bordered on the obsessive. Yet he had his position as eldest son and heir to ranks and titles to think of. Aldric was third son, and heir to very little.

“All right. No arguments. But if you can’t look like a gentleman,” Joren raised one hand to summon the guard again, “let’s see if you can fight like one.”

“Him? Do something like a gentleman?” The new voice was urbane, sarcastic and malicious. “Light of Heaven, brother mine, what challenges you like to set yourself.”

Baiart Talvalin stepped out of shadow into the flattering full wash of sunlight, tall, blue-eyed and blond like his twin brother. Aldric was the only one to carry their Elthanek mother’s dark hair and grey-green eyes, as if she had given those up at his birth along with her life. Baiart’s love for her had always been intense, almost too intense for comfort, and he detested the child who caused her death. He had little love for Joren either. In any pair of twins one had to come first, so Baiart, junior by five minutes, was cheated of lordship, rank and title by no more than a midwife’s choice and a twist of fate. It had twisted him somewhat, ever since he became old enough to understand it.

“Let be,” said Joren. “You should be done with bullying by now.”

“Dear elder brother,” Baiart’s perfect bow was so low it made his contempt plain, “I thought our dear baby brother could speak for himself. Or will your next task be training a cat to play the gurdy?”

Everyone in Dunrath knew Aldric wanted the kourgath forest cat as his crest when he was old enough to wear one, and Baiart had led merciless teasing about choosing such an unimpressive creature when there were wolves, eagles, great hunting cats and mythic beasts aplenty. Nobody except Joren and his father had ever thought to ask Aldric why.

“Everyone—” they knew well enough who ‘everyone’ was, “—says kourgathen are useless, lazy, cowardly vermin. They’re not useless! They hunt vermin! Ask our farmers! They’re not lazy, they just don’t hunt unless they have to. They’re not cowardly, they just don’t attack unless they have to. But when they’re pushed to it they’re as brave as creatures twice their size.”

It was an impressive speech for a twelve-year-old boy, even with the sound of having been prepared and practiced in advance, and its reasoning was sound. Lord Haranil made his feelings known, and the teasing stopped. Mostly…

The soft Elthan accent of Baiart’s homeland was buried now by the affected style preferred at court, and his supercilious drawl and choice of words curdled Aldric’s good humour like vinegar in milk. If they were meant to provoke an undignified outburst like the old days, he was disappointed. He spent most of his time in Cerdor, returning only at Feast-days or, as now, when his allowance ran out. Absence and simple disinterest meant losing track of how much this ‘baby brother’ had grown up, or how well he could handle a sword. Aldric knew all about that ignorance, and cherished hope that Baiart would one day sneer his way beyond the bounds of propriety.

Now he had, far enough at least to justify a response.

“Dear elder brother, of a certainty I can speak for myself.” Aldric was so polite it was an insult. “Shall we have a conversation, you and I?” He got up, dusted grass-clippings from his clothes, then pulled two swords from among the practice weapons and held one out hilt-first. “With these.”

In the Clan Wars five hundred years before, almost three-quarters of the ancient aristocracy had destroyed one another. Since then it was illegal for kailinin to fight to the death, except in war and raid or with permission from their lord. Though they still bore the Three Blades, they were forbidden to use them on each other, so a strictly-regulated Alban duel was far removed from real combat. They used light swords ending in spines which did no more than draw blood, and the prescribed movements for that use were more like dancing.

The weapons in Aldric’s hands were very different. They were taiken longswords, as close in size and weight to real killing blades as their blunt edges allowed, and Baiart’s smug expression changed to unease. He glanced from side to side as if looking for some way out, but saw only Joren’s lazy amusement and Aldric’s leashed-in rage.

The fight that day under the shadow of Dunrath-hold’s great citadel was no measured, rule-bound ritual. Small, agile and swift, Aldric scored two quick points before Baiart grew wise and used his longer reach to keep the angry boy at a distance. Then his own blade flicked out in a brutal cut to stop the fight at once.

Aldric jerked his head aside just in time, feeling the sting as skin peeled off his forehead. He retreated, shaken, knowing Baiart’s attack went far beyond the usual verbal jabs and insults. It could have split his face from brow to chin, and all that saved him was a movement as instinctive as flinching from fire. It was a sensation he’d never felt before, without it he might have been blinded or disfigured, and knowing that made his already-bad mood turn ugly.

Baiart broke ground as he saw something in his little brother’s eyes that he didn’t like. With fresh blood bright across his face and shirt, Aldric shifted one hand to blade for half-sword close work and came after him. Joren opened his mouth to shout, then shut it again. Any interruption now, any break in concentration, could prove deadly. He had seen what Baiart had tried to do, and the change of position that told him Aldric had turned serious. All he could trust now was the control born of long training.

Baiart jabbed again, this time little more than a frantic distraction, but the other blade met his own with a slither of steel, and a swift twist of leverage wrenched its hilt clean out of his hand with an ease that bordered on contempt.

Aldric’s own taiken went home an instant later, but not the way Joren had feared. Even a blunted blade thrust with full body-weight behind it could cause fearsome damage. Instead, still braced in both hands, it came back up from the disarm in a silver blur which jerked to stillness at Baiart’s throat, less than a finger’s breadth from where blood-vessels pulsed under his ear and breath rasped in his windpipe. The last eight inches of blade extended from Aldric’s left fist like a dagger, with point to pierce and edge to slice, in a killing stroke that no-one, not even Joren and least of all Baiart, could have done anything to prevent.

“You’re done.” He lowered the weapon, pressed careful fingertips to where ribbons of blood still tickled their way past his eye, and flinched as they touched raw flesh. Baiart held up both empty hands in surrender and produced a weak smile. It could have meant anything: acceptance of defeat, apology for insult, even attempted reconciliation, but Aldric knew it more likely masked contempt.

“Joren told you not to bully me,” he said, as if explaining to a child. “So don’t.”

His right hand and the sword in it slammed out hilt-first in what fight manuals called the ‘Viper’s Strike’. It was a counter to surprise attacks at close quarters, a pommel-punch at face or throat or crotch that usually came straight from the scabbard like a snake from its burrow. This one hit Baiart in the nerve-spot just below his ribs. He doubled up, fighting for breath as a gush of half-digested food spewed all over his elegant court shoes, and slumped forward onto his knees. For just a second Aldric studied the offered neck like a headsman sizing up a client then shrugged – or shivered, it was hard to tell – and dropped the practice sword as if it burned him.

“And now I’m done,” he said, then walked away.

Except for the sound of retching it was very quiet in the fortress gardens. Joren picked up the abandoned sword and glanced at Baiart’s huddled, smelly misery, wondering if the man had learned enough caution to avoid some deadlier exchange in the future. What concerned him more was Aldric’s use of the Viper-strike. This fight should have ended with no more than black eyes or split lips, at worst a broken nose or tooth. Yet Aldric had rightly guessed Baiart would be far worse hurt by months of behind-hand laughter at a vomit-spattered loss of dignity caused by the boy he despised. It suggested their little brother had a hidden vicious streak.

There was a common refrain in Alban folktales: ‘Say the name, summon the named’. Aldric’s name was Elthanek rather than Alban, centuries old in his mother’s line. The men who bore such names were warriors unbound by any kailin-Code, ruthless, vengeful, often cruel, from a time when honour and reputation counted for more than life or death. A day, an hour, even ten minutes before now, Joren would have dismissed that old folk-warning as mere nonsense.

He wasn’t quite so certain any more.

*

Their father Haranil Talvalin was Clan-Lord, master of Dunrath and responsible for King Rynert’s peace in the north. Unlike ancestors who often coped with full-scale war, Haranil’s foremost concern involved cattle-reiving along the provincial border, and that was more an over-rowdy criminal sport than a conflict. It made him a thief-taker and watchman rather than a noble lord. With three quick-tempered brothers living in the fortress, he sometimes had more trouble under his own roof.

It was why, after the duel in the garden, he put Aldric on his honour to avoid any further needless fights.

Lord Haranil chose his words with care, for Aldric guessed his father knew there would be needful fights enough. All five remaining clans of the old nobility bore distinguishing features strong enough to survive inter-clan marriages, and the Talvalins had height, blue eyes and fair hair. Aldric had none of those, and comments about his build or colouring threatened his honour more than breaking any promise.

The response to those comments rode in a scabbard at his side, and without actual disobedience Aldric still fought often enough with hot-headed comrades to make his skill notorious. By the time he neared legal maturity such comments had almost ceased. Even with a clan notorious for its implacable avenging of insults, it wasn’t from fear of Talvalin displeasure. Aldric’s ability with the taiken and his readiness to use it was reason enough, until at last few would cross swords even on the most friendly terms. He never lost composure or control, but a disturbing air of restrained violence hung about him when the blades were out.

He could be more directly violent without them. There was one memorable episode in a seedy tavern of Radmur’s old town, when somebody suggested that they’d never seen Aldric with a girl because he spent all his time…polishing his sword. It was near the knuckle yet good-humoured enough, and provoked raucous laughter. What the jester didn’t know was that Aldric had just failed yet again to impress a lady of the town, and wasn’t drunk enough, or already too drunk, to find the comment funny. The ensuing argument broke two heads, several limbs, half a dozen kegs of ale and ended with the whole unsavoury den catching fire and toppling sideways into the canal.

He had been seventeen then, and as his twentieth birthday approached he was broader in chest and shoulders, but only an inch taller. That was good average height for most Albans but still short and dark for a Talvalin and he was sensitive about it. The early part of that year also left him sensitive about other things, with one arm in a sling after falling in full armour from a galloping horse. He was in the saddle again long before the splints and dressings came off. Kailinin relied on mobility, not brute force, with the subtleties of horsemanship a paramount importance. Learning to control a mount with knees alone was difficult enough. Over jumps or with a broken bone it was often painful.

With work so intense, it was only fair that recreations were equally extreme. One of them was the hunting of wild boar with a spear from horseback. It culled wild pigs which could ruin a field of growing crops in a single night, it provided meat for Dunrath’s pantries, and it was exciting, often dangerous, so highly popular both with reckless young men and those old enough to know better.

*

Two riders picked their way down an overgrown bridle-path, arguing as they went. Only their voices and the distant deep barking of boar-hounds disturbed the quiet autumnal woodland.

“I tell you he’s escaped.” Aldric spoke with the lazy assurance of someone with their mind made up, but Joren slapped his saddlebow with one hand, waving the other in a huge sweep across most of the forest and almost his brother’s nose.

“Listen to the hounds! They’ve got him at bay somewhere!”

“Those yapping puppies would bark at their own shadows.”

“At my age I should know when hounds are giving tongue and when they’re not!”

“Joren, at your age you should know when to admit you’re wrong.”

Their wrangle was over the boar which had evaded Joren’s best thrust, and it was injured pride rather than lack of roast pork that made the big man peevish. Aldric didn’t care either way, but he enjoyed teasing his brother because Joren always responded so well. All at once the yelping died away and he shot an ‘I-told-you-so’ glance from the corner of one eye before lifting a horn from his belt.

“It’s too late to start again,” he said. “I’m calling the others in. Time to go home.”

Joren expressed his opinion in several crude syllables and began turning his big horse around in the confined space of the path. Then a cry went up away to the left and with it the renewed baying of hounds. Joren laughed aloud at the expression on Aldric’s face and jabbed heels to his steed’s flanks, crashing off through the undergrowth and whooping as he went. Aldric rolled despairing eyes heavenward, shrugged, put the horn away and followed with more caution.

The scene was familiar enough. Dogs raved in a semicircle round the base of a tree, while horsemen fussed and fidgeted behind them. Their quarry hunched huge and black between a fork of roots, a drool of froth hanging from its champing tusks. The boar, secure in that defensive redoubt, waited for its antagonists to make the first move, and the first mistake. It didn’t wait long.

When shouts of encouragement didn’t shift the hounds, one hunter used his spiked spear-butt. One snarled, and as it turned to snap at the iron-shod ashwood the boar charged though the opening like a bristled thunderbolt. It ripped the distracted hound with a sweep of tusks, sidestepped a clumsy jab and shot away with the hunt hard after it. As the bracken gave way to open woodland the speed of the chase increased even though occasional low branches scraped unlucky riders from their saddles.

The forest ended above a smooth valley carpeted with unseasonal poppies, and the setting sun glaring across it made everyone blink and slow down. All except the boar. It fled along the valley rim, trying to double back, but though it met stragglers emerging all along the escape route it still tried to avoid running in the obvious direction. A thrown spear changed its mind. Faced with immediate death or entering the valley, it finally galloped over the ridge and down the slope.

The hounds’ baying stopped in mid-cry while their masters shouts redoubled as horses reared, wild-eyed and whinnying. Neither soft words nor hard blows could induce them to follow the boar, and the hounds, usually brave and persistent, backed off with tails curled to their bellies and hackles bristling. The boar only added to the hunters’ rage when it slowed to an insolent amble and stopped with a piggy sneer on its tusked chops.

“What in hell’s the matter?” Aldric’s studied coolness was slipping and he thumped his stamping, sidling horse. “Why won’t this brute follow that one?”

“Sorcery,” said Joren. “Some sort of barring-spell was laid here.” He didn’t elaborate. Magic was a subject shunned by Alba’s kailin-eir, and even knowing what kind of spell it was might be too much for decency. “No, I don’t know why,” he added as Aldric’s mouth opened for the inevitable question. “But this is an ancient part of the forest.”

His brother looked around with well-concealed interest. That same interest had led him to read the dusty, abandoned books on forgotten shelves in Dunrath’s great library, and given him knowledge beyond anything taught by his most liberal-minded tutors. His father’s views about such knowledge and its source meant Aldric knew how to keep it to himself.

“These woods were here before Dunrath,” Joren continued. “And mother’s people were here before then. You’d better read the Archive when we get back.” Aldric glanced at him. You mean read it again, he almost said aloud, then thought better of it as Joren turned away. “Let’s go home.”

“And leave the boar?” Aldric’s imagination landed, returning him to reality. He gave the beast a thoughtful glance and hefted his spear.

“The horses won’t…” Joren began, then stopped and stared as his young brother dismounted. “What are you doing, you idiot? These aren’t cross-bar spears! He’ll come right up the shaft to get you!”

“Let him try.” Aldric grinned, though the grin went a little thin and stretched as he realised the margin between bravado and stupidity was so small. He drew the heavy falchion sheathed under one saddle-flap and thumbed its edge, but when he strapped the weapon round his waist Joren made a disbelieving noise and started to swear.

“You’re not impressing anyone, you know!” he finished after several noisy seconds in which he didn’t repeat himself even once. Then more plaintively, “Light of Heaven, Aldric, what will I tell father if you get killed?”

“You’ll think of something.”

“I could order—” Joren hesitated, because Aldric was old enough that any command to stop would be ignored. “Just… Just be careful.”

He ruffled his youngest brother’s hair and Aldric flinched away. It was kailin-length now, down past his shoulders, and he was close enough to the Eskorrethen ceremony to resent another warrior touching it, even one of his own family. By tradition no kailin put hand to another’s hair except to lift his severed head.

“Aren’t I always?” Aldric hefted his spear, loosened the falchion in its sheath and walked towards the boar. The animal snapped its tusks once, twice, and charged.

Aldric dropped to one knee, spear braced, and let the boar run straight onto the levelled point. It came on up the shaft as Joren had warned, but in that brief time Aldric let go of the spear and sidestepped. The falchion’s wide blade blurred from its scabbard and whipped down across the boar’s thick neck even as Aldric skidded and fell flat. He was in no danger, because the cut had enough force and precision to leave the boar dead before its slayer could pick himself up from the ground.

Aldric sat up, feeling foolish about his tumble. The coppery stink of blood clogged his nostrils, his head buzzed inside and the walls of his mouth were dry and sour. Then he shuddered and stared about him. For a few seconds the valley had become a battlefield, scarlet not with poppies and low sunlight but with puddled gore from corpses in outdated armour, hacked and torn with fearful wounds. He rubbed his eyes, and it was as if the vision had never happened. A skylark chirruped high in the blue dusk, and things were all so ordinary now it was as if he had been dreaming. Yet when he looked at the boar’s carcass, he felt more than willing to leave without it.

He lost that chance when the others came down the slope, chattering with congratulations and good-humoured banter, but when the butchering began Aldric retreated. Real or imagined, he’d seen enough raw meat for one evening. A hound whined and licked his hand, for dogs and horses alike had followed their masters into the valley as if they had never feared it.

Odd…

Aldric shook his head to clear it of confusion and looked across to the far slope. Remnants of sunset glowed amber behind the trees silhouetted stark on the skyline. A few hazy patches of mist trailed like forgotten scarves along the ground, ghost-pale against the shadows. He sighed and sat down – then yelped and sprang up again, rubbing a bruised buttock. With no trees nearby, the offending object couldn’t be a root. He kicked at it, and when the thing shifted under the turf he dug it free with falchion and fingers.

His eyebrows went up, because what he held was a sword-hilt in the blocky, massive style not made since before the Clan Wars. There were several like it in Dunrath, hanging on walls or stuffed away in untended corners of the armoury. They were horseman’s weapons, each pommel chained to a wristband so if the sword got knocked from its owner’s hand it wouldn’t be lost underfoot. There was something strange about this rusty remnant of a forgotten battle and it took a few seconds before he realised what it was. The hilt had been lying under the sky for uncounted years and though it was thick with corrosion, there wasn’t enough damage. Time and the elements should have eaten it away, yet they clearly hadn’t found it to their taste.

Aldric recalled his hallucination, wondering now if it was anything so simple. For many years before an Mergh-Arlethen, the Horse Lords, came out of the sea mist to claim Alba for their own, scholars of Great Principalities and lesser domains had recorded history, legend and gossip. But even they hadn’t troubled with some things. Those were the old tales of magic gold and talking animals, some to send children to bed and others to keep them sleepless when they got there. Yet every tale once had reason to tell it, and every wisp of smoke rose from an ember be it ever so small.

A wolf howled among the distant trees and Aldric’s fingers spasmed against the ancient hilt. He scowled, both at the display of nerves and at the beast which should have been miles farther north at this time of year. With a mental note to organise another hunt, he moved the hilt towards one of his hunting-jerkin’s deep pockets…

Then he shivered as if he had been touched by a chilly breeze, and all his curiosity about the old sword-hilt vanished in the same instant, whirled to extinction like smoke on that breeze. Now the chunk of bronze and iron was no more than a piece of grubby refuse, and he would have dropped it back onto the ground, if the near-completed pocketing movement hadn’t been easier. But by the time it slithered out of sight, he had forgotten its existence.

Instead his mind wandered down the macabre lanes and back alleys of imagination, recalling stories read, overheard or deliberately told to frighten him by Baiart when they were both much younger. Aldric muttered a soft oath as he mounted up to the high-cantled saddle and let out a hollow laugh at working himself into such a state.

Joren, laden with joints of boar, overheard the laugh and gave him a strange look but withheld other comment. Stars glittered in the darkening sky before they were ready to leave and, as the moon rose farther, the woods and valley took on a frosty sheen. Aldric felt cold, and as the others rode off he gladly turned his horse to follow.

Then he jerked on the reins and stood in his stirrups as a fragment of shadow detached from the forest. It flitted down into the valley, ghosting from one gorse-clump to the next, and the fine hair on Aldric’s arms and neck stood on end. A short heavy bow hung in its saddle-case behind his left knee, a laden quiver behind his right, and he reached for the weapon as if seeking comfort from it. There had been enough irrationality for one night; the bow was solid and real. As his hands moved through the practiced sequence of arrow from quiver and nock to string, he strained his eyes to see what the lean shadow might be. He thought he knew already.

He was right. A monstrous wolf, grey coat tipped silver by the moonlight, came padding up the slope. It ignored the dark patch where the boar had been cut up and headed straight for a patch of disturbed earth, making Aldric frown as a faint memory nagged him for a moment. The wolf began to dig, careful jabs with one paw at first then with increasing frenzy until soil flew in all directions.

Abruptly it stopped, raising its long muzzle to sniff. Now the wolf’s eyes reflected the moonlight like two green jewels staring straight at Aldric. That was ridiculous, he was downwind and invisible under the trees. If it could see him, it would run, and the next he’d hear about it would be slaughtered livestock and complaining farmers. Better to kill it now, while he had the chance, than explain to his father why he didn’t. He drew back the bowstring, hoping the uncertain light wouldn’t spoil his shot, and a low, rumbling snarl reached his ears as the wolf crouched. It wasn’t going to run after all.

It was going to pounce, and a beast that big could be on him in two bounds and a snap…

“Aldric!”

The distant voice made him start, the bow loosed with a slap, and the wolf went down yelping. But it wasn’t dead, far from it; wood cracked as it bit the arrow from one hind leg and when it rose, limping and unsteady, those blazing eyes fixed once more on Aldric as if etching his shocked face into its memory. Then Joren came trotting up, Aldric glanced towards him, and when they both looked back the wolf had gone.

“What’s the matter with you?” After hurrying back in case his little brother had fallen foul of roots or hanging branches, Joren was less than pleased to find him shooting at shadows. “Well?”

“Nothing.” It came out far too fast. “Nothing at all.”

“Does ‘nothing’ make you sweat like a wash-house window?” Joren was right. Aldric’s whole body was damp and he all but steamed in the cool air.

“I shot at a wolf,” he said, tugging a shirtsleeve away from his clammy skin.

“Then a pity you missed. If it was there at all.”

“It was there! And I didn’t miss!”

“So where’s the body?”

“It… It ran off when you shouted.”

“My shout, or your bad shot? After what I taught you, things you hit don’t run off. They don’t run at all. So you didn’t hit it. As I said: a pity you missed.” The irritable edge in Joren’s voice stopped further protests. “Now come on home before you catch a chill.”

Aldric took one last look across the valley and did as he was told.

CHAPTER TWO

Five weeks later the great feast-hall at Dunrath blazed with candles and lamplight made brilliant by the shifting hues of elyu-dlasen, the crested Colour-Robes of the Alban clans. It was Aldric’s twentieth birthday, his coming of age, and Haranil-arluth had made an occasion of it by inviting relatives and friends to the least degree.

“My lord?” The arluth looked up, and his steward bowed low. “There’s a stranger at the gatehouse, my lord. He requests shelter.”

“So? Grant it, grant it. Why bother me?”

Travellers were rare at this season, and announcing their arrival was equally rare since any clan-lord, high or not, would grant guest-right without question or condition. The steward looked uncomfortable and made another anxious bow.

“My lord, he won’t come in.” Haranil raised his brows, and the steward continued in a hasty babble. “He says he can’t come in until his host invites him across the threshold. He says it’s the custom of his country.”

“Stupid customs, stupid foreigners…” muttered Haranil, very comfortable right where he was. “Did you tell him that this isn’t his country?” There was a platter of quince-and-honey cakes in front of him, a dish of walnuts at his elbow, and the goblet of wine to wash them down wasn’t his first. Yet on a day such as this refusal was out of the question. He stood up, gestured at his neighbours to stay seated, shrugged into an over-mantle offered by the steward and strode out of the hall. When he returned still alone, Joren gave him a quizzical glance.

“Our new guest is changing to more suitable clothes for the occasion,” Haranil explained. “Foreign yes, overly punctilious yes, but a gentleman.” He glanced at the empty chair where Baiart had refused to attend Aldric’s Eskorrethen banquet. “Unlike some.”

When the new guest finally appeared, his ‘more suitable’ clothes muted conversation for several seconds. The man was stocky, his hair and small neat beard was brindled silver and his gown and breeches were an unassuming grey. But his over-robe was pure white velvet, stiff with embroidered patterns and lined with azure silk, and as he bowed to Haranil Talvalin the fabric rustled like armour.

“Gracious good my lord,” he said, “may warmth be always in the hearth of this house.” Haranil acknowledged the compliment with a nod and indicated Baiart’s empty chair. When the stranger moved to take it he winced.

“My horse and I argued with a tree, my lord,” he explained. “I lost. But your pardon. Here I sit at your table, by your fire, beneath your roof, without a name for you to call me by.” He laid one hand over his heart and spread the other wide. “Duergar Vathach, a passable historian though indifferent horsemen, very much at your service.”

He sat down with a grunt of relief while servants set a tall bronze cup of spiced wine at his right hand, then stared as plate after dish after bowl passed before him. Roasted mutton, pork and goose all came with their accompaniments, then river-fish with fennel, gingered eggs, vegetables both green and root…

It far exceeded the typical hospitality of an Alban high-clan household, because the Talvalins took pride in being open-handed. At last Duergar begged a respite so he could eat rather than admire, though it didn’t stop him talking all the time between mouthfuls. If his conversation had been dull it would have been unmannerly; instead, despite his accent and occasional difficulty with language, he had an entertaining opinion about every topic mentioned at the lord’s table.

Except for one put forward by Aldric.

“Duergar-an, did you come south from Datherga?” When the pale eyes focussed on him Aldric noticed how the man’s face lacked expression when no longer animated by his frequent smiles.

“Sir, you are…?”

“Kailin-eir Aldric un-cseir Haranil ilauem-arluth Talvalin inyen Dunrath. Third son.” He had never given the full rollcall of his rank and title before, and it sounded good. Duergar looked impressed, as if forgetting the company he might expect at the high table.

“Then well met, my lord. And no, not Datherga. I came by Elmisford and along the outskirts of Baelen Forest. Is it important?”

“Maybe. I shot a wolf a few weeks back. There are people,” he gave Joren a hard stare which went unnoticed, “who say, have said, I missed. At that range I don’t miss, so the brute’s wounded and dangerous. It needs tracked down before it raids the winter flocks and someone gets hurt.”

“If your wolf isn’t raiding already, it won’t now,” said Duergar. “They don’t bide their time.” He shrugged. “Perhaps you did miss.” Aldric blinked, stared, opened his mouth then closed it again, and there was a brief, uncomfortable silence while those within earshot scrutinised such thoughtless words for a veiled insult. Rowdy normality from farther down the hall made the silence still more awkward, until Duergar stood up and bowed. “But more likely it ran away to die.”

Someone somewhere cleared his throat, the talking began again and the moment was past. Two retainers set a carved stool on the gallery of the great stairway and the murmur of voices died again, this time to an expectant whispering. More servants helped an old, white-bearded man to his seat and set a harp of black wood into his hands. He made a deep, graceful bow towards the high table and spoke, his resonant voice thick with a Hertan burr.

“Gracious good my lords and ladies fair,” he said, “I would have your leave to sing.”

Haranil-arluth and Lord Santon’s wife granted him that leave, but the old man didn’t begin at once; instead he ran one finger across his harp, stroking a flowing chord from the strings, and the hall fell silent as he played a melody as natural as water on rocks or birdsong in trees. As the old bard touched the harp’s strings, he also touched the hearts of his listeners.

He played of sunrise and spring, courage and love and laughter, the sheen of swords and maidens’ golden hair; he played of the wind in the trees, the waves on the sea, of luck and the joy of living. Then he began to sing, and though older than any in the hall, his voice filled every corner with cunning music and subtle words.

He sang the old stories of magic and adventure, when lean firedrakes flicked flaming across the sunlit sky and sorcerers worked their spells by starlight. He sang of battles lost and won, and the love of kings’ daughters for brave strangers. Archaic names sprinkled his songs like rare jewels, and earlier ages flowed from his music in a golden haze of memories. Long-forgotten voices spoke again through the harper’s mouth, captains and kings and beautiful ladies who returned from the dust to live for a space, warmed by the suns of past summers.

The old Hertan struck three crystal notes which shimmered to silence in the vast hall, and bowed his head. There was a pause, and then his audience erupted into applause. Haranil had the old man brought before his chair, where he filled a guardsman’s high-crowned helm with silver marks and placed it in the harper’s hands. Then he took a crested bracelet of Prytenek gold from his own arm and snapped it shut around the minstrel’s wrist. Its deeply incised decoration, a Talvalin eagle in halathan style of wings spread wide, glittered in the candlelight, and the old man bent his head in thanks for a token of approval more personal than mere wages.

“Arr’eth-an, a question for you,” said Aldric. “Do you know any tale about Baelen Forest, and a valley filled with dead men’s bones?”

His question drew curious stares, for until now he hadn’t mentioned what he had – or thought he had – seen after the hunt. Aldric didn’t admit it even to himself, but the experience worried him. There were several sparse Archive mentions of a battle in Baelen Forest, yet a lack of useful details there or elsewhere in an exhaustively searched library left him willing to try any other source.

The minstrel’s response was far from comforting.

“I know it,” he said. “‘The Fall of Kalarr cu Ruruc.’” He studied Aldric with eyes blue as faded cornflowers. “And no tale for this occasion. Your pardon, lord, I will not sing that song tonight.” And he left, his departure marked by Haranil-arluth’s bow to honour him. It was an action which by custom the entire hall copied, and which helped Aldric control the uneasy expression on his face.

Only Duergar noticed. “The Kalarr story is an interesting one, my lord,” he said, “though for the most part quite untrue.” Aldric’s mouth shaped a silent “Oh?” and the historian explained, but without his earlier entertaining wit. This rambling, long-winded lecture lacked any spark of interest, and Aldric quickly regretted ever raising the subject.

Kalarr, so the story went, was a warlord and sorcerer in the days before the Clan Wars, when the loyalty of Alba’s petty rulers varied with the distance from their Overlord and intrigue was as common as breathing. No one could say where cu Ruruc came from; he simply was, and offered aid to each group of conspirators until they were together in one place at a clan gathering in his citadel of Ut Ergan. There he slew his erstwhile allies with fire from the air, and seized their lands for his own.

“A fanciful way of saying he had them murdered while they were drunk,” said Duergar. “It was the usual way of things back then, so storymakers—” he jerked his head towards where the old harper had sat, “—like to season the tale with magic to make it more exciting.”

The Overlord, undeceived, gathered his warriors and rode north, defeating Cu Ruruc’s army in a battle near Baelen Forest. The sorcerer was killed, but the Overlord and many nobles also fell and rivalry between their ambitious sons led to the Clan Wars and all that followed.

Aldric had read those histories many times before, but worse than learning nothing new was the way Duergar talked down to him like a child, and not a very bright one at that. He yawned, a slow, exaggerated and supremely insolent yawn like a cat’s, and Duergar stopped in the middle of another convoluted sentence.

“Do I bore you, my lord?”

“Yes,” said Aldric as bluntly as manners allowed. “You must be aware I’m twenty years old, because this banquet – where you’re a guest – is to celebrate the fact. Yet you’re treating me like an infant. Deliberately.” Duergar’s bland unchanging smile set his teeth on edge, and when the scholar made benevolent noises as if to soothe a squalling baby, Aldric lost his temper. Even though he kept his voice down, his thinned lips and narrowed eyes made his feelings all too clear.

“If your intention this evening was to be offensive, Master Duergar, then I applaud your success. I don’t know why you did it. I don’t want to know why. So I’ll thank you to keep—” He bit down on his words before they went too far. “Good evening.” Rising without a bow, not even a nod, he stalked away.

Duergar watched him go with eyes which never blinked, then smiled and drank more wine.

Aldric’s anger had changed its focus within five steps. Now he raged inwardly at himself for having broken one of the oldest rules of conduct for high-clan kailinin. It had nothing to do with weapons or honour, and all to do with simple good manners. Courtesy to guests meant courtesy at all times, and doing otherwise on this day of all days made him look exactly like an irritable child. Being treated as one by Duergar only made matters worse. More brooding and more wine might have compounded the error, but the arrival of his father’s Companion and Bannerman saved him.

Eskar Tereyl was more than just Haranil’s right-hand man and foremost warrior; he was a confidant, keeper of secrets, adviser and friend. That quiet, full-armoured presence became the steadying influence Aldric required, and knowing everything was ready for his coming-of-age ceremony was as sobering as a splash of cold water. There were times to be angry, times to be drunk, and times to be foolish. None of those times were now.

He followed Eskar out to prepare for the rituals.

*

Aldric knelt before his father, first on one knee then on both with a deep bow each time. The movement ended with an inclined head and his right hand, the sword-hand to defend his honour, pressed over his heart. It was the only time in his life he would be expected to give First Obeisance to anyone other than royalty, and he did it well. Then he straightened, took the Book of Ancestors from yscop Gyreth, bowed to the priest and pressed the ancient holy relic to his brow. From Lord Dacurre’s hands he received his father’s taiken with a hand-span of blade unsheathed, and touched it to his lips, wary of the weapon’s age as much as its edge.

Haranil Talvalin rose from his seat, laid both hands on his son’s head and swept up the hair at the back to secure it with a crested clip. Though several clans required the full head of hair be combed back and put into braid, this single horsetail had sufficed for twenty generations of Talvalin warriors. Then he freed the long locks from behind Aldric’s ears and let them fall along each cheek to the jaw-hinge. Again, some kailinin braided these ear-locks as they braided their warrior’s queue – Joren did it once in a while – but clan Talvalin preferred simplicity.

Haranil stepped back and Aldric acknowledged him with hand on heart and head held high, Second Obeisance from a kailin-eir to his lord. He stood upright, drew a deep breath, then spoke the oath that would govern him from this moment onward.

“I am kailin-eir Aldric Talvalin,” he said. “Know me. Know I have a Word of Binding. Upon that Word I now take threefold oath: to keep the honour of my House and Clan, even to the ending of my life; to keep the laws of Heaven and the King, that my name and ancestors be not shamed; to be the King’s liege man, and live and die as may best serve him. Under Heaven and before the company here assembled, upon my Word all this I truly swear.”

Everyone present bowed, high and low together making the Third Obeisance between equals. When they straightened, Joren looped the scabbard-belt of a new taiken longsword over his brother’s head and fastened a silver crest-collar round his neck. Its crest, despite everything said and unsaid, was the kourgath wildcat after all. Then Lord Santon stepped forward, purple and dark blue Colour-Robe contrasting with the pale skin of his clan, and Aldric’s mouth went dry as he stared at the slender black dirk held out towards him. Santon moved his hands apart and the triple-edged blade slid free, a glittering icicle of steel.

This was a tsepan, last of the Three Blades.

Now it was a badge of rank and a piece of masculine jewellery, its materials of the very finest for the sake of the wearer’s honour. But it remained an echo of the older, harsher rules which once laid down both the living and the dying of an Alban warrior. The tsepan’s blade was for its owner; it had no other purpose. There were reasons for that use even now: to avoid tormented capture by an implacable, dishonourable enemy or to take leave of a body shattered past healing after accidental fall or rolling horse. It was even a means of self-execution as repentance, though never admission of guilt, to keep land and wealth from falling forfeit to the crown.

But in war, when common sense prevailed over pride and bloody obsession with honour, the tsepan had another aspect. If a man lay split asunder by sword or axe any means to end his pain was mercy, yet there was always risk of provoking a feud. So each kailin’s dirk was for himself, marked with his own crest, a guiltless blade for some compassionate hand to make his passage to the darkness quick and clean.

Santon spoke the old phrases in High Alban, the Horse-Lords’ priestly tongue, no longer used except for rituals such as this. “Behold thy blade, black and belt-borne. Honourable it is, pride-protecting, death without dishonour’s darkness. Mark its meaning in thy mind with Word of Binding and with blood.” From the corner of one eye Aldric saw servants unroll a length of bandage, and he shivered.

“Word and blood will bind me. I will bear the blade.” He held out his open left hand, muscles taut to stop the fingers trembling, and looked away as Lord Santon put steel to the offered skin. Oath-taking in staged drama always overplayed the stroke as a potentially crippling slash. Reality was more delicate, cutting deep enough to make the required white cicatrice yet not enough to risk the muscles and tendons just beneath, and receiving the cuts at Eskorrethen was as much token of trust as rite of passage.

Santon kept that trust as he sliced once with each edge so Duty to Heaven, Clan and Crown each left its mark, each cut finishing with a small back-twist of the blade to leave a clear-marked scar and nothing else.

White-faced, Aldric watched the rows of glistening beads rise red as hawthorn berries from his palm until a fine linen bandage covered them. He felt a little queasy, because as the saying went, ‘None look with ease on their own blood’. The tsepan was so keen the wounds had barely hurt, but now a hot throbbing pulse crawled up his arm. He cradled one hand in the other and bowed, then retired for a while as was his right.

The ceremony was over, and his life for the next few years could proceed in ordered fashion. Youth spent in weapon-training had prepared him for service in a garrison, officer rank when he earned it, promotion to the Guards’ cavalry barrack in Cerdor then Companion and Bannerman to another high-clan lord. Not an appealing prospect, though better than the alternate choice for a landless third son. Aldric Talvalin had never seen himself as a priest.

He grinned at the thought and went to find a drink.

*

Aldric reined in his chestnut gelding at the crest of a small rise and twisted around to look back at Dunrath’s distant bulk. The loftier turrets and the donjon of the citadel gleamed straw-gold in the sunrise; the rest was still shrouded by mist and pre-dawn gloom, with only a few firefly specks to show where people were up and about. Aldric hunched deeper into the fur collar of his long riding-coat, for autumn was coming to its close and the days were growing short and chilly. The horse stamped and shook its mane, eager to be off. With a final glance he settled into his saddle and let the beast make its own way down the slope, towards the broad straight road that led to Radmur.

*

“Radmur? At this time of year?” Joren had laughed when he first heard Aldric’s plan, treating it as a joke until he realised his young brother was serious. “And why, may I ask, are you so set on going?”

“Why do you ask, when I’ve told you once already? I want to see my friends before winter closes in, because there won’t be time come spring before I go into service with Leyruz.” Joren frowned and drew breath, but Aldric got there first. “With Leyruz-arluth. Sorry.”

“Eight leagues is a fair distance even in summer. You’d not find me doing it.”

“I’m not you.”

“No, praise Heaven!”

The big man’s vehemence made Aldric grin. Joren was right, nobody he knew was worth a twenty-five-mile social call in the present weather, but it was an acceptable excuse to cover what he didn’t know. Aldric unlocked a chest, rummaged through the clothes inside, then started clearing three months of accumulated debris from the pockets of his favourite leather jerkin. Something fell with a clank against the bottom of the trunk, and he fished out a decrepit, rusty sword-hilt with a broken chain through its pommel. The flakes of corrosion it sprinkled everywhere made him mutter vulgarities under his breath.

Joren stared out of a window, wondering how his little brother had grown up to be a well-read fool who collected rubbish and went visiting in foul weather for no good reason. “It wouldn’t be a woman, hmm?”

If he hadn’t been watching the shifting grey clouds Joren might have questioned the sharp look shot at him, a look banished by the realisation he was joking again. Aldric laughed carefully, dropped the old sword-hilt back into the half-empty chest and resumed his packing.

“Wrong again. If – when I find a lady, she’ll live a damn sight nearer home!”

*

Aldric cantered on, whistling between his teeth. Apart from the few yeomen and an occasional merchant who gave him “Good day” and respectful bows, the road was empty and winter unquestionably drawing near. Everything was grey – the sky, the hills, the clumps of woodland, even the road beyond a bowshot’s distance – and Aldric wondered more than once why indeed he hadn’t stayed at home. Haranil-arluth had granted him three days of liberty, pleasing enough until the old man elaborated. It meant a day to go, a day to stay and a day to return, no more. Aldric made the mistake of trying to argue, and learned he was no longer a child with whims indulged by a good-natured father.

“Heed the bidding of your lord, kailin,” said Haranil, and that was that.

The smooth sad wail of a wolf floated down from the woods beyond the ridge, and Aldric resisted a temptation to jam in his heels. He hadn’t forgotten the strange events after the boar-hunt, nor Duergar Vathach’s dismissive remarks at the banquet.

Strange man, he thought. Spends all day in the library or wandering about the woods, seldom gets back till after dark, never heeds the weather…

A raindrop in the eye interrupted his musing. Bad weather might not concern Duergar, but Aldric hated getting wet. He shook the gelding to a gallop and reached a handy way-house in time to watch the brief downpour pass overhead from beside the comfort of its well-stoked fireplace.

“Short and sharp and soon over,” said the keepers.

Aldric hoped they were right. He had a long way to go.

*

He and the horse were both tired when at last they reached the walled city of Radmur.

Stiff and saddle-sore, he stood in his stirrups as the beast trotted towards the gates, their welcoming lanterns and a brief greeting with wardens more courteous than last time once they saw how he wore his hair. But he still had to turn his steed over to a city groom since horses were forbidden beyond the perimeter roads of most Alban cities. The ache in thighs and back made him consider a chair and bearers, until he reminded himself mock-sternly that he was no fat merchant but a Talvalin kailin-eir, young and supposedly fit. Aching or not, he walked the rest of the way on his own two legs.

Allowed for the first time to carry a taiken within the city walls, Aldric paused in the doorway of The Brimming Tankard to confirm it still hung in peace position across his back with the hilt at his shoulder. A longsword worn that way couldn’t be drawn, and the implied threat if it dropped to his hip was penalised by law, so he checked it was secure. The action would have seemed more thoughtful if he hadn’t made the same ostentatious movement half a dozen times since entering Radmur. This time was like all the other times, and nobody took the slightest notice.

Tewal’s tavern was much as he’d last seen it, snug and quiet under adzed oak beams and rich with delicious cooking smells. The taproom had a fire like a forge and dishes of salted dainties to encourage thirst and deep drinking. Aldric ordered a cup of wine, confiscated a bowl of dried-beef slivers and began munching. It had been a long day, and he was ravenous.

Only a few minutes passed before Tewal himself emerged from the kitchen, cheerful as always. “I thought I’d seen the last of you till spring, my lord,” he said, and regardless of the younger man’s new warrior-rank slapped him on the back. Aldric winced, because the short chubby man had big, broad hands and he slapped as if knocking dust from a rug.

“There’s no need to sound so disappointed,” he said. Tewal tugged his grey-flecked ginger beard and shook his head.

“Oh no, dear me no, not like that at all, my lord. I said to Egyth only today, Egyth my dear, said I, now his hair’s up and he wears the Blades, young lord Aldric might come calling for a—”

Aldric held up one hand for silence before Tewal got into his stride. The innkeeper always made him feel out of breath. “Please, Tewal, not right now. I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my throat’s been cut. Feed me first, let me wash it down with a flask of white, very cold, then you can tell me everything you’ve said to everybody this past week.”

“And you’ll want your usual room?” Aldric went pink about the ears and Tewal continued without a pause. “Though now I recall, one of the double chambers is still free. As a belated Eskorrethen gift, perhaps?” Aldric nodded and buried his nose in his wine-cup to avoid more questions. “I’ll send a boy to the stables for your bags, my lord. Settle yourself in and eat, at… At this table, I think.” It was near the back of the common-room, in a secluded booth. “Popular with guests who like privacy.”

Tewal bustled off and Aldric sat down, wondering how he took everything in his stride so easily. The Tankard quickly filled with other customers and Aldric, never fond of crowds, was grateful for his quiet corner. Then the food started to arrive, each dish leaving the kitchen when it became ready to eat, and he stopped fretting. Tewal’s wife Egyth brought him a bowl of peppery lamb-and-lentil broth, garnished it with a generous scatter of small buttered dumplings, and carried on sporadic conversation while he ate.

They swapped gossip until his main dish arrived: a chicken crisp and brown from the spit, roasted vegetables, warm crusty bread and a sharp relish of pickled gooseberries. Egyth left him to give it his full attention, but Aldric had barely freshened his palate with a sip of wine and lifted his knife when he paused in mid-cut.

Not because of the wine, his head was harder than that. This was a feeling of being watched. Yet a glance across the busy room saw only merchants with their ledgers and long-stemmed pipes, city councilmen and their wives, off-duty guards officers and their ladies of the moment. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Until his gaze reached the door, and there she was.

*

Her name was Ilen. Aldric knew little else about her, and he hadn’t pressed for more. There was already enough potential for confusion, because when they first met she had been – for all he knew, still was – already casually partnered with a friend of a friend in Radmur. Ilen had been more amused than confused by the situation and not concerned at all, but gave no hint of what his next step should be.

Joren had guarded his young brother’s morals with the same attention as teaching him to fight, so previous attempts at what passed for romance had been fumbling, inconclusive and no help at all. Aldric grew up shy, obsessively honourable, extremely frustrated and remained, at twenty years and ten days old, nervously virginal in all the ways that mattered. His visit to Radmur was meant to remedy the situation, since at their last meeting Ilen’s friendship showed willingness to become much more friendly. Perhaps even intimate.

But as she stood in the doorway and stared at him things started to go wrong. Her expression wasn’t the sultry smile he remembered from last time, it was surprise, and not pleased surprise either. Halfway out of his chair and halfway into the courtly bow practiced so often in the sheet of polished tin that did duty for his mirror, he froze.

Because Ilen wasn’t alone.

The man beside her didn’t wear even a kailin’s single braid, but he was rich, the cut and ornamentation of his clothes made that very clear. The possessive way his arm went round Ilen’s waist was bad enough; the expression on his well-fed face as he registered then dismissed Aldric’s existence was far worse. It wasn’t scorn, contempt or dislike, like Baiart until he learned better. This was simple indifference, and it stung like a slap in the face.

The man said something that made Ilen laugh in a way that set Aldric’s teeth on edge, then they walked out of The Brimming Tankard and out of his life.

*

He watched the door while it swung shut, wondering if there was any point in running after them. He wanted to ask questions : if Ilen had meant any of what she said, or if he’d misunderstood, or if she’d been making sport of him all along. So many ‘ifs’. He also wanted to wipe that derisive sneer off the merchant’s face – with so much ostentatious wealth he had to be a merchant – except for one more ‘if’.

If the man was as rich as he seemed he would have powerful friends in Radmur, well able to make life unpleasant for any clan-lord whose unimportant last son had no sense of humour. Aldric stared at nothing in particular for a long while with humour very far from his mind. Then he ordered another drink, not wine this time but Elthanek grainfire, and it was Tewal himself who arrived with the squat stoneware bottle and a glass. A distinctly small glass. Whether he had seen the incident or just heard about it, like any good innkeeper he had a nose for trouble.

“Was the food not to your liking?” Aldric glanced at the roast chicken, his knife still deep in one breast. It matched the way he felt.

“It was fine. Is fine.”

“Then you should show more willing. I took trouble over your dinner, my lord. Eat. Don’t waste.”

“You sound like my brother.” No need to specify which one.

“I could sound like worse. And I have another request.”

“What?” Aldric reached for the bottle, and Tewal moved it far enough to make his intention clear. “Oh. It’s like that, is it?”

“Yes, my lord, it is. You surrender your Blades, or you drink no more this evening.”

“What if I insist? I have the right.”

“As do I, my lord. The right to Peace in the House.” Tewal’s pronunciation drove each capital letter into place. “You know the law. Would you spoil our friendship over that?” The small bearded man who always smiled wasn’t smiling now. He wasn’t angry or aggressive, Aldric would have matched that willingly, but Tewal gave no reason to find fault. He only looked determined to stand by a law meant to protect his livelihood, patrons and property, and unhappy to lay it down so severely.

“I… No, I wouldn’t. All right, Tewal. You win. Here…” Aldric unbuckled his weapon-belt and its cross-strap, then wrapped them around the long and shortsword scabbards. He kept his tsepan, and it wasn’t asked for. No kailin would give up the defender of his Honour, just as no kailin would ever use one as a fighting weapon. Tewal set down the grainfire again and ducked his head in respectful acknowledgement as he took the swords.

“No need for deep drafts, my lord.” His smile was back, if not quite as broad as usual. “Small sips wash away a bad taste just as easily.” So he had seen after all. “Until later, my lord.”

Aldric poured a measure and swirled it in the thick, chunky glass, anticipating the burn. He coughed as it went down, harsh at first, but even honey would taste like vinegar tonight. Yes, he felt wretched and betrayed, but it was better than being led by the nose and other parts for Heaven knew how many unwitting months. With a brief salute to what might have been he took another sip, and this time the grainfire wasn’t so bad.

Aldric’s evening might have ended with him rather drunk, rather sleepy, and rather more aware of how the world wagged. He would have gone back to Dunrath with an aching head if not an aching heart, and many things would have turned out differently. That was how his evening should have ended, except for other tavern patrons who saw things in a different light. Their conversation was quiet at first, except for an occasional guffaw like a mastiff with a bone in its throat. But the volume of their voices increased with their consumption of ale until it was clear they were no longer talking about him.

They were talking at him.

*

The three guardsmen had nothing against Aldric himself, but they were drowning their sorrows after a punishment detail and any authority was fair game. His hairstyle marked him as the sort of young officer who could assign, who had assigned, hours of pack-drill for a piddling misdemeanour. Better still, he wasn’t their young officer, or any officer at all, and they made the most of it.

None of their remarks were individually offensive, but repetition and elaboration made them mount up. A ton of feathers still weighed a ton, and Aldric soon grew weary of sly looks and comparisons between length of sword and weight of purse. Then the suggestions started, that lecherous boys who couldn’t stick up for themselves in public should stay at home and play with something sticking up in private.

The sensible, practical thing would be to finish his final glass of grainfire, poured fuller and drunk faster than intended, and walk off to bed armoured with icy dignity. But after Ilen and giving up his swords another defeat was one too many, especially since his imagination easily supplied the coarse snickers directed at his retreating back.

There would be no retreat just yet.

*

Aldric had watched enough stage-plays of the less improving kind to recognise this scenario and his role in it. Well, real life wasn’t a play, so maybe sense would prevail if he handled matters with enough diplomacy and tact. A little more caution, a little less anger and a lot less grainfire might have succeeded. Instead he said the wrong thing at the wrong time in the wrong tone to the wrong person.

“If it’s so funny say it louder, friend.”

The wrong thing was forgetting what calling someone friend could sound like. He staggered back to his chair, sparks dancing across his vision like a cloud of midges and blood welling from a split lip, and stayed there until the tavern stopped spinning while several things stood up to be counted in his rattled brain.

One: attempted authority without an imposing appearance counted for nothing.

Two: actors on stage pulled their punches a lot more than real people did.

Three: the fly-swatting contempt behind the blow hurt his self-esteem almost as much as his jaw, a physical match to the merchant’s expression and whatever he had said to make Ilen laugh.

And that left Four: what to do next.

He was outnumbered, outweighed, everything except outranked, and his stinging lip was proof of how little that was worth. The incident had been too brief for anyone else in The Brimming Tankard to notice. Conversation, demands for more drinks and the serving of those drinks continued as if nothing had happened. Trays laden with the tavern’s namesake were everywhere, and when Aldric got back to his feet he intercepted one not for the beer, but the tankard and the tactical advantage of its weight. He ignored the pewter ale-pots and heavy salt-glazed mugs favoured by Tewal’s regulars as too heavy and hazardous. But a cheap wooden tankard, a miniature barrel with a handle and hinged lid, was more than enough.

The trio of guardsmen had already dismissed him and were laughing at something else when Aldric tapped one of them on the back. He didn’t care which. The man swung round and one of his companions yelled, “Gyrek, look out!” just as the tankard met him in an explosion of staves, hoops, froth and good brown ale that swept him to the floor like a felled tree.

“Who’s next?” said Aldric. There was a clattering towards the tavern door as several more timid customers decided it wouldn’t be them. Then someone behind him grabbed his new warrior’s queue and gave his head a violent jerk.

It triggered one of the responses Joren had so carefully trained into him. His elbow slammed backwards and a crunch of impact shot down his arm. The someone let go of his hair, tried to yell past a flattened nose and several loosened teeth, then lashed out blindly and hit somebody else. After that events in the tap-room became even more like a stage-play, and Aldric ducked sideways under a table where he could watch the performance in peace.

A heavy body hit the ground behind him and he found himself with some company, though none he could talk to. The spice-merchant had been on the wrong end of a bottle and was in no state for conversation. Things were getting out of hand and Aldric realised that kailin-eir or not, lord’s son or not, elsewhere was the best place to be when the law came calling. Radmur’s Watchmaster would still remember his last tavern fight, and how much it had cost to set things right.

A chair by the table shot straight up out of sight, then became loud noises and a rain of splintered wood. Two women ran squealing for the door and Aldric stood up to follow them, doing his best to look innocent and uninvolved. Three swinging fists proved he had fooled nobody, and as he resolved that problem someone else departed loudly through the Tankard’s big front window. Breaking glass drew the Watch like wasps to syrup, and there were – had been – enough panes to attract the deafest constable.

Then he stopped as the man who had gone out of the window reappeared again in the doorway. It was his old acquaintance with the coarse mouth and the quick hand, and now he had a long military dagger in his fist. Aldric backed away warily. Knife-fighting was dangerous, few got away unscathed, and to qualify as a fight both sides should have a knife. His tsepan didn’t count and never would. But it helped to be more or less sober, and despite the grainfire he outmatched the ale-sodden guard on that score.

Aldric shifted his gaze to the street beyond and put a shocked expression on his face. It was enough, and the man started to turn before realising his error. An instant later his knife-hand was wrenched round so the elbow bent the wrong way, and Aldric punched the heel of his own free hand against the straining joint. Break, dislocate or whatever else it did, the blow hurt enough to put all thought of further fighting out of mind and the guardsman bellowed as he flailed headlong into a handy pile of chairs. His dagger clattered across the floor and out of sight, and Aldric stepped quickly out into the dark, cool quiet of the street.

Then he spun around with one hand flying to where the hilt of his taipan shortsword should have been, but thanks to Tewal’s intervention it closed on empty air. He let it drop slowly to his side, and the spearpoints levelled at his stomach withdrew a little.

“Aldric Talvalin, once again,” said the Watchmaster with a resigned smile. He gave the ghost of a bow. “And with increased rank, I see. But not increased sense. At least there’s nothing in the canal this time. Yet.”

*

Heavy flakes of snow wavered to the ground as Aldric galloped fast for Dunrath. This fall had begun as he left Radmur and was making the paved road treacherous, but he had no time for caution. The magistrates had deliberated for two days to decide who caused the riot in The Brimming Tankard, and though they’d given Aldric an honourable discharge they’d taken exactly too long over it. Haranil-arluth would think Aldric had deliberately misinterpreted his instructions. It would put him in just the right frame of mind to hear the real reason.

Aldric’s stomach turned whenever he thought about that, and he thought about it constantly.

He stopped at the way-house again, not to feed himself this time but to rest his lathered horse before the beast dropped under him. Not all the stamping up and down nor the rapping of quirt on boot could hurry the weary animal’s recovery, and at last Aldric gave up trying. He went inside and glared in grim silence at the fire.

Nearer home the sky began to clear, and he approached Dunrath in thin, harsh evening sunshine. The frosty air was still and silent, the only sound his steed’s hoofs muffled by new snow. He could see no guards, no sentries, not a soul. The chestnut passed over the outer lift-bridge, and still no one questioned his presence.

Aldric frowned and scanned the courtyard as he dismounted. Though no grooms were in the stables, horses stood in the stalls and even his new battle armour lay boxed in one corner, not yet unpacked. More worried by the minute, he went up into the citadel itself.

It was cold, and full of shadows made deeper by the dust-flecked shafts of light streaming through the western windows. There was no movement or sound except for what he made himself. He had never seen the corridors so still and dark. Even late at night there were lamps and servants, now there was only that slow eddy of golden specks washed by the evening light. He shivered and let his taiken slide from back to hip, the long blade appearing in one hand almost of its own volition, then very carefully he eased back one of the great hall’s doors and stepped inside.

*

The vast chamber was empty, dead fires slumped to grey ash in its hearths, and the many lamps and candles to keep it bright and cheerful had burned down to charred wicks. That was when unease finally became fear. He crossed the hall at a run and took the stairs into the donjon four at a time, almost going headlong more than once as panic and darkness made even familiar places treacherous.

At the foot of the spiral stair leading to his father’s tower rooms, he paused to control his breath and listen. All the corridors with access had en-canath, singing floors, uncarpeted boards laid loose to creak at the slightest pressure. Now they were silent, almost as silent as the young man who slipped upstairs like a stalking cat. The planks groaned when Aldric set foot to them and he hesitated briefly before continuing to his father’s door, then realised with the floors announcing every step that there was no more point in caution. He threw the door open, went inside…

And the sword slid from his slack fingers to clash against the floor, while a thousand useless thoughts, fears, hopes, excuses melded into a single silent scream.

Haranil-arluth Talvalin sat in his high-backed chair by the fireplace with his taiken resting on his knees. His head drooped forward on his breast, as if the old lord was asleep, but it was only an illusion, shattered by the spear that nailed him to his chair.

A few feet away Joren lay propped against the wall. There was no illusion of sleep there, for he had fought hard. His right hand was empty where someone had stolen his sword, but his left still gripped the broken wooden haft of whatever axe or mace had served him well before the end. Blood congealed in puddles on the floor, spattered the walls and smeared across ripped fabrics and hacked furniture. Aldric stared for a long time at Joren’s face, at the loose mouth and the obscene emptiness of wide, dead eyes.

And began to cry.

*

When he recovered from his brief, convulsive sobbing, Aldric pressed his face to the cool wood of the door and tried to grasp what fate had forced upon him. He was late. He had promised his father, his lord, to return at a certain time and he had broken his promise. Broken his Word. Reason nagged it hadn’t been his fault, hadn’t been deliberate, that he would only have died with the rest. Reason had no place in a kailin’s honour-code.

Without a trusted Word he would be better dead.

His arms drooped by his sides, and something touched one of them. Aldric glanced down and his scarred left palm burned with renewed pain. The black hilt of his tsepan glinted at him, a reminder of its purpose and his duty.

Better dead…

Slowly he drew it. The chiselled iron grip was cold against his hand, and the thin blade glittered in mockery of how he trembled. Aldric stared at its bitter point and cruel edges, cringing inside at what tradition and the Code expected of him. To what purpose? Dying would neither avenge his family, nor mourn them, nor even carry out the funeral rites. Yet staying alive would brand his name with permanent dishonour.

“No!” The denial spat from his bloodless lips, chasing the tsepan as it flickered across the room and thudded into a panel. The dirk swayed and thrummed with the impact, its blue-enamelled crest-cap – his crest – winking at him like a sardonic eye, contemptuous of his cowardice. Aldric rubbed his hand, but the pain wouldn’t go away. His haunted eyes looked far into the distance, towards where the sun hung low over the Blue Mountains and edged a lapis sky with gold. A gentle breeze passed through the shattered window, caressing his face and cooling its film of sweat.

I lived as well as I could. I ate good food. I drank good wine. I had good friends. I even loved someone a little. Under the Light of Heaven or in the Shadows, my hands and soul are clean. Why fear death?

All men and women born crossed that final threshold and passed into the darkness. Only kailinin could choose their time to do so. It was an honourable right, if there was truth in what the priests said, to leave this melancholy world and return reborn.

He crossed the room, twisted the tsepan free, and returned to kneel at his father’s feet in First Obeisance as he had done mere days past and a lifetime ago. Aldric bowed his head and pressed his right hand, the sword-hand that should have defended his honour, into the still-wet blood staining the floor. Cold stickiness spread across its palm. When the ritual phrases that accompanied tsepanak’ulleth refused to form in his head he opened tunic and shirt, reversed the dirk and nuzzled its point into place under his breastbone. The steel was cold, and it stung.

“My lord father,” he whispered at last, “I am dishonoured. I ask forgiveness and… And I offer my life as recompense.”

“Do not!”

The two words, barely audible, shocked Aldric like the stroke of a mace. Haranil-arluth had always been a fit, strong man, even in his later years, but if health and strength had kept the life in such a ruined body they were no blessing. Then he saw his father’s eyes and realised the clan-lord had struggled to keep death at bay, hoping for his son’s return before all strength ran out. How long he had sat here, or what brought him back to wakefulness, Aldric didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

“You. Still live. You must live.”

Blood trickled from where the tsepan’s blade had broken skin, even though Aldric knew his hesitation – no, his fear – meant the wound was a mere pinprick. Yet that fear had let him survive to know his father lived, to hear what he had defied the darkness to say. He let go of the dirk, and felt a surge of relief as he heard its metallic clatter through the sound of his own heartbeat. Despite Haranil’s command, that relief made him ashamed.

“Duergar did this. Betrayed us. Destroyed us.”

The brief story made grim listening. Duergar Vathach had been a familiar figure at all hours of the day or night, and when he appeared as usual before dawn the guards had let him in. Hiding in the shadows beyond were a gang of hired blades who rushed the opened gate and sleeping citadel. They killed all who refused to yield, because Duergar was no scholar. He was an agent of the Drusalan Empire, and Clan Talvalin was a convenient host no longer needed.

“Forget tsepan. Laws. Even honour. Help our name survive. My son…”

Aldric clutched the old man’s hand as his father dragged in a shuddering breath. It came out again in a faint little moan as Haranil, the Clan-Lord Talvalin, in his sixty-sixth year, relaxed in his chair for the last time. Aldric felt life take its leave, released at last by the stubborn will to brush past like a movement in the air.

His face was taut with grief and tears ran down his cheeks, but mourning had to wait. There was too much to do. He lifted the tsepan and scored its point across the scars on his left palm, cancelling all other oaths in a scarlet streak of blood and pain. It purged him of confused emotions, and he stared dispassionately at the oozing cut before putting it to his mouth and swallowing some of the copper-salty flow.

“En mollath venjens warnan,” he said, and despite his trouble with the words for self-slaying, these words came all too easily. “The curse of vengeance be upon thee, Duergar Vathach. Thy blood for my clan’s blood. On my own blood I swear it.” Gripping his warrior’s queue in smeared fingers he slashed it off with the dirk, then did the same to each ear-lock and flung all three to the ground. The cropped hair gave him a youthful look belied by his eyes and the blood on his chin.

“I renounce my duty,” Aldric said as each tag of hair came free. “To Heaven if it guard thee; to the King if laws protect thee; to my Honour if I fear to slay thee by whatever means I may.” The old ritual of the venjens-eijo, the avenging exile, was a death sentence for Duergar, and maybe for himself.

Far down the corridor outside, a singing floor made its one-note cry.

*

For perhaps two seconds the only thing to move was a muscle in Aldric’s cheek. Then he sheathed his tsepan, snatched the taiken longsword from his father’s lap in the same movement, and shrank into the shadows just before the door opened to admit lamplight and familiar faces. Traders, they’d claimed, on their way from Datherga to Radmur with a wagonload of farming tools. Others like them had trickled through Dunrath like a rivulet of dirty water. Duergar’s raiders, one and all. With hindsight it was all so clear.

Both had taipan shortswords at their belts over armour of a sort, and the first also wore a helmet with a half-mask visor. Aldric took cold note of that. It could help him walk unnoticed from the citadel. With his father’s taiken poised behind his head in the double-handed Guard of Justice used by executioners, he took a soft step forward, even now unwilling to strike like an assassin, but giving murderers fair warning was downright stupid. Then they got warning enough when one saw his abandoned longsword near the door. One startled word was enough for the helmeted man to look round, and Aldric cut hard and fast. Head and helmet bounced together across the floor, an unfocussed expression on the face inside, that of a man who literally never knew what hit him.

At the end of its sweeping stroke the taiken’s blade was already in the Eagle’s Guard, ready to ward a blow at his own head or descend like rending talons. Alban swordplay shifted in blurred sequence from attack to defence to attack again, and even an alert opponent found it hard to counter. As the second raider grabbed for his own sword, steel scored a diagonal line across his body in a stroke so old it came from a time when taikenin were curved. Neither time nor a straight blade altered the result when aimed with skill and driven by rage. The mercenary’s eyes and mouth went wide with shock, and his hand flew off its wrist. Then his body split apart.

Aldric leaned against the wall and stared at the gutted, stinking corpse. After his own near-death and the shock of everything that followed, he was close to fainting. Only raw fury had kept him on his feet, and now it ebbed away to leave him unsteady, nauseated by the reek of blood and entrails, and horrified by the revelation of his own appalling expertise. His head spun and the sour taste of vomit rose in his throat. Then as Joren had instructed him long ago, he breathed deeply despite the slaughterhouse stench and pushed the shattered dead into a compartment of his mind where they no longer mattered. As they ceased to be threatening, they ceased to be sickening, and the thought of them would no longer interfere with his survival.

He did three more things in rapid succession. First he jammed his father’s sword into a crevice of the fireplace, threw his weight against it until the blade could flex no more and snapped in half, then returned the shards to Haranil’s lap. Then he picked up the soldier’s helmet, shook out its late owner’s head and set it on his own. And finally he spilled oil from a lamp and set light to the room, noting with grim satisfaction that not even glistening pools of fresh-spilt blood kept the flames from taking hold.

Then he recovered his own taiken, made a salute to the funeral pyre and hurried away.

*

As Aldric rode from the stable a few people walked slowly across the far end of Dunrath’s courtyard, driving home that he was the only one on horseback in the whole empty space. His horse seemed to shout for attention, but even when dark smoke billowed from the donjon and an alarm began its harsh clangour, nobody showed any interest. It gave him a chance to pause near the windlass for the lift-bridge and slice his taipan blade to fraying-point into the heavy cables of its counterweighted drop-gate. There were no guards in sight, but the bitter wind whistling in from outside should have told him why. Just because they didn’t choose to stand in it didn’t mean they weren’t there.

The windlass cords began to unravel and snap of their own accord, so he set heels to the horse and crossed the bridge as fast as he was able. It was barely fast enough. A rattling rumble broke out behind him, and the lift-bridge made an upward lurch so sudden and violent that his gelding had to jump the last few feet as if clearing a hedge. The massive double bang and rattle of broken parts behind him meant someone would have a lot of work before either bridge or drop-gate opened again.

He rode straight for Baelen Forest, still unaware of the sheltering sentries, and his course was as unerring as the arrow that slammed into his back. He might have gasped, or even screamed. He couldn’t remember. His only recollection was of the world spinning away down a long polished tube with utter blackness at the bottom.

*

When Aldric came to his senses there were trees all around, and the horse had slowed to a walk. Even though he swayed drunkenly with every step the chestnut took, the high saddle held him in place and let him straighten up as best he could. That cold wind was still sighing past his ears, but the snow was turning slushy. At least it would make his tracks harder to follow.

Then the trees came to a sudden end and a valley yawned before him. Aldric tensed, knowing this place all too well, and with nowhere else to go he rode out from the tumbled light and shadow of the forest onto the exposed upper slope, listening for pursuit and hearing none. They were probably still fighting with the jammed gate. What might have been a fragile laugh formed in his throat, but faltered and died when he glanced back and saw what hung above the forest behind him.

Away to the north-east, above Dunrath, a bloated spiral cloud was swallowing the sky. Long tendrils stretched towards the forest like some vast hand extending taloned fingers south to clutch and rend. A flicker like lightning passed through the cloud, throwing its coiling bulk into sharp relief, but he had never seen lightning that shade of vivid, venomous green.

The champing horse finally got the bit between its teeth and took off at full gallop, flinging him backwards in his saddle, and despite the way its cantle punched against his spine he went over far enough to slam the arrow in his back against a saddlebag. It drove deep before it flexed and broke, and long before he made any cry of pain the dream-haunted dark claimed him once more.

CHAPTER THREE

When Aldric came back to aching consciousness an unknown time later his left arm was cold and stiff, hard to move and hideously painful when he tried. But pain meant life. When he was dead he would no longer feel pain, nor love, nor joy, nor laughter. The dead felt nothing. In his present state he might as well be dead, for he was sure he would never laugh again in this life.

But he wasn’t dead yet, nor helpless either.

He slid clumsily to the ground and opened a saddlebag, though doing it one-handed needed ingenuity and teeth. It was worthwhile; there was a feeding-bag of grain for the horse, dried meat and wheaten bread for himself, even a stoneware flagon of wine and plenty of water from the melting slush. Recent memory and present hurt made his stomach heave after only a few mouthfuls, so Aldric queasily put the food aside and turned his attention to the broken arrow. He panted for breath as his good hand strained to grip what remained of the shaft, then whined like a hurt dog as the barb shifted in living flesh. Blood seeped through his clothes, tainting the cold air with a smell that made the horse stamp and fret.

He clenched his teeth, closed his fist, and jerked the arrow hard. It snapped off short, he slumped forward into slush and dead leaves, and the lights went out again.

*

Aldric regained his senses after minutes or hours of fireshot darkness, only regaining his feet when the horse came close enough for him to use one stirrup as support. Patting the beast’s nose, he buzzed affectionate nonsense into its ears and regained the saddle after an age of effort then listened for any sound of pursuit. Baelen Forest answered only with the reassuring sounds of small living things. It was small comfort, because though it would have taken hours of work to re-rig the cables for the bridge and gate, those hours might already have passed. At least after so long they couldn’t tell where he had gone. Even he wasn’t sure any more.

A black crow drifted overhead. When it still circled there miles later, suspicion found some room in Aldric’s mind, despite the pain that fogged it. Now he realised that when his tired horse walked anywhere the trees grew thick, the crow descended in a lazy spiral and only climbed again when its view cleared. That was no accident.

There were a pair of telek spring-guns holstered on his saddle, not as long-ranged as a bow, but any bow required the big muscles of back and shoulders and two working arms. Aldric had just one, whose hand shook as if with fever. He rode the gelding under a dense-branched pine tree, deep into the shelter of its needled branches, then drew the right-hand telek and racked back the outer sleeve that cocked its heavy cylindrical spring. That was when he learned a telek needed two arms just as much as a bow.

By the time the sear clicked into place Aldric was clammy with sweat from an exertion that usually went unnoticed, while overhead the crow dipped lower, straining to see. He glared at it, then at the telek, because his outstretched arm could barely support its weight and the sighting-notches wandered on and off their target like a bad joke. Finally he jammed the weapon in a fork of branch and trunk, a desperate measure that restricted his aim the way attempting a freehand shot made nonsense of it. If he failed to hit the crow first time, he would warn it that he had a long reach and it would never come close enough again. Yet it only had to come close once, and eventually it did.

A lead-shod dart ripped up through the screen of pine needles, feathers burst from between the crow’s wings and Aldric swore, but not at his good shot. The bird hadn’t cawed as it died. It had screamed.

And the voice of that scream had been human.

Common sense warned against panic, against riding headlong across uncertain ground, against so many things… As if sense played any part in what he had seen and heard and done today. Instinct took over and he slammed his heels against the weary gelding’s flanks, kicking it into a gallop. The direction wasn’t important. What mattered was to get away from here.

*

Dead leaves and mud plastered his clothes from where he had skidded face-down across the ground. Aldric shook the whirling stars from his head, but the booming in his skull made it so hard to think…

Then he cursed in despair because his horse, his poor faithful horse, lay on its side with heaving flanks. Its eyes rolled white with pain, and the cause was all too clear. Some small animal had dug itself a burrow and the horse’s leg had gone into it almost to the knee, then shattered like a rotted branch.

He could do nothing for such a break, and only one thing for the horse. Kneeling by its head, he gentled it with soft words as he pulled the taipan shortsword from his belt. When the animal relaxed, trusting him, he drove the razor-keen blade into its neck and felt like a murderer. Aldric grieved for the horse far more than the two men he had killed. They were hostile strangers cut down in a flurry of fear and rage, while the chestnut had grown up with him since it was a wobbly-legged foal and he a skinny boy in his early teens. That single merciful cut was like severing a limb: kailin and mount were more than partners, and losing one diminished the other.

There was nothing on the carcass he needed, not even the telekin. A single agonised attempt proved the heavy springs were beyond his strength, and a telek unable to shoot was no more than a clumsy club.

Taking only some food and the water bottle, he began to walk.

*

By early evening of that short day the grey clouds had thickened with a promise of rain or more snow, and the cold air rasped Aldric’s throat each time he inhaled. He was exhausted. There had been no more crows, no strange sounds in the forest, and no sign of pursuit. There was no reason to be any more frightened than he was already. And yet, though he had never been afraid of the dark before, he feared the coming night.

That was why he started to run.

On uncertain forest ground and in the shifting evening light, a missed step soon sent his legs out from under him as if someone, some thing, had tripped him for its own amusement. He lay still for several shuddering seconds, the pain of his back almost overwhelmed by stark terror. There was no attack or even threat of it, except for what tormented his imagination, only the rustle of leaves stirred by a sluggish wind and the quiet crunch of bracken flattened by his fall. When nothing else happened Aldric hauled himself up by painful stages, fist to knee to feet. Then he staggered away.

Flight became nightmare. Things in his mind snarled and giggled, bushes and gnarled roots took on distorted shapes, and still he ran though now his muscles were dull and his legs as slow to move as if he waded through honey. Sweat soaked him despite the cold, trickling down his face and blinding him to the hooked branches that tore at his wound. Times without number he collided with trees or fell headlong, dragging himself on by force of will and little else. His eyes took on a glazed, dead look that was ghastly in a living face.

The dense clouds made nightfall even darker, and a small breeze carried the first few drops of rain from an iron sky. In the distance a rumble of thunder chased the flash of its lightning across the heavens. Then he took another tumble, breaking his sword and what remained of his resolve.

Aldric gave up at last, not running any more, only cursing the storm as it drove rain against him like a hail of arrows. When a hand reached out of the darkness and gripped his torn flesh, it brought agony and an instant of terror.

Then the ground came up to meet him and the night slammed down on top.

*

Aldric struggled awake with a pounding headache, blinked with eyelids made leaden by weariness and drugs and looked around him at low wooden beams, simple sturdy furniture and soft daylight beyond fastened shutters. None of it meant a thing until he tried sitting up. A flare of pain tore through the narcotic haze, and memory returned in a confused, ugly rush.

After a few minutes spent gathering his wits and waiting for the trembling of his hands to fade, he got out of bed. Apart from the old leather jerkin there was no sign of his own tattered, filthy garments, but the clothes laid out to replace them fitted well enough and above all, they were clean. More reassuring still was the sight of his weapon-belt with its two remaining Blades still in place. Although dressing was a lengthy operation punctuated by oaths and gasps he managed at last, slung his belt so both hilts were close at hand, then opened the door and stood blinking owlishly in a flood of pale sunshine.

Gemmel saw him from the corner of one eye, glanced up from his book and drew breath to speak words that stumbled to silence at his first clear view of Aldric’s face. Last night a flaking crust of dirt and gore had disguised it; today it was the face of his own dead son. The Alban was shorter, his hair was darker, and where Ernol’s eyes had been a clear, honest green, this young man’s gaze was as unreadable as a cat’s, like grey flint sheathed in glacier ice, yet the likeness was close enough to tighten his throat. No matter how many pages had been torn from the Talvalin Books of Years, blood clearly lingered where ink had not.

Aldric knew the expression ‘to see a ghost’. That was why he felt uncomfortable about the white-bearded man’s intense stare, and why he laid one cautious hand on the reassuring metal of his shortsword’s hilt.

“You won’t need that.”

Aldric’s hand stayed where it was, and fierce eyebrows drew together to make the stare a frown. One finger stabbed out, seeming only an emphatic gesture, but he jerked his hand from the weapon as if it had stung him. And it had, a brief jab like touching a candle-flame. He forced himself to relax, or to seem so at least.

“From what I remember of last night, I gave you my name. Will you return the courtesy?”

“Gemmel Errekren fits best on Alban tongues.”

Aldric let the condescension pass. “Snowbeard?” he said. “That’s no clan-name.”

“I have no clan; but I – we – have need of haste. The spell wears off at sunset.”

“Spell…?” Aldric echoed the word as if making sure of it. Events were running too fast, if he stopped to get his bearings he would be swept away, yet some questions still needed answers. “Perhaps I should have asked what are you?”

“I already told— No, I didn’t, did I? Forgetful.” Gemmel rubbed his short neat beard and smiled a little. “The villagers call me pestrior and purcanyath; rural dialect that even highborn ears should understand.”

Aldric did, and a thin, humourless grin flickered across his face. “‘Wizard’ and ‘enchanter.’ So I’m hunted by one and rescued by another.” He raised one hand towards his taipan again, then thought better of it and instead bowed as well as he was able. “For which I thank you. Now, this isn’t your affair, so I’ll—”

“You’ll come with me,” said Gemmel. “I have another home, more secret, more secure, and with better means to tend your arm. I don’t leave healing half-completed. Call it a matter of honour. A kailin-eir should understand that.” He met Aldric stare for stare until the younger man looked away.

“Yes. Yes, I do understand it. And I owe too great a debt already.”

“Debts are for merchants. Here.” Gemmel held out a thing like a long-dead mouse. “Put this on.” Aldric eyed it distastefully and raised an eyebrow until a shake of finger and thumb revealed the object as a false beard. His other eyebrow joined the first. He hadn’t played dress-up since he was very small, and as he fitted the whiskers round an expression of faint disgust he discovered, as he feared, just how itchy they were. He looked unlike anyone with a shred of self-respect, but also unlike like a high-clan kailin which, he reflected with a gloomy scratch, was the whole point.

There were horses in the stable behind the cottage, two saddled for riding, the others already laden with packs of things best not left behind. Aldric examined his own steed with dismay. It was a stocky, barrel-bellied, shaggy little pony, the sort of horse he hadn’t ridden for almost thirteen years, and true to form it sidled, kicked and tried to bite.

Gemmel sat astride his own much finer horse and watched the young man mount his skittish beast without difficulty, even one-handed. It made him wonder about the Alban’s other and more lethal skills, the ones involving a blade.

“Best come on, son.” He watched for a response, but Aldric let it pass without comment as part of the role-play of escape. “Twenty riders passed at first light, and it won’t take many questions in the village to bring them straight back here.”

“How did they miss it?”

Gemmel waved one hand in the air. “A Sightwarp,” he said. “To prevent them seeing straight.”

The explanation explained nothing, until Aldric rode away and realised what the enchanter meant. Stone and thatch faded from sight as if around a corner, leaving an empty place where only grass waved in the wind. Gemmel heard a short intake of breath come out as a muttered curse and took wary note. The ymeth-trance had shown him Aldric’s illicit fascination with magic; it had also shown him a raw, immediate reason why the young man should hate sorcery and everyone who used it. He had encountered that before, long ago. It was just as perilous now.

Riding as fast as the wizard deemed sensible still wasn’t fast enough for Aldric. He kept thinking about those twenty horsemen, about being outnumbered ten to one, about being caught in the open. After half an hour of cantering across the moorland, always due west and uphill, he reined in and turned his horse around.

“I thought there was somebody behind us,” he said. “I was right.” Gemmel drew a long-glass from his belt and peered at a plume of grey smoke rising from the horizon, then said something harsh that Aldric didn’t need to understand. “They’ll guess why you hid the cottage. Why you left in such a hurry. That I’m with—”

“Yes, I’m sure they will.” Gemmel slapped the long-glass against his palm like a truncheon. “Whether it does them any good is another matter. Let’s go.”

*

It took almost a week for the Blue Mountains to change from a jagged shadow in the distance to a tumbled mass of crags rearing vast and menacing almost overhead. Snowflakes wavered down from a sky the colour of dirty sulphur and settled on anything they touched, including the two men walking their horses along the treacherous mountain path.

“Almost there.” The taller of the pair shook a small avalanche from his hood as he moved. The other looked up without enthusiasm.

“You said the same thing yesterday, and the day before.” The foul weather, his itchy false beard now mixed with real stubble, and Gemmel’s persistent optimism were so depressing that Aldric no longer even feigned interest to the wizard’s cheerful conversation. Bored, wet, sore and miserable, he saw nothing except snowy rocks, but Gemmel seemed to think otherwise.

“There, by the standing stone,” he insisted, and Aldric dutifully strained his eyes through the blurring snow as Gemmel dismounted, scrambled up to the monolith and laid his hands against its side. When Aldric followed he realised the enchanter didn’t need his help, indeed the pressure from his wide-spread fingers barely disturbed the crust of snow, but it was enough.

With a grating sound clearly audible in the snow-silence, twenty feet of rock-face slid open and Aldric’s eyes went wide. The cavern within was no dank cave but a smooth, polished tunnel whose walls and ceiling were lined with globes of some crystalline stuff. Gemmel touched one and they came alight, spreading illumination from globe to globe down the tunnel until it filled with warm golden light.

When Aldric looked back down the slope he stared just as hard at what he didn’t see, because the horses and their baggage had vanished without a sound and without a trace. Questions, exclamations and simple bad language fought for precedence until he decided there was nothing worth saying. Live with an enchanter, and live with enchantments. Or learn to. Few Albans would accept that. But few Albans had stood where he was now.

Double doors at the end of the tunnel hissed aside as Gemmel approached, and released a harsh glare that made Aldric squeeze his dazzled eyes almost shut. The cave beyond was as extraordinary as everything else, flooded with light of unreal whiteness and sparkling reflections from burnished machinery recessed into both walls. A humming in the air and a slight vibration underfoot hinted at incalculable power deep within the rock below. Yet it was still just a cave.

The yawning vault at the far end defied that easy label.

It was big enough to swallow an entire fortress, and so high the loftiest citadel turret would fit with space left over. More of those crystals shone from its walls, illuminating nothing and serving more to outline the enormity of height and breadth with tiny dwindling rows of jewels. A slight, cold drift of air moved out of the cavern, swirling as breezes will in such monstrous empty spaces, though this space was far from empty. There was… something… in the middle of the cavern floor, an ill-defined mountainous bulk of dark smooth shapes and glinting edges. It dwarfed all else both in mass and in the eerie suggestion of dormant power, and Aldric walked towards it with all his senses tingling.

“Meneth Taran,” he said. “Is this the Mother of Storms?”

“It might be.”

Gemmel steered him away without further explanation. Meneth Taran, Thunderpeak, was the heaven-scoring crag that birthed the great tempest in the story, so people gave the name to Sil’ive, tallest of all the Blue Mountains. They gave it half in fun, but never completely so, and with the very air thrumming in his ears Aldric could guess why. Even if he gained no other knowledge from the enchanter, he was learning about awe.

*

By contrast the living apartments were cosy and reassuring, with heavy, well-padded furniture, wood panels masking the starkness of half a mile of solid mountain behind them, and live flames dancing in the fireplaces. Aldric spent no time wondering who had lit and fuelled them, or where the smoke went. With warmth around him for the first time in six days, the wound was making its presence felt again. As it thawed, it throbbed.

Gemmel noticed the wince as Aldric took a seat by the fire. “Enough of this. The arm will heal with time, but I can heal it faster.” He set a box down on the table and opened its lid. “Take off your tunic and shirt.”

Aldric stared apprehensively at the glittering rows of instruments. Though he didn’t know what some of them did, the purpose of the small sharp knives was clear enough. “I’d rather have a bath and a shave,” he said.

“And I’d rather have that wound dealt with. Tunic and shirt off, now.”

With uneasy memories of having his arm set last spring Aldric obeyed, then shuddered like a bitten horse when the bandages peeled away. At least the small shiny device in Gemmel’s gloved hand wasn’t one of the knives.

“Sit still. This won’t hurt—” the device made a droning sound like a swarm of metallic bees and Aldric yelped, “—much.”

Yet within five minutes he was working the arm and shoulder as easily as if the wound had never been there, well aware such swift healing involved far more than medical skill. He was equally aware that any guilt he should have felt about accepting aid from sorcery had also vanished, as completely as the past week’s constant pain.

“Now,” said Gemmel, “do you still want a bath, or would you prefer food and drink?”

Aldric’s appetite came back with a rush. He was definitely in favour of eating first and said so, though tact and a reluctance to find out kept him from asking where the food came from. It was no lavish feast-day banquet but a meal of comforting simple dishes: meats braised and broiled, vegetables whose freshness belied the season, and seasonings which defied the distance from any market, all as good as anything Tewal’s tavern could prepare.

Fastidious as the kourgath cat on his collar, he went to wash directly after the meal and left Gemmel staring at the fire, sipping Hertan grainfire as he tried to shape what he wanted to say to this young Talvalin with the unsettlingly familiar face. It wasn’t an easy task.

Dead son, and unexpected stranger. So alike, yet so different. Aldric had begun smiling again this past week, yet there was an occasional air of freezing menace about him that Ernol had never possessed. This Alban kailin was frightening. Gemmel rejected the word at first, but found it returning to his mind.

“Frightening,” he said, as if hearing it aloud would change its meaning.

“Who is?” Aldric had found breeches and a clean white shirt, and held a towel in one hand. The wet hair sleeked close to his head and freshly shaved face made him seem so young and harmless that Gemmel’s chosen word seemed out of place. Yet he had looked no different in the ymeth-trance as he took down Baiart with brutal precision, and killed the two men in Dunrath with a single sword-stroke each. Youthful he might be, but harmless? No.

“I was thinking,” the wizard said. Aldric settled into a chair by the fire and picked at a loose thread in the towel.

“So was I.” He hesitated, watching through the lashes of eyes half-closed and apparently sleepy. The firelight carved deep trenches in Gemmel’s face and his strange wistful look was back: echoes of recognition and regret, all mingled with a bitter memory of loss. It made Aldric certain his half-formed guess approached the truth.

“You knew someone long ago who looked like me. Or I looked like him. And he died. Was he a friend?” He looked straight at the enchanter. “Or a relative…?” What flickered across Gemmel’s features had nothing to do with firelight, and with an inward wince of embarrassment Aldric bit his tongue before it did more hurt.

Gemmel stared at him, wishing he was less observant or less forthright. More like Ernol. No matter what had happened to drive him into the woods with an arrow in his back, no matter what his clan or history, the Alban was still in his own country. He could never, would never, know what it felt like to live down the long years, to walk through a crowded city, to exchange friendly words and yet be alone. Always alone. This young man with his dead son’s face was a cruel joke perpetrated by malicious fate. Unless…

Unless nothing. Gemmel had no wish to contemplate that alternative either now or later. The brief clandestine relationship was long ago and long forgotten, at least that was what he had convinced himself until last week. He regained his composure with an effort and twisted thin lips into a thin smile. “No matter,” he said. “I was miles and years away.”

Aldric inclined his head and let the subject close. “You started to say something when we were at table, then decided it was best left till later. This is later.”

“Very well.” Gemmel leaned back and steepled his fingers, staring at their nails for a few seconds. “It had to do with what I think happened during your last boar-hunt. We talked about it once or twice, but you were in no fit state for lengthy discussions.”

On several occasions during that ride Gemmel had come close to admitting his use of ymeth and what he had learned from it, but that admission would have led to more questions needing more answers, including some he would never give. So he had shied away from the subject every time, unsure how Aldric would respond. With his conclusion about the young man’s character fresh in mind, he was more unsure than ever.

“There was a spell on the valley, to keep animals out. Not to preserve the honoured dead from scavengers, but to prevent anything being killed there. Blood’s a catalyst for powerful magic. The wizard who cast the spell suspected that any further bloodshed would have some unknown result. He was right, and you can blame Duergar for the rest.”

“Duergar? But what had he—?”

“He’s a sorcerer. Is taking the next step so difficult?” Aldric sat up straighter and prepared to make sensible remarks. He wasn’t asked for any. “You shot a wolf in the leg. Yet you failed to notice what leg Duergar limped on. He’s crafty, that one, and the shape of a fox would have suited him better.”

“You know that bastard?” There was a sudden change in the kailin’s voice, and a look on his face that confirmed Gemmel’s judgement. For all his lack of years, Aldric Talvalin was frightening.

“We met once. In a professional capacity. I didn’t like him then either. Agents of the Empire make my skin crawl.”

“What’s an Imperial agent doing in Alba? Or is that another thing I failed to notice?”

Aldric hoped Gemmel would snap at him again and give him an excuse to snap back. He was seething inside, with helplessness as much as anything else, because the Drusalan Empire made his own hopes and aspirations look very small. Seeking revenge against such a mighty realm would be like making war on the sea for drowning a friend.

“You weren’t meant to notice,” Gemmel said. “Nobody was. And your family may only be the first, because when Grand Warlord Etzel turns his mind to conquest, he’s as inexorable as the incoming tide.” Aldric wondered at that choice of words, as if the wizard was looking into his mind. “But even the spring tide can be stopped, if a breached sea-wall is plugged before too much water gets through.”

“An elaborate way of telling me that if I kill Duergar and do it soon enough, I’ll save Alba from Imperial invasion.” Aldric’s mouth twitched in an acid smile. “Me, all by myself?”

“Yes.”

The smile froze and faded. “Light of Heaven, man, that was blunter than I like. Why would the Grand Warlord want to invade us? Alba isn’t involved with Imperial policies, and King Rynert takes a great deal of trouble not to be involved with them.” He caught Gemmel’s changed expression. “What now?”

“Surprise, no, amazement, to discover any high-clan kailin-eir could be so ignorant of politics.”

“That was Baiart’s field, not…” Aldric’s voice trailed off and his eyes went distant. “Baiart wasn’t at Dunrath. He isn’t dead…”

“Neither are you. Forget him for now. How much were you taught about the Drusalan Empire?”

“Baiart never—”

“Not now. I didn’t ask him, I didn’t ask about him, I asked you and I asked about the Empire. What do you know?”

Aldric blinked. He hadn’t been addressed like that since sunny afternoons in dusty classrooms when one tutor or another lost patience, and he hadn’t expected it here. His reaction flicked from irritated to amused, because Gemmel sounded like all of them at once. But no matter what was said, he wouldn’t forget about Baiart.

“Clearly, far less than I should. All right: Imperial borders have expanded for nearly two hundred years, mostly by profitable marriage and political annexation. Once in a while there’s open conquest, though they call it ‘keeping the peace’. The Emperor has most places across the East-Sea in the palm of his—” Gemmel shook his head, and he stopped. “What now?”

“The Drusalan Empire rules across the Narrow Sea. The Drusalan Emperor is lucky if he rules the running of his own palace. Grand Warlord Etzel’s the true master of the Empire, like every Grand Warlord before him. Now things may change. Emperor Droek’s old before his time, and that time is running out. He’ll die within the year, and for a change Etzel doesn’t want it to happen because there’s a problem with the succession. Droek’s eldest son Taroen was raised from childhood to be a good Emperor: a puppet with strings pulled by the Warlord. Then six months ago the young fool fell off his horse and broke his neck.”

“Baiart thought somebody helped him on his way,” said Aldric. “If it causes so much trouble, then I doubt it.”

“Exactly. Taroen may have helped himself, with a bellyful of wine and a headful of smoke. Or his brother could have done it.”

“His brother?” Aldric sounded appalled, and Gemmel remembered the closeness of Alban family ties. “All right, Baiart didn’t like me, but he wouldn’t…Well, I don’t think he…” Aldric shrugged and produced another sour little smile. “With the right reason and a chance to get away with it, I suppose he would. He really didn’t like me at all.”

“How much better reason with an Empire as your prize, eh? No matter how he might have moved into the succession, Ioen’s a better man than his brother, much better – or will be, if he survives. He’s sixteen, he didn’t grow up in the decadence Etzel provides for his puppet emperors, and he’s more adult than his dear departed brother ever was.”

“So whether Warlord Etzel likes it or not, the next Emperor won’t be just a figurehead.” Now his interest was aroused Aldric paid more attention, and he could see how things fitted together. “He’s doing what he can while he can, because if the Empire stops expanding there’ll be no need for a War Lord any more. And he picked Alba because… Because if the worst happens, he’ll have a bolt-hole out of the Emperor’s reach. And by using a filthy, treacherous, backstabbing—” He checked and took a deep breath. “Using a sorcerer when sorcery’s forbidden in the Empire shows how desperate he must be.”

“Desperate indeed. He’s also aware Rynert condones piracy against Imperial shipping, and Alban vessels smuggle arms and gold to insurrections in the Imperial provinces. Your king is involved, Aldric. He just takes a great deal of trouble not to seem so.”

“Ah.” breathed Aldric. “How in the name of the Highest Hell did you learn all that?” There was no anger in the outburst, only curiosity.

“What would you prefer, sorcery or friends in high places? Call it some of both. and knowing when to say nothing and just listen. But…”

“But what?”

“But I think you may have it all wrong.” Aldric gave up. Tracking the wizard’s mental processes was like trying to read a book in a fog, without lights, after midnight.

“Then what’s the real answer?”

Gemmel stood up and went to the big oak desk, returning with a long slender pipe. Aldric had seen the lengthy rituals of the habit before and that nothing else was likely to happen until it was filled and lit, so instead he helped himself to wine.

“Now why would Duergar Vathach be sneaking about the old Baelen battlefield?” Gemmel muttered. “Was he looking for something? Some unusual thing? A piece not shaped to fit the Empire’s puzzle…?” Aldric began topping up his glass as a buffer against more convoluted discussion, then spilt about half the contents as Gemmel thumped the desk and barked, “Of course!”

“Of course what?” Aldric shook wine from his fingertips into the fire and finished what remained before he spilled that, too. “I’m tired of asking simple-minded questions you never answer.” Those last words and their tone were more than mere petulance. Aldric sounded like a kailin-eir and a clan-lord’s son. Like a Talvalin. Perhaps that made Gemmel careless.

“Duergar wanted the sword-hilt…” Aldric gave him a sharp, quizzical look and he faltered, knowing he had said too much. Once again, this was when he could, should, admit using dream-dust and face the consequences. And once again it didn’t happen. “You, er, you mentioned it once on the road.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Hardly surprising. And I didn’t realise it might be important until now.” Gemmel breathed more easily as the moment passed. “There’s more to enchantment than just a spell to keep beasts away…”

*

Duergar, he said, must have been searching until the boar-hunt interrupted him. Then he watched from a distance, either in the form of a wolf himself or with long-sight through the wolf’s eyes, and saw Aldric unearth his trophy quite by accident. His charm of forgetfulness was cast in haste and too late, otherwise Aldric would have retained no memories of the incident at all.

When fumbled magic didn’t make Aldric drop the hilt, Duergar had changed his plans and sent for disguised mercenary soldiers before going to Dunrath. Killing the Talvalins was no deep-laid scheme. They were an obstruction, and in the death-casual manner of necromancers he had snuffed them out without a thought. Time spared for that thought would have ensured a thorough job, but the lack of it could prove the end of his whole scheme.

*

Gemmel set out his theory without rhetoric, and waited for a reaction. It took a long time in coming, because Aldric was digesting the implications of ‘a thorough job’. The welcome party awaiting his return from Radmur wouldn’t have killed him quickly. They would have asked him where the sword-hilt was and unless Duergar used sorcery to rip lost memory from his mind, the asking would have lasted a long and agonizing time.

“When you mentioned the Empire,” he said at last, “I took comfort from the notion that Clan Talvalin was an important obstruction to some great design. That my family had to be removed before it could proceed. That all those deaths mattered.” He laughed an odd, choked little noise and scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes until they filled with sparks, then blinked until they cleared again. The time for grief and tears was past, or waiting in some uncertain future. Now he wanted to feel the jolt of a well-delivered cut running through the muscles of his arm, and see Duergar’s blood on his blade.

“Instead we were just a nuisance, like wasps in an orchard. So much for pride.”

“What about the sword-hilt?” Aldric looked at him, hoping for clues and seeing none. Then he remembered the old harper who refused to sing a song and the pieces came together.

“No. It isn’t. It can’t be. It’s not possible!”

“Why not?”

“Because Kalarr cu Ruruc’s a legend, a myth, a story to make bad children behave. He’s no more real than… Than a firedrake.” That earned him an odd look he would remember later.

“Legends aren’t written into Books of Years,” said Gemmel. “Or so I was told. Yet it’s one place I read about him. There was nothing about firedrakes, though.” He hesitated, waiting for correction, and when it never came a small smile of relief tugged at the corners of his mouth. “If I can’t trust the chronicle of an honourable clan, what can I take for truth?”

Though Aldric wanted to argue, it was difficult to deny the existence of legends when their reality surrounded him. A crow screaming like a human, a man who could see through a wolf’s eyes, another who could make a cottage vanish… Either none of it made sense, or all of it.

“What makes you sure it’s part of cu Ruruc’s sword?”

“It has to be. Duergar took such great pains to bore you out of interest about the subject.” Gemmel exhaled bittersweet aromatic smoke around his pipe-stem. “And to achieve it with one so inquisitive,” he added, not unkindly, “required considerable ability.” He went to one of the bookcases lining the walls of his study from floor to ceiling and searched for several minutes. “I should have something to enlighten us about why… And yes, yes indeed, there it is.” He pulled down a thick leather-bound book, leafed through its pages and marked one with his finger. “Not a Book of Years, more a personal archive of things that interest me. Alban hall-scribes wouldn’t care for them.” The double meaning did nothing for Aldric’s peace of mind. “Now, let me see.”

Gemmel read quickly, muttering the words under his breath. What Aldric caught of them sounded like archaic Alban, closer to the ancient High Speech of religion and ceremony than everyday language. Suddenly reluctant to hear any more, he was about to say so when Gemmel put the book down.

“Aldric, go fetch me your old jerkin.” There was an odd edge to his voice. Aldric went at once, and when he returned, the sorcerer was drawing a complex table of words and symbols on a sheet of paper. Gemmel glanced up, then drew another sigil right in the centre of the page. “Turn out the pockets, please.”

A brief search revealed the usual fluff, small coins, notes on scraps of parchment and threads from a hole in the pocket lining. Gemmel dismissed the unprepossessing rubbish but lifted one of the broken threads, frowning when he saw the jerkin’s own lining was still intact. When he took a small knife from the desk and sliced the seams apart Aldric opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again as an object fell out and rolled clattering across Gemmel’s desk. As it stopped they could see what it was: the wristband of a horseman’s sword, still with three links of rusty chain remaining of the length that once connected to a pommel.

“Duergar has the hilt,” said Gemmel, “and we have the wristband. I wonder which is more important.”

Aldric picked the thing up for closer inspection. It looked much as he had found it, green with verdigris except where the chain had left bright scratches and flecks of rust. The patina covered even the decorative bosses on its surface, and the more he stared, the less he felt it had anything to do with a master sorcerer like Kalarr. Plain bronze was too cheap.

“Important? This?” He gave a small, disgusted snort and dropped it back onto the table. “Not even to a penniless eijo like me.”

“That’s its function: to look unimpressive, and be ignored.” Gemmel scraped dirt from the band with his knife. “It isn’t even magic. We judge worth by appearance, and when appearance doesn’t match our expectations, we’re easily deceived. Yet an older man may prove stronger than a young one, a plain ring may have more value than any set with gems. And a band of inexpensive bronze may prove of greater interest than one of jewelled gold, if you know what…to…do.”

Metal squeaked under stress as he pried with the knife, then a catch went click and a flickering nimbus of pale blue light sprang up around his hands. The radiance poured from one of the ornamental studs on the wristband, where a cap of bronze plating had sprung back to expose the cabochon crystal secreted beneath. It was blue, like a sapphire, but lit from within by cold, fierce white fire, altogether beautiful and at the same time as awesome as the vast dark shape Aldric had half-glimpsed in the outer cavern.

“This,” said Gemmel, holding it up, “is one of the Seven Spellstones of Echainon.” Aldric could hear the capital letters dropping into place like lumps of lead. “They’ve been lost for what the storytellers like to call ‘uncounted ages’. Well, maybe so and maybe not. I’m not convinced about the Seven, but if I’m right about this one’s provenance I can count the ages of its loss well enough.”

Aldric almost asked for more details, then thought better of it. Perhaps later. Perhaps never. Curiosity might be as unhealthy for a kourgath as a house-cat. “Who or what was Echainon?”

“A scholar possibly; a sorcerer perhaps.” Gemmel glanced at Aldric. “Does it disturb you?

“I’ve been disturbed by more this past while. Why do you say the name as if it’s imp…” his pronunciation shifted, “it’s Important?”

“Respect costs nothing.” Gemmel glanced at the spellstone. “And better safe than sorry.”

“Now that disturbs me.”

“It should.”

Aldric looked at the glowing blue stone, thinking of how long it had lain inert and unnoticed in the pocket and the lining of his jerkin. “You said there were seven spellstones?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, Seven Spellstones. Where are the rest?”

“According to the chronicles, there were seven…” Gemmel began, then noticed the crooked smile on Aldric’s face. “What?”

“Why not just use according to legend and be done?”

“Would you prefer It is said…? Most of what I’ve read is no more trustworthy. Truths, half-truths, guesswork and drunken scribbles in the margin. One, three, five, seven, nine is a progression of numbers in mathematics as much as in magic. You don’t need to know why. One of anything attracts attention, but several—” Gemmel waved one hand as if fanning away his pipe-smoke, “—can be more vague. Some sources even insist Echainon was a place, not a person. And I think evidence doesn’t get so comprehensively muddled just by accident.” If that was intended to put Aldric off, it didn’t work.

“What does a spellstone do?” he asked, and the wizard chuckled.

“Inquisitive hardly begins to describe you. Duergar must have a real talent for tedium. All right, try this. The crystalline matrix within the stone stores power, energy, magic if you like, and the cabochon shape gives focus to the power like sunlight through a burning-glass. Learning to implant and contain such power, then direct its release with control and safety, is part of what sorcerers do. Sometimes they don’t survive the lesson. Now do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.”

“You might, if you studied for ten years or so. Will you do that?”

“No, I won’t.”

“Then you’ll have to trust me.”

“Have I any other choice?”

“As you just said: No, you don’t.” Gemmel set down the spellstone, gazing for a while at the pale light twisting at its core. “Finding this suggests what Duergar has in mind, if he hasn’t done it already. He means to summon a mad dog as his ally, because he thinks he has the collar to control it. Instead all he has is a broken leash. If the dog discovers it can run free as it tried to do before…” He glanced at Aldric. “Imperial invasion will be pleasant by comparison.”

*

There was a stone plinth, with a slab of crystal resting on top making it look like a catafalque for the lying-in-state of some great man. A slow dance of green flames surrounded it, burning without heat, without smoke and without fuel.

Duergar dozed before it in a cushioned chair, untroubled by the shifting light and so weary that little could disturb him. The rituals had lasted four days and their completion had left him exhausted. One hand cradled a sword-hilt of antique design, scratched and shiny from recent cleaning and with the incised letters on its guard and pommel outlined in fresh black ink. Those square, heavy letters were everywhere. He had read them, and others like them, in the many grimoires scattered about the room, and now they twined among the intricate symbols covering the floor.

Duergar settled deeper into his chair and dreamed that the sluggish flames began swirling upwards into a tapering spire of translucent emerald ice. A globe of amber radiance spun at the heart of the fire until its golden light swallowed every trace of green, and darkened from the colour of hot honey through incandescent scarlet to a bloody crimson. The globe narrowed to a spindle of dark red poised atop the catafalque, then even its sullen glare faded and everything grew dark.

Waking with a nervous jerk from a dream close to nightmare, Duergar found his dream had become reality. The light of a solitary candle was barely enough to discern outlines, but he could see that the granite plinth now held more than just the slab of crystal. This tall, rustling silhouette was none of the possible shapes his grimoires had described, and like all sorcerers Duergar lived in dread of the day when what appeared was not what he had summoned, making all the blocks and wards against it useless.

Today was that day. The candle-flame sparkled back at him in a hundred ruby-red reflections, from polished metal, from cut gemstones – and from gleaming eyes.

The eyes blinked, savouring his terror, and drifted closer. Sweat coursed down the necromancer’s face and his tongue stuck in his dry mouth as he tried to form the words of a defensive spell. Then the shape halted and the eyes glanced down to where a line of the pattern drawn so carefully around the catafalque glowed white, blocking its path. With a soft, venomous hiss of indrawn breath the dark outline shifted sideways, but always the lines of the pattern brightened before it, tracking every move.

“What… Who are you?” Duergar said at last. There was no reply and the evident power of his restraining-spell made him bolder. “I summoned you, I command you! Give me your name!”

There was a noise almost like a sigh of boredom, and all the other candles sprang to life. They revealed a man leaning against the catafalque, tall and lean, his features framed by dark, grey-flecked hair bound back in a kailin’s braid. It was the face of a man who seldom hears refusal of his wishes, and right now he was far from amused.

“If you could remove this obstruction?” he said in a deep voice, gesturing at the warding-pattern. Duergar did nothing of the sort.

“What is your name?” he repeated.

“You summoned me, you command me.” The man echoed Duergar’s words with sarcastic contempt. “Do you doubt your skill so much that you dare not also name me? Then let me spare you further effort.” He left the plinth and sauntered with a predator’s grace to the edge of the ward, watching as it flared with excruciating brilliance to hold him back. “I am Kalarr cu Ruruc.”

He made a complex sign in the air with his hand. Demons could lie, could cheat, could change their form, but some things they could not do, and perform the Sigil of True Summoning was one of them. Duergar bowed low, almost abasing himself.

“Your pardon, my lord. I was… Unsure. Welcome, welcome! Let me Open the way for you.”

“The ancient rules of binding still hold good, do they not?” said Kalarr. “You gave me welcome, so I have no need for Opening.” He raised both hands above the nearest blazing line and pressed their palms together. When they parted again so did the line, leaving his path clear. “Just as someone invited you across their threshold.” Duergar cringed like a dog before a beating, and failed to sidestep the hand that wrapped around his head. “Have no fear,” Kalarr reassured him. “I merely want to learn, and ymeth takes too long. But unlike dream-dust, I do not suffer the headache…”

The sorcerer tightened his grip, yet it was more than physical pressure that made Duergar scream. The mind within his skull was being wrenched asunder, sifted through like papers in a trunk, examined and discarded. When those long fingers released him he almost fell.

“So you hope for my aid in wrecking this kingdom of Alba, because I would enjoy revenge for my past defeat. How true. Then instead of turning it over to your Imperial masters, you mean to hold it for yourself. What laudable ambition. And since you possess the last thing I touched in life—” Duergar raised the sword-hilt like a protective amulet, “—I have no choice.” Cu Ruruc’s smile faded as if the implications of what he said were sinking in, but Duergar missed the glitter in his eyes when they saw the broken chain. “So be it. I shall obey.”

He turned away and as if for the first time, Duergar realised his guest was dressed in unbroken red. No Alban ever wore it without some other colour to offset its malign influence and vermeil, the blood-clot shade of dark crimson Kalarr wore with such arrogance, was the single most unlucky tincture in the spectrum. It was associated with misfortune and violent death.

Cu Ruruc and his chosen colour were well matched.

CHAPTER FOUR

Aldric lay in bed, half-dozing, and let his mind wander back over the past three years. They had passed more quickly than he would have believed possible, and he was already in the spring of his twenty-fourth year. Though he felt no different, he was: not just older, but with a scar down his right cheek and a mind better versed in certain subjects than any honourable kailin-eir would admit. Gemmel called it ‘survival.’

Gemmel…

When Aldric first learned how long he would stay, there was an undignified scene. Only cowards deferred sworn vengeance, he had shouted, and whatever else he might be, he was no coward. There was more in the same vein, some repetitive, some original, all obscene, but Gemmel weathered the storm of abuse with the little half-smile of a man who knew he would have the last word. He had been right, as usual, and the topic hadn’t been raised since.

An eijo and honourless wanderer lost nothing by tuition in the Art Magic. Aldric already knew a few pesok’n, petty-spells, from old books borrowed in secret, because despite their presence in his library as a proof of wide learning, Haranil-arluth despised sorcery. After a notably sharp punishment Aldric kept his own counsel on the matter and hid his borrowed books more carefully. They gave him a certain ability to make friends with dogs, cats and horses, and to find lost trinkets, but it was little more than toy magic. Thanks to Gemmel he now understood a little of the real thing, and what chance unaided revenge might have against Duergar.

None at all.

Months had passed before Aldric called Gemmel anything but his name or carefully-neutral terms of respect. Then one evening he used altrou, foster-father, and the undisguised delight at something with more meaning than any lordly title broke down their awkward host-guest attitudes once and for all.

Even so, Aldric shouldn’t have laughed aloud when Gemmel claimed to be a taiken-master. If false, laughter was cruel, and if true it was unwise. There hadn’t been a true master of the longsword since Baiel Sinun died two hundred years ago, so claiming the term without credential was unseemly. Gemmel remained unruffled.

“Sinun was passable,” he said. “Not as good as some, though he taught me techniques of ward and guard I hadn’t seen before. In exchange I showed him some practical work with hilt and pommel the manuals had forgotten.” Before Aldric could start asking How? and When? Gemmel demonstrated at least the ‘how’ with a taidyo staff-sword, catching him off-guard three times within the first four passes. Not even Joren had ever managed that.

Despite his apparent age, and Aldric didn’t ask what it might be, the enchanter’s gaunt frame concealed wiry strength and his hands had the skill harpers exaggerated in their songs. Gemmel wasn’t a master; he was a genius, a virtuoso, perhaps the finest swordsman Aldric had ever met, seen or heard of. In his late teenage years he’d beaten Joren by skill not luck several times, yet against Gemmel Errekren he was a child with a stick trying to harm a battle-armoured kailin.

Whenever Aldric thought about sword-work now he could see the wizard, eyes glittering like emeralds, whirling and stamping like some graceful, demented dancer. With his wizardly dignity set aside Gemmel was opinionated, excitable, quick to argue and had no tolerance for the more useless rituals of swordplay.

The first time Aldric took guard with both hands on his sword’s long grip, Gemmel copied him and held the pose for a full second. Then he closed the distance in a single stride, locked hilts in a close bind to push both swords off-line and chopped his left hand like a striking snake across the younger man’s neck.

“I could have had a dagger in that hand,” he said over the sound of coughing. “Even when you’re observing the courtesies, keep observing your opponent. He’ll certainly be doing the same to you, and if he gets a chance, he’ll take it. Now, again!”

Aldric took many slaps and cuffs like that first one, delivered through openings in weak defence or misread moves. His teeth were rattled and more than once he got a bloody nose. But he bore it all as calmly as he could, because he’d seen from early on that Gemmel-altrou was teaching him to stay alive.

Soon they graduated from plain practice hilts to complex real ones, curves and bars of polished steel like abstract artworks that fitted Aldric’s hand like an extension of it. Then came the day during a practice bout without masks when a stroke opened his face from eyebrow to cheek. It wasn’t a dangerous cut, not even unsightly though he would bear its mark for the rest of his life, and it proved he had become too fast for the wizard to merely slap at any more. As realisation dawned, a grin twisted the stream of blood on his face into grotesque tributaries.

“You’ll have a scar,” said Gemmel. “Try to ensure it’s the only one.”

“Only one? That’s a bit much to hope for.”

“Wounds in melee are excusable. The only thing proved by a wound in single combat is that you’ve survived being careless.”

Aldric wondered what getting killed in single combat would prove, then decided not to ask.

The fierce tuition continued for three hours each day, on six days out of every seven. Aldric didn’t enjoy it and hadn’t expected to, but his skills with long and short sword, with dagger and with cutting-spear were soon far beyond anything learned from Joren.

The improvement wasn’t only with weapons. When Gemmel instructed him as they fought, he could think through the often-abstruse questions and give the right answers even while avoiding a blade swung at his head. A sudden flurry of Jouvaine or Drusalan no longer left him floundering in a morass of bad translation and worse defence. That was when he knew he was becoming something more than just a clan-lord’s youngest son, trained for war but little else. Whatever Gemmel had in mind was much more than helping an Alban eijo who chanced to looked like his son. All those lessons in languages, politics and geography added up to something on a scale Aldric preferred not to think about. Not just now, at least.

He smiled at the thought as he turned out the light, and was still smiling when he fell asleep. For once, he didn’t dream.

*

“Where can he be?” Kalarr cu Ruruc’s soft, introspective murmur stung Duergar like the shrillest accusation of guilt. He shrugged and made helpless gestures that went unnoticed, because Kalarr was standing near the window, his vermeil crest-coat a coagulated blot in the sunset light, and paid no heed to what went on behind him.

“Where…?” he said again.

Despite hunting Baelen Forest and beyond for almost two years before abandoning his search, Duergar still lacked a solid answer. He knew about the little cache of spellbooks in Aldric’s room, and when the trail went cold at a cottage hidden by an insignificant charm, it was likely the young man had cast it himself. Duergar’s horsemen, with bad habits picked up in their Drusalan service, had burned the place, but their rough search had confirmed it empty. Aldric Talvalin had most likely died long ago from the arrow he’d taken as he fled from Dunrath, using up the last of his strength in that sorcerous attempt to hide his tracks. If only they had found his body…

Kalarr was less easily convinced, and the repeated searches he ordered made Duergar wonder if his associate was looking for something else. What that might be, the necromancer didn’t know. He needed to find out, because alive, missing or dead, Aldric Talvalin wasn’t Duergar’s only concern. There were five letters locked in his desk, four enciphered and the latest in clear, unequivocal language. Warlord Etzel was losing patience with his agent’s carefully worded excuses; he wanted action and an end to subtlety. The Alban Royal Council, stated the latest message, was secretly financing a rebellion by two prominent Jouvaine city-states, and arms of Prytenek manufacture had been seized in the province of Tergoves at the heart of the Empire.

Where is the political instability you are to foster? Why has your much-vaunted seizure of a fortress not borne fruit? Perhaps, snarled the spiky letters, written by a secretary whose penmanship captured tone of voice with frightening success, the time has come for you to explain your failure here, while someone else completes your mission there!

Kalarr derived much cynical entertainment from Duergar’s planned treachery, and as always when he thought what cu Ruruc found amusing, the necromancer put one hand to the chain around his neck. The ancient sword-hilt hung from it like a ponderous good-luck token, but its cold metal gave little comfort at the best of times and none now, for Kalarr caught the gesture and smiled in a way that made Duergar’s stomach tighten like a fist. All requests to aid the Drusalan’s mission had been ignored, and though the binding-spell on the hilt allowed commands not just requests, Duergar didn’t dare test his strength until there was no other choice.

Such a test might fail.

He hadn’t recalled all the spies sent out after Aldric, and now they shadowed Kalarr’s people. Whatever lay undiscovered in the far reaches of Baelen Wood, Duergar wanted it first.

*

What Kalarr wanted was the wristband of his sword.

Duergar’s spell used any artefact of a sorcerer’s life to restore him whole and entire and, if the artefact was the last object touched before death, it granted control to the spellcaster. Yet Duergar knew nothing of Alban military history. A man might drop a sword-hilt from his fingers, but the last thing to touch him as he died would be its metal band, locked in place. Trivial oversights like that had killed many otherwise-careful wizards, and when Kalarr no longer needed to pretend subservience it would kill another. All he had to do was find the wristband.

Best of all, the Echainon spellstone would magnify his own considerable power. Kalarr had used it that way until fear of loss made him hide it on the band of his war-sword, where its metal shroud muted the stone’s influence. He had never foreseen a time where he would lack the few seconds needed to free it, until Clan Talvalin’s last suicidal charge burst through his battle-line and swept him dying to the ground.

The clan-lord’s name was long forgotten, but Kalarr could still recall blue eyes wide with battle-rage and terror, snarling bloodied teeth within the mask of a scored and buckled helm, and a taiken already scything in even as he killed the man with a lethal blast of sorcery. He remembered the sword better than its owner, for Isileth, Starsteel, already had a grim reputation. Friends and enemies alike called it The Widow Maker. The blade had lopped hand from wrist on the way to his face and a brilliant blaze of pain, then darkness and oblivion…

Kalarr drew a shuddering breath and massaged his right hand with his left. It was fitting that he now held the Talvalin citadel, but terrifying that another Talvalin might hold the Echainon stone. This was a Talvalin who had defied his clan history and read books of sorcery, who had ignored the kailin Honour-Code and refused to kill himself.

What else might such a man do after brooding on vengeance for years?

Once he regained the spellstone Kalarr would fear nothing. He would show Duergar, and Rynert of Alba, Emperor Droek and his Warlord or anyone else who dared face him, what a true Overlord was like. After half a thousand years there would be no wizard with enough schooling in the Old Magics to defy him.

Once he regained it. If he regained it. Because though he was already a power to be feared, the spellstone was in the hands of someone beyond familiar rules. Aldric Talvalin should have died with the rest of his clan or by his own hand afterwards. Instead he was alive for a purpose made clear by those three tags of severed hair found eerily unburnt on the bloody floor. Duergar could make claims about Talvalin’s probable death for his own reasons, but until a head or body lay on that same floor in front of him, Kalarr would believe none of them. With his honour laid aside, a venjens-eijo might hire another enchanter to use the Stone on his behalf, and Kalarr’s own skill would count for nothing if he was taken by surprise. History had confirmed that already.

Another enchanter…

Kalarr shot a suspicious glance at Duergar’s bowed head. His own deep-laid plans would benefit from the chaos of an imminent invasion, once the Drusalan sent ciphers to authorise it. When he did, everything would change in the blink of an eye. A bead of sweat trickled past Kalarr’s own eye, tickling the skin and causing just such a blink. In a sudden blaze of frustration he flung the window wide.

“Where are you, Talvalin?” he yelled into the afternoon air, but only the distorted echoes of his voice came back from the citadel walls. Kalarr turned as the door of the chamber opened and watched the man in the doorway bow low.

“Is anything wrong, my lord?” he said humbly. Kalarr’s face twisted, angry at his own loss of control.

“No!” he snapped. “Get out!” The man bowed again as he backed away.

“As my lord pleases,” said Baiart Talvalin.

*

Aldric came out of a sound sleep with alarms jangling his mind for the first time in longer than he could remember, and rolled sideways off the bed with one hand already closed on the holstered telek behind the headboard. It cleared leather as his feet hit the floor and made a small, sinister double click as he racked its spanning-sleeve. The spring-gun held eight stubby steel darts, and inside twelve paces it would put each one through an unarmoured target as fast as he could crank them out. It was a weapon for places and times where a sword had insufficient reach but a bow had too much.

Places like bedrooms; times like now.

“Impressive,” said Gemmel from the doorway. “All I had to do was stand here and draw this,” he held up a long dagger, “and your subconscious did the rest.”

“You weren’t being very clever, altrou.” Aldric disarmed the telek carefully; their long trigger-bars were sometimes over-sensitive, and it would be easy to put a dart through his own foot. “Especially after training me not to ask questions in a situation like that one. If I hadn’t remembered where I was…”

“The day you take me off guard after I’ve set up the ambush is the day I’ll give up sorcery for keeping chickens.”

Aldric made a derisive noise as he returned the telek to its holster. “Just don’t be too impressed,” he said. “This inner warning of mine doesn’t always work.”

“Such things seldom do. Best not to rely on it.”

“I don’t.”

“Very wise. Now, pay attention. It’s time you found out what’s been going on in the world these past few years, because you’re going to rejoin it.”

“You mean I’m leaving? Why?”

“Reluctance, after so long? I thought you were eager to be away.”

“I am eager, but… Well, this is one of the situations you told me about. The ones where I should ask questions. So when I ask, will I get more answers than usual?”

“As many as you want.” Gemmel didn’t smile. “And some you might not want at all.”

*

“…which is probably why Kalarr hasn’t given Duergar any help so far, and why Duergar won’t force the issue. He isn’t a fool. If he hasn’t already worked out the true controlling talisman, a look at any other old sword should make it clear enough. Whether he knows about the spellstone I can’t say. I doubt it’s mentioned in the Talvalin Book of Years. Most clans don’t like keeping records of such things, and some are more reluctant than others.” Gemmel paused as he had done so many times over the past years in case Aldric rose to the tentative lure, and again there was no response. “Kalarr certainly won’t tell him.”

“Altrou, you’re a wizard.” Aldric’s finger rapped the table to emphasise his words, making the spellstone tremble slightly in its velvet-lined case. Cold azure fire spilled out and sent shadows dancing across his features. “Why not use the stone yourself? Let it work with your power instead of his?”

Gemmel shook his head. “No. Sorcery’s like swordplay, there are different schools with different styles. Skill with an Alban taiken doesn’t mean skill with a Jouvaine estoc, and this is the same. I could use it, but an expert could turn that use against me. And cu Ruruc is an expert.”

“Then what can I do?”

“You can learn why I gave you such an elaborate education.”

They talked over dinner, or rather Gemmel talked. As often happened when he was in the mood for a lecture, the meal was solid, homely food that gave Aldric more to do than interrupt. He listened in silence as he worked through mustard-spiced lamb braised with onions, carrots and garlic, served peasant-style with dumplings steamed on top. There were even little bowls of the fiery red and green emberseed sauces he remembered from happier times.

Gemmel finished first as usual, since he didn’t observe high-clan table manners, adding liquid relish from the left hand and dry seasoning from the right, cutting meat with a long knife but bread with a short, and a dozen finicky rules besides. For Aldric however they formed a connection with what he had once been; so little remained of his past life, that he refused to break any remaining links.

“I can’t use the spellstone to best advantage by itself,” said Gemmel, “so you’ll bring me something I can use. You won’t have to go far.” He cleared dishes to one side and spread a map on the table, a strange thing on stiff glass-clear parchment with letters much too small to see unaided. “This charts the location of various useful talismans.” Aldric raised his eyebrows at the idea there might be so many they needed mapped. Then he raised them even further when the map projected itself much larger into the air and the lettering grew with it.

“The closest is here,” Gemmel’s finger touched a red dot in the central Jouvaine provinces, “but it’s right on the Empire’s border. Provincial governors have been lax about magic in past years, but with two city-states in rebellion, Imperial law is stringently enforced again.”

“Rebellion financed by Alban silver?”

“Another reason why sending you there isn’t a good idea. Being Alban in the Empire is bad enough at the best of times. If anyone discovered you were searching for a sorcerous talisman, you wouldn’t live to see trial. But the ban on use of magic works both ways and it’s blown up in Etzel’s face. Duergar isn’t his only agent, and when a Vreijek overlord caught another stealing documents from his library, it caused much more than gossip.”

“Altrou, Vreijaur’s an Imperial province. An ally. Even I know that. So why would the Grand Warlord send a thief—?”

“Because the documents were spellcastings. He couldn’t officially request them because it meant admitting interest in papers so illegal they shouldn’t exist. Theft was the only way and after some, ah, persuasion, the man admitted who was paying him. Etzel barely weathered the scandal, and it lost him so much support it’s a wonder he’s still in office.”

“What’s the Empire so afraid of? Alba’s lords and kings never approved of sorcery, but they didn’t see any need to pass a law against it.”

Gemmel poured wine and took a careful sip. Yet again Aldric showed no knowledge of the sorcerer many years ago whose aid to clan Talvalin had turned out far different than what was expected.

“Perhaps because they’ve never had its full power used against them. I travelled, before I came to Alba. My son Ernol and I wanted to see new countries, and learn new things. Until the day we reached a village in Tergoves province that was being… The Empire’s word is ‘corrected’. You can guess what it entails. There was nothing we could have, should have done, but Ernol played the hero. He rescued several people and killed two soldiers in the process. Small loss. They were butchers, enjoying their work. That afternoon, more soldiers found us.

“There was a young man with them, in fine armour and costly clothing, who called Ernol over. He was smiling, I remember that. ‘Did you kill my soldiers?’ he asked. He had a pleasant voice, I remember that too. ‘Yes,’ said Ernol. ‘Why?’ he asked, and Ernol told him. ‘They were following their orders,’ the young man said, ‘and are expensive to replace. Can you reimburse me for the loss?’ ‘No,’ said Ernol. ‘I think you can,’ the young man said in that pleasant voice. He was still smiling…”

Gemmel stared at empty air for several seconds, and Aldric sat very still. He knew what had to be coming next.

“He was still smiling when he killed my son. I went a little mad. I think I screamed. I know I wept.

I saw the young man, smiling, wiping his axe, and he was red; his horse was red; the grass and the sky and the sun, all red with the blood of my son and the rage in my brain. I raised my hand. He saw it was empty, and he smiled some more. Then I spoke the Invocation of Fire. He stopped smiling and began to burn.

“He fell to the ground and he burned until only his armour gave shape to the cinders. I didn’t know he was the Grand Warlord’s second son. I didn’t care that I would make the Empire ban all magic on pain of death. All I knew, all I cared about, was that I killed him too quickly.

“I didn’t repay him adequately for… For my own, my only son.”

*

Aldric stared unblinking at Gemmel for a time, then poured wine for himself and drank it down in a single long gulp. The alcohol’s warmth did little for the icy knot in his stomach. He had only ever seen the studious side of the man he called altrou, even during the violence of sword-training, and had sometimes wondered if Gemmel understood the intensity of his own desire for revenge. Clearly he did.

Not repay him sufficiently… Those words might have been his own.

“So where am I—” Now those were his own words, raspy and shrill from a mouth still dry despite the wine. Aldric cleared his throat and tried again. He asked nothing more about what Gemmel had done, because he had heard more than enough. “Where am I supposed to go? And what do I do when I get there?”

“You go here.” Gemmel pointed to another red dot on the map. “And you come back with Ykraith.”

“Talismans have names?”

“Of course they do. Horses have names, dogs and cats and swords have names, why should significant artefacts of the Art Magic be otherwise? You already speak of the Echainon Spellstone with respect, so do the same with this. It’s called the Dragonwand.”

“Dragon…”

“What you Albans call a firedrake.” Gemmel didn’t look up from the map and missed the expression on Aldric’s face. He knew well enough what a dragon was, and the echoed word was less a question than audible dismay at being sent to find anything named for one.

“What does this, this Dragonwand do?” For a moment he thought Gemmel was refusing to answer, then realised the enchanter was merely considering how to explain in a way Aldric could understand.

“I’ve told you more than once how a spellstone focuses the energy of a spells,” said Gemmel after a moment. “A spellstave enhances it. You can throw a stone or arrow a certain distance. Using a sling or bow makes them go further, strike harder, be more accurate…”

“It’s a weapon?”

“It’s many things.” Aldric knew that tone of voice. The subject was closed.

“So where am I going?”

“Techaur Island.” The wizard indicated a broad swathe of blotches in the Narrow Sea south of Cerenau, more like ink spattered from a clumsily-trimmed quill than anything else. The red dot of the talisman was as large as any of them.

“Altrou, those are the Thousand Islands. They weren’t given the name for a joke!”

“They’re only five days’ sailing from Erdhaven.”

“And how many days finding one particular nameless lump of rock?”

“It’s not nameless, it’s called Techaur. Ask one of the local fishermen. Any ‘lump of rock’ big enough for a name and a cavern like the one in the record will be big enough to find without much trouble.” Gemmel looked thoughtful. “If there’s going to be trouble, that’ll come afterwards.”

“But look, altrou, Kerys is much closer. If I took a ship from there it would be a two-day sail at most. Why don’t I—”

“Why don’t you look at the rest of the map? There’s much more riding from here to Kerys than there is to Erdhaven. Much more time for you to be spotted. Much more time for you to be dealt with.”

“Oh…”

“Yes, ‘oh.’ Now, you already have tsepan and taipan, but you still need the third of the Three Blades. One to own, not to borrow. Or have you any more objections for me to dispose of?”

Aldric could have mentioned pirates, Imperial Fleet patrol-ships or even water-monsters. Instead he twitched his mouth into a brief, humourless smile and saved his breath.

*

“My collection,” said Gemmel, and stepped aside as ponderous double doors slid open, releasing a faint waft of cold, dry air and a metallic scent. Aldric was well-accustomed to the unusual after so many years in a wizard’s company, but he had long wanted to see this armoury. He saw it now, rack upon rack of oiled and glinting steel lit by cool, pale light, and realised he wasn’t completely inured to marvels after all.

He wandered up and down between the racks, casting a critical eye over enough weapons to outfit a legion of retainers. Most of them, even the strangest, could be identified as sword or axe or spear, while others left him as puzzled as any country yokel in a Hall of Curiosities. They were weapons because they were in an armoury; what they did and how they did it was a mystery.

There was a nagging sensation that he should be looking for something in particular, and the lack of it brought him back to Gemmel empty-handed. The enchanter nodded as if expecting it.

“Here,” the wizard said, holding out a long, flat box. “This is what you hoped to find.”

The box contained what Aldric expected, a taiken longsword, and he bowed before he touched it to honour gift and giver. Heavy waxed linen protected the bare tang, while the blade was covered by a black scabbard relieved by delicate filigrees of silver. Recesses to either side contained the parts of its hilt, each cradled in a shaped nest of quilted satin and dark not with enamel or bluing but because of the metal itself. Even the long grip was black, bound in braided wire to the halfway point, then finished with a skin of leather over twisted cords.

No new-given taiken was drawn for the first time except under the light of Heaven, and Aldric contented himself with easing a handspan of blade from the scabbard. He half-expected it to be black, like swords in storybooks, but instead there were serpentine patterns of smoky blue-grey within the metal, shifting like mist on water between edges bright as mirrors.

Finally he unwrapped the linen binding from its tang to see what was written there. By custom and practice the visible decorations on a taiken blade were thunderbolts, mythic beasts or abstract sweeps and curls. Names, boasts, curses or tallies of the dead lay out of sight beneath the grip. Aldric’s eyes narrowed as he scanned the graceful letters, flowing as if written by a pen rather than chiselled from the grey metal. They and their language were an archaic form of High Alban, so old that he had to work at the translation and hard to accept even when he understood it.

“This can’t be true.”

“It is,” said Gemmel. “An ancient blade to match an ancient evil.”

“Forged was I of iron Heaven-born,” Aldric read, half to himself. “Uelan made me. I am Isileth.”

Gemmel had no reason to deceive him, so this taiken from the stories was almost two thousand years old, older than the coming of the Horse Lords. Hilt and guards would have changed many times as style dictated, but the blade itself, one of the first to be straight and fully double-edged, had a lineage few clans could match.

Clan Talvalin did, on the Elthanek side, and so did Aldric.

The ribbon of steel was supposedly too hard to take a bend yet too flexible to break, and those same stories claimed its edges had been honed just once, still wet from the quenching bath. Its name was indeed Isileth, Starsteel, but it also had a more sinister title: Widowmaker. Many named-blades had dark deeds in their history, shadows like the smoke-grey snakes writhing in their bright blades, and until it vanished from history after the last Clan Wars, Isileth Widowmaker was no exception.

Aldric secured the complex hilt, its quillons curved and forked for trapping an opponent’s blade and extending into loops to guard his fingers, then locked the pommel in place and pressed the silver-mounted scabbard to his brow. There were stilted traditional words to say when accepting a sword, but he couldn’t remember them, and for this sword they would have been inadequate.

Instead he pulled the scabbard’s cross-strap over his head and let the taiken’s weight rest against his left hip for the first time in years. Thanks to the half-mythic reputation of this sword it was both familiar and strange, comforting yet eerie.

“I’ll have your horses and armour ready by tomorrow,” said Gemmel, and Aldric came out of his waking dream with a start.

“I’ll pack my own travelling gear,” he said. “And my personal kit.”

“I don’t think I’ve overlooked anything.” Gemmel wasn’t offended, just a little curious.

“You haven’t, altrou. I want to make sure I don’t either.”

*

Aldric shook his head, put down the scissors and brushed away a last few clippings. Despite many haircuts over the past years, this was the first to renew his eijo-crop with such severity. There was no reason to do it, but many things had been done without reason and this was far from the least.

His clothing was restricted to essentials chosen for function not fashion and, apart from white shirts and linen, everything was serviceable black or deep blue with just a touch of silver to relieve their gloom. Some garments – Aldric pulled three sheathed knives from their hiding-place behind his bed – were more serviceable still. Neither his family nor, he guessed, his foster-father would approve of these Three Blades, since even venjens-eijin were expected to carry all their weapons in plain view. In a perfect world, perhaps. This was not.

One, a balanced throwing-knife, had a sheath inside one of his long riding-boots. Another was a thin stiletto slipped into the lining of his jerkin’s left sleeve. The third was most dubious of all, a T-shaped punch dagger whose scabbard hooked to loops he had sewn beneath all his shirt-collars. It was dishonourable, an assassin’s weapon – and a possibly fatal surprise for anyone who thought him unarmed. That, Aldric reflected as he settled the tiny knife against his spine, was justification enough.

His old shortsword hung from one side of a new double weapon-belt with Isileth on the other, until he drew the long blade up across his back and checked the look of it in his mirror. Then he hesitated for a long time, staring at his tsepan and hating it, hating what it meant, and most of all hating the cowardice prompting him to leave it behind. But finally it went onto his belt, and his Three Blades were complete for the first time in too long. With a final glance around what had been his second home, he picked up his saddlebags and closed the door.

Gemmel was waiting near the armoury, and without comment about Aldric’s re-shortened hair he led the way to a flight of stairs. There was a stable scent of hay and horses and sure enough, past the wide doorway at the top stood a pack-pony laden with unmistakable boxes of cased armour.

The courser in the stall beside it was midnight black and gleaming. Its harness and saddle were black leather bossed and inlaid with silver, with a short-bow, full quiver and pair of holstered telekin strapped to either side. The ornamental tassels were silver-shot blue, Talvalin colours too understated for an idle glance, and the shield behind them was uncrested black. The beast was Andarran, a graceful, fine-boned breed extinct this hundred years or more, surviving only as drawings and wistful words in old books. Any horse with even a trace of that bloodline was valued above all others, and now Aldric found himself looking at a purebred.

“Its name is Lyard,” he heard Gemmel say as he made his saddlebags fast. The words barely registered. He had an overpowering sensation of having slipped unnoticed into a harper’s tale, one as solid as the warm horseflesh under his hand or the cold sword on his back.

He led the Andarran courser forward, secured the pack-pony’s reins to a stirrup leather, then glanced around for the way out. Gemmel noticed his enquiring look, and touched a panel to set the back wall of the stable grinding ponderously open. A breeze whirled in, bringing birdsong and the scent of the open air, and Aldric stepped back into a world which should have seemed real, except he could no longer decide what was real any more.

Gemmel watched the Talvalin kailin-eir with his son’s face rise to the saddle in a single easy swing and moved out behind him into the watery sunshine. “I’m sorry the weather isn’t more pleasant,” he said. Aldric didn’t care. He had never appreciated landscapes before, but this was the first he had laid eyes on in far too long and he drank it in.

“Prices have changed since I last paid them attention, but a thousand marks should suffice.” Gemmel held out two leather wallets. “This one has five hundred in gold deniers, the other has the same in silver.” Aldric had repeated his store of thanks so often that he no longer knew what to say, so he just nodded and took the wallets, heavy and clinking pleasantly even though their tops were laced down tight. “If it’s not enough, and you hurry, you can win more at the Erdhaven Spring Festival. You’re a Talvalin, the clan-lord’s son, better suited for this task than anyone else—”

“And one day you might even tell me why?”

“One day I might. Now remember…” A tiny smile tugged at the corners of Aldric’s mouth; it was typical of Gemmel to give another lecture when all had already been said. “Touch nothing but the Dragonwand, no matter how tempting. Watch out for spies, they won’t all be human. Trust nobody, especially after dark. And if you’re spoken to from an unexpected quarter, reply with all the courtesy you would give to… Do you remember how you spoke to your grandmother?”

“No. She died the year after I was born.”

“Ah. Then… Then just mind your manners. And Aldric—”

“Yes?”

Gemmel shyly rubbed the toe of his boot into the grass. “I was only going to say, come back safe.” Aldric smiled, bowed, and with a rush of warmth the wizard realised it wasn’t gratitude to a benefactor but the small nod of son to father.

“I’ll do my best. Tau k’noeth-ei, altrou-ain.” He twitched Lyard’s reins and cantered off into the sunrise while Gemmel watched him go.

“And you too, my son.”

When Aldric looked back he saw only an empty hillside, and grass rippling in the breeze. But he waved anyway.

*

Duergar Vathach read the words on a ragged scrap of parchment for the third time as if hoping they might have changed their meaning. They had not. There was nobody in the locked room to comment on the pallor of his face, nor the way his fingers became white-knuckled fists that clawed the pendant sword-hilt from around his neck. Links of broken chain scattered across the floor with a multiple laughing tinkle as the hilt crashed against a wall.

Cradling his sweat-slick head in both hands, Duergar mumbled incoherently to himself. He had long been troubled by the way cu Ruruc showed neither caution nor respect but amusement whenever he saw the talisman which supposedly controlled him. Then there were all those searchers sent into Baelen Wood. He hadn’t realised what cu Ruruc sought until a year ago, when some now-forgotten errand brought him to the Hall of Archives in Dunrath’s great library. There were relics of the Clan Wars hung up among the books and rolls of parchment: tattered banners, broken shields – and old-style taikenin with the chains and bands for securing each sword to its owner’s wrist.

Bands which would be in contact with the wearer’s cooling flesh long after death-slack fingers had released the weapon’s hilt…

Duergar spent the next ten months in frantic, furtive searching through every document in a fortress all too well supplied with scribbled scraps of information. He hadn’t known what he was looking for, only that he would recognise it when he saw it. And he did. The coppersmith’s bill, folded out of sight and mind in a heap of ledgers for five hundred years, confirmed his worst fears.

“… from a kailin of Ut Ergan citadel, retainer to Kalarr-arluth, two markes of silver for ensetting of a jewel (this blue and most fair) under bronze on his swordes clasp against losing of ye same, it being a luck-token ygiven of his lord…”

One of the Echainon spellstones had vanished from all knowledge just before the last Clan Wars, and to Duergar what he read had only one possible meaning. If he could get his hands on the wrist-band with its stone still ‘ensetten under bronze’, Kalarr cu Ruruc would smirk on the other side of his haughty face. But if Kalarr found them first…

He quailed at the prospect. This discovery answered many suspicions about cu Ruruc, and he was sure his so-called ally was also hunting for Aldric Talvalin. If Kalarr couldn’t bring the kailin back to search and question, then to keep the stone from someone else’s hands he would obliterate Aldric and everything he wore, carried or was near.

Duergar had to reach both it and Aldric first.

With the strength of terror he dragged his laden desk aside and began to draw a symbol of great power across the wooden floor.

*

In the four days’ riding since he left Gemmel, Aldric encountered less than twenty people, but it was enough to prove that an eijo received far more respect than a kailin of the same age. Their bows of greeting were invariably performed with an unease he found shocking until he remembered why. An eijo, whether with hair unbound to indicate a lordless state or cropped to mark oath-taken purpose, stood beyond the law without protection from House or Clan. Such a man could trust and rely on only himself. It made eijin menacing individuals, for lonely travellers to beware of.

He got the same reaction every time. First a curious glance towards the sound of hoofs, followed by a narrow-eyed survey of black clothes, horse and harness, close-cropped hair, covered shield and crestless tsepan, then finally a shocked stare at the face untouched by sunlight for years. That pallor went away as his skin took on some colour, but it only made the white scar down his cheek more visible.

Aldric felt comfortable in the presence of yeomen and peasants, regardless of whether they were comfortable with him, but when encounters with kailinin on the road were unavoidable he matched their bows exactly, neither giving nor expecting additional respect. If they were low-clan and inferior, as most were, that galled him more than he was willing to admit.

In another week the huge forest of Guelerd began to darken the horizon ahead of him. Despite the efforts of King Rynert’s father it had a well-deserved reputation for ruffians and bandits, and what few steadings Aldric passed were large and well-fortified. Rumour claimed only fools and foreigners rode through Guelerd unescorted, though he saw nothing hostile from dawn through to dusk. But then a fully armed eijo on a warhorse was hardly the most inviting victim.

At least for thieves who worked in the open.

By the time he passed under the eaves of the forest, afternoon had already tilted towards evening. He was grateful for the cool of the slanting shadows and almost wished it would rain a little, enough to settle the dust of the road and wash the dry heat from the air. A pair of rooks hopped out of his path, then returned to whatever they had been squabbling over. A solitary fox eyed him from behind a tree before ambling off about its own affairs. There was a crow cawing lazily somewhere. Aldric reined in for a few minutes each time, especially when he heard the crow, but saw no unusual interest. These were real birds and beasts, nothing more.

He yawned and tried to remember what the last yeoman had told him of the forest inns. They locked their doors at sunset and didn’t admit guests after dark, that much he knew already, though a glance at the sky showed he still had a couple of hours yet before daylight failed. Long enough to find both roof and bed.

*

Aldric soon learned why no brigands stalked the road: if prices at The Shady Oak were like the rest, they’d all opened taverns.

It catered for wealthy merchants who travelled towards Erdhaven port, and it charged accordingly, so that even a clan-lord’s son might think twice. Yet thanks to Gemmel’s generosity, a landless wizard’s fosterling could demand a room, not the best but good enough, and expect to get it.

The demand became less amusing when the innkeeper made a demand of his own, something he would never have dared with a lord’s son. He wanted payment in advance. It should have been simple enough, except that all his money was still in the same two wallets Gemmel had given him, the better to keep it under his eye. There had been no urgent reason to divide it into smaller bags and hiding-places, and now there was reason, there was no time.

Forced to delve into his saddlebags at an all-too-lively counter, Aldric did his best to keep both wallets out of sight, because the cheerful jingle of coins that had once sounded so attractive now sounded far too loud. By sheer luck the one he opened held only silver, and before presenting the requested fifty marks – not ten, not twenty, but fifty! – he mimicked hunting coins as if they were few and hard to find; many more taverns with charges like this, and they would be.

Apart from the innkeeper, drumming impatient fingers on the lid of his cashbox, nobody seemed to notice or care. A tavern closer to any town might have the usual scattering of sharp-eyed predators, but this establishment accommodated people who often arrived with partners not their own. The Oak was busy with other affairs than his.

The innkeeper also insisted he surrender his bow and telekin with Tewal’s old reason, ‘Peace in the House’, though he wasn’t stubborn enough for anything else even when the Three Blades made other customers uneasy. One man’s money was as good as the next, but patrons who brought longswords to table weren’t the guests this place preferred. The wealthy merchants and their ladies, ‘wives’ wasn’t the word, didn’t carry weapons themselves. They employed hard men to do it for them, and they disliked sharing dinnertime with another hard man no matter how well-mannered.

At least most of them disliked it. One woman, perhaps the only genuine merchant’s wife in the building, seemed to find Aldric’s youth attractive and his appearance dashing. She was certainly pretty enough, in the well-upholstered current fashion, and it was her misfortune that those sidelong glances and roguish winks only reminded him of Ilen. It made poor seasoning for a fine honey-roast duck sauced with quince and preserved cherries, and finally he set his lips in a thin smile then fixed an unwinking stare on the would-be-romantic, toying with his long meat-knife all the while. By the time he had to blink, she had hustled her baffled husband out towards the safety of the taproom. Aldric’s smile widened to a brief grin. There were advantages to being eijo after all.

The heat, the wine and pleasant fullness after food gave the world a rosy glow, and soon it was time for sleep. He stretched, stifled a yawn, hefted the saddlebags which had been his footstool all evening and went upstairs. His room had been prepared for the night with two dimmed lamps at the headboard of the bed, a stove with dampers closed and window-shutters already latched. Normally he did that himself, locking them with a steel girth-buckle and stringing a cord of bridle-bells across the opening, but tonight he was warm, drowsy and a little drunk. It was enough to transform caution into routine, and routine was seldom as insistent.

Aldric laid his swords on the wall-rack, threw his jerkin across a chair and sat down on the bed to kick off his boots. His grin at the luxurious soft mattress and quilted sheets became another yawn, this one enormous and not stifled at all.

Five minutes to relax, then finish undressing, have a wash, secure the room and sleep. He swung his legs off the floor and lay back. Five minutes, no more, then see to the locks and shutters.

His eyelids drooped.

Just five minutes.

His eyelids closed…

*

Merchants lodging at inns like The Shady Oak paid too much for their comfort to accept nocturnal noises other than the ones they made themselves, so the floors were thickly carpeted, the locks and hinges oiled and silent. That meant when his shutter-latches were teased open and the window itself swung back Aldric heard none of it. He slept on while thin moonlight brightened the room, and even when a dark silhouette slipped silent as fog across the sill.

Once he muttered in his sleep and rolled over, and the intruder froze where he stood until the breathing from the bed was slow and deep once more. Then he went about his furtive business. The same small, fine-bladed knife used to force the latches now sliced saddlebag straps, and gloved fingers withdrew the wallets whose existence Aldric had tried so hard to hide. The thief checked their contents by moonlight without clinking a single coin, then transferred them to his own belt-pouch and vanished into the night.

He didn’t even shut the window.

*

Aldric drifted out of deep sleep half an hour later, unsettled at last when the warmth of the stove was finally overwhelmed by cold air flowing in through that open window. A small noise made by another person climbing through it shocked him wide awake as effectively as a dash of icy water in the face. His first instinct was for weapons, but his swords were on their rack and the telekin were wherever the innkeeper had stowed them. Silently cursing his own stupidity, he made sounds of restless sleep and gathered his legs under him while one hand eased up to free his punch-dagger from its collar loop. If the shadowy masked figure leaned over the bed it would get that dagger under its chin, as prickling threat or killing stab depending on how it moved.

Instead it bent over the saddlebags and a second later got slammed down against them when Aldric flung himself from the bed onto the intruder’s back. It was a confusing fight because his uninvited guest refused to attack, barely defended, and did hardly anything except try to escape. That kept him from using the dagger, and when it glinted briefly in the moonlight the threat stopped the thief’s thrashing long enough to wrench the mask away.

And discover he was she.

A woman, yes; frail and helpless, no. Both her knees slammed up into his side and almost threw him over her head. If they had hit his crotch as intended, he would have been in no state to prevent her getaway. Aldric returned the favour by slamming his weight against her stomach and her breath came out in a gasp as she flopped backwards. Before she could recover, his dagger’s point was against her throat.

“Enough!”

Resistance finally ceased and gave him the chance to see what he had caught. She was well worth looking at, with tanned skin, straw-fair hair escaping from under a dark hood and eyes whose brilliant blue reminded him of the Echainon spellstone. She was beautiful, and very angry.

“Get off!” Even in only two words Aldric detected an accent. “Alban, take the knife away and get off!”

“You’re in no position to make demands. I am. What did you steal?” The woman spat inaccurately at him. “Listen, you,” he waved the dagger and her eyes tracked it, “I’m asking nicely. The Watchmaster in Erdhaven won’t. So what did you steal?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Why don’t I believe—”

“There’s no money in your saddlebags.”

“So you say. What would I find if I searched you?” The answer was not much. Her tunic, breeches and boots were all close-fitting for stealth and easy movement, and those oh-so-well-filled moneybags would be clearly visible. They weren’t.

“Your shutters were already open, Alban. I’d hoped to be your first visitor tonight. It seems not.” Aldric cursed elaborately and didn’t feel any better. “You shouldn’t have taken such a good room,” she said, not helping. “Or made such a performance of hiding your money.”

He considered and rejected half a dozen answers, all no more than excuses, and finally settled for a weak smile. “I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, and should have done a lot of others. More fool me. What about you?”

“Alban, if we’re going to talk, sit elsewhere. And until we know each other better, move your hand.” He blushed and whipped his knife hand back from where it had been resting almost between her breasts. The woman closed her shirt and secured its buttons, then gave him another disdainful glance. “The first part too. You’re no lightweight. Find a chair.”

“Don’t try escaping. I wouldn’t want to…” Aldric considered various things and settled for the least offensive. “To miss hearing what you’re about to tell me.” He got up, turned quickly and slammed the shutters, but the woman did no more than rise to a cross-legged seat on the floor. She put her head on one side and batted her lashes mockingly at him.

“Convinced of my good intentions, Alban?”

Aldric nodded. All the same he took Widowmaker from the wall-rack before opening a bedside lamp. “You aren’t Alban.” It wasn’t a question, her accent made one unnecessary. She untied her hood and let her braided hair fall free before answering him.

“I am Kyrin, Tehal Kyrin, Harek’s daughter, of Tervasdal in Valhol.” She spoke as though she expected recognition, but got only surprise.

“What under Heaven’s Light is a Valhollan doing here?”

“Trying to gather enough money for passage home again. I was merchant-venturing with Seorth when his ship wrecked on your coastal rocks.”

“Not my coastal rocks. And he shouldn’t have been so close to shore in the first place. Unless he had reason to be there.” Aldric didn’t need to say more. The Valhollans were traders, and good ones, even though everyone who dealt with them suspected the vague term ‘venturing’ involved more than just looking for new markets. Steel worked as effectively as silver when acquiring goods; a bit of robbery here, a bit of resale there, a bit of smuggling in some other place. And a bit of running onto the rocks when sailing in uncharted waters, as he could do in this conversation if he wasn’t careful.

“Where are Seorth and the other crew?”

“Still in Alba, halfway home, perhaps alive, maybe dead.” That could have been I don’t know or equally I’m not telling you. “It was dark, there was a sea running, we got separated and I was thinking of myself.”

You still are, thought Aldric, and sank a pin in her self-assurance. “Bad luck on not getting to my saddlebags,” he said with a small, malicious smile. “Never mind paying your passage, you could have bought a ship. I had the best part of a thousand marks in them…”

Kyrin cursed in several languages for almost a minute, and glared at him as if the loss was all his fault. “Then we’re both in the same boat.”

“So it’s we already? All right, need breeds strange friendships – but we have neither boat nor ship, so what do we do about that?”

“Rob someone else.”

“No. It would be dishonourable.”

“Why do Albans think honour’s their exclusive privilege? I made my own honourable choice: thief not beggar, robber not whore.” She waited for approval and got none. “Seorth would have agreed with me. I was to wed him at Spring-Return.”

“You two were betrothed? Yet you were venturing with him?” That apparent censure, another proof that the Alban way was the only way, added more irritation to a night already irritating enough.

“Don’t strain yourself trying to understand, Alban, but foreign people do follow foreign customs.” Yet she wanted him to understand, to know there was more than just his proscribed little world. “It’s an alliance. Our families are rivals, and… And it might turn bloody. It would have been my honour to prevent it. So if I don’t return before the Feast and he does, he’ll wed my sister. There’ll still be peace.”

“Very pragmatic.” It wasn’t a compliment. “So why the thieving? Why the need to get back so fast?”

“For honour, Alban, for what you admire so much. To be the one who brings that peace. And because I want to go home…” An odd expression flicked across his face, but Kyrin ignored it. “Of course Albans never wed for anything except romance.”

He didn’t rise to that one, and his faraway look made her wonder if he’d even been listening. Then he clicked his fingers. “Spring-Return! My— A friend told me I could try the Erdhaven Spring Festival if I needed extra funds. I can earn some money there.”

“Earn money at a religious Feast? And you disapprove of our ways?”

“It’s a holiday, Tehal Kyrin. A festival, a celebration and a contest, with weapon matches, archery, telek-shooting, horsemanship, and prizes in minted silver.”

“What about swordplay?” She indicated the taiken at his waist with a jerk of her chin. The Alban shook his head.

“Too public. Too obvious.” Kyrin put her head quizzically on one side and now it was his turn to shrug. “People are looking for me.”

“The people who originally owned that money you lost?”

Again he didn’t react to the jibe. “No, the money was all my own. Believe it or not, but believe this: if they catch me and you’re nearby, you’ll wish yourself far, far away.”

“I see,” said Kyrin, glad she didn’t. Her father was right, Albans were crazy, and this one was crazier than most. Better to avoid him, yet travel in his company might be useful. Accidental or otherwise, when he’d refused to turn thief he hadn’t demanded any such promises from her. And his confidence about the Spring Festival was infectious. Like marsh fever. “Why do you need the money?”

“Like you, I’m taking a sea voyage. For the good of my health. Want to come?”

“Why not? It might be interesting.” Kyrin wondered why he laughed out loud, honest amusement without sneer or sarcasm.

“Yes, yes it might indeed…”

CHAPTER FIVE

Aldric was too polite to ask where Tehal Kyrin’s handsome grey mare had come from, and she most likely wouldn’t have answered. Nothing about her invited questions, although her daytime wear invited admiration from a safe distance.

It resembled hunting costume of doeskin boots and breeches, a russet leather jerkin and a white linen shirt, and looked feminine enough with a lady’s cymar riding-mantle flung casually over all. The details were rather less so. Whorls of gold embroidery decorating the jerkin were wire, not thread, and one of its three purses, with thick braided cords wrapped around the fastening, was heavy enough make the entire belt sag. Aldric knew a sling and a pouch of lead slugs when he saw them, just as he recognised the dry click and rustle of metal where none was visible. At a guess the jerkin was like his own riding-coat, with lamellar scales or mail concealed between leather and lining and held in place by that sturdy ornamental wire. Then Kyrin laced blued-steel plates from a light cavalry armour over her sleeves, cross-strapped a Jouvaine estoc so its hilt rose high at her left shoulder, and any notion of concealment went by the board.

It meant that idle passers-by gave them a wide and wary berth, though there were any number sharing the road. Peasants rode ox-carts or walked in noisy groups, well-heeled merchants lounged in their carriages and the less wealthy jolted in horse-palanquins. A few elderly kailinin cast disapproving looks at the younger set, fantastically tricked out in fashions from the Imperial court, the Jouvaine city-states or wherever else took their fancy, but it made Aldric feel more at ease. In this holiday atmosphere his own dramatic black-and-silver and Kyrin’s half-armoured russet-and-blue were no more than whimsical fancy dress.

As they came closer to Erdhaven the crowds increased, and judicious eavesdropping heard rumours that this Festival was the best and biggest for years. For a man intending to lose himself among the press of people it was good news.

The scream of a gull cut through the other noises and Aldric glanced up at the birds circling above the road, attracted by scraps of food, occasional spillages of grain and maybe by himself. Was he being unimaginative, watching for crows when a seagull would look less out of place near the coast? Reining in, he stared at one big yellow-eyed brute which seemed suspiciously disinterested in the scraps lying under its beak.

“What’s the matter, Alban?” Kyrin saw the worried look on his face before she saw the gull, and when her eye fell on it she gave a dismissive snort. “Ah, those pirates! Nasty, but no concern of ours.”

“None of yours.” Aldric eased a telek from its holster, because his own carelessness at the inn still rankled. The thief who took his money could so easily have been sent by Duergar to take his life. Or worse, bring him back to Dunrath for more personal attention. “I’m not so sure.” He cocked the spring-gun and levelled it in the arm’s-length posture for target practice.

The telek thumped, and the gull went down in silence. There was no human shriek of agony this time, only a reflex spasmodic flutter of one wing which soon ceased. Aldric ignored the ironic applause from other travellers, racked another dart into the weapon and nudged Lyard slowly forward, eyes and telek fixed on the dead bird. Kyrin followed, muttering under her breath in her own language and wondering again why she’d bothered to come along with this madman. He dismounted, prodded the corpse with a toe, rolled it over, then finally tugged the dart free. Throughout all, it remained a seagull.

“If you don’t tell me what this exhibition is about. Alban, I’ll leave you to play-act on your own.”

Aldric dropped the carcass and wiped his fingers on the grass. “If I don’t, could you bear to leave without finding out?”

“Don’t twist words!”

“All right, I won’t. I’ll tell you everything.” He hesitated. “Everything you need to know. But not here. Once we’ve found a room and a bed—”

“Beds, Alban. I’ve warned you already.”

“Beds, then. Or privacy. And Kyrin-ain—” the endearment was mostly for other ears, “—I warn you that you won’t like what you hear. Play-acting has no part in it.”

“What I don’t like is all this secrecy. Why don’t you trust me?”

“I do trust you. If I didn’t, I… I wouldn’t have told you my name.” Even though she hadn’t so much as repeated it back, never mind used it since.

Kyrin stared at him for a long time without saying anything, then inclined her head a fraction. “I believe what you say, Alban. And I’ll accept whatever you tell me about this business, however little it might be.” She glanced towards the road. “Best be on our way if we want somewhere to stay tonight. Otherwise your small change won’t last until tomorrow.”

As they mounted up and cantered towards Erdhaven, neither noticed a black crow gliding from the lower branches of a tree where it had cowered from sight behind the trunk. Nor did they see how it wheeled high into the blue spring sky before flapping away towards the northwest and the citadel of Dunrath.

*

Kyrin’s guess was close to the truth. Separate rooms were either impossible to find or impossible to pay for, and they ended up sharing one in a small tavern near the harbour. It was better than Aldric expected, but more costly than he hoped, and even ten minutes of haggling left his meagre funds sorely depleted.

“One bed,” said Kyrin, her voice carefully toneless. “And a chair, and some blankets…”

“I paid for this bed and I’m sleeping in it,” said Aldric. She said nothing, and instead began piling her saddlebags in front of the chair as a makeshift footstool. “Kyrin. Kyrin.” He met her stare for a second, then gestured at the mattress. “It’s big enough for half each. To sleep, nothing more. We’ll need rest, both of us. I know you won’t… What I mean is, I…” Embarrassed now and angry because of it, he unslung Isileth Widowmaker and laid the sheathed taiken precisely down the centre of the bed. “Half each.”

She looked at him, then at the sword. “You promise like that?” Aldric nodded once, willing her to accept without comment and not make him look foolish. “All right.” She smiled, no more than a twitch of her lips, as if she found his intensity amusing. “Why such an old-fashioned gesture?”

“It, it seems right the right thing to do.”

“Sometimes, Alban, I wonder if you’re real.” There was no mockery in her voice and as Aldric remembered his own feelings when Gemmel presented him with the sword, he matched the twinkle in her eyes with a shy smile of his own. Then Kyrin lifted Widowmaker from the bed and he bit back harsh words. No warrior ever made so free with another’s sword and though Kyrin was attractively female, the way she wore sword and armour made her as much a warrior as any kailin-eir. Perhaps she sensed his outrage, because she turned hastily and bowed from the waist as she had seen him do along the road.

“May I?” she asked, as she should have done at first. Aldric hesitated, still irritated, then decided he couldn’t expect the right customs and protocol from a foreigner and acknowledged her hurried courtesy with a curt nod of his own.

Isileth’s blade left the scabbard with a whisper like stroked silk and something ominous came with it like the touch of a winter wind. Kyrin shivered. The same intangible chill sometimes hung around Aldric and she wondered, not raising her eyes from the cruel beauty of the steel, which of the two was its true source.

“Have you used this?”

“She was drawn in the dawn-light, under the Eye of Heaven, that she might know me,” said Aldric, then dropped the formality. “But used? No. Not yet.” Kyrin affected not to notice the way his hand touched hers as he retrieved the taiken and secured it in peace position aslant his back. “Someone tried to insult me once. He said I slept with my sword. I wonder what he’d say now.” The thought prompted a small, crooked smile that grew to an honest grin. “No, I don’t. He’s not worth that much notice. And I’m not down to the last of my wallet-change yet, so let’s see what food this place can offer.”

*

“So he made for one of the five ports after all,” said Duergar. “And I guessed right about where to send the bronzes.” His pale gaze remained fixed on the thin figure in black who knelt before him. The man’s hood was thrown back, revealing yellowish eyes and dark hair hanging in sweat-soaked tails. If he had been a horse he would have been lathered. Until a few minutes before he had been a crow, and he was still lathered. “You’re certain it was him?”

“Quite certain, lord.” The man was still trying to regain his breath and Duergar’s impatient questions hadn’t helped. “If Talvalin had spotted me I would have been,” he cleared his throat and ventured a gap-toothed smile, “dead certain.”

“Spare me your feeble humour.” Duergar stood up and the changeling lowered his head respectfully. “Go rest. There will be rewards for this day’s work. I wish all my servants did so well.” He crossed to the door, put one hand to the latch, then glanced back. “Mark you, no word of this to Lord Kalarr.” He opened the door.

And Kalarr was standing there, teeth bared in a hard, mirthless grin.

“Why not?” he asked. “I’m most curious.” There was a broad-bladed taipan shortsword in his hand, its point resting against the door-ward’s lips. “I heard one of your crows had returned, yet this,” his sword prodded delicately, “said otherwise.” Kalarr’s gaze settled on the black-clad changeling, who stared back with fear in his eyes. “It seems he lied.”

The taipan crunched past the sentry’s lips, teeth and neck, driving deep into the panelled wall and pinning the man there like some grotesque specimen. Kalarr released the weapon and sauntered into the room while his victim slid forward down its blade until the hilt held him in quivering obeisance above a puddle of his own blood. He took a fearful time to die, but Kalarr paid him no more heed. All his concentration was focused on Duergar.

“Enough of this charade,” he said. “I grow weary of it.” He chuckled like tearing metal and sent a whirl of yellow fire across the room. It filled the air with heat and the reek of burning, yet dissipated a yard from the Drusalan’s face. Kalarr’s chuckle became a snarl. He had hoped Duergar would rely on the useless talisman, but instead there was some protective shield in place. Such things needed different spells to breach them.

By the time he repeated a fuller invocation Duergar too was ready, emboldened by his own survival. Power surged and crackled through the room and as the changeling scuttled for shelter his world dissolved into harsh colours and raw, atonal noise. Cloth, wood and even stone seared away under the lash of such ravening energies, consumed to fuel their own destruction.

The magic died abruptly in a whirl of sparks and for several seconds nothing moved. Echoes of thunder rolled sonorously towards the mountains, while in the shadow of the citadel donjon ordinary folk raised their heads from the dirt and looked around in terror. Only the sun shone placidly from a clear blue sky.

“It seems we’re well matched,” said Kalarr, and coughed on a wisp of acrid smoke. Shaking with exertion, Duergar sat down on the spell-warped floor. Sweat glistened on his hairless scalp.

Kalarr chuckled again, this time genuinely amused by the state of the room. It had a dizzy, nauseating look. Walls sloped out of true at giddy angles, floor and ceiling were corrugated like waves on a petrified ocean, and the changeling was a grey silhouette scorched into the window-frame where a blast of force had snuffed him out of existence.

“If neither can defeat the other,” he said as if the past few seconds had never happened, “the obvious solution is a true alliance. There is, however, one problem.”

Duergar glared at him. “Just one?”

“Just one, and the source of all others. Lack of trust.”

“You try to kill me, then you say I lack trust?”

“Certainly you lack manners. Hear me out. What oath would you accept as token of good faith?”

Duergar looked blank. The question was so improbable that he had never considered a possible answer. “Suggest one.”

“Before I learned my other skills I was once kailin-eir, as much as Aldric Talvalin. My clan and my other name is… is no concern of yours, but I still have rank, and lord-right over lesser men, and honour when I choose to remember it.” As he spoke he went to the door, twisted his taipan free of the wall and the sentry’s face, then cleaned the blade fastidiously with a silken kerchief until a footfall in the corridor made him turn to see who was there. Kalarr smiled and dropped his sword into the warped, rotting wood of the floor where it stuck, quivering.

“So you alone have the courage to brave this sorcerer’s den, eh? Come in.”

Baiart Talvalin bowed low as he entered, ignoring the corpse in the doorway. “You’re unhurt,” he said. Kalarr’s smile widened into a cruel grin.

“The deep sincerity of your concern touches my heart. All went as usual in Cerdor?”

“How else would it go?”

“How indeed? Tell me, Baiart-arluth, Clan-Lord Talvalin, what great oath would a man take if he desired an enemy to trust him? An enemy, mind, not a friend needing deceived.” Baiart glared. “I don’t mock you, man. Not with that question.”

“No? I didn’t see the sun rise in the north today either.”

“It might do so tomorrow.” Kalarr’s dark eyes glinted, he dropped his pleasant aspect like an actor changing character and a whirl of energy distorted the outline of his hand. “You might not live to see it.”

“You don’t frighten me, warlock. Not now. I wear my tsepan at Court and here, but the damned Drusalan’s spellbond means I can’t use it. Death would be a welcome gift.”

Kalarr banished the poised spell from his hand. “You might earn your gift when we no longer need your mummery before the King. Not otherwise. You had your chance, Baiart Talvalin, you had your chance and you refused. I saw how you responded when Duergar’s necromancy showed how impermanent death could be. You were afraid then, you chose treachery instead, and became clan-lord as you always wanted. And you’re still afraid now, because we know what gift you truly want: not passage to the dark but passage through the fire. Yet my friend so hates to see a funeral.”

“It smacks too much of waste,” said Duergar, and Baiart flinched “Now answer the question.” His courage had returned now Kalarr’s attention was elsewhere. What happened later would depend on how things developed both here and in the Empire, and on whether Kalarr cu Ruruc could be trusted.

Perhaps the sun would rise in the north.

“It’s a blood oath,” said Baiart at last. His face was pale, and an unshed tear trembled in the corner of one eye. “For reasons sorcerers well understand. And made with a tsepan, like all the High Oaths.”

“Then give me yours.” Kalarr held out one hand, arrogantly ignoring an enemy drawing blade right behind his back. Sweat beaded Baiart’s forehead and he trembled with effort as once again he had tried to stab either himself or his undefended target, and like every other occasion his muscles refused to obey. All he could do was hand the weapon over. Kalarr glanced at it. “What now?”

“Cut once from thumb to index finger, joining the Honour-scars. Cut shallowly. A man might need many oaths in his life, if he has many enemies.” Kalarr grinned unpleasantly. “Then mark your crest in the blood, and the first character of your name, swear the oath, and wipe all clean with a cloth burnt at once.”

“What if there are no Honour-scars?” said Kalarr, and laughed at Baiart’s outraged expression. “Merely a question, Clan-Lord.” He opened his hand to reveal the three parallel white scars and sliced the tsepan lightly across the top of each.

The blood seeping from the shallow wound was as red as the sorcerer’s robes, though black would have surprised nobody. With one fingertip Kalarr drew the crescent and double curve of his crest, the winged viper, and under it a character that was not the first of either Kalarr or cu Ruruc.

“Your name,” said Baiart, “or the oath is void.” Kalarr gave him a cool stare.

“I know,” he said. There was no more explanation. “Duergar Vathach, give me your hand.” The necromancer began to protest, thought better of it, and did as he was asked. “You’re no Alban, wrapped around with honour and tradition,” Kalarr said, “but the Empire has a custom of bloodbonding which you should respect. So bloodbond friendship, for peace of mind if nothing else.”

Duergar shrugged, flinched as the tsepan nicked his thumb then pressed it against the thin cut on Kalarr’s palm. Normally never at a loss for something to say, usually sharp and cruel or once in a rare while almost poetic, Kalarr stared at the mingled blood and spoke not a word. With a touch of his hand he closed both wounds, wiped away marks and errant trickles with a kerchief and exploded the wisp of linen into a flash of fire with a single gesture.

“And now we’re allies. So – what were you planning when I first came in?” Duergar jerked his head in warning at Baiart and Kalarr nodded. “Ah. I see.” He returned the tsepan with a derisive bow. “Would you care to leave us now, Clan-Lord?” Baiart nodded as curtly as he dared and made for the door until Duergar called him back and pointed at the dead sentry.

“Send a few servants up for that,” he ordered. “He was a strong man, a useful addition to the ranks of my traugarin.” Baiart’s mouth twitched as he turned away again. This time it was Kalarr who spoke.

“If you care to stay, I promise what you hear will entertain you. Just as it will entertain your brother Aldric.”

Baiart shook his head and stumbled from the room, but the sound of weeping drifted back from the corridor for several seconds, until it was drowned out by Kalarr cu Ruruc’s laughter.

*

There were tents all around the enormous competition field beyond Erdhaven, and Kyrin sat in one of them with a pile of silver marks in front of her and a scribble-covered scrap of parchment on her knee. The money came to almost two hundred marks, yet no matter how she managed her arithmetic, the required total was nearer five. Kyrin added again, deleted an entry, tsk’d between her teeth, deleted another and shrugged.

It was the horses, every time. Without them, any passage was affordable. She could go home, and the balance would take the Alban wherever he had in mind. He could even keep her grey as a farewell gift and stable both in Erdhaven until he came back. But parting him from his Andarran charger wasn’t quite as easy a subtraction.

Right on cue that charger’s hooves thudded to a standstill outside. Aldric lifted the flap and ducked inside, wearing the imposing Great Harness called an-moyya-tsalaer and looking uncomfortable. He unbuckled his helm with a sigh of relief, laid aside the war-mask covering cheeks and chin, then unlaced his mail and leather coif. Under the armour his hair was dark and wet.

“You should wear an overrobe,” said Kyrin. “On a day like this, that black metal must take a lot of heat from the sun.”

“Less than you think.” Aldric settled into a chair and it creaked in protest, though not as much as it might have done. The armour, another gift from Gemmel, was remarkably light, and its cats’-cradle of laces and straps, buckles, belts and hooks meant each part could be worn individually as the need arose. Today he wore it all, partly as disguise but also because wearing an-tsalaer for a mounted archery contest was in keeping with the spirit of the Spring Festival.

“Here.” He pulled out a small purse tucked for safety behind his weapon-belt. “I won another second prize. Fifty, this time.” Kyrin caught the wallet as it sailed through the air and added its contents to her calculations.

“Be careful. Too many seconds and people will talk as much as if you were taking firsts.” Aldric laughed and poured himself some wine.

“No worries there. If young Escuar from Prytenon and his friends hadn’t been nursing hangovers, I’d have been lucky to manage fifth. Bastards.” He said it without heat. “How are we doing for money?”

“Well enough. Alban, about the horses—”

“I said No. It’s still No. I won’t use a stable. Look, I’ll enter another riding contest if I have to, or a telek target-shoot, or even a sword match. But I’m not leaving the only Andarran I’ve ever seen with some would-be thief.”

“You don’t trust anybody, do you?”

“I’ve had little reason until—” He caught her expression. “Until I met one thief who’s more honest than every merchant in this bloody town.” Kyrin raised a sceptical eyebrow and Aldric changed the subject, standing up with a metallic slither and creak of leather straps. “At least we can afford to eat better than we’ve been doing.”

Despite his brag about having more funds than just small change, Aldric had soon discovered that at Festival time most prices in Erdhaven went like the forest inns, fit to shame a highway robber. Their meals in the past few days had been adequate at best, mere body-fuel at worst, and a poor contrast to years of Gemmel’s excellent food. Kyrin glanced at the columns of numbers on the parchment, sighed and reached a reluctant decision.

“All right. Keep your wallet closed and leave things to me. Your money’s no good where we’re going.”

“It’s got the King’s head on it…”

“Are you being deliberately mulish, Alban, or is it a natural talent? I told you: leave things to me. This is one of those things.” Now it was Aldric’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “My family aren’t unknown in Erdhaven port. Merchant venturers, remember?”

*

A few taverns in Erdhaven, small dining-houses into the fourth and fifth generation of the host’s family and proud of their reputations, disdained the usual Festival price-gouging. Those who knew of them kept quiet about it, using their preferred places for epicurean indulgence or a little courteous seduction.

When Kyrin described how well she knew the owner of The Seventh Wave Aldric gave her a thoughtful glance, even though Rutkhur was another Valhollan and the whole business was quite innocent. Or as innocent as anything involving Valhollans could be.

Rutkhur was grey-haired, not over-tall and notably broad, with a red-cheeked roundness suggesting he enjoyed the products of his own kitchen. With several other armed and armoured men eating at The Wave he didn’t look twice at Aldric, although he and Kyrin had a short, low-voiced and from the sound of it sharp exchange before he led them to a table.

Aldric got the impression it had been reserved for someone else, but the two Valhollans seemed to have their minds on other matters. So was his, because though the food on nearby tables looked and smelt delicious, he could detect spices hard to find for even a clan-lord’s kitchen. Then there were the imported wines in their distinctive bottles: red Seurandec from the Jouvaine Provinces in salt-glazed stoneware, golden Briej from Vlech in squat brown glass and straw-pale Hauverne from Drusul at the heart of the Empire in long-necked green. Aldric hid a smile, certain neither spice nor wine had passed through any legal channel to get here.

Kyrin’s family friendship with Rutkhur the innkeeper was clear. A sizeable part of their trade involved items that the Empire’s tariffs made too expensive or hard to obtain by legal means. Haranil-arluth Talvalin had said it aright, while Elthanek grainfire drifted out more like a ghost than a spirit and Valdain grapefire drifted in the same way. If smuggling was a crime, and the things smuggled were popular while the laws restricting them were not, it would be the lawbreakers not the lawmakers who won support.

Food appeared fast enough to confirm that this wasn’t just someone else’s table, it was also their meal, and Aldric wondered what the original customers would say when they arrived. A few minutes of service dismissed the question, and all others except one. Favours or cash, what’s this going to cost?

“Smoked beef broth with split peas, sliced carrots, toasted barley, dark-fried onions, wild garlic, pepper and a touch of Seurandec,” Rutkhur announced in a breathless rush as he set down a tureen. A quick signal to one of the inn servants summoned a still-sizzling black iron platter. “Mackerel,” he continued, “sea-fresh this morning, stuffed with minced bacon, green onions and leaves of fennel, wrapped in pork lace then grilled over oak chippings.”

Aldric drew breath for a compliment, and was interrupted by the arrival of an even larger platter. That was when Kyrin’s expression began to change.

“Rutkhur, what is this?” She spoke in Alban, and the familiar edge was back in her voice.

“Saddle of suckling-pig,” said the man quickly, “roasted, then braised in cider with pepper, cinnamon, pickled red emberseed, onions, apricots and sour apples.”

“I didn’t ask for—”

“Bean-and-ginger fritters fried in best white butter, and baked wild mushroom caps with cheese, chives and garlic. The autumn mushrooms would be larger, but the small spring caps have more delicacy of flavour, of course.”

“Of course,” echoed Aldric, feeling as if he was in a play with mismatched actors and no script.

“Are you done?” snapped Kyrin.

“And to finish,” Rutkhur sounded determined and desperate in equal measure, “the finest of last autumn’s dried damsons stewed in Hauverne wine, enriched with grapefire then dressed with beaten cream, honey, hazelnuts and candied mint-leaves.”

“Enough!” She pushed back her chair with a noisy, prolonged scrape that turned heads. “A word with you, Rutkhur. In private. Now.”

Aldric watched her go, one hand clamped around the innkeeper’s elbow as she hustled him towards the kitchen. He had no idea what was wrong, because the dishes in front of him were as appealing as anything he had seen or smelled on their way in. He shrugged, opened his cutlery-case and turned his attention to The Seventh Wave’s fine cooking with such enthusiasm that passers-by in the sunny street smiled at his obvious enjoyment. One of them watched for several seconds while Aldric dusted on some cumin-pepper and shifted to his left hand for a few drops of spiced fruit relish, then leaned across the partition.

“I presume, sir,” he said , “you approve of this place?”

“Mmf.” With the usual timing for such questions Aldric’s mouth was full and he could only nod, but for an instant his fingers closed around the handle of his long meat-knife. Then he relaxed, released it again, swallowed and forced a smile as if the incident had never happened. “If you don’t mind surviving on bread and cheese for the rest of the week. It’s good bread. I can’t speak for the cheese.” The man didn’t quite smile back, he just inclined his head courteously to Kyrin as she returned and went on his way.

“What was that about, Alban?” The screech as she pulled her chair was even louder than before.

“Just a man curious about good food. He—”

“—didn’t notice your little by-play with the knife, I hope, because I saw it from clear across the room. Something else: don’t be funny. Don’t be witty. You’re not much good at it, and the attempt makes you memorable.” Aldric opened his mouth, thought for a second, closed it again and settled for a silent scowl across the table.

“I’m wearing armour and my Three Blades in an eating-house. That makes me memorable even when I’m not being…not attempting to be witty.”

“There are plenty of armoured men in Erdhaven for the Festival and plenty will pass through the eating-houses, but they’re all kailinin with braids and queues. You’re an eijo croppy.” Aldric glowered, wondering where she’d picked up that nasty little insult. “Yet you’re eating at one of the most costly tables in town—”

“At your damned suggestion!”

She nodded at the other armoured men, laughing and cheerful while they ate. “You’ve won several prizes, and a celebration isn’t out of place. But if what you hint is true, then for your own safety and mine don’t draw notice while your helm is off.” Aldric’s knife played an irritable little drumbeat on the crust of a roll. “Now eat up,” she said. “This food’s not getting any warmer, and—”

“And it’s wicked to waste it. Yes. I’ve heard that before.” After a few irritable seconds he realised she was right; it was too good to waste for the sake of making a sulky point. “All right, I’ll eat up. You should too. Just tell me this: what put the brambles in your breeches? Rodker—”

“Rutkhur.” The correction sounded weary.

“—gave us a banquet, yet you’ve been like a bear with a sore head ever since. Why?”

Kyrin stared at him for several seconds, then muttered under her breath and put down half a cup of excellent Hauverne in a single disrespectful gulp. “Because I didn’t expect a banquet. I didn’t want a banquet. What I wanted, what I expected, was the sound of my own language, a friendly face—”

“Thank you.”

“—and a bite to eat. Also the loan of enough silver to see me home.”

“But?”

“I got this instead. It’s an apology. I hope whoever ordered it gets one as well.”

“It must easily have cost—”

“Less than you think.” She lowered her voice. “Far less than it would cost anyone else here. The problem is this: it’s the start of the Festival, so the Wave’s stockrooms and pantries are full…”

“And the cashbox is empty. I see. By the end of the week,” Aldric made a little turning-wheel gesture with one fingertip, “it’ll be the other way round. Be patient.”

“Easy for you to say. A ship in harbour sails for Valhol tomorrow, and until this happened…” She poked at the food, sampled a few mouthfuls, then offered a brief, weak smile. “I’d convinced myself I would be aboard.” Kyrin nibbled a bit more, sighed in a resigned way and started eating. There was no further conversation for a while as they did fair justice to the meal, and it was Aldric who stopped first.

“Enough. Overloading would be too easy.”

“Because?”

“Because tomorrow I want to take part in the Messenger’s Ride, not sleep all day. And don’t fret me about drawing notice, because I’ll have helm and coif and war-mask on.”

“Why?”

“Don’t you have traditions in Valhol? It’s an old story about a courier in the Clan Wars. He wore full armour, so competitors in the Ride wear it too.”

“And what did this messenger do?”

“Delivered messages.” Kyrin made a sound that might have been an inadequate laugh or a badly swallowed hazelnut. “He did it despite the enemy’s best efforts, and helped win a battle. The Ride’s an assault course and simulated combat; things I’m good at.”

“Can I speak frankly?” Aldric wondered why she bothered to ask. “It all sounds, well, childish.”

“Perhaps. It’s also the only event at the Festival where the spectators can place…” He grinned. “Can legally place bets.”

“Oh indeed?” Valhollans were notoriously fond of gambling, and Kyrin’s sudden interest suggested she was no exception. “Tell me, Aldric,” she used his name for the first time as she filled his cup to the brim, “who do you think will win?”

He sipped the dry, cool wine, considering odds and skills. “I was thinking it might be me.”

Kyrin stared at him for several seconds, then drank the rest of the Hauverne herself.

*

Erdhaven’s clocks were chiming the sixth hour after noon when a man sat down at a bench and put fire to a bowlful of crystals. The substance sparkled like crushed diamonds as it burst into brief flame, then settled to a slow crawl of sparks. Grey smoke swirled up, growing thicker and more opaque with each passing second, and the man muttered in a soft monotone as the cloud took on more definite shape. An image formed, a face distorted by the shifting smoke. Its half-seen mouth formed words.

“Weylif?” said Duergar’s voice, thickly warped by sorcery and distance. “You are late.”

“I beg pardon, lord!” The man abased himself. “I couldn’t close early because of the Spring Festival. Turning away potential trade at such a time would have attracted too much attention.”

“Very well. And the object you hold for me?”

“It is safe, lord.” Weylif glanced behind him and swallowed nervously.

The small shop fronting his small foundry usually displayed small expensive signs for the doors of expensive merchants, and small elegant bronzes to ornament their wealthy houses. This week it had been dominated by a statue bigger than any made there before, a life-size equestrian warrior scale-armoured like an Imperial katafrakt. The warrior was portrayed leaning back in his saddle, war-mask in hand, staring into an unknown distance from under the peak of his helm. Goat-horns curved from that helm, a hint of inhumanity completed by the face behind the mask. In profile its features had a classic, perfect beauty; from any other angle they became mere geometric shapes. Shadows suggested soft roundness to mouth and brows and chin, while clearer light showed only stark hollows and harsh, flat planes. It had no mouth other than a cracked flaw in the verdigrised metal, and no eyes at all, just a bleak blank power like the desire for conquest given form.

It was a masterpiece of casting exclaimed over by all who entered the foundry – all except Weylif, who preferred not to go near the thing. It disturbed him. The armour wasn’t a scale hauberk in the style called lizard-mail, instead it fitted close to all the limbs like lizard’s skin and gave the figure an unsettling reptilian look. He glanced at Duergar’s smoke-wreathed face. Though the necromancer’s eyes were closed in concentration, Weylif still felt as if he was being watched by someone without his best interests at heart. Despite the threat of his master’s anger, he rose and backed quietly towards the door.

A vast shadow fell across him and he turned, mouth wide to scream with shock or horror. The sound never left his throat, because the statue leaned down from its pedestal and clamped it shut with the inexorable pressure of one huge bronze hand.

“I can move it for a while.” Duergar’s distorted voice sounded like a man straining to lift great weight. “But it needs life. Yours will serve.”

The katafrakt straightened and held Weylif at the end of one outstretched arm. His thrashing legs danced a gallows jig on empty air, and the last thing he saw was the flaw-cracked mouth opening as if to take in the breath choked from him. Then its hand closed to a fist, crushing flesh and sinew like a bundle of wet reeds. There was no blood, and when the katafrakt let go at last, the wreckage of Weylif the bronze-founder hit the floor with a rattle like dry sticks wrapped in a bag of skin.

The horse and rider left their plinth without any screech of stressed metal, only a clatter of hooves and clank of armour like any ordinary kailin. The horse stopped in front of the shifting smoke-cloud bearing Duergar’s face, and the warrior on its bronze back raised one arm in salute.

“Command me, Lifegiver, my master.” The voice had a deep, metallic resonance.

“First a name,” said Duergar.

Names controlled, names gave power, and even a creature of sorcery was incomplete without one. This was not man because its flesh was cold bronze, nor was it statue because it moved. It was Duergar’s servant and more than servant, an extra limb made of metal. “You are one of my hands,” he said at last, “and the weapon for it. Your name is Esel, which is ‘sword-hand’ in the old language of my people.” It was also the name of his own master, the Warlord of the Drusalan Empire. Whether Etzel would regard that as compliment or insult, Duergar didn’t care.

“It is a good name, my master. What is thy will?”

“You have it already, Esel my servant. Seek Aldric Talvalin on the weapon-field tomorrow. You will know him as I know him. Do not slay unless there is no choice. The blade you bear will aid you in this. But if he must be slain…” Duergar considered for a moment, then reached a decision. “Destroy him utterly, and all with him, and all he carries.”

“Thy will is my will, Lifegiver, my master. Thy enemy is my enemy. My victim is thine.”

*

Aldric glanced down at the white mantle covering his armour and grinned. His opponents wore the same thing, not the sun-screening overrobe Kyrin had meant, but because wooden weapons for this contest were edged and tipped with dye-soaked wadding and the white covering would show any strikes as plain as ink on paper. She was as right as any foreigner could be about Alban tradition. Yril’t’sathorn did seem like a children’s game, and after what had happened at Dunrath, none of its pretence counted for anything.

The competitors had received their instructions earlier that morning from one of the Prefect’s officials, a small man full of his own importance. “Each rider will receive a scroll,” he announced, thumbing fussily through sheets of parchment, “representing important dispatches. This must be brought to a judge on the moated island, representing Torhan-arluth in his fortified camp of Gorlahr. There are targets for spear and bow – the great-bow only, sirs, the short-bow is not historically accurate – and five mounted kailinin of the Prefect’s guard representing—”

“Five men on horseback?” suggested someone, their voice loud and provoking laughter. The official reddened, coughed, rustled his notes and continued in a voice less pompous than before.

“Enemy forces, sirs. As you might expect. The bridge to the island is guarded and a rider may, if he wishes, swim the moat. Any who do so will not be attacked, but note that swimming takes longer than galloping and each course is timed by turn of sandglass. That, sirs, is all.”

That, thought Aldric, is enough. The best way to stop a courier was to shoot the horse from under him, but judge and audience wouldn’t appreciate anything so practical.

He watched as Escuar the Prytenek galloped out to ride the Messenger’s Ride. A target came up on its counterbalanced arm and the young man twisted in his saddle to drive an arrow neatly into it. Even with the awkward great-bow his archery was good, and he took down his two spear-targets as cleanly, but his swordplay was book-schooled and as wooden as the practice taidyo staff-sword in his hand. Though it was enough to dispatch one defender after another, men equally wooden and unimaginative, Aldric saw half a dozen openings for something unexpected.

It happened when the final warrior burst from ambush behind a leaf-strewn net in a clump of trees. As Escuar raised his shield to block the levelled spear, his attacker flung it aside, whipped out his sword instead and left a blue blotch of dye from Escuar’s hip to knee that was visible all over the field.

Something unexpected, just like that. Not far from Aldric someone groaned at money lost, and he wondered if Kyrin was loyally backing him or sensibly doing no such thing.

“Kourgath-eijo,” said a voice at his elbow, “you ride now.” One of the Prefect’s retainers presented him with a small scroll and Aldric was tempted to ‘read’ the thing then destroy it. Instead he played matters straight and tucked it in his gauntlet-cuff, wondering what his odds might be, then dismissed all other concerns and kicked Lyard into a gallop.

Two defenders pounced almost at once, and Aldric made the big Andarran courser sidestep with tug of rein and touch of knee, lunging his red-dyed spearpoint past a shield suddenly in the wrong place. That long reach also ‘killed’ the second kailin before he closed enough to be dangerous. Children’s game or not, it was combat more realistic than anything in Dunrath’s exercise yard. A target reared up, he thrust home—

And his spear broke in half as some unseen flaw gave way.

He swore, threw down the stump, and tugged his bow from its saddle-case. Aldric much preferred the short-bow, half this one’s length, because despite the long and noble history of the Alban great-bow it was a clumsy weapon for horseback. The supposed courier in this supposed story had only used it for lack of better weapons.

Still, it shot arrows longer, heavier and more destructive than anything from the short-bow. Aldric loosed one at close range and despite the noise of galloping in full armour heard a rending crack as the wooden target split from top to bottom. Another target appeared, this time craftily set low on his right, and he bared his teeth in a hard, appreciative grin. Whoever built the course knew no horse-archer could shoot to nearside and had to display skill with mount instead. He did exactly that. Pressure with one knee and a kick from the opposite heel swerved Lyard sharply left, enough to launch a shaft straight back over the courser’s tail. The smack as it drove into timber was as satisfying as the cheers the shot produced.

Three remaining defenders waited at the bridge and Aldric reined back, eyeing them warily. Attacking without a spear for extra reach would be risky, yet he didn’t want to squander time swimming the moat. The sands were running, and a quarter-glass could decide who won or lost. Boldness would be best. He pulled the peak of his helmet down, settled more firmly in the saddle and touched heels to Lyard’s flanks, aware the judge had risen from his canopied seat to get a better view.

But the official wasn’t watching him.

Something reared from the moat in a hiss of displaced water and Aldric’s head jerked round, all plans and strategies forgotten. For an instant he thought the horseman surging at him through the shallows was an elaborate joke, a final trick to challenge the potential winner of The Ride. Then weeds fell from a spear that ended in a long, sharp point. It might indeed be some sort of trick, but it was definitely no joke.

He threw aside his useless wooden weapons, wrenched Lyard around and galloped with desperate haste towards the judge’s escort, the only men on the field wearing real blades. They broke and scattered as he approached, running not from him but from what came after him. Aldric snarled, rode one of them down and was out of his saddle before Lyard had skidded to a halt, wrenching the dazed man’s sword from its scabbard. Though it was no named-blade taiken, it was steel and better than nothing.

The bronze rider was on him before he could mount up again. Aldric twisted away from the spear, hacked at its shaft and almost dropped the sword from stinging fingers as it bounced off solid metal. He tensed to sidestep another charge, but the scale-armoured horseman dismounted instead, landing with a hollow reverberation as if there was nothing inside his reptilian mail.

“I am Esel, O enemy of my master.” It was the High Speech of religion and ritual, in a metallic, inhumanly-deep voice that confirmed Aldric’s fears. Duergar had caught up with him at last. “Return to me that which ye stole, or shall I take it from thee? Speak thy choice.”

“I think…” Aldric cleared his throat to still the tremor lurking there and managed a mirthless smile. “I think you’ll have to take it.”

“As ye will.” The monstrous figure turned towards his horse, and when he swung back he held a sheathed sword as long as Aldric was tall. “My master desires ye brought before him, that he may chastise thee at his pleasure. This shall be. Prepare thyself.”

*

A whistle rang out through the deathly stillness of the crowd and Lyard swung his head around, ears pricked and nostrils flaring. The black Andarran recognised his master’s signal, but his master hadn’t given it and Kyrin had to repeat the summons twice before the horse obeyed.

As she made for the spot where the big animal waited, Kyrin had to barge past spectators who stood as if spellbound. For all she knew, they were. Aware how dangerous a warhorse could be, she approached with as much caution as haste could spare while Lyard snorted and put his ears back. When she set foot to stirrup and vaulted into the saddle he reared, pawing the air and shrilling his anger and excitement, but did nothing worse. The woman on his back was a companion, someone who had treated him kindly, and a familiar comfort in the midst of this frightening strangeness. Relieved she wasn’t about to be bucked off and stamped flat, Kyrin dug in her heels and rode full-tilt for Aldric’s tent - and for Widowmaker.

*

Aldric tore off the white overrobe before it tangled his legs, and backed away from Esel’s inexorable advance. He glanced around, hoping for help and getting none. Whether through fear, horror or some more sinister reason, nobody moved. When the bronze katafrakt whipped his sword through the air and sent its scabbard spinning at Aldric’s face, he ducked aside from a long-train familiar ruse – but no tuition by Joren or Gemmel could have prepared him for the weapon Esel gripped in one scaled fist.

It wasn’t steel, it wasn’t even bronze to match the rest of him. Instead a shimmering translucent material drew Aldric’s eyes and held them. His vision blurred and he gulped as sourness rose in his throat, then wrenched his gaze away as the sweat under his armour and combat leathers went icy cold. The world had begun to slither out of focus, and one more second would have left him helpless. Before it happened again he lashed out with his own stolen sword, and guided by luck or judgement the clumsy blade struck hard against Esel’s helm.

One of the bronze goat-horns broke off and spun away, but Esel ignored what should have been a stunning, brain-rattling impact. There had been neither an attempt to dodge, nor a block with the shield strapped useless and forgotten on his arm, nor any warding movement with the great sword. It was as if he didn’t understand what to do with either of them, because he gripped his sword like a blacksmith’s hammer. Or a bronze-founder’s maul.

Quick footsteps came from Aldric’s left as one of his former opponents charged in, a battle-axe raised in both his hands. Why this man moved when no one else did he didn’t know, and it served no purpose. Esel’s sword came up to parry with a piercing sweet chime unlike any true clash of steel, and the nacreous shimmer vanished from his blade, leaving it as clear as ice.

Then it chopped home.

The kailin dropped his axe and froze in his tracks. There was no visible wound, nor any blood on the white overrobe covering his armour, but the cloth went rigid and it crackled. Aldric had heard that sound before, the sound of frost-crisped leaves in autumn. The warrior fell over, his face a pallid mask of shock, and even before the wave of icy air billowed over him Aldric realised what Esel’s sword had done. The fallen man had frozen in very truth, his body, clothing, mail and plate all frosted over within half a heartbeat on a hot spring day. Aldric felt sure he was still alive, because this was too much like a way to transport meat from one place to another.

He was the meat, his destination was Dunrath, and Esel was to fetch him.

Another great sweep of the ice-bladed sword left a trail of chilly white vapour like exhaled breath swirling in its wake. Aldric ducked under it, straightened up fast and smashed the iron-bound rim of his shield against the bridge of Esel’s nose. It should have broken bone or even dislocated the spine, it would at least have left a real man blind with pain, but the only blindness here was a war-mask buckled beyond recovery. Esel made a grinding, impatient noise and tore the mask aside, and the lack of any face beneath it was worse than any wound.

Aldric lost his own sword in the next exchange. Brittle from appalling cold, its blade abruptly flew into a score of tinkling shards, and perspiration on his sodden glove almost froze the useless hilt to his hand.

As he backed out of reach the bronze katafrakt followed without haste, walking with the calm assurance of an executioner.

Esel moved as he had always done, no slower, no faster, stride after patient measured stride, but exhaustion was making Aldric unsteady on his feet and even Gemmel’s marvellously-light armour had become a dragging weight. That was when he realised he couldn’t outlast Duergar’s sending. Resignation joined fatigue, combining with the despair of vast weariness until he almost knelt and waited for the inevitable.

Almost; not quite. He was Alban, kailin-eir Talvalin, and he could still finish this thing on his own terms with the tsepan at his belt. Then hoofbeats and shouting cut through his daze and his eyes focused on the fast-approaching black horse and the woman astride it whose blonde hair flew behind her like a banner. He forced himself into a shaky run.

Kyrin breathed a soft apology to Isileth Widowmaker and felt not the least bit foolish doing so. She slid the taiken from its scabbard and threw it as hard and straight as she was able, then broke away to the right out of Esel’s reach. The weapon cartwheeled down and quivered in the turf for less than a second before Aldric’s fingers closed around its hilt and wrenched it free. There was no surge of renewed strength, just reassurance that with his own sword in hand he had a better chance of…

Of dying well, if nothing else.

He swung around to face his tormentor and flinched instantly, avoiding a cut across the eyes by less than a finger’s-breadth, so close that the frigid wind of its passage left frost on eyebrows and lashes. Aldric had no illusions about crossing swords, not even with Widowmaker, and concentrated on spotting the opening he needed. It wasn’t an opening in Esel’s battle harness, he was certain none of the pommel-strikes or cunning stabs to weak points could hurt what was inside it. But bronze was brittle. That helmet-horn hadn’t cut, it had broken like a dry stick. So given the chance – Aldric threw his shield away and poised Isileth Widowmaker in the Falcon’s Guard behind his head – he would test his theory on the bronze man’s armour.

And his arm.

Esel’s blow was a huge clumsy sweep. Despite his weariness Aldric evaded it with ease and there was nothing weary about his return stroke, a vertical double-handed cut aimed between wrist and elbow. Armour and limb gave way together with a hard bright clank, and Esel’s hand with the sword still in it went spinning to the ground. He clutched the stump with his remaining hand and uttered a shrill noise, a screech like the corroded iron hinges of some ancient gate working against decades of rust. Instead of blood he leaked a bluish fluid with a sharp acidic stench, and instead of flesh an oily pulp bulged from the ruptured metal, pulsing with the irregular flutter of a moth in a cobweb.

Aldric fought a matching flutter in his stomach as he dropped Isileth to the ground, lifted the amputated hand and twisted Esel’s sword from its slack, bronze-scaled grip. He kept his own hand well clear of the icy crystalline blade as he took a step forward, stiff-legged as an angry cat.

“Esel,” he said. There was no longer any quaver in his voice, only a harshness fired and tempered by the memory of how this creature had frightened him almost onto the point of his own dirk. “Your master wants something from me. When the time comes, he’ll get this.”

The huge sword stabbed into the bronze katafrakt’s body as easily as into a scabbard, far enough to come out again at the back. Instead what went inside became part of inside until the hilt-guard slammed against Esel’s chest and stuck fast. A convulsion wrenched it from Aldric’s grip, and Duergar’s failed sending staggered towards his horse.

The bronze warrior crawled laboriously back to his saddle and sat there, plucking at the sword-hilt protruding from a torso already caked with ice. His horse raised one foreleg and stopped. Esel leaned back, stump raised as if to hold his missing war-mask in a hand no longer there, and gazed into the distance. If Aldric had ever visited a certain bronze-foundry in Erdhaven, he would have recognised the pose at once. The equestrian statue once so admired slowly overbalanced, fell with a vast splash into the moat and vanished beneath a surface that froze solid between one breath and the next.

There were long seconds of shocked silence before the cheers began.

Aldric heard more footsteps, many more, as armed and armoured men came running up now everything was safe. His face curdled with disgust, his stomach heaved, and he got his helmet off just before the vomiting began. Kyrin stroked his head, murmuring soft comforting sounds until he was done and spat the last foulness from his mouth, then glared as soldiers surrounded them with levelled spears. Their officer surveyed her with a cold eye, but when he did the same to Aldric he was met by an expression that made him back away.

“Somebody get his sword!” the man shouted to cover being startled by a sickly frightened boy in armour.

The sickness and fright were almost gone by now, Aldric had been much more than a boy for years, and after a sorcery-created monstrosity like Esel, a mere officer of guards didn’t count for much. It took several deep breaths to control his anger or at least push it out of sight, and he straightened his back as he glanced at the soldiers.

“What’s going on here?” His voice was as haughty and menacing as any offended clan-lord, and though the officer tried to ignore its tacit threat, Kyrin noticed he kept well clear. Instead he levelled one gloved finger at her.

“You,” the officer said, “help him to walk. Guards, watch them. Especially the eijo. I wouldn’t think of escaping, an-kourgath,” he finished, bolder once his soldiers had closed in.

“I asked you a question,” Aldric said. There were no more threats. He was too weary for play-acting an unconvincing role and no longer cared about an answer. He got one all the same.

“My commander wants you,” the officer replied, happy to dump his responsibility on someone else. “Both of you. Now. At once.”

CHAPTER SIX

Aldric and Kyrin had no idea where they were going, and it became clear they weren’t meant to know. The closely-escorted walk from the competition field brought them to a carriage of impressive luxury, though every curtain was lowered and fastened and two armed guards who climbed in and locked the doors were there to keep them that way.

Aldric nodded at Kyrin, glanced at the guards and slowly, so as not to alarm them, he stretched to confirm the three small blades under his clothes were still in place. For all his bluster the arresting officer – an arrest, or an abduction? – seemed remarkably ignorant about how to handle dangerous prisoners, yet apparent ignorance could be a test to see what those prisoners might do. He forced himself to relax and see what happened next.

The carriage stopped after only twenty minutes of slow travel through the Festival-busy streets, not long enough to take them beyond the walls of Erdhaven Port. Another brief walk from the coach-yard went past where cooking smells and general bustle suggested a kitchen, then up narrow back stairs to a plain door, and the view inside told them everything had changed again.

“Quite a cage,” said Kyrin. “A gilded one.”

To call this room gilded understated the truth. Gold-plated was more like it. Ornamental panels of maple and walnut covered its walls, and rugs deep as snowdrifts lay on the floor. The lamps, burning scented oil, filled the air with fragrance and struck myriad reflections from gems and precious metals. So much ostentation should have been coarse and garish. Instead it was tasteful, restrained, and elegant enough that Kyrin stood near the door considering her next move in case it unbalanced the room’s sense of graceful order.

“A cage is a cage,” said Aldric as he studied the windows. Scrollwork half a finger thick writhed across them, and like much else their dull yellow gleam was not mere brass. But they were as secure as any brutish lattice of iron strips. “And this has bars like any other.”

He was past being overawed by fine furnishings, and suppressed anger from his brief, shaming loss of face in front of Esel burned inside him like a charcoal brazier. When he slumped into a chair, he pushed back until the lamellar scales of his tsalaer scraped long gashes in the polished wood. It was petty, and he didn’t care. What concerned him more was who had captured them, if ‘captured’ was the right word and he was beginning to doubt it. For all that their early treatment had been brusque, it seemed that they were just reluctant guests. Very reluctant.

But he had a key. Three of them. Aldric rummaged up sleeve and down collar and was no longer unarmed.

Kyrin glanced at the slender stiletto in his right hand and the punch-dagger glinting below the knuckles of his left fist, and hooked two fingers across the tooled-leather patterns of her own high boots. When a small curved blade slipped from its hiding-place his curiosity changed to a smile and she matched it with one of her own, the small, knowing smile of companions realising how much they had in common.

“Are we leaving now?” she asked.

“Unless you want to stay. I don’t.”

Aldric found to his surprise that the door wasn’t locked, and eased it open a whisker. Then he bit on an oath and almost slammed it shut, because a file of soldiers lounged in the corridor outside, armed with short, broad-bladed hall-spears for indoor use. Expecting trouble or not, they were ready if it happened. He leaned back against the door until the latch clicked home and tucked the useless daggers out of sight again.

“I’ve changed my mind. We’ll stay.”

*

There was a small table by one wall, laden with dishes, worked-metal flagons, stoneware bottles and delicate glasses. Aldric studied them, then lifted a few lids. Underneath were a variety of small-foods: bite-sized pies, fried pastries, nut-encrusted little cakes and candied fruit glazed with syrup. Their mingled aromas of sweet, spicy and savoury prickled pleasantly at his nostrils and reminded him of his empty stomach.

The drinks were equally impressive. One bottle held grapefire, and by the smoky scent of it the grainfire in the other was Hertan. That scent brought back memories of his first tasting at fourteen, a mouthful stolen from his father’s personal store and gulped before anyone caught him. Made with fire and named for fire, it had burned like fire the whole way down, giving him an interesting five minutes when he thought he might cough himself inside-out. Though he liked it better now, grainfire was still no drink for anyone needing a clear head.

Instead he examined the flagons, partly filled two deep glasses with a garnet-red wine he guessed was Seurandec, and offered one to Kyrin. Her hand trembled as she took it and her lips were compressed until they had no colour left. Kyrin was scared.

That just meant he wasn’t the only one.

“If they’d meant us harm we’d have found out by now.” False reassurance kept reality from darkening the brittle brightness of his voice, and he forced a smile onto his own lips as he pressed his free hand against hers to offer the same comfort she had given him only half an hour before. “Drink. If it does no other good, it should help you relax. You’re shaking.” The glass clinked against her teeth as she drained it in a single swallow. “Another?”

“It is the custom,” said a voice behind them, “for hospitality and refreshment to be offered by a host, not for guests to take unbidden.”

Aldric felt Kyrin’s hand jerk and heard her stifled gasp of shock, just as she felt and heard his, and when he turned it was with the slowness of exaggerated calm. Despite its carefully-enunciated Alban, this voice was more accustomed to the harder consonants of Drusalan. The language of the Empire. The speaker stood in a sweep of darkness beyond the lamplight, his outline vague, only the glint from jewels and embroidered garments giving indication of size or shape.

“I beg pardon,” Aldric said, and gestured towards the table and the cups. “Would you…?”

“Later. Not yet. Please continue.” The man left his cloak of shadows and walked forward so they could see him clearly. He was tall, with a burly, powerful frame like a bear, but a weather-beaten bear of mature years with grey in his heavy whiskers. “The small-foods are excellent. And if you want something hot, say so.”

That might have been invitation, threat, or just poor phrasing. Either way Aldric flicked an appraising glance at the basket-guard hilt of a low-slung sword and the blunt, capable hand resting on its pommel. Though it was no taiken and its wearer no kailin-eir, he inclined his head in respect to the authority the big man wore like a garment. Haranil Talvalin had worn his clan-lord’s power in the same way, and Aldric possessed a little of it himself. In such circumstances, courtesy went beyond good manners into good sense.

“I wouldn’t put you to the trouble. But telling me – us – what’s going would be appreciated.” The man stroked his moustache, perhaps to cover a smile, perhaps not.

“Almost the words I might have used myself.” Then he did smile, if anything so small and fleeting deserved the name. “Explanations will be given and received as necessary. For now, sit down. Be at ease. Feel free…” He gave another minuscule smile. “No, continue to feel free with the wine. I’m assured it too is excellent.”

Further pointless small-talk was interrupted by four soldiers who stamped in and came to attention alongside the door. The moustached man drew himself more upright, while his two unwilling guests forgot about making themselves comfortable and waited apprehensively for the next development.

It took the form of a man in a gold-worked purple overrobe, with thinning fair hair in the three braids of a high-clan arluth and a golden crest-collar with a pendant sun. He limped as he entered and the padding of his under-tunic almost concealed a slight crookedness of his back. The eyes in his clean-shaven face were clear hazel, like sunlight through water, and tiny crow’s-feet wrinkled the skin around them as he stared at the two strangers in this tranquil room.

Aldric didn’t return the stare as he normally would; instead he knelt without hesitation to give First Obeisance. From the corner of one eye he saw Kyrin copy him. Neither had seen this slender man before except on the coins she had joked were no good, but the stylised metal likeness was close enough.

He was Rynert an-Kerochan, Alba’s paramount clan-lord, Landmaster and King.

*

“Up, you two,” said Rynert, taking a seat and an offered glass of wine. “Now, Dewan, what’s all this? Your report was rather… garbled, shall we say? The translation, please.”

Dewan…? That name rang a long-forgotten bell in Aldric’s memory. Dewan ar Korentin was King Rynert’s Captain of Guards, his personal champion, adviser, confidant and friend. He came from the province of Vreijaur on the edge of the Empire’s influence in Jouvann, and he had been a much-decorated Eldheisart – lord-commander – of the Imperial Bodyguard cavalry in Drakkesborg.

“Lord King,” the big man said, “you always prefer not knowing how I do my job.”

“Today is an exception.”

Ar Korentin’s shoulders rose and fell in the ghost of a shrug and he spoke briefly, his accent and curt delivery clipping the words shorter still.

“At these gatherings, Lord King, my people watch for the unusual. Friendly meetings between unfriendly clans. Merchants with no goods to sell. A crop-head eijo in a costly eating-house. Nothing too unusual, with so many prizes won, but this one had highborn table manners. Too flawless to be feigned, I was told. An oddity, nothing more, until the incident at the Messenger’s Ride. It involved that same croppy, and was definitely unusual.”

Kyrin glared at Aldric and muttered something in Valhollan whose meaning he could guess. What troubled him more was the difference between how his father had described this king and the apparent reality. Haranil had praised Rynert as the most open, honest and fair-minded ruler in three reigns, not a tyrant ruling by the favour of his own and allied clans. Yet this open, honest man set spies to watch his own people. It meant that before his father had been deceived by Duergar he had been deceived by his own King. That meant his father wasn’t the all-knowing, all-wise head of a high clan, just an ordinary man who could be fooled.

And that meant…

Aldric wondered what else it meant, and if anything truly trustworthy remained in the world.

Yet the spying made sense. Kailinin were arrogant men, sensitive of slights against their honour, with the low clans worse than the high. Cooped up during the winter then let loose on the Festival’s competition field, any one of them might treat a misheard joke as an insult worthy of immediate reprisal. It happened in miniature during tavern brawls, as Aldric knew only too well. Such reprisal could run out of control into bloody squabbles and an occasional private war.

There had been no major clan conflict for hundreds of years, not since the Overlords were overthrown and the rule of Kings began, but scholars of history claimed the long peace only proved another clan-war was long overdue. This would be the wrong time, the worst time, to ignite some long-smouldering internal dispute, because the Empire would take notice, take advantage, and take action.

It had happened before, at The Landing, when the Horse Lords seized Alba from its feuding people and kept it for their own. Duergar was here to make it happen again.

*

Rynert set down his wineglass and twisted at a signet ring on his little finger, turning it round and round as he stared at Aldric. His scrutiny made the younger man uneasy, as if he could see the thoughts flicking like fish through those translucent eyes. “Kourgath is just the crest on your collar,” said Rynert at last. “What is your true name?”

“Lord King, I…” Aldric had been waiting for this question, and hearing it was worse than the anticipation. His mouth went dry and he had to swallow and lick his lips, aware how much it made him look like someone preparing a lie. “Mathern-an arluth, Lord King, I… I was once kailin-eir Aldric Talvalin. Haranil-arluth’s third son.”

Ar Korentin made a formless, angry sound, and the faint slither of steel as he half-drew his sword almost drowned a gasp from one of the soldiers near the door. “You lying—” the Vreijek began, then fell silent at a gesture from Rynert.

“Put your sword away, Dewan. The time for it is later, if need be. And you, eijo, why claim to be Talvalin when everyone knows about the pestilence in Dunrath three years ago?” Rynert leaned forward, face grim. “Choose your explanation with care.”

“If ‘everyone knows’ about it, Lord King, why would I be stupid enough to take the name of somebody ‘everyone knows’ is dead?” He saw Rynert’s eyebrows go up, not just at the sarcasm. The king had expected some intricate excuse instead of a blunt admission of guilt. Or was it guilt? The reasoning was sound. “I use the name because the name is mine.”

“Have you proof?”

“Only this,” Aldric touched his crest-collar, “and my tsepan.”

Rynert studied collar and dirk for several seconds then looked sidelong at Dewan, who shook his head. “Collars can be stolen, Lord King,” he said. “And the dirk’s crest-cap has been removed.”

“Unfortunate.” Rynert’s voice turned cold and sceptical. “For a moment, eijo, you almost convinced me. Now Dewan’s inquisitors will have to pry the truth from—” He broke off as one of his guards stepped forward and slammed a salute.

“Gyrek?” Like any good commander ar Korentin knew his men by name. “Why the interruption?”

“Lord King wanted proof, sir! I have it.” The guardsman pulled off his helmet, revealing a battered face and a spreading broken nose, then snapped back to parade-ground attention.

“Well?” asked Rynert, curious to know what light a mere sentry could throw on this awkward situation. Aldric doubted it would do much good; the name meant nothing and he would remember such misshapen features if he’d ever set eyes on them before.

“I’ve seen that one before, Lord King,” the man said. “Him in the black armour. Wore his hair proper then, and no scar on his face. But the same man, swear to it.”

“You might have to. Where and when did you meet him?”

“Not meet, Lord King. I…” Gyrek cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “We had a fight. Private one. In Radmur, that was. Couple of years back.”

“A couple of years?” echoed ar Korentin. “How many?”

“About three, sir. No, more like four. When I got this—” the guard touched his flat nose and crooked jaw, “—from a mug of ale the hard way. New kailin he was, a bare month past Eskorrethen, hair just up, bumptious and full of… Of himself. A rare good fighter though.” He ventured a crooked smile. “Over a woman it was. Haughty-looking piece, and someone else’s lady too.” Aldric could guess Kyrin was giving him another chilly stare. “Watchmaster took us in, and I got posted to Cerdor. So I’d learn how to act like a soldier, he said.”

“Dewan, remind me to write to Uwin at Radmur-hold,” said King Rynert. He sounded amused, though his expression hadn’t changed. “My Guard company isn’t somewhere to dump his rubbish.”

“Captain…?” Gyrek muttered as reproachfully as he dared.

“Your Guards aren’t rubbish, Lord King.” Dewan’s mouth twitched. “Not always.”

“You command them, you should know. One last question, Gyrek. What was this kailin’s name?”

“Talvalin, Lord King. Aldric Talvalin. Haranil-arluth’s youngest lad. Radmur magistrates knew him right off. Bit of a troublemaker, they said. Not often, but once he got going—”

“Enough. Well done, Guardsman… No, Guard-Serjeant. Dismissed.” As Gyrek joined them the other Guards came to attention, saluted, about-faced and left the room. A great deal of tension went with them. “Confirm the promotion today, Dewan, and award him a duty bonus. Not rubbish indeed. He’s observant, clever, and he stopped a miscarriage of justice.”

“Thank you, Lord King. Praise for a Guard praises their commander.”

Rynert tapped one finger against his wine-glass. “Aldric-an, please be seated. I beg pardon of you and your companion for what happened, and what might have happened.” Aldric inclined his head in a gesture more than a nod, less than a bow, and sat down, glad to get the weight of his armour off legs gone a little weak at the knees. “I sent my guards outside so you could speak freely,” the king continued. “Tell me what’s happening in my kingdom. Leave nothing out. Nothing at all. I suspect yours may be the only report with all the details.”

Aldric moistened his mouth with a little wine and began.

*

“It’s incredible,” said Dewan ar Korentin. “The only thing more incredible is you hoping we’d believe it.”

King Rynert cleared his throat. “I believe it, Dewan,” he said. “If he was lying it would be a convincing lie, not some wild tale he couldn’t back with proof. And don’t forget this afternoon. How thick was the ice on the moat before it began to thaw?” Dewan said nothing.

“I wondered a little when I saw your hair, Aldric-an,” Rynert continued. “I’ve seen eijin before, but you’re the first venjens-eijo I’ve met in my life. And your oath was against this – Duergar, you called him – this Imperial necromancer? No one else?”

“Only against him. Why do you ask, mathern-an?”

Rynert hesitated, and looked at ar Korentin. The Vreijek nodded slowly.

“Better he hears it from you, Lord King, than a twisted version from somewhere else.”

Something cold awoke in the pit of Aldric’s stomach and sent icy tendrils shivering up his spine. “Hear what…?”

“Aldric-an, your brother Baiart told me none of this.”

Baiart’s name, even his existence, had been locked away at the back of Aldric’s mind ever since it was mentioned in that long-ago discussion with Gemmel. He was probably alive, but that hardly mattered. They had never been close, and the thought that Baiart had run away or changed his name was easy to believe. That he might be a willing player in Duergar’s game was something else. The coldness in Aldric’s belly gave a sluggish heave and sourness fouled his throat.

“Is he in Cerdor…?”

“No. In Dunrath. As Clan-Lord Talvalin. I granted him the lands and title myself.” Aldric looked away. The only person who saw his face was Kyrin, and his expression made her wince. “Kailin-eir Aldric,” said Rynert after a moment, “don’t assume the worst. He may be under threat, or even a spellbond if what you’ve said of Duergar is even half the truth.”

“And if he isn’t? What then? The words, Lord King, are coward and traitor!” Aldric slammed one fist against the wall, heeding neither the crack of a split panel nor the pain and blood of his own torn knuckles. “I took an oath I can’t keep. Because I won’t kill my own brother. I don’t want to. I will not!”

“No, you will not, because I forbid it. Leave Baiart Talvalin to the Council Court, Aldric. My laws, and the crimes they govern, have long ceased to be the black-and-white of the old Honour-Codes. Dewan, give him some wine. No, make it grainfire. And call a surgeon for his hand.”

*

The table was black ebony, the mirror on it was black obsidian framed with red gold, and the sorcerer who stared at it in a black mood was robed in scarlet cloth. Kalarr drummed his fingers on the tabletop then dispelled the images drifting deep within the volcanic glass. “We underestimated him,” he said. “That must not happen again. It irritates me.”

“It doesn’t fill me with delight either.” Duergar had been sulking since Esel’s defeat and destruction, his temper not improved by Kalarr’s bleak amusement. “Were those your soldiers?”

“I have none in Erdhaven,” said cu Ruruc, not saying where else they might be. He pushed himself back from the table and stood up. “The bronze traugur was there only because of your own suspicious nature. I wonder…”

“We have no time to wonder.” Duergar opened a thick book and leafed through it. “Talvalin wasn’t killed on the spot, so I’ll assume he’ll be released.”

“And what will you do when that happens?”

“I’ll deal with him once and for all.”

Kalarr glanced at the page, recognised the charts and symbols on it and shook his head.” You had your chance, and you failed.” He smiled at the childishness of it all. “That spell wouldn’t reach him anyway.”

“Why not?”

“Distance. At best you’d raise a storm over Erdhaven, at worst the magic would be overextended. When it snapped back here it would flatten this tower. All you can do is form a plague-sending, and that’s too slow for this game.”

“Game?” Duergar’s voice went shrill with outrage. “So this is a game?”

“Of course it is, and a most stimulating one. You Imperials treat everything too seriously. What will Talvalin do now, eh?”

“I have no idea.” Duergar said, turning sulky again.

“After going to a sea-port, after risking his neck to earn money, you still have no idea? Not even speculation about plans to take a ship somewhere? I suggest, Duergar Vathach, you make yourself useful and find out. Now I, I intend to play my turn, and I intend to watch it happen.”

“At sea? After mocking me for forgetting about distance?”

“At sea,” repeated Kalarr. “But not with a spell. With this.” He dipped one hand into his belt-pouch and threw an object at Duergar that fluttered round his head on silent wings. When the Drusalan got a close look he gasped in disgust because it was, literally, a flying eye: an eyeball the size of an apple, bloodshot across the white with tendrils of muscle driving mothlike wings. The thing circled him like a repellent insect, then dived back into Kalarr’s pouch like a swallow entering its nest. “I’ll send it to Erdhaven at first light tomorrow.”

“Why not now, tonight?”

Kalarr smiled, with a rare flash of real amusement. “I have my reasons,” he said. “And after dark, they usually involve owls.”

*

King Rynert’s presence in Erdhaven was a well-guarded secret, and nothing to do with enjoying the Spring Festival. Besides Dewan’s spies within the town, two full regiments of Guards were encamped outside it after a training march.

Just in case.

Any ruler with sense kept a close eye on kailinin gathered for the first time after winter, and not just because of private quarrels. For months there had been little to burn off their energy and too much time to brood on real or imagined slights, or even how they might rule Alba to their own advantage. All owed allegiance to the man enthroned in Cerdor, but it was the last and sometimes the least aspect of their Eskorrethen oath. First loyalty went to the clan-lords who gave them land, food on their tables, clothes on their backs and a roof over their heads. If those clan-lords grew ambitious, their kailinin would support that ambition.

The king was equally concerned by this talk of Kalarr cu Ruruc. Sophisticated and cynical though he was, Rynert had never adopted the disbelief so fashionable among his lords. A wasting disease in childhood had left his body too frail for a warrior, so instead he strengthened his mind. He read, studied with tutors, absorbed knowledge wherever he could find it, learning both military and political strategy, and became a king who needed no strong arm to rule well. Rynert was all too aware of the power brought by sorcery. It soiled the soul like black pitch, and made cu Ruruc’s intentions more frightening than they were already.

Despite its luxury and a king under its roof , this town house in Erdhaven was just the home of a wealthy merchant who granted it to important visitors in hope of future favour. The servants and the guards were male, with few women at all and only one of high-clan rank: Dewan ar Korentin’s Alban wife. She had left Vreijaur when he did, and it surprised Aldric to find a lady of quality near somewhere with even the slightest risk of unrest. She was a wife like Haranil’s, the mother Aldric had never known, who would walk side by side with their husbands down a firedrake’s throat and help them kick the beast to death from inside.

The Spring Festival at Erdhaven was a famous entertainment, attracting merchants and traders from Cerenau, Prytenon and all over Southern Alba, while trustworthy kailinin showed off their horsemanship and skill to admiring eyes. While those eyes looked elsewhere, a ship with cargo needing Rynert’s personal seal could sail unnoticed. As one was about to do.

“When does it leave port?” asked Rynert.

“A day, Lord King,” said Dewan. “Two at most.”

“Good. Your countryman Captain Skawmour is as reliable as always.”

Aldric had been paying little attention to the exchanges between king and Guard-Captain, full of people he had never heard of and business not his concern. But this latest name sent a flicker across Dewan ar Korentin’s face, as small and quick as the shadow of a bird’s wing. Uncertainty? Unease? Aldric didn’t know. He did know he would never have seen it if he hadn’t been looking in the right direction at the right time, and that Rynert hadn’t seen it at all.

“Not Skawmour this time, Lord King. He’ll be attending to—” Dewan made a swift substitution, “—other duties this week. This ship is En Sohra. Hervits Barrankal is master.”

“The Elherran with the impressive beard? Another good man. And you, Aldric-an, will be on board. With your companion, of course. I despise the Drusalans, though in some matters they may be right. Their prohibition of the Art Magic, for one. Until then, the saying is meet a weapon with its match. Your foster-father Gemmel is aiding you, but by your Honour you are oathbound to aid me. Master Barrankal’s cargo isn’t urgent, so he can make a small diversion on your – our – behalf.” Rynert rose to go and the others rose too, but then he paused. “Dewan, pass command of the Guard to your adjutant.”

“Lord King?”

“You will accompany these young people.” Rynert’s smile made Aldric think of a razor wrapped in fine velvet. “To ensure Master Gemmel’s fosterling returns here, not somewhere else. My apologies to your wife. Good evening.” The door clicked shut behind him.

“Ah…” Ar Korentin released a held-in breath through his teeth, “Lyseun won’t like this. And since you’re the cause of it, she won’t like you either.” He shook his head as if dismissing a familiar problem. “How often do you practice taiken?”

“Two hours daily. One in the morning, one at—”

“To the exclusion of all else. I’ve got two days to sharpen up your archery, kailin Talvalin, because that exhibition today wasn’t worth a damn in combat. Follow me.”

Another bloody expert, thought Aldric. Something I can do without.

Dewan’s unsmiling wife could have done without him. Lyseun ar Korentin was handsome rather than beautiful, with the porcelain-pale complexion and the attitude of a highborn Alban lady. She dismissed Kyrin’s foreign accent and tanned skin with the merest scornful glance, but Aldric got a stare of real dislike.

This eijo with the cropped hair was just another in the endless series of armoured men who came with various reasons to take her husband from her side and into harm’s way. Lyseun hated every one of them, for she could foresee a day when only the armoured man returned, made insincere noises of regret then left her all alone. She had begged Dewan to stop taking risks and settle down, yet now here he was with more armour at his heels, excuses on his lips and that familiar inability to look her in the face. It made the room’s atmosphere as taut as an overstretched bowstring, and just as prone to snap.

Aldric and Kyrin were grateful when a servant showed them out.

*

Charcoal-filled braziers stood at carefully measured intervals across the peak of Dunrath-hold’s great donjon tower, and Kalarr cu Ruruc linked their positions with chalk lines drawn just as carefully. When he finished he stood back with a grunt of satisfaction and surveyed his handiwork. The chalk-marks writhed with such complexity that in places they seemed to sink into the stone floor or vanish up into the night sky. Incense-laden censers fumed above certain angles, bowls of clear water rested on others.

He laid a heavy book on a lectern and thumbed through the pages until he found the one marked with a strip of ribbon, then read the spell through once in silence, his lips moving as they worked out words more outlandish than usual. At last Kalarr cleared his throat and pronounced the Summoning aloud.

The charcoal ignited with small flurries of sparks, and the water began to steam while the threads of incense smoke whirled across the floor, spinning together, crossing and recrossing until they wove a great cloudy, spherical mass. Then the braziers roared, consuming all their fuel in a single burst of heat. Duergar felt it at the far side of the tower, and he could hear a sound from within the cloud as if some huge creature was breathing there.

Amber light to make the stars grow dim spilled through the weaving strands of smoke as Kalarr stepped forward, his shadow stretching long and black behind him. He raised both hands in a gesture of invitation, and when he voiced a soft, ululating call the being in the cloud emerged.

It hung above the magical symbols on motionless wings, black scimitars like those of a swift but sixty feet from tip to tip, while another thirty feet of whiplash tail writhed with boneless flexibility behind it. The thing’s breath moaned through great vents guarded by sweeping arcs like horns where the wing-roots joined its bulging wedge-shaped body, its head was like a wasp’s, and its two bulbous yellow eyes had lids like the shutters on windows into hell.

“An isghun,” Duergar gasped, horrified. Kalarr nodded, and spoke to the creature in a rapid monotone of inhuman syllables. “An isghun,” the Drusalan repeated. “You’re insane! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“I do. Because I know the Masterword to control these things.”

Without that Word of Mastery no man in his right mind would have gone anywhere near the isghun, and Duergar had no intention of approaching it even now. He shrank back against the cold stones as the creature drifted lower, the air thrumming with the otherworldly cadences of its speech as it made reply to Kalarr. Then, its body still suspended on those outstretched wings, the baleful eyes closed to phosphorescent slits and winked out.

“If this is still your idea of a game,” said Duergar with an apprehensive glance towards the vast, hovering bulk, “then you’ll not face me across a board. You play far too rough.”

“You think an isghun is rough?” Kalarr sneered. “If the brat had stayed landbound, I’d have shown you what rough play really looks like. I’d have summoned up a shri.”

“A shri?” Duergar’s face turned the colour of meal and his voice trembled. “You dare to even think… You are mad!”

Kalarr smiled a slow, cruel smile. “Perhaps I am, Drusalan. But it was you who called me from the shadows, so what does that make you?”

*

Kyrin watched Aldric’s first archery lesson under ar Korentin’s tuition for only a few minutes before walking away with the echoes of a parade-ground bellow in her wake. She saw him again late the same evening, sour-humoured, sore-fingered and very poor company, especially when Dewan’s voice cut across the dinner-table chatter.

“You’re getting better, Aldric-an,” the Vreijek said. “Another full day of shooting and you’ll be…” He hesitated as if choosing the right Alban words. “Almost quite good.” Aldric laughed dutifully, but Kyrin could see his heart wasn’t in it.

The next night Aldric wasn’t even at table and Kyrin retired early, though when she reached her bedroom the windows were shuttered, the lamps were lit and the thick down quilt had been turned back. If this was how high-clan Albans lived, she approved. Kicking off her boots, she dropped them with a muffled double thud onto the thick rug and poked at the scuffed doeskin with her foot.

“Hardly ladylike,” she muttered, and lifted the estoc from its harness across her back. The blade rattled in its scabbard as she turned the weapon over in her hands. “And as for you…” She laid it across a chair for a few seconds, then picked it up and placed it on the sword rack as Aldric would have done. If even Lyseun ar Korentin’s guest-room had one on the wall, perhaps carrying a sword might not be as unladylike as she thought.

When she returned to the bedroom after a long, leisurely bath, she looked thoughtfully at the wardrobes set into the bedroom walls. Five Kyrins stared back at her from under five fringes of tousled pale-blonde hair and wiggled their bare toes in five rugs. She had already looked inside those mirrored doors, but the garments within were so fine and delicate she hadn’t dared to touch them.

That was then. This was now.

Kyrin slid one wardrobe open and examined rack upon rack of peacock fabrics. Silk, satin and velvet rustled as she ran her fingers through them and pulled one garment free, sending a guilty glance toward the bedroom door as she did so. Then she shrugged. Dewan’s wife was already out of sorts with her uninvited guests, and her humour would hardly get much worse if she found one of them trying on her clothes.

Unless the one doing it was Aldric.

Kyrin chuckled at the notion as she tugged off her damp bathing-robe and draped herself in the silken overmantle, white as new snow yet shot through with a rainbow lustre. She luxuriated in the sensuous weight of the material against her skin, twisting and turning before the mirrors in a graceful dance to make its colours shimmer, no longer caring what Lyseun ar Korentin might think.

“You look happy.”

Kyrin froze for an instant then spun around, shocked by the unexpected voice and the clicking latch that punctuated it. How long Aldric had been there she didn’t know, but she hadn’t heard the door open so the sound of shutting was deliberate. She recovered fast enough to nod acceptance of his compliment. “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to wear clothes like this.”

“I like seeing you in them.” Aldric’s well-scrubbed face and faint scent of soap showed he’d also come from a bath, and he no longer wore his usual black combat leathers. Now he was dressed in a white linen shirt, blue breeches worked with silver along the seams and house-boots of soft grey leather. Even with the inevitable tsepan at his belt, that change of clothing and appearance made him look far less self-assured than usual. He also sounded it.

“I’d like… That is, I, uh… What I came to tell you was…was that my ship is sailing tomorrow. Rynert-arluth says, he asked me to say, that he’ll put another vessel at your disposal. If you want to go home.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“No! No, that is, I mean, it’s your choice now. You don’t have to stay with me. Unless you want to.”

“What do you want?” She saw him blink rapidly and swallow a couple of times, glancing around the room to avoid her steady gaze. “Well, Alban? Tell me.” She was older by three or four years and had travelled more, seen more, knew more. While he… Oh, he was intelligent enough, but his knowledge of the world was limited by more than the exile he refused to talk about. The restrictions of rank and birth played their part. So did where he came from.

People from the province of Elthan had a reputation spread onto ships and overseas by gossips in every tavern port. They were sturdy, reliable folk, the Elthaneks, good to have at your side in troubled times. They were also close-mouthed, quick-tempered and old-fashioned in habits and outlook. Being ‘very Northern’ didn’t make for a good match for any sophisticated Southern son or daughter, at least not without sound political or profitable reason. Otherwise the other sophisticated Southerners would laugh, and that would be…unfortunate.

Aldric drew in a deep breath and Kyrin realised how nervous he was. Her half-formed smile vanished in case he thought it made fun of him, and became a solemn expression more in keeping with the moment.

“I… I want you to stay.” he said at last, blushing at the admission. “Not just here in Alba, but with me.”

“Finally.” Kyrin ran one finger gently down his face, eyebrow to cheekbone to jaw, tracing the line of the scar. “My, how pink and warm you are. I’ve watched you since we first met, Alban, and I’ve waited for you to say something, do something, anything, besides just look at me. It’s as if you’ve never met a woman before.” A flicker of expression made her think otherwise. There was at least one woman in his past, and the memory was unwelcome. “No, as if you were a child and I was some sweetmeat on a high shelf out of reach. You looked so much you didn’t notice me looking back. You aren’t unpleasing, Aldric Talvalin. Not as handsome as Seorth, nor as big and strong as Seorth, but Seorth isn’t here, and may never be here. So what shall we do, now we’re done with looking?”

His blush deepened until even his ears seemed to glow.

“Do you think I’m being forward?” For an instant he nodded before he stopped himself, and she had to hide another smile. “Let me remind you of something. I’m a woman in Alba, I’m not a woman of Alba, and your laws and customs aren’t mine. The way you act towards your ladies – has anyone ever asked if they want to be treated like spun glass all the time? – has nothing to do with me. I’m sure more than one clan-lord does exactly what his wife tells him, then wraps her words in his own to make himself feel better.”

She walked to the wall, lifted the estoc from its rack, drew a handspan of blade from the scabbard and drove it home again with a percussive snap. “Trading across the sea is a risky business, and many Valhollan women become heads of house because their men don’t come back. After my mother lost her father that way she went voyaging three times. The third time, she commanded her own ship and led two others captained by men, who followed without question or complaint because she’d proved she knew what she was doing.”

“And what was she doing, Kyrin? Trading? Or raiding?”

“I never asked. She’s my mother, and the mother of my brothers and sisters, and my father’s wife of many years. What she did at my age is none of my concern. What I do is none of hers. But…”

“But?”

“She told me one thing. If ever I found a thing worth having, I should do my best to get it in case the chance never came round again. You’re worth having, Aldric-eir. We’ve looked at each other, and we’ve thought about each other, and we’re of one mind about each other. Am I right?”

This time Aldric did nod. He was still nodding when she kissed him gently on the mouth.

“Kyrin, I—” he said, then stopped and returned the kiss with clumsy eagerness. Her lips parted for an intimate touch of tongue on tongue, a delightful exploration promising much, much more.

“You see?” said Kyrin after a few moments. “There are better things to do than look from a distance.” She kissed him again. “Far better. Let’s try some of them…”

*

Afterwards they lay silent for a long time, limbs entwined, content to be together. Then Aldric raised his head to look at her, fingertips caressing the curve of one breast. Despite their mingled sweat she smelt bright and sweet, felt as warm and firm and curved as apples in sunlight. He closed his arms to draw her closer and Kyrin lay there for a few seconds before she wriggled free and rolled over.

“Enough!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing at all.” She patted the kourgath on the silver crest-collar at his throat. “Wearing a tom-cat round your neck doesn’t mean you need to act like one!”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No, you didn’t. I don’t think you could ever hurt me. Why?”

“Because… Well, because you—”

Kyrin interrupted with a chuckle halfway to full-blown laughter, and stroked his chest. “Oh Aldric-ain, those were sounds of pure pleasure. Didn’t you know?”

“Of course I knew, I’m just not—”

“Not telling the truth. There’s a first time for everything, Aldric Talvalin. I’m glad your first time was with me.” She grinned. “And the ones after it, tom-cat. Enthusiastic vigour carefully instructed really does make up for lack of experience.”

“Thank you.” There was no answering grin as he kissed her palm, and Kyrin glimpsed the tag-end of an expression she didn’t want to see. It was gone an instant later and she rapped his nose with one finger.

“Aldric, this was, is, for companionship. To answer a need. Anything more complicated won’t work.” She cupped his face in both hands and kissed him on the forehead. “You can stop pretending to sleep.”

His head turned on the pillow, his eyes opened and he stared up at her from beneath his brows. “What won’t work?”

“What you’re thinking about. There’s a romantic hiding behind that cynical mask, Aldric-ain. I’m a realist. And a foreigner.” A spasm of annoyance, or awareness of what she meant, tensed his muscles. “You can’t fight tradition with a sword.”

“No?”

“No. Because you’re not just a romantic, you’re an Alban kailin-eir, a clan lord, ilauem-arluth Talvalin, heir to lands and ranks and titles.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Enough.”

“You said your father Harek is urlim. That means ‘lord’. Doesn’t it?”

“It means ‘Head of House.’ A merchant clan-lord, if that helps you understand. He has power, the respect of lesser families and,” she gave Aldric a crooked smile, “far more money than most of them. Which is also power of a sort.”

“What are you trying to say?” He knew perfectly well, though pride wouldn’t let him admit it.

“He can name his fathers through six generations, and he’s very proud of that. How far does your clan go back, Aldric?” Kyrin’s question seemed artless.

His mouth opened, then closed again as he realised what she was telling him, and a half-formed mist of future plans blew away on a storm of Alban high-clan protocol. Six generations was perhaps two centuries, but according to the clan’s Book of Years, the brothers Shar and Hachen Taelvallyn were at The Landing with the Horse Lords almost two thousand years ago. His Elthanek forebears went beyond into an age impossible to comprehend, where written records mingled with stories and legends until they were no longer told apart. Aldric turned his head away as if shaking free the leaden weight of years.

“It goes back far too long.”

“You see. How much does a line of six ancestors count against that?”

“It counts. I’d make sure it counts.”

“Hush now.” She lay back and their fingers slid apart. “We’ve said enough. Go to sleep.”

Kyrin slept almost at once, but Aldric stayed wide awake and propped on one elbow for a long time. The frown eventually smoothed from his face and a wistful smile took its place as he reached out and let silken strands of her fair hair drift across his honourably scarred left hand.

“Perhaps you’re right. But perhaps I am. Later for that.” He drew the quilt up across them both and put one arm around Kyrin’s waist, then curled up close, closed his eyes and slept like a child.

*

En Sohra turned out to be a big, black, broad-beamed ship with complicated rigging. She and her master were well matched, since Hervits Barrankal was also big, black and broad-beamed, powerful in voice and body, with the upper part of his barrel chest covered by a spade-shaped beard. What would have been silver tushes at his temples and a badger-streak of grey running straight down from his bottom lip were dyed the same bright blue as his ship’s sails.

The effect made Master Barrankal most striking. He gave Dewan ar Korentin a brusque nod as he came on board, and Kyrin received a deep bow performed with all the grace of an Imperial courtier. Aldric, however, got a disapproving stare that made clear how much Barrankal resented the detour foisted on him.

Elherra was another trading nation and though the crew looked askance at Kyrin, disapproving of her male clothing or approving of how well it fitted, they made no open protest as Alban sailors might have done. Anyone with business on the sea knew all about Valhollan ventures led by women. If it was good enough for such experienced mariners, it was good enough for all the rest, no matter what they might think in private.

The ship was well under way by mid-morning, bowling down the Narrow Sea before a stiff north-easter and alone except for the distant sail of another ship far off in the distance. Sometimes there and sometimes not, at first it seemed to be following them, but even with his minimal knowledge of seafaring Aldric realised it was probably a different ship each time. These waters were a highway, and seldom empty for long.

Unlike his stomach, which at first was seldom full. En Sohra, ballasted by an unexciting cargo of wool, timber and roofing-lead, rolled slow and steady but enough to make a first-time sailor always aware of the nearest railing. The queasiness lasted no more than a day and night before he learned to cope with the rolling deck, and afterward he and Kyrin spent much of their time together screened from prying eyes behind their cabin door.

Dewan ar Korentin found it amusing in an innocently romantic way, though innocence was seldom so noisy after dark. It was his profession to notice things but, as long as their relationship had no adverse effect on the task in hand, ar Korentin remained discreet.

*

On the third morning out, Aldric’s newly settled stomach was disturbed yet again. Breakfast was usually served in the great cabin, but there was nothing on the table this particular morning except bowls of chopped-up stuff that looked nasty and smelt foul. The Elherrans were already eating small pieces, several with evident pleasure, others with a reluctant sense of duty done. One sniff sent Aldric back to the fresh air, only to meet the same reek from a platter held by Kyrin.

Daylight made the pungent lumps look no better, indeed rather worse now details masked by the gloomy cabin were more visible. Perhaps too visible. Fishy cheese or cheesy fish, they were yellowish and glistening, with rind or skin like wrinkled leather, and even with the wind against it the stink still reached him. He watched amazed as Kyrin sprinkled a piece with chopped raw onions, dusted it with cracked pepper and ate it with every sign of enjoyment.

“Do you want—?” She saw his expression. “No, I suppose not.” The offered portion went into her own mouth instead.

“How do you do it?” he asked finally, after three more strips of the fish, cheese, thing had gone the way of the first.

“Do what?”

“Eat that. It’s disgusting.”

“Says the man who likes fried pig-blood sausage.” Kyrin picked up another morsel and repeated the onion, the pepper and the eating. “And that’s how. It goes in the mouth, the breath comes out the nose. So you don’t smell it.”

“And the raw onions?” He already suspected why.

“So you don’t taste it either.”

Aldric rolled his eyes, sure this was a joke on the landsman. “Then why bother?”

“Tradition. Don’t you have traditions in Alba?” She threw his own words back at him with a grin to take the sting away. “One we and the Elherrans share, though I don’t know who started first. This,” she poked at the chunks on her plate, “is erets-akket, matured fish pickle. Wicked sour, but not too bad. Not like our Valhollan habsilaq. Fermented, half-dried, and packed in salt? Now that’s bad.”

Aldric’s mouth quirked as he put the words matured, fish and fermented side by side, and Kyrin laughed.

“I mentioned my family’s connection with the sea during our last night in Erdhaven You probably missed it. We were both a little…preoccupied with each other. This is an emergency ration. When it’s all you have, you get less picky. So on the third day beyond sight of land we eat this meagre fare to convince the sea-sprites we’re already in trouble. Then they don’t torment us later.”

“Does it work?”

Kyrin might have said more but she was interrupted by a lookout’s yell, then by Dewan ar Korentin running across the deck from wherever he’d been eavesdropping.

“Not today!” he shouted, gesturing with one outstretched arm as he went up to the quarterdeck four steps at a time. En Sohra was making excellent speed, sails filled taut by the wind whistling in over her stern rail, but breaking the eastern horizon on the port quarter was another sail. Master Barrankal passed Dewan a long-glass and he stared through it long and hard as if hoping the image would change.

“Well?” called Aldric. “Is it green?” The sail he had seen two days ago was green.

“Red.” Ar Korentin snapped the long-glass shut. “Imperial Fleet.”

“I’ve seen other ships since we put out from Erdhaven,” said Kyrin, “so maybe it’s just a merchant captain who likes the colour. The way Master Barrankal likes blue…” Her forced optimism fooled nobody and Dewan looked down at her with a withering expression.

“With the price of scarlet dye, I doubt it.”

Within half an hour the other vessel was running astern, close enough for an occasional flash from her deck as someone turned their own long-glass on En Sohra. She was definitely a warship. Her sides were armoured almost to the waterline, and even unaided eyes could see the dome-topped turrets on main deck and bow. The mainsail, vivid red, displayed the Emperor’s silver star-with-streamers, but the black sprit-sail bore the white diamond outline of the Grand Warlord’s badge. Both remained square-set and full no matter what manoeuvres she executed, with only her masthead pennants marking the direction of the wind.

The Elherran merchantman retained her lead for half a sea-mile more and then, under full sail, with no more room on her yards for even a silken kerchief, the warship increased speed. A white bone of foam surged up between the teeth of her ramming gear and in a matter of minutes she scythed alongside in a hiss of broken water. Everyone aboard En Sohra heard the clang of command gongs, then a voice amplified and distorted by a speaking-trumpet.

“This is Imperial Battleram Aalkhorst! Heave to for boarding and inspection!”

Aldric glanced up at the quarterdeck where Dewan and Hervits Barrankal were at odds about what to do. The shipmaster won the argument by simply turning his back on ar Korentin and bawling orders to his helmsman. En Sohra heeled over, away from the battleram and out onto a course where her clumsy-looking lugsails let her sail closer to the wind than almost any other rig. Any attempt to follow would reduce the Imperial ship to no more than sluggish tacking.

At least that was the theory.

Their abrupt change of course caught Aalkhorst’s steersman by surprise and the battleram ran straight on for almost three ship-lengths. Then she leaned over in a skidding, gunwale-submerged turn to bring her head straight into the wind, where her sails should have gone slack and useless. Instead they gave a momentary flap and bellied out fuller than before.

Aalkhorst came boring in even faster than the first dash that brought her level, and for a terrifying instant the white-framed black diamond reared high above En Sohra’s stern lanterns. Cold brine slopped across the main deck as the battleram slid into place on the starboard beam. As her armoured bulk masked the smaller ship’s own sails En Sohra’s pace faltered, and ar Korentin scrambled back down to the main deck.

“Bloody fool!” he snarled. “They’re sure we’ve got something to hide!” Two of the domed cupolas on the battleram’s portside revolved until their shuttered slots faced the merchantman and a crackle of commands drifted across the narrow strip of salt water. “Now listen, you two, when the Imp—”

The shutters swung open and, with a sound like a score of hatchets in timber, the deck between the masts sprouted catapult bolts and shards of broken pottery from the containers behind their barbs. They usually carried oil or liquid fire. These had been empty. The next ones…

Hervits Barrankal struck his colours.

*

Part of the battleram’s armour opened, a small boat lowered into the sea, and soon afterwards four soldiers in the red-and-green of Imperial marines clambered up En Sohra’s boarding ladder. Their officer followed at a more dignified pace, tall, lean, with a face tanned by wind and sun. He took off his rank-barred helmet and cradled it under one arm, passing a hand over his close-cropped scalp as he studied the accuracy of his salvo. Then he glared at Master Barrankal as if trial and verdict had already been settled.

“You ignored my direct command,” he said in accented Alban. “Why?”

“I, that is, we…” Barrankal was floundering between hazardous honesty and useless excuses.

“I ordered it,” said Aldric.

The officer’s arrogant stare switched to him. “Did you indeed? I am Hautmarin Doern. Who—” he didn’t add the Hell, though it was there, “—are you?”

“A mercenary, between employers.”

Doern laughed and swept a pointed gaze over En Sohra’s grimy finery. “Not a very successful one, if you sail on a tub like this. And aren’t you Alban?”

“Elthanek, if you please.” Aldric knew how to simulate affronted dignity well enough, because his father’s North-born retainers had been just as prickly about names and places, and he hoped a memory of something similar from Gemmel’s political lessons was accurate. It was: Doern’s expression shifted from military severity to embarrassment and didn’t come all the way back. Not every province of the Drusalan Empire had joined it willingly, not every provincial citizen like being called Drusalan, and this hautmarin seemed to be one of them. But he knew what uniform he wore.

“Why did you run?” Doern barked the question to reassert his authority and maybe startle a confession from someone.

“The clan-lords aren’t hiring and I made enemies,” said Aldric, unstartled. “Powerful enemies. Using an Imperial warship isn’t beyond them, so I took no chances.” He turned his back and kicked at a hatch-cover. “Since you’re real, you’ll want to search the bloody ship. Get on with it and let us get on our way.”

Kyrin was the only person who saw the glance Dewan exchanged with Hervits Barrankal, and realised there was more to En Sohra than either she or Aldric had been told. Much more. Doern missed their byplay, studying Aldric as if trying to read what went on behind the younger man’s indifference.

“You seem honest enough, but I warn you, seeming won’t be enough if this ship is carrying contraband.” He gestured at the hold, issued orders and all four marines went below. From the sound of it they made a thorough search, though a sudden clatter and Lyard’s enraged neighing made Aldric grin at the burst of Drusalan swearwords drifting through the open hatch. Then one marine half-emerged and what he said brought Doern over in three noisy strides. When the hautmarin turned, a helmet like his own dangled by its chinstrap from one outstretched hand. “Whose is this?” he demanded in a low, dangerous voice. “Whose?”

“Mine,” said Dewan.

“It’s part of a full Imperial cavalry armour. Where did you get it?”

«As standard issue when I served with the Bodyguard in Drakkesborg.» Ar Korentin’s sudden use of Drusalan was fluent and caught Doern off-guard. «My rank was eldheisart of horse.»

The pine deck boomed as all five Imperial soldiers crashed to attention.

«My apologies, lord-commander.» Doern was suddenly deferential. «You should have made yourself known at once.»

Ar Korentin said nothing, letting him sweat by taking a short walk around the deck while the hautmarin and his marines stayed with heels together and eyes front. That way they missed the small wink directed at Aldric. Then the conversation began again.

If that wink was a hint to eavesdrop, it didn’t help. Thanks to Gemmel’s lessons Aldric understood regular Drusalan well enough, but Dewan’s lavish use of regional slang and military jargon slang was a different dialect, almost a different language. He could only watch and try to read something from expressions, while Kyrin peered through a long-glass at whatever caught her interest, whether clouds, gulls, sea-foam - anything except the two men exchanging secrets right where she could hear them.

*

«Hautmarin… Doern, wasn’t it?» Dewan said, «I didn’t make myself known to you at all. There was nothing out of the ordinary aboard this neutral merchant vessel. And especially nothing Imperial.» Ar Korentin strode up to the officer and glared at him from parade-inspection distance. «Do I make myself clear?»

«Sir!» Doern slammed once through the sequence of a full salute and looked through ar Korentin as if he wasn’t there. “Re-embark!” he ordered. “There’s nothing illegal here. Good day to you, shipmaster.”

«One question, hautmarin.» Ar Korentin leaned even closer and lowered his voice. «Doing what I do, I get little news from home. Your ship sails against the wind. How?»

Doern glanced sideways. «I shouldn’t tell even you, sir. The undertaking is so new that—»

«Hautmarin, I’m not travelling with written authority, so I can’t fetch it. Just call this an exchange of confidences. I might need the information later.»

«Sir, Grand Warlord Etzel paid a sorcerer to set a wish-wind in the sails of the Fleet’s battlerams, so we can go where we please. I don’t like it, sir. Magic was proscribed for years and we shouldn’t be making so free with it now.»

«Since I wasn’t here, hautmarin, I have no opinion about—» Ar Korentin broke off as Kyrin shouted, pointing at the sky, where the long-glass had revealed an approaching seagull to be nothing of the sort.

Aldric seized the glass, raised it to his eye, and when he flinched Dewan grabbed him by one shoulder. “What the hell is it?”

“I can’t give you a name.” Aldric could taste acrid bitterness under his tongue. So soon after Esel, he thought, and felt a shiver crawl along his spine. “But it’s looking for—”

A whistling shriek drowned him out as the isghun passed overhead, and En Sohra’s deck blinked dark as its wings shaded the sun. The spellbeast turned with heavy, ominous grace and came back low and fast at wave-top height, the storm-wind of its passage raising a whirl of disturbed water in its wake. For an instant Aldric met the demon’s eyes. The force of its inhuman gaze was like a blow and there was recognition in it.

As the isghun soared back into the hard blue sky he unhooked Widowmaker’s crossbelt and laid hand to hilt, aware of how small he and the taiken were beside the monster’s bulk. He noticed other things too: how his hand trembled, how windblown hair and clothing stuck to skin already chilled by sweat, how he felt more alone than ever in his life.

And more afraid. Esel had at least been manlike and familiar. This thing was not.

When the isghun poised on one wingtip and dived, his last rational thought before reflex took over was disbelief that anything so big could move so fast. The descent was almost vertical, and the warbling howl as it plunged down was a sound to freeze men like mice beneath a kestrel. Aldric flung himself to one side just as its shadow flashed across En Sohra, and a rending crash right at his heels made the ship vibrate from deck to keel.

He kept his balance with an effort, then looked up and further up at where the creature’s tail had whiplashed around the companion-ladder where he’d been standing, wrenched it clean out of the deck and dragged it into the air. If that had been him, they would even now be heading for Dunrath. Instead the stairway fell in a slow end-over-end tumble through three hundred feet of clear air until it smashed to matchwood against Aalkhorst’s armoured stern.

Aldric could hear the sonorous whine as air pumped through great vents in the spellbeast’s wings, driven by contractions of muscle to thrust it forward. That gave a clue to what might prove its weakness. Once again the isghun made a lazy circuit of the ship, then broke off and plunged straight towards him. Once again it made that rising howl but, if the sound was meant to shock prey into stillness, it succeeded no better than the first time. Over-eager to reach its elusive victim, the isghun slammed into En Sohra’s mainmast with an impact that sprang timbers all over the merchant vessel, then slewed across the deck fighting to stay airborne.

There was a snap! behind him, and something went over his head with the purring drone of a startled partridge to smack into the monster’s flank. He knew the sound of a sling in action, and if this thing could be hurt at all, blunt heavy slugs would cause more damage than any arrow. Kyrin’s sling snapped again and this time he actually saw the slug punch a ragged hole in soft otherworld flesh.

The isghun thrashed and bellowed as air rushed into its wing-vents, and Aldric guessed what was about to happen. He grabbed a handful of rigging and held on tight as muscles contracted and the demon’s indrawn breath came jetting out, blasting its body upwards and hurling three men overboard. That surge took it straight overhead, and when Widowmaker sheared across the swollen belly above him Aldric was almost deafened by the isghun’s screech. It lurched sideways, half its body deflated like a burst wine-skin, but it still struggled into the air just as its lashing tail finally wrapped round his legs.

The brutal grip jerked him upside-down, smashing him first against the deck then against En Sohra’s sterncastle as his taipan shortsword came free, sliding between the side-rails and over the side. Tail and legs were so entangled that cutting one with a taiken’s long blade risked cutting the other, but Aldric still closed both hands on the longsword’s hilt. Losing a foot was better than what Kalarr and Duergar had in store.

Then he slammed back onto the deck, a length of severed tail uncoiling from his kicking legs and the vinegary stench of its blood in his nostrils. That same glutinous blood dripped from Kyrin’s sword, the loops of her sling hung from her other wrist, and when she jumped clear of the wrecked companion-ladder a lead slug as big as a quail’s egg fell free and rattled across the deck.

Aldric dredged up a quick grin of thanks then scrambled to his feet and ran towards the stern. He could see at once what his cut to the creature’s underside had done. The injury left it unbalanced, able to manage only sluggish oblique swoops while the Aalkhorst closed with white water boiling from her prow.

Dewan and Hautmarin Doern were both at the starboard rail, and as Aldric drew level with him the Imperial officer made a fist and thumped it down. In response the warship loosed a full salvo from her forward batteries, a storm of searing fire-bolts that made the isghun shudder in mid-air.

From the moment when two turrets had been enough to fill En Sohra’s deck with bolts, Aldric guessed the battleram carried something out of the ordinary. He was right. Those turrets carried quick-firing catapults wound and triggered by the same geared mechanism. They could shoot as fast as their crews could crank them, crews who had never cranked as fast as they were doing now.

Wings shredded and body riddled with gaping holes, the isghun heeled over towards the waiting sea, trailing a long scarf of smoke as it voiced a rising shriek of pain, or rage, or frustration, or some inhuman response of its own. An instant before it struck water the creature winked out of existence as if it had never been there at all. Only the drift of fading smoke and En Sohra’s battered condition proved otherwise. Doern watched his battleram swing towards them and drew a long deep breath before settling his helmet back in place.

“What was that?”

“Sent by my enemies.” Aldric felt unsteady and very tired. “I told you they were powerful.”

“Not how powerful.” Hautmarin Doern cleared his throat and spat across the rail. “I know now what I dislike about sorcery. Every hell-damned detail! Good luck to you, Elthanek.” He swung outboard and down towards his waiting cutter. “You need it.”

The wish-wind filled Aalkhorst’s sails and with a rustle of canvas she drew away from En Sohra before turning in a leisurely, arrogant sweep, flaunting her armoured might to everyone aboard the merchantman. As she swung onto a parallel course the battleram’s bow rose and foam creamed from her ram as she came slicing past. A surge of wash made the merchantman roll, and by the time she settled again Aalkhorst was already dwindling towards the horizon.

*

As they started putting their damaged ship to rights the Elherran crew avoided Aldric, clearly blaming him for what had happened. Slumped in a quiet corner of the deck with knees drawn up and head resting on his folded arms, he waited for the trembling to stop and didn’t care what anyone thought. Kyrin sat beside him, scrubbing with oil and white sand at where the isghun’s blood had discoloured her sword.

“Aldric-ain,” she said, “there’s something going on aboard this ship.”

“It’s not the ship, and it’s not my business.”

“I think it is.” Once she told him of the look she’d seen pass between Barrankal and ar Korentin, and the supposed secrecy of what Hautmarin Doern had said, he realised she was right. This affair had become his business just by him being here.

“It isn’t that we didn’t trust you,” ar Korentin said when the questions stopped. “The fewer know of this, the better. You were one; your ignorance kept you honest, and you told Doern what you were sure was the truth. It’s always far more persuasive than the best lie. He was already half-convinced there was nothing aboard, so the gold we—”

“Gold?” A coin dropped at last. “You mean the roofing lead in the hold is—”

“Bullion, plated with lead. Gold’s far heavier, but how many people get a chance to heft the difference? It’s to finance some thorns in Etzel’s side, just as he financed Duergar Vathach. You should approve.”

Aldric stared at him, face devoid of expression. “Ignorance equals honesty,” he repeated, as if tasting the words, then a faint smile twitched his mouth. “You’re a devious bastard.”

“One of my many talents.”

Down on deck Kyrin listened and grinned, appreciating the trick. Then she stiffened and gripped her estoc’s hilt, because there was a soft fluttering noise behind her and its source was moving. She half-turned, bared her teeth at a ball of pallid jelly hovering on small wings beside the rail and slashed the thing in half.

Then she cleaned her sword again.

*

Kalarr jerked back from his magic mirror and spat an oath.

“You’ve lost them now,” said Duergar, torn between annoyance and smug delight at seeing cu Ruruc made foolish. “What will you do?”

“We,” Kalarr emphasised the plural, “will wait until he comes back. Which he will, for you if nothing else.” He ignored the way Duergar flinched and turned to Baiart, watching from the shadows by the door. “You said one was the king’s man. Do you know what that means?”

Baiart shook his head.

“It means, my friend,” the word dripped vitriol, “your brother has spoken to King Rynert. From here on, you will not go back to Cerdor.”

“I can—” Baiart started, then fell silent before a glare from eyes as cold and empty as the spaces between the stars.

“You can’t. You will never leave this citadel again.” Kalarr’s lips thinned above his teeth. “Not even to your own execution. And that, Clan-Lord Talvalin, is final.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Aldric Talvalin lay on his back, watching golden dapples of sunlight chase one another across his cabin ceiling and down a panelled wall as En Sohra rolled slowly on a deep-water swell. He had woken with the sunrise, aware the ship was lying at anchor but with no intention of leaving his bunk. It was narrow and hard, made up with sheets of linen cloth instead of the usual quilt and not really big enough for two to sleep in, never mind anything more active.

With a little ingenuity, he and Kyrin had managed well enough.

She was still draped across him, head cuddled against his chest so he felt the warmth of each tiny, purring breath, their limbs all tangled with each other and the sheets. Moving one hand up the smoothness of her back, Aldric twisted to kiss her on the cheek. Kyrin stirred drowsily and her eyelashes tickled him as she rolled over a little in the crook of his left arm.

“I love you,” he whispered, touching her face with his lips. They were words that needed said even if she thought otherwise. Kyrin raised her head and opened her eyes wide, but thought better of it and half-closed them again. Aldric realised she hadn’t heard him, and her heavy-lidded gaze blunted the courage to repeat himself.

“Put th’ light out,” she mumbled.

“It’s the sun.”

“Then pull th’ shutters.”

“You’re closer.”

Kyrin considered the suggestion then hit him with a pillow, and the resultant wrestling match worked through to its enjoyable conclusion. As they dozed in a cooling breeze from the still-unshuttered port, ar Korentin rapped on the door and called “Breakfast, if you want any!”

Aldric caught a muted chuckle as the Vreijek walked away and tried to calculate the time. Indecently late, even for lovers. Grinning, he swung his feet to the deck.

*

The fine weather meant they could eat on deck under an awning, but Aldric was disinterested in food for once. Instead he spent much of his time leaning over the stern-rail with an untouched cup cradled in one hand, studying the green bulk of Techaur Island. The place was worth looking at, for someone who had seen nothing bigger than a lake-isle before, even though ‘worth looking at’ didn’t mean the same as ‘attractive’. Gemmel had told him too much for that. Aldric stared all through his meagre breakfast, and liked it no better at the end than when he started.

Many of the so-called Thousand Islands earned their title only at low tide, spending the rest of their time awash. Techaur wasn’t one of them. Trees covered the single small peak overlooking the cove where En Sohra had dropped anchor, while cliffs rose sheer on one side and a headland sloped down on the other. There was a narrow beach between them as a landing-site, but frequent currents drew swirling, sinuous curves across the surface of the little cove and the ship strained at her cable each time, swinging stern-on towards rocks jutting like bared teeth at the foot of the cliffs.

Kyrin watched sky and sea critically for a few minutes, and Aldric didn’t need a lesson in basic seamanship to know she didn’t like what she saw. “I’d rather be clear of this anchorage when the wind shifts.” En Sohra made another creak of timber and cordage and the cable thrummed taut. “Best not to linger. Find what you’ve come for and we’ll be away.”

“Lower a boat, Master Barrankal,” Dewan was all brisk business, “and count off a few sailors to come with us.”

“I will not,” said Hervits Barrankal. “No man of mine would heed me. No man of mine would go with you. Ask that one,” his thumb jabbed at Aldric. “does he feel what is in the air. Ask him! He knows.”

Aldric could indeed sense something, but had no intention of admitting it. Not after the isghun. Instead his fingers closed on Widowmaker’s grip and he glowered at the man from under his brows. “Is it really your men? Or is it just you, and they’re a good excuse?”

The Elherran’s dark face tightened. He was familiar enough with Alban to hear the sting in Aldric’s words, and for an instant it looked like there might be violence. Instead, after a few heavy-breathing seconds, Master Barrankal let loose a tirade of complaint in his own language, vehement enough that Dewan’s translation was clearly trimmed to something less provocative.

“Shipmaster Barrankal wants you to know that he is not Alban, he is Elherran,” said ar Korentin, sounding like a schoolboy reciting a difficult lesson. “He wants you to know he owes loyalty to his own city’s First Council and not your foreign king, and any voyaging made for your foreign king is fair service for fair payment. He also wants you to know voyaging to Techaur is a favour to your foreign king, and no extra charge was made, but Drusalan warships and winged demons from the Pit were not part of the arrangement. He finally wants you to know that damage to En Sohra must be repaired in full, or your foreign king will get no further voyaging from Shipmaster Barrankal or other Shipmasters of Elherra or any other Captains they might speak to…”

The monotone trailed away to silence as if there was no diplomatic way to say what came next.

“And?” Aldric let go of Widowmaker’s hilt and a few seconds later managed to produce an acceptable smile. “I know that sort of hesitation, Dewan. What’s next?”

“And Master Barrankal wants you to know that if you come back from the island, he will be pleased to ram your imputation of cowardice down your throat, if you have the courage to use a fighting-stave instead of steel.” Aldric’s hand twitched towards his taiken’s hilt again, but when Barrankal bared his teeth in a sarcastic grin he coloured, flexed his fingers and let the hand drop back to his side.

“Fair enough. When we come back I’ll let him try.” He gave the Elherran shipmaster a small bow - not much more than a nod yet courteous enough in the circumstances. “What I said was wrong.”

“You admit error?” Dewan sounded surprised.

“I was worried and angry. I spoke without thinking. Why?”

“Because it’s unusual for highborn Albans to apologise for anything.” The Vreijek didn’t need to add ‘especially to foreigners.’ “They say it shows weakness.”

“I say it shows strength.” Aldric’s mouth twitched in a brief, crooked smile with little humour in it. “But then I’m an unusual highborn Alban.”

Hervits Barrankal looked from Aldric to Dewan and back again, aware he had won the brief battle of wills and puzzled by the why or how. It made the big man magnanimous. “Rynert-King says: Master Barrankal, bring these three to Techaur Island. He does not say: Land there yourself. On voyages for Rynert-King, all orders are exact. Unless he says, Do a thing, the thing is not done. You understand?”

“Completely,” said Aldric. “Just have the boat provisioned and lowered. We’ll do the rest. Will that keep your crew content?”

“They stay aboard En Sohra?”

“Yes. Yes they do.”

As Aldric watched the ship’s longboat swung out to start its rope-squeaking descent to the sea a hand touched his arm, and when he looked to see why he caught the merest hint of a wink from Kyrin. Like any gambler she knew when to hold and when to fold, and appreciated how he had raised stakes then backed down. It had mastered Master Barrankal better than argument or threat. Except for a lack of crew, he was doing everything they wanted.

“Have you ever rowed a boat?” she asked. Aldric shook his head.

“Well, I have. Come on.”

*

They dragged the little rowboat up the shingle and Dewan tied it to a ponderous length of driftwood with a hitch more often used to secure horses. A pull in one direction would draw it tighter, a single hard tug at the other would release it at once.

“Expecting to leave in a hurry?” asked Kyrin.

“What I’m expecting doesn’t matter,” said Dewan. “But it might comfort the timid among us.”

They were all wearing partial armour after Aldric insisted, and Dewan ar Korentin’s response to that insistence was low-level chaffing at someone who could face down a flying monster one day and be as anxious as an old woman the next. Except for dirty looks, Aldric hadn’t risen to the bait. After the Imperial battleram and the isghun some extra caution was justified, and the armoury in En Sohra’s forward hold confirmed it. There were spears and axes for a crew unused to more sophisticated weapons, there were helmets and shields, and hauberks of studded leather or rustproof marine-bronze mail swinging from hooks like hides in a tannery. Hautmarin Doern’s men must have seen them, yet said nothing. That silence said a great deal about the life of mariners plying their trade between Alba and the Empire.

Aldric wore one of the helmets, smaller and closer-fitting than his own, with guard-plates for neck and cheeks and a peak hinged as a demi-visor to protect his eyes. The rest was part of his lamellar battle harness with its plated left sleeve doing duty as a shield, although in this heat he had left the thick quilted undertunic on the ship. The result looked like discards from the back of an armourer’s shop, yet combined mobility with protection in a way that impressed even ar Korentin.

Aldric strode off into the undergrowth with the other two hurrying to keep up. Within half a dozen strides the sea was out of sight and nearly inaudible, overwhelmed by a constant whisper of branches overhead and crackle of dead leaves underfoot that confused hearing as fog might confuse sight.

“Can islands usually support a forest like this?” asked Dewan, more a thought aloud than a question. Kyrin glanced at him.

“Depends on the size. Techaur’s big enough to weather storms without being drenched in salt water, but…” She looked around and scraped one foot across deep, soft layers of dead vegetation laid down over many years and never washed away. “But I see what you mean.”

“There’s something not right about this place,” The Vreijek sounded less sarcastic already. “The trees shouldn’t be this big, shouldn’t grow this straight, shouldn’t be this healthy. He thinks it, you know it, and none of us except Barrankal has dared to say it.”

Once they startled some wild pigs, small and fast, patterned with brown-and-buff like young wild boar, and Dewan saw half a dozen creatures that might have been goats, except for their huge, curling horns. It was Kyrin who found the tracks of another animal in the soft mud near a stream. They were feet with pads not hoofs, and Aldric recognised the pug-marks of a kourgath, the forest wildcat he wore as a crest. Except that this kourgath was three times as big as it should have been, no longer a large house-cat but able to prey on pigs, goats…

Or anyone incautious enough to let it get too close.

That was when the sweat and itching caused by armour stopped being such a burden, and Dewan muttered what might have been an apology if it had been loud enough. Aldric didn’t respond, though he felt better. About the armour, anyway; the atmosphere of Techaur Island remained oppressive even when the trees gradually thinned out at the base of a sheer crag whose peak rose almost a hundred feet above them. The cliff was naked rock, seamed and fissured like pine bark, impossible to climb and by the flaky look of it hazardous to stand near.

“Where now?” Dewan leaned back to see where the wall of stone went then glanced at Aldric. “Up, down or around?”

“Around. This way.” He walked off and Kyrin glanced at Dewan. So much assured confidence had to be a bluff. Based on what?

“Better get after him,” said Kyrin. “He might know what he’s talking about.”

“Care to put money on it? Let’s say twenty in gold?”

Kyrin listened to the fading sound of Aldric whistling a complicated little tune and thought for a moment. “Let’s say twenty in silver.”

“I’d have thought you more confident, my dear.”

“I am confident, just not that confident. Or that wealthy. And I’m not your dear.”

That was when Aldric’s whistling abruptly stopped in mid-trill. Dewan and Kyrin looked at each other, drew swords and ran. The place where they had last heard the whistle was a clearing, but when they reached it there was no sign of Aldric anywhere: no blood, no crushed grass and no trace of a struggle. It was as if he had vanished, like the isghun, into a drift of hot, still air.

“You don’t think—” Kyrin began, then jumped backwards as something heaved out of the ground almost at her feet. Dewan lunged forward, sword swinging…

And hit the dark bronze dome of Aldric’s borrowed helmet hard enough to hammer him back underground. Kyrin dropped onto hands and knees, peered into the dark hole and was greeted by a small, anguished groan from deep inside.

“Aldric? Are you all right?”

A set of armour-gloved fingers emerged, clamping round her wrist with a rasp and click like a sprung trap as the dented helmet came back into view. Aldric’s face was pale beneath it, a narrow thread of blood scribbled its way across the pallor, and he glared at Dewan in a way Kyrin hoped he would never glare at her.

“No, I am not all right. I hurt at both ends and—”

“I could have split your skull!” Ar Korentin’s voice hid sincere relief behind irritable bluster, and once again held no trace of apology. That might come later, but late or soon did nothing to ease the blur in Aldric’s vision, the beat in his ears and the cause of both. He undid the helmet’s chinstraps, loosened its cheek-guards and pulled it off, then pressed one hand against his aching head.

“I already know that! If you’ve got nothing better to do than—”

“Be quiet, the pair of you!” Kyrin cut the argument short before it could begin. “It was an accident, accidents happen, and this is no place for bickering about them. So shut up!” They did shut up, more through surprise than anything else, and stared at her. “Better! Now, what’s this hole in the ground?”

“Give me some light and I’ll tell you.” Still angry and sore, Aldric waited impatiently until Dewan struck fire with his tinderbox into one of the ship-lanterns they had brought, then took it with him into the pit. Several minutes passed before he reappeared, and when he did there was an odd small smile on his face. “There are steps,” he said, “going downward. This is the way in.”

“Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?” said Dewan.

“What is?”

“You walking off into the forest and finding what you were looking for.”

“Don’t credit coincidence with much. Remember who sent me here, and what he is. Not Rynert. And not a king.” Aldric watched while the other lamps were lit, winced as he settled his helmet back in place, then led the way down again. Dewan and Kyrin followed him out of sight. For a while after they had gone nothing moved in the clearing, until a small bird landed and began picking for insects in the loose soil turned up near the tunnel mouth.

Then it twittered in alarm as a gloved hand moved one of the nearby branches aside, and flew hastily away.

Then one of the nearby branches slowly moved aside.

*

Dewan and Kyrin walked down the steps, speculating about who might have made them. There was no reason for their hushed voices, but this place was like a religious house or funeral crypt, and discouraged loud talking.

After three years in Gemmel’s hold beneath Thunderpeak, Aldric knew he should have been at ease underground. Instead the past days of open sky and open sea made him all too aware of the uncounted tons of rock pressing all around. This tunnel had been here for Heaven knew how long, its arch of walls and ceiling as solid as anything he had ever seen, yet the notion of it slamming shut with the thoughtless permanence of a farmer’s boot refused to go away. Then a movement of the air stroked his face.

It was warm, spicy-scented, completely out of place, and with it came a sound where no sound should be. A tinkling like tiny windblown bells formed the background for a tenuous thread of melody woven by a flute and some stringed instrument, so faint and insubstantial that even the act of breathing was enough to overwhelm it. Kyrin put her head first on one side, then the other, and frowned.

“Am I the only one hearing this?”

Aldric and Dewan both glanced at her, then at each other. If this was imagination, they were all imagining the same thing. Just as they were all imagining the amber light welling up from far below. Aldric extinguished his lantern, and when the others followed suit the glow grew brighter, making them shrink back against the wall with a mental image of something searching for them with luminescent fingers.

There was a creak of leather and a steely whisper as Aldric released the strap supporting Isileth Widowmaker across his back and secured the longsword to his weapon-belt before he moved on down the steps. A ponderous door blocked the foot of them, massive timbers cross-braced with black iron and secured with a bar as thick as his wrist. That amber light outlined its frame and edges. Aldric approached as quietly as a drift of smoke, eased the bar off its stops, touched the latch…

Then released it, moved his hand to Widowmaker’s hilt, and loosened the taiken in her scabbard.

Anywhere else the tiny metallic scrape would have been almost inaudible, but here, against the background of soft musical tones, the stark, brutal noise dispelled a lethargy he only noticed as it left him. With no other excuse to delay the inevitable, he pressed down on the heavy latch. It released without resistance, creak or even click and swung towards him on silent hinges. Aldric moved aside, took a deep breath, then finally looked out to see what lay beyond the tunnel.

It was like nothing he could have imagined.

Bales of rich fabric, fine garments, precious metals both raw and exquisitely worked, jewels and crystalline bottles all lay like litter along the walls and around the pillars of a great vaulted hall. Piles of coins formed snowdrifts in whatever space remained, and there was plenty of space. Live flames fed by an unknown source lit the vast chamber, spilling from the mouths of dragons carved around each pillar, and a great orange-red glare pulsed and shifted at the farther end of the hall. Aldric caught his breath at the unimaginable riches piled here, and at the monstrous magnificence of it all.

“What is this?” Dewan’s gruff voice befitted a man of his rank and station. Aldric could have told him that rank was no defence against drunken guardsmen, never mind the arrogant splendour of a sorcerous hold like this one, but the Vreijek’s expression proved he already knew it.

“This is the Cavern of Firedrakes, the lair of Ykraith, the abode of the dragon.” Those mannered phrases seemed fitting for a place where sight, hearing and smell were dazed by the dance of flame on gold, by thin, eerie chords of music, by rare and costly fragrances. Touch and taste begged to be indulged by an insidious compulsion to run fingers through the precious things, or broach the crystal jars which doubtless held wines of noble vintage. It went beyond mere avarice into a heady sensuality close to drunkenness and lust, and Kyrin and Dewan were already reaching out when Aldric remembered words half-forgotten at the back of his mind. They were Gemmel’s words, just one instruction among so many but now laden with terrible significance.

Touch nothing but the Dragonwand, no matter how tempting…

“Hands off!” Aldric’s best-modulated voice would have sounded coarse as it cut through the humming music, and this harsh yell of warning rasped hideously. The others jerked as if stabbed by pins and the frightening blankness slowly vanished from their faces.

“I-I think I said it before, and if I didn’t, I should have. Don’t touch anything. There might be…” He glanced at the gaping jaws of carven dragons and the fires fuming in each. “Consequences.”

He continued down the cavern by himself, but Kyrin pattered level with him before he had completed five strides. Aldric made a gesture that might have started as dismissal, then smiled and took her hand. From where he stood to the source of the hot light was a long and lonely walk, better made in company.

Dewan ar Korentin watched them go, then grounded his scabbarded sword and leaned his weight against it as he had learned to do on parade in Drakkesborg years before. He didn’t relax. Despite the comfortable warmth, this was no place for it.

Aldric and Kyrin could see, as they got closer, how the cavern ended in a lofty plinth with a flight of steps cut into its side. The surface was patterned with sigils of power, and the radiance from its peak splashed flame-coloured reflections across the ceiling, matched by deep shadows on the floor with something half-hidden in the darkest of them. It stopped them both in their tracks.

Hunched and huge, lean, undulant and elegant, the firedrake lay in the darkness around the base of the plinth. Its wings were folded along its spiked back, the monstrous head rested on slender claws, and a coil of armoured tail wrapped across its nose gave the momentary suggestion of a colossal cat asleep by the hearth. No breathing moved its scaled flanks, none of the legendary smoke drifted from its nostrils. More than just sleep, all seemed dark and still and dead.

Aldric took a single step forward, then laughed softly with more relief than mirth. That step had been enough to reveal a platform under the firedrake’s body, agate and lapis lazuli inset with turquoise and gold. No wonder the creature seemed dead. This was a thing made by hands and skill, all gleaming ceramic, blued steel and russet copper. The Cavern of Firedrakes took its name from no more than two rows of carved pillars and a rich man’s indulgence.

“It’s not real,” he said.

“You sound disappointed.” Kyrin sounded relieved.

“I’d been expecting something more. This is better. Safer. Maybe…” Aldric’s voice trailed off. He hadn’t forgotten Esel, or that statues weren’t always as motionless as they should be, so he examined the firedrake for several minutes before going closer. Scales like lizard-mail – another uncomfortable reminder – covered its body, complete in every detail from the largest along the spine to the smallest on the flanks. If someone wanted a real dragon this huge sculpture would make a good model, because its unknown creator had portrayed the beast with awe-inspiring realism, if myth and reality had anything in common. With a mental salute to the artist’s genius, he took off his helmet and gave it to Kyrin.

“You need to stay here.”

“I’d rather come with you.”

“You can’t. This is a thing I have to do alone. Spinytail there will keep you company until I come down again.” It was a feeble attempt to ease the tension, and it fell flat.

“I’ve told you this before, Alban,” she said. “Be careful.”

He nodded once and kissed her, a brief, tender touch with more than speech could ever convey, then faced the plinth, drew Widowmaker and his tsepan, and went down on one knee with both weapons raised.

“I swear now by the Low and by the High and by the Ancient Powers,” he said, carefully reciting the long-rehearsed words, “that this thing I do is not my wish or will nor by my choosing, and I call upon these Powers to witness that my oath is true. I, kailin-eir Aldric of the Alban clan Talvalin do swear it by the name which is my own and by the blade which guards my Honour and by the blade which guards my life.”

He rose, sheathed sword and dirk and went up the steps with a slow dignity that looked nothing like his real wish and will and choosing, which was to make an end of this business as fast as possible and leave the Cavern of Firedrakes far behind before brooding menace became solid threat.

*

The tapering plinth lacked a point, and if Aldric had realised how much it resembled a volcanic cone he might have known what to expect. Instead of a flat platform at the top there was only a narrow rim, and beyond it a sheer drop to a roiling pool of molten rock. That was the source of the red-gold light, and the source too of the warmth in the huge chamber, though now it became a shrivelling blast of heat which struck him in the face like a blow. The air danced and shimmered so much it became hard to see, and when at last he made out details in the midst of the burning haze his stomach turned over.

A column of granite rose from the centre of the churning crater, its upper part carved into the likeness of a warrior wearing antique armour. The outstretched stone hands bore a glinting staff that matched Gemmel’s description of the Dragonwand, but the only way to reach it was a causeway across the void from where he stood to the statue’s base.

That causeway had neither parapet nor rail, it was less than a foot wide, and its surface was as smooth as glass.

Anywhere else those twenty paces would be a game for children, a laughing run out and back with arms outstretched for balance. But this place had another eighty paces to consider, the ones straight down to where bubbles burst with hungry belches in liquid rock. Courage was one thing, child’s-game boldness across this insane causeway was suicidal. The only sensible way to cross would be to sit astraddle and shuffle forward on his backside.

Yet walking or sitting hardly mattered when just standing on the lip of the pit should have already killed him. A blistering childhood experience in Dunrath’s smithy had taught him how much heat radiated off a farrier’s forge and how far its heat could reach. Charcoal fumes in the forge had made him cough, the smoke had made his eyes water, so why was the air around this much greater forge not too foul to breathe? Why hadn’t he roasted in his armour?

If Gemmel’s protective ward could guard against the heat and poison of the earth’s own hearth-fires, the man he called foster-father was a greater sorcerer than he had ever dreamed. Sweat formed and trickled on his skin even while heat and wonderment dried his mouth so much that the first attempt to speak came out as a rasping croak. The second attempt, still hoarse, was at least audible above the gurgling mutter of molten rock.

“Abath arhan, Ykraith,” he said. “Echuan aiy’yan elhar, arhlath ech’hil alauin.”

The heat died away and even the soft, eternal magma-roar fell silent. Aldric could hear the beat of his own heart again, the sound of his breath and the rush of blood in his ears as he stared at the causeway. Though it was no wider or safer than before, crossing sensibly now seemed wrong, almost disrespectful.

Aldric took a last glance down, then walked out to the statue as if along a sunlit garden path.

Its hands were carved to represent fists closed around the Dragonwand, with no sign of catch or hinge or being anything except solid stone. Yet when he gripped the spellstave those stone fingers opened so suddenly that he took a startled, instinctive step backwards. He recovered with a muscle-straining jerk on the very brink of the pit, feeling flakes of rock crumble from the edge beneath his heel. They dropped, were swallowed up, and flared away to nothing. Just as he might have done…

Aldric bared his teeth in something halfway between grin and snarl, trembling all over, then returned more slowly, more carefully, across the narrow causeway to safety. Once there he sat on the plinth’s top step for a long, long time and stared at nothing until his racing heartbeat slowed, his sodden clothing dried a little and his breath grew steady. Then he took his first close look at the spellstave he had come so far to find.

It was the length of a hall-spear, maybe six feet from end to end and well-balanced for one hand or two. Tiny filaments buried in the smoke-black translucent shaft glistened like cobwebs caught by sunlight and a silvery dragon wrapped serpentine coils around it. The tail formed a wicked spike at one end and its sculpted head made a crested pommel for the other.

The dragonhead had just one eye, its empty socket no defacement but a clean recess waiting to be filled. Aldric needed no ten years as a sorcerer’s apprentice to know the Stone of Echainon would go there in due course. A flame-shaped crystal writhed from the dragon’s mouth, clear as a midwinter icicle, though when it scraped against the stone step between Aldric’s feet that delicate-seeming substance bit into the granite like a chisel in soft wood.

Magical talisman or not, the Dragonwand was an impressive weapon in its own right, and if—

The thought vanished abruptly when Kyrin yelled from the hall below, and Aldric came down the steps in bounds of four at a time. Even over the clatter of his descent the cavern echoed with a metallic scrape like a thousand swords all drawn at once. In such a place, such a sound meant just one thing.

The firedrake.

*

Aldric jumped the last short distance to the cavern floor and landed with a slithering crash as his feet went one way, the weight of his armour went another, and his balance wavered for half a flailing second somewhere in the middle.

Kyrin was already half-crouched in a defensive stance, her sword drawn and poised. The slender estoc had always reminded Aldric of a needle, and even Isileth Widowmaker was no better against the creature they faced now.

Iron coils grated together and iron talons clicked on the stone of the plinth as the firedrake rose. It stood more than twice Aldric’s height, it stretched sixty feet from nose to the finned barbs of its tail, and at full spread those vast wings would span the Cavern from end to end. Its body was like a greyhound, all narrow waist, lean belly and deep chest made deeper still by tremendous flight muscles, but it moved with the stealthy grace of a stalking cat.

An iron eyelid lifted and Aldric wrenched his own eyes away, for after hearing and reading so many old stories he knew something of the lore concerning firedrakes. Wise people didn’t meet them stare for stare. A hasty sidelong glance proved him and the old lore right. for Kyrin and Dewan were already locked in place by the firedrake’s gaze. She stood frozen in her combat crouch while Dewan, many paces distant, had been struck still in the very act of drawing his sword.

Those same wise people didn’t run when the time to do it was long past, and honourable people didn’t abandon their friends, so he stood his ground like one cat facing down another. Cats with somewhere safe to go will run, but if they can’t then in the last desperation even the smallest cat will forget how small it is. Aldric felt very small indeed, but he poised Isileth Widowmaker in one hand and raised the Dragonwand above his head. Then the words came, whether from the spellstave or from some less knowable source, filling his head and pouring from his mouth.

“Ymareth!” The firedrake’s scales rang with a steely music as it halted, and he felt a brooding presence leaning over him, an unimaginable intelligence considering him, a shadow like the shadow of death hanging right above him. “Ymareth,” he said again, with more respect, and then a third time almost in greeting. “Ymareth… Techaur arrhath eban Ykraith, aiy’yel echin arhlathal Gemmel pestreyr.”

All movement ceased and Aldric finally risked an upward glance, certain the firedrake had understood what he had said and uneasily aware that he hadn’t. He might have promised it… Anything. His gaze slid across the armoured, graceful head, always avoiding those amber eyes, and he wondered about the old tales where firedrakes spoke. This lipless mouth and thin forked tongue could never form the sounds of any human language.

Then it did speak, in a voice not loud but huge, and inhuman words rustled in Aldric’s ears like cymbals brushed with wire. Yet their meaning was clear enough in his mind, and their archaic mode was entirely fitting.

“I give thee greeting, man. I am Ymareth. Know me, and know that I am lord.”

The word was not arluth. Instead it was anak – owner, possessor, one who held with the strong hand, and Old Alban like all the rest. Aldric had studied the language as a child and disliked it because it was useless, because no-one used it any more, and because no-one had spoken it except in ritual for half a thousand years. Until now.

He had a strange feeling Ymareth was more curious about his sword than anything else. Perhaps Gemmel had come here in the past with Isileth Widowmaker on his belt, or perhaps… The thought hovered for a moment, crossing with the firedrake’s language, and went nowhere. He sheathed the long blade, but he had no intention of laying the Dragonwand aside. Then he went to one knee and gave the courtesy of Second Obeisance due to any highborn in their own hall.

“Speak thy name, man, that I may know thee.”

“I am Aldric, Ymareth-anak, third son of Haranil Talvalin, and I ask—”

“Aldric Talvalin?”

Even though he had given his name freely enough, a muscle still twitched in Aldric’s cheek. What he had heard was no echo but recognition where none should be, and under his armour the hair rose on his forearms as their skin went to gooseflesh. Yet he also sensed a shift in the atmosphere of the Cavern. Its awesome ruler was no less fearsome – anyone not afraid of a full-sized firedrake was either lying or insane – yet it was somehow less menacing.

“Auldarek ar’Talvlyn,” Ymareth said again, his name sounding now as it would have done to ar Ayelbannr kozh, the Albans of the Old Time, when their keels struck shore, when they claimed the Land and in the savage years that followed when they secured their grip on it with fire and steel. “What do ye here in mine abiding-place? Speak, that I may judge the rightness of it.”

“Ymareth-anak, I… I ask a favour.” Aldric gathered his courage, stood up straight and grounded the Dragonwand between them with a small sharp click against the stone-flagged floor as if it was a spear brought to parade-rest. “I crave the borrowing of this talisman.”

“Upon what cause?” Grey smoke curled from the firedrake’s jaws, proof its wakening was complete. “Wherefore desire ye Ykraith only, Talvalin, and not the many treasures of mine hoard?”

“I ask only for the Dragonwand, Ymareth-anak, as an honest man with no desire for stolen gold. But I desire revenge on my enemies, and aid in the achieving of it.” Ymareth snorted smoke and a few sparks from its nostrils, and Aldric could have sworn the huge creature was laughing at him. Perhaps it was.

“O prideful, prideful, as befits the son of a clan-lord. Do I touch too closely on thy honour, kailin-eir Talvalin? So, and so, and so. Know this: were ye not an honest man I should not have spoken save to taunt thee ere thy most assured death.”

Aldric raised his eyes and the firedrake opened its mouth to give him a clear view of nine-inch fangs, great cheek-teeth big enough to bite an ox in two, and a slight, deliberate exhalation of yellow-white flame. He cringed inside but held his ground and, if such a word had any meaning for it, Ymareth seemed impressed.

“Speak and say, what foes do so concern thee that fear of my wrath does not deter thee?”

“The necromancer Duergar Vathach,” Aldric replied, “and Kalarr cu Ruruc.”

There was a coughing sound within the firedrake’s throat and tongues of flame licked from Ymareth’s jaws as its head shook with amusement. Aldric choked as smoke enveloped him, and when it cleared he saw through streaming eyes how close the fanged jaws had come, bringing the wash of a great hot breath and the icy stab of the fear of death. Instead of a blast of fire, those jaws stretched in a tongue-lolling grin like an impossibly huge fox.

“I compliment thee on thy choice of enemies, kailin-eir Talvalin, if there was choice at all. Duergar Vathach I know not, but cu Ruruc of Ut Ergan is a creeping viper I thought dead, long ages past.”

Once again Aldric heard recognition where none belonged, and half-expected a demand to elaborate; then came the susurration of a scaled neck and the bright, ringing clank of a talon laid on the floor as the firedrake’s shadow moved, leaning down for a closer look at him. He stared hard at his own gloved hands and tried to ignore the colossal wedge-shaped head less than an arm’s length above his own.

“I did hear thee speak the words of swearing and of summoning and of claiming. All these cu Ruruc knew of old. What of the words to bind me, kailin-eir Talvalin?”

If Ymareth thought for one instant that Kalarr had sent him he would be ash and embers before he drew another breath. Aldric took a desperate chance and looked up, directing what he hoped was an open, honest gaze between Ymareth’s eyes. Even glimpsed on the edge of sight, the blank, phosphorescent glare set his senses swaying. It needed an effort he hadn’t known he possessed to look anywhere else. Runnels of perspiration tickled his back, and he could taste the salt droplets forming on his upper lip as the eyes enticed.

“Ymareth-anak,” he managed at last, “I have no words to impose my will upon you. The strongest one I know binds me. Once given, my Word is kept.” He put his free hand down to touch the grip of his tsepan for emphasis, then realised accident or unthinking intent had laid it on Isileth’s hilt instead. “But… But I confess that keeping it is often hard.”

There was a long, slow, still moment and then the firedrake blinked, its spell withdrawn with the abrupt jolt of a downward step missed in the dark. Aldric cried out in shock and almost let the Dragonwand clatter to the floor.

“Those who speak with me make use of twisted talk and riddles,” said Ymareth. “Always until now. It is passing strange for a Talvalin of all men to be so forthright. Take Ykraith, kailin-eir, clan-lord’s son, and may it give thee power to visit vengeance on thine enemies that they may be consumed with the heat thereof and entirely eaten up. When all is accomplished, I would have thee and none other bring it back.”

Aldric made a deep, respectful bow, but the firedrake was already coiling onto the platform where he had first seen it, slow sinister grace in every movement. Its head swung to study him again.

“I will sleep the long sleep once again, Talvalin, but first I will tell thee that which may prove useful. Should thee possess a thing sought greatly by cu Ruruc, make pretence of its destruction. Then act upon what follows.”

Scales clicked and grated as Ymareth settled on the plinth, eyelids drooping to shutter those hypnotic eyes. The smoke-plumes drifting from its nostrils ceased as some internal process slaked the fires in its belly, and silence returned to the Cavern of Firedrakes.

Aldric’s head pounded, what with the unremitting heat, the air stiff with enchantments, and the strain of encountering an ancient, wise and frightening firedrake. Spoken direct, hinted at or left unsaid, the convoluted working of its mind was enough to give anyone a headache. Yet that final advice was sound. If Kalarr believed the spellstone was destroyed, he would also believe the one who did it was an ignorant fool and no threat. And he might, just might, do something stupid.

Beside him he sensed Kyrin stirring. Snared by the firedrake’s gaze, subject only to Ymareth’s will, if it had commanded her or Dewan to walk down its throat they would have done so. Yet it had not, for some reason Aldric couldn’t explain any more than he could understand its strange familiarity with his name and sword.

But Gemmel could explain.

And one way or another, he would.

*

Kyrin shivered, then lowered her sword and put one arm around Aldric, not as a frightened woman or concerned lover but a warrior relieved to see their companion-in-arms safe after risking misadventure. When she released him again she backed away until only the tips of her fingers touched his face, tracing its features like something unfamiliar.

“Are you safe?” she said. Aldric nodded. Unroasted, sane and with all his limbs in place was safe enough for now. “You were talking to that, that thing as easily as you talk to me. Who are you? What are you?”

“I’m who I always was. And I’m still scared.” Under the metal carapace of his armour it felt like a creature with big soft wings was flying clumsily around the pit of his stomach. “I expected to be scared. But I’m still alive, which I didn’t expect at all. Speaking to a firedrake isn’t easy.”

Ar Korentin came sprinting up, then slackened his headlong pace and approached more sedately as befitted a captain-of-guards, even a thoroughly startled one. His eyes were heavy, like a man woken after too much wine, but a flood of questions was dammed up behind his impassive features. At least the simple ones came first.

“Are you both all right?”

“Yes. You?”

“Well enough.” Dewan showed his teeth. If it was a grin, it needed work. “I’ve been better.”

“You could have been worse.” Aldric tucked the Dragonwand under one arm, not sure he should let either companion touch it and not sure they even would, and took his borrowed helmet back from Kyrin. With the straps buckled and the cheekplates laced down it felt reassuringly solid even on his aching head, and he continued with a swift check of every other belt and fastening on his battle harness.

“Look to your armour whenever you can,” he said as Dewan watched, “so you never die wishing you had… An old proverb my father liked, though he usually meant I should tighten the girths on my pony or make sure my breeches were decent.” He tugged at a final strap. “All right, I’ve got what I came for. Let’s go.”

They went back along the hall together, and if they walked faster than before, nothing was said. The attraction of the treasure still tugged at them, but awareness of its guardian made resistance easy. Ymareth’s dormant bulk, lost now among the shadows at the far end of the Cavern, was an excellent deterrent.

It was also a distraction. Perhaps there was some remnant of the firedrake’s spellbinding gaze, or relief at surviving an encounter which might have killed them all. Whatever the reason, when the attack came it took them by surprise.

Two men burst from the open doorway. There was no challenge and none needed; the shortswords glinting in the unsteady light made their intention clear enough. Kyrin and Dewan dodged to either side, but Aldric was right in front of them. That was when long hours of training became reflex.

He pivoted on one heel and the first blow missed by inches, but avoiding one blade put him into the path of the other. He swept the Dragonwand across to block it, and splinters flew as a great gouge chipped from the shortsword’s edge. Ykraith took no harm at all, and its defensive sweep ended as a strike that smashed the attacker back against the unyielding stone arch like a stick of firewood snapped across a knee.

As he swung around to meet his first opponent again Aldric let the spellstave drop and grabbed for Isileth instead. The man was too close for the undrawn blade but at perfect distance for a Viper’s Strike, and the taiken’s pommel slammed against his face and neck like a siege-ram, three meaty thuds that after endless practice came almost as close together as the clapping of hands. The first impact broke his nose, the second hammered a half-formed howl of pain back into the mouth that made it, and the third crushed his windpipe. He reeled back choking, and that gave Isileth Widowmaker enough space to clear her scabbard in the raking upward diagonal of the Boar’s Strike.

It sheared him to his spine.

The old tales claimed a taiken longsword could cleave armour, but old tales always said such things and Aldric had never believed them. He believed them now. Even though his opponent wore a bullhide jerkin reinforced with broad bronze plates, Isileth parted leather and metal like so much damp paper. Flesh and bone were no obstacle at all.

The man’s chest opened like a carcass on a butcher’s counter. His eyes rolled up in their sockets, and he crashed backwards to the ground as if the spew of frothy blood from lungs and heart drove him there. His legs kicked in half a dozen random jerks, then quivered and were still.

From start to finish, from ambush at the doorway to corpses on the floor, the incident had taken less than fifteen seconds.

Aldric released a long breath between his teeth. Light and shadow moved between the peak and cheek-plates of his helmet, revealing spots and trickles of blood on his face but no emotion. It had become like Esel’s face, cold metal with the scar on one cheek a mere flawed imperfection.

Kyrin watched him wipe and dry the longsword. This wasn’t the Aldric who smiled and made bad jokes and had gentle hands. He was an eijo with no gentleness in his life. The man she thought she knew wouldn’t have done what he had just done without showing some reaction to it.

“Who were they?” she asked, so quietly that the question passed unnoticed.

The taiken’s smoke-grey blade returned to its scabbard with a soft, prolonged hiss, just steel against wood and leather but all too like a sigh of satisfaction. Isileth Widowmaker had tasted human blood for the first time in many years and her thirst was quenched. Until the next time.

Kyrin had heard stories about Alban named-blades, and remembered the sense of icy menace on the one occasion she had drawn this one. Then, she had been uncertain of the feeling’s source. Now she was sure. Even though swords were no more naturally evil than storms or men or dragons, they were forged for a purpose. It was one this taiken seemed all too eager to accomplish.

Aldric released the hilt and shuddered. When he looked up Kyrin met his eyes and realised though he might kill without hesitation, it wouldn’t be without reason. And not without remorse. Not yet.

“I said, who were they?” she repeated.

“Your guess is—” Aldric began, picking up the Dragonwand. Then his eyes narrowed. That unreliable sixth sense was working again, like a lantern being unshuttered, but as usual it was a lantern low on oil casting a feeble light. As he backed away from the black oval of the open doorway, the scuff of his soft-soled boots and the faint metallic rustle of his armour seemed too loud.

Much louder than the accented voice which said, “They were fools.”

*

The man who sauntered into view was lean and lanky, with roguish curls and a moustache as neat as a court lady’s brows. His black breeches had gold medallions down the outer seams, gold wire decorated his gloves and boots, and a scarlet sash was wrapped round the waist of his fine blue coat. That sash held the only jarring note, a raven’s-bill fighting pick as brutally functional as his clothes were dashing. He studied the dead men, then shrugged.

“If I warned them once about rushing in unannounced,” he said, “I warned them a thousand times.”

“Skawmour? Luent Skawmour?” Recognition and rage fought for precedence on Dewan ar Korentin’s face. “Madurek’ta peyyak an-tragh!”

“Undignified, uncomfortable and perhaps not physically possible, but good day to you too, ar Korentin. Why so unfriendly?”

Dewan glared. “Because you’ve confirmed my suspicions.”

“Confirmed? How?”

“By being where you’re not supposed to be! I told Rynert you were a captain to rely on—”

“All Vreijeks together, eh? Helping each other, speaking well of each other, honest as the day, wagging our tails when the King of Alba pats us on the head and says Good Dog. I’m sorry to burst your bubble.” He didn’t look sorry at all. “And now Rynert might wonder if you had other reasons for choosing me. If there’s more of the Empire about you than a few bits of retired armour.”

It took Aldric a few seconds to recall where he had heard the name Skawmour before. King Rynert had mentioned it as the name of a reliable captain, and made ar Korentin look like he was already having second thoughts about his countryman.

“He knows me better than that,” said Dewan. Was the denial a little too fast?

“The way you knew me?”

Dewan avoided the question. “What are you doing here, Skawmour?”

“He was following us,” said Kyrin. “There was a sail far off on the horizon almost every day. A green one.” Aldric’s mouth quirked as he remembered the sail he’d seen then ignored in favour of his own unsettled stomach. “I said nothing about it because these are busy waters. Now I understand.”

Skawmour studied Kyrin as if deciding whether she was worth his notice. “This is why the Elherrans don’t like women on board. They see too much and talk too much. Except when they don’t talk enough.”

“It was our cargo,” said Dewan. “You found out before you left Erdhaven, or you guessed.”

“No, ar Korentin, I didn’t guess. I thought, ‘too obvious’. Roofing lead? Really? Then I thought, ‘too obvious is what I’m meant to think’. And finally I thought—”

“That when you overhauled us, what you did would depend on what you found. You conniving bastard.”

“Thank you.”

“The Imperials searched us, Skawmour. Was it your doing?”

“Not this time.” Dewan scowled. “Why would I chance them finding something I want for myself? They searched my ship too.”

“Even though you were carrying—”

“Already delivered, and that’s the last of them. I’m done playing confidential courier, ar Korentin. Those patrols are getting more frequent, as if the Empire has a need for secure sea lanes. Would you know anything about that? Would you tell me if you did? I’m getting out, and Rynert’s gold will help me do it.”

“You’re turning honest by turning thief?”

“I’m ending my association with Alba, with its King, and with fools like you. You held rank in the Imperial Guard, so they’ll treat you as a traitor. They’ll not do the same with me. And if I do some thieving to finance my new life,” Skawmour took in the treasures of the Cavern with a sweep of one arm, “it seems Rynert can well spare it. Do Alba’s clan-lords know about this, or is it another of his secrets?”

“They know, and they know why. To keep it secret, safe and out of reach.” Aldric spoke fast to forestall any accidental mention of Ymareth. Keeping Skawmour unaware of the Cavern’s guardian might prove useful before all this was over. “The Empire’s losing patience with Alba, Captain Skawmour. King Rynert needs extra fighting men, and my Company needs to know what happens if his treasury in Cerdor is seized by a Drusalan garrison.”

He was playing the same role as he had with Hautmarin Doern, with no idea what real mercenaries talked about except that too much willing explanation would ring as false as blatant lies. They fought for a wage, not honour or duty, so money had to be a common topic. There was an old Border saying, ‘Elthan by birth, Alban as required’, so for more confusion he pushed his usual slight accent to near-parody. Skawmour didn’t recognise what it was, but he certainly knew what it wasn’t.

“You’re no Alban. What’s your concern?”

“Concern for my wages. In Jouvann or Drusul the Company can just march away, but Alba’s an island. We’d have nowhere to go. If we have to re-negotiate our contract, it’s best done from a position of strength. That includes full coffers.”

“And you are?”

“Here to confirm Rynert’s claim he could still pay. I have my confirmation.”

“Yes indeed.” Skawmour sounded like a hungry man looking at a banquet. Then he nodded at the Dragonwand. “I don’t recognise that token. What Company did you say you marched with?”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re young for a sellsword.”

“Don’t confuse age with expertise. And I don’t sell this.” Aldric patted Isileth Widowmaker’s hilt. “I hire it, long term or short, at very reasonable rates.”

The way Skawmour trawled for information showed he was partly convinced of its truth, partly distracted by its possible value, and eager for more. It kept him from doing something more dangerous and gave Aldric the chance of talking their way to safety. At least until Dewan butted in.

“What did you mean by ‘not this time’? How often did you betray us, turncoat?”

“Often enough to keep the Empire happy, not often enough to make Alba unhappy. Don’t give me a fine speech about right and wrong, ar Korentin. Not while your king has his own double standard. Ostentatious honour in the daylight, convenient death in the shadows – or should I say death by the Shad—”

“Shut up!” Dewan’s words came out sharp and loud to cut off what clearly touched him on the raw. “Leave Rynert out of this. I did you a favour, one Vreijek to another, and now look at you. For all the fancy words and fancy clothes, Luent Skawmour, you’re just a liar and a pirate. Were you ever anything else?”

“I was a privateer. You gave me the letter of marque, and you explained all the details no-one dared to put in writing. I learned that lesson well. Now I’m a merchant venturer—” Aldric shot a stern look at Kyrin, who paid no heed, “—a dealer in expensive commodities, and a broker of information.” Skawmour stepped clear of the doorway and snapped his fingers. “These are pirates.”

Boots clattered on the paving and seven more men joined him, an intimidating gang in grubby leather, pieces of cast-off armour and even imitations of their captain’s finery. They were armed and spoiling for a fight, but their threats fell silent when they saw the glittering contents of the Cavern of Firedrakes.

“No more insults. Let’s talk like reasonable people before things get unpleasant.” Skawmour began speaking Vreijek and Aldric listened in worse frustration than when Dewan spoke to Hautmarin Doern. Alba’s web of complex alliances meant high-clan wives and husbands could come from Elthan, Prytenon or Cerenau, he had been raised fluent in all three dialects, and what he heard now was almost familiar, like Cernuek overlaid with Old Alban. Just not familiar enough.

“Interesting,” said Dewan. He laughed, and even seemed natural when he did it. “Luent offers me a place in the crew, second only to him. I’m sure he’ll explain why he needs an ex-cavalry officer on board his ship. There’s room for you too, since you created the vacancies.”

Aldric had a feeling they were being played with, mice granted time to run before the claws came out, yet his stiff-backed military bow would have done credit to any Imperial officer.

“Thank you, Captain Skawmour, but no. My partner and I are here to check Alba’s ability to pay us and report our findings, nothing more.” He hoped female mercenaries were common enough to pass unquestioned, and a disinterested shrug proved him right. The privateer paid much more attention to what came next. “However, since I owe reparation for your depleted crew, I can allow—” he counted heads with quick jabs of a fingertip, “—eight gifts of choice items. But only after we’re gone.”

“Why not now?”

“Because Rynert hasn’t completed any bonds of payment and I can’t tell if you’re taking our gold or his. Since ar Korentin is King’s Witness, it’s better if he doesn’t witness anything irregular.” He relied on Skawmour’s own devious mind and the uncanny atmosphere of the Cavern of Firedrakes to make such garbage convincing, and from the look on the man’s face, it worked. “However, I’m curious; you could have helped yourself after we left. Why this confrontation?”

For an instant Skawmour’s urbane mask slipped and his voice took on a rasping edge. “Because some people think they’re so wily, so superior, so clever. Some people need to learn they’re not.” Then the smile and shrug came back. “You understand, I’m sure.”

“Yes, Captain, I do.” Aldric had grown up understanding; it reminded him more than a little of Baiart’s poisonous rivalries. “And it’s not my concern. What matters is whether you can restrain your crew’s…” He paused to show he knew the right word was ‘greed’ and was too polite to say it, “…enthusiasm?”

“By the sea on which we make our living, my Word on it.”

The privateer smirked reassurance and waved one hand vaguely between chest and chin in a meaningless gesture, just as the whole exchange was meaningless. A Word of Honour required belief in the concept and this man had none. He even swore by something which changed with every wind and tide. The only value Skawmour placed on words was what he intended to gain from them, and in the intoxicating, enchanted presence of the hoard, that intent showed clear.

Aldric and his companions would walk out as promised, but the seven crewmen would die, one way or another, before they got back to their ship. Then En Sohra would be overtaken in revenge for those fallen shipmates, all knowledge of the Cavern would be erased with fire and deep water, and Luent Skawmour would have a secret cashbox for the rest of his life, killing as required to keep it that way. As the Albans of the Old Time said: ‘to shut the mouth, cut the throat’.

Aldric’s last spark of reluctance about his own plan guttered like a dying candle and went out. Soon, very soon, one of the other pirates would lay hands on the enticing heaps of treasure, and after that…

There would be no ‘after that’.

What mattered most was to be elsewhere when it happened, so he was willing to play the trusting fool. Luent Skawmour could enjoy all his knowing smirks and double-edged remarks just as long as he let them go, and go they did. The pirates even made way, and though it looked like an invitation to run the gauntlet, no-one was waving weapons.

They were so close, so very close, when someone spoke and it all went wrong.

*

Though the loud, deep voice used neither Alban nor Vreijek, Skawmour half-turned to give the words his full attention and his expression became a curious mixture of annoyance and cynical amusement.

“I regret to say the situation has changed.” There was no trace of regret in voice or face. “My quartermaster Kakhur declines the kind offer of gold. You have a prize he likes better.”

There was a flurry of movement as Kakhur came forward, huge in grubby combat leathers and carrying a long-handled axe wrapped in oilcloth, with no armour except plated half-sleeves over his biceps. He looked like the sort who despised anyone wearing more, and his contemptuous glance at Aldric’s helmet and lamellar body-harness confirmed it.

A youth misspent watching and reading the wrong sort of melodrama meant Aldric could guess what was coming next. That complicated matters. He had also heard Kyrin’s gasp when Kakhur first spoke, and didn’t need to understand Valhollan to recognise the sound of it. If she still wanted to go home, and if Skawmour’s quartermaster was…

Then he saw her face.

“Isn’t he one of your people?”

“Valhollan yes, my people no. He’s cualshtur. An upland rock-rat.”

She spat the words and Aldric understood. Alba had its own derisive labels – ‘saltfoot’, ‘heather-herd’, ‘woodworm’ and the rest – and all meant the same thing. One of them, not one of us.

“Do you accept the proposal?” From the sound of him Skawmour didn’t care one way or the other.

“What if we don’t?” Dewan was keeping his anger in check with an effort. “You promised we could leave. All of us, Luent. Without exception.”

“I promised not to do anything until you were gone, ar Korentin. That can mean, oh, so many things. And promises are like politics, or a pretty woman’s mind, or the sea. They’re all subject to change without warning. Kakhur seldom asks, he usually takes, so this pretty woman must be rather special. So special that I won’t see him disappointed. Either the young lady stays with him, or you all stay with us. Permanently. And the path to permanence will be long and full of discomfort.”

Kyrin stared at him then deliberately turned her back. “Go,” she told Aldric and Dewan. “Both of you, get out. Come back if you can. Don’t worry, I’ve had rougher shipmates, and once Kakhur hears my name he’ll know I’m better left undamaged. The cualshtur is going to regret this.”

“No. You’re coming with us.”

“Aldric, please don’t. This isn’t your fight.”

“It is if I want it to be.” There were too many ears too close for him to tell Kyrin the real reason why she couldn’t stay behind. Once his trap closed, what followed would make no distinction between pirates and prisoner.

“We’ve decided,” he told Skawmour before Dewan could complicate the argument. “Your quartermaster will have to live with disappointment.” He stabbed the Dragonwand into the flagstones like a skewer into cheese, and heard a flurry of disquiet go round Luent Skawmour’s crew as they realised there might be more to this sword-for-hire than met the eye.

“There are three of us and there should have been ten of you. I see eight. How many more won’t live to enjoy what the others win?” He wasn’t talking to Luent Skawmour or Kakhur, but to the other sailors behind them. “Do you want a good bargain or a hard fight? We go, and you get rich.” Widowmaker left her scabbard with a metallic whisper and he heard Kyrin and Dewan draw as well. “We stay, and you get steel.”

Skawmour stared at the Dragonwand spiked into solid stone, and at how the lights in the Cavern glinted on Isileth’s blade. Live flame in the dragon-head torches shone back gold, while the glow reflected from the lofty ceiling was like fresh blood. Then Kakhur said something that made Skawmour laugh out loud.

Aldric risked a glance at Kyrin, who was white with anger. “What?”

“He says – claims – he’s Ersol Kakhur, a Valhollan of good repute.” Her mouth twisted. “When it’s his kind, that means a cattle-thief who hasn’t been caught.”

“And the rest?”

“The filth cualshtursaq use as compliments, and a warning that little black-beetles will get stepped on.”

“I’ve had better threats from children.” Aldric put his head back and sideways and looked down his nose at Kakhur, a habit of Baiart’s which had always irritated him beyond measure with its suggestion of stink heroically endured. It seemed to work with Valhollan pirates too. “Tell him so, and make it sting. I want him angry.”

Whatever Kyrin said, the big man went red in the face. What he bellowed needed no translation, and the way he tore the oilcloth from his axe was clearer still. Then its cover came off and Aldric wondered if he had overstepped his mark, because the big man carried a sparth.

The Hertan fighting axe was held in the same high regard as Alba’s taiken, and Kakhur must have killed its owner because they weren’t given away to foreigners. Aldric hoped he had acquired just the weapon, not any skill in using it, because axemen who knew their business were dangerous and those who knew the sparth were deadly. It could thrust as easily as cut, its clipped-crescent blade rising above the haft in a point that could burst mail or punch through a helmet. Alban armour was heavy enough to turn chance arrows or glancing blows yet light enough for agility to evade anything more deliberate, and the partial harness Aldric wore now was lighter still. Perhaps too light.

“Captain,” he said, “if your man’s of any value, call him off.”

“Not after your companion was so forthright.”

“What did she say?”

“That little black-beetles have great big stings,” said Kyrin.

“Not quite.” Skawmour grinned the nasty grin of a weasel finding an open henhouse. “If you work with foreigners, learn their language before you let them speak for you. She didn’t say ‘sting’, and her comparison between yours and his was… Unflattering. She talked you into this. You’ll not talk yourself out. Kakhur, attend to it.”

Skawmour was right, the time for talking was over, but Kyrin had done exactly as requested and it was more than speaking out of turn. Kakhur had already been scornful, now he was seething. It would make him careless.

At least Aldric hoped so. He locked his helmet’s demi-visor down over his face and hefted Widowmaker in both hands. If confidence could be felt, it was in the longsword’s wire and leather grip as he moved into Cat’s Guard, hilt low and blade slanted high.

“No more asking, yes?” he said, his Alban crude and provocative. “You want to take, yes? Then come. Take. If you can.”

There was no careful movement for best position, no shifting between guards as each man sought advantage, not even a tentative blade-to-blade probing of defences. Kakhur merely stood still for a few seconds, then swung the sparth at Aldric’s neck.

He jerked back and to the side like the beat of a swallow’s wing, just enough to avoid the blow. To the watchers it looked so easy, so disdainful, that more than one expected a single cut to end the fight before it began.

It didn’t happen. Aldric didn’t know how fast his opponent might recover, or even whether the apparent clumsiness of the blow was just a feint. He hadn’t forgotten the triangular spike at the other end of the axe-haft, either.

When Kakhur actually grunted as he changed the direction of his extravagant sweep, he answered Aldric’s question. The big man was used to a smaller, lighter axe than the Hertan sparth, and didn’t know how to handle it. Length, weight and momentum made the weapon difficult to manage. But not impossible, as proved when the haft reversed into a low stab, throwing up sparks as it screeched across the floor and making Aldric jump wildly sideways to save his foot.

Then it was Kakhur’s turn for a frantic dodge when Widowmaker’s blade almost opened his face and the back-edge return cut planed a dagger-long splinter from the hardened wood of the axe-haft. Six inches either way would have taken fingers with it and Kakhur backed off in a hurry, leaving a dozen feet of clear space between him, the eager sword and the man who carried it.

For several seconds shuffling feet and panting breath were the loudest sounds in the Cavern as both men moved round the perimeter of a circle only they could see. Aldric was grateful for his first caution because Kakhur was good, tutored in the violent school of experience where failure meant death. He sized up the big man, looking for an opening that could put a swift end to this.

Then Kakhur broke across the unseen circle in a single long step, sparth already swinging.

And in one hand for extra reach.

A dodge back or sideways wouldn’t have been enough. The only way was forward, inside the arc of the cut. Aldric dodged the blade, but the iron-reinforced haft still slammed against his left side hard enough to burst his armour’s laces and send a jangling spray of metal scales across the flagstone floor. He reeled sideways, crashed against a pillar, and slid down it in an untidy loose-limbed heap.

Kyrin didn’t shout or cry, neither would help. Instead she and Dewan went back to back with swords in hand, and she whirled the loaded sling she had readied while attention was elsewhere. It stopped the pirates in their tracks. Even though she could only make a single cast, none wanted to be the one who took that lethal lead slug in his face.

“You’re right, ar Korentin,” said Skawmour. “There’s no need for cavalry on a ship. Kakhur, attend to it.” The big Valhollan poised his axe and eased forward, watching the sling as he looked for an opening.

“He should. Attend to. Me. First.”

The words, no more than a series of hoarse gasps, were enough to freeze Kakhur in his tracks, and his face turned the colour of raw dough as Aldric braced his back against the pillar and forced himself upright again. Armour grated against stone with each heave of effort and even though one hand pressed against where the sparth had hit him, his grip on Widowmaker’s hilt was as capable as ever.

“You’re dead! I killed you!”

“So you. Speak Alban. After all. Thought so.”

Aldric dragged air into his lungs and barely managed not to yell it out again as pain tore through his ribs. There wasn’t the sharp stabbing agony of broken bone, he could thank the springy leather lacing of the tsalaer for that, but his entire left side still hurt like… Like something hit by a battleaxe.

“No. Not dead. Black-beetles. Wear shells. For damn good. Reasons.” Even if they forget to wear the damned padding underneath.

Kakhur’s superstitious fear vanished when he realised Aldric wasn’t some living dead thing, one of the traugarin of legend. Now it became fury because his shipmates had seen him afraid, and he moved forward to finish what he had begun.

Aldric didn’t wait for the attack. He couldn’t wait for anything, because whatever had helped him up and held him up was in limited supply. As Kakhur slashed the sparth at his neck he ducked beneath and whipped Widowmaker out from Wolf’s Guard to Falcon’s Strike. That strike with one hand instead of two was inadequate in force and inaccurate in location. It was still effective.

The taiken blade hit Kakhur above his elbow, slid under the rim of the half-sleeve armour and sliced bicep from bone like a roast carved for the table.

Kakhur howled, and the sparth clanked against the floor as he frantically tried to hold his arm together. Then the howl soared to a shriek when Aldric’s return stroke opened his belly from hip to hip and everything fell out. The big man’s legs gave way and he dropped to his knees, head drooping forward as if inhaling the stench of his own unravelled guts.

Aldric limped sideways and recovered the Dragonwand. Kakhur was down, yes, but his own endurance was almost spent and the odds remained in Skawmour’s favour. To show pain would be to show weakness, and weakness would be temptation. Better to seem made of iron, even if he had to drive his nails clear through his palms to make the act convincing. It worked, because the pirates watched them retreat to the doorway without interference or obstruction.

“Very wise. We’ll go now. Don’t follow.” Nobody spoke, and Kakhur’s feeble noises were loud in that silence.

“Aren’t you going to finish him?” For the first time Luent Skawmour seemed genuinely shocked.

“What I. Said before. Let him live. With disappointment.” Aldric flexed his fingers on Widowmaker’s long grip and hid a grimace of pain behind a mirthless smile. “Or you can. Attend to it…”

“You bloody-handed bastard,” said Skawmour. “I’ll remember what you did, and what you didn’t do. I’ll remind you of it when we meet again. Then you’ll burn.”

Kyrin and Dewan went out, but Aldric paused in the doorway and looked back. Kakhur was still on his knees, dying one bubbling breath at a time because no-one liked him enough to make it faster. Most of Skawmour’s men were still staring and hating, reluctant to move without orders. But one was doing just as he expected, creeping towards the Cavern’s wall and the enticing piles of plunder waiting there.

“No, Captain Skawmour,” he said. “You will.”

There was a musical chiming as minted gold overflowed cupped hands, and a burst of raucous, greedy laughter. Then a sound he had heard before drowned them out, the sound he had suspected, expected, would follow any theft.

It was a metallic scraping, like a thousand swords all drawn together.

Aldric stepped past the door, slammed it shut and dropped its bar just as a confused tumult of hammering fists and clamouring voices broke out on the other side. Its thick timbers muffled any sense in the words, but didn’t blunt the abject terror, the frantic screams and the sobbing. It would have been easier to hurry up the steps into the fresh air, but he had baited this trap and a twisted thread of honour insisted he stay until it closed.

There was no need to inflict that on the others.

He turned to say so, and that was when a storm-wind roar swamped every other noise within the Cavern. For a slow count of three the outline where door met frame blazed as brightly as a noon sun at midsummer. Then the light blinked out again, leaving its violet ghost in dazzled eyes and a pattern of glowing rivets, cooling. Heat and a dry, clean furnace-smell radiated from the ancient iron-hard timber, but at least there was no stench of roasting meat. The devastating blast of dragonfire had been too hot for that.

They could hear the click and scrape of huge talons as Ymareth returned to its sleeping-place, then silence. Aldric wiped Isileth Widowmaker clean, slid the long blade back into its scabbard…and slumped onto the lowest steps, racked by shivering so intense his teeth chattered. When Kyrin put one arm around him he came very close to breaking down.

“Only a professional wouldn’t care,” she said with a dismissive glance at Dewan. The Vreijek retired a tactful distance. “What you did was necessary.”

Aldric felt wretched. He was in pain, he was exhausted, and he had enticed Skawmour and his crew to their destruction with disturbing ease. “Necessary? How much will ‘necessary’ excuse? How many years before the world dissolves in fire and someone calls that necessary?”

Kyrin stared at him for a long time, then shrugged. “It hasn’t happened yet, Aldric-ain, and we have other things to do than fret about it. Lean on me a little, and we’ll get back to the ship.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

En Sohra’s master had never laid much claim to being brave. He was just a skilled and crafty seaman. Once he learned he was sharing the same stretch of ocean as a shipload of pirates, Hervits Barrankal didn’t waste time tacking laboriously out to open water. Instead he had the longboat secured with a towing-line to En Sohra’s bows and filled it with nervous sailors, men who had heard enough to need no more encouragement than “Row!”

Beyond the lee of Techaur Island the sails caught a brisk wind, and in less than two hours under a full spread of canvas their recent anchorage was lost below the horizon. There was no pursuit, and as the afternoon turned into evening the wind continued to rise. From brisk it became fierce, a north-easter that filled the sails to bursting, and by nightfall the ship had a single topgallant on otherwise bare masts. She still heeled as each comber smashed against her side, but the bullion in her hold made good ballast.

The wind faded as fast as it had risen, just a sudden spring gale of the sort common in Alban waters, and soon stars appeared through rents in the flying clouds. The sea took longer to calm down than the wind, and as En Sohra settled into an evil corkscrewing motion her master glanced towards the main cabin and wondered how his passengers were faring. After an injury from what he claimed was an accidental fall, the bad-tempered young Alban already looked sick when he came on board.

Master Barrankal preferred not to contemplate how he felt now.

*

Aldric felt sore.

Dewan was busy with the wound, working as gently as he could despite the ship’s irregular corkscrew motion. It meant he often wasn’t very gentle at all, and his only thanks were occasional yelps and some really imaginative curses. Finally he straightened and nodded approval.

Aldric’s injury was slight compared to the many slashes, dents and punctures of ar Korentin’s career, and when he made the mistake of saying so aloud Kyrin angrily informed him that some people would call a severed limb a flesh wound, and if he couldn’t say anything more constructive he could shut up or get out. The door slammed behind her before he could think of a reply.

“She has a point.” Aldric said, exhaling in a series of small shuddering gasps. “Father of Fires, man, you’re not much of a doctor.”

“You’re not much of a patient. And anyone can see it took more than just falling onto a tree-root to make that mess. Couldn’t you have made a more convincing excuse?”

“Not on the spur of the —ow!” This time Aldric breathed in too deeply and regretted it. “Neither did you.”

What Dewan called that mess was a bloody purple welt from armpit to mid-chest, skin minced by metal scales, rings driven deep and muscles bruised to the bone. Nobody could have avoided Kakhur’s blow. Aldric’s evasion had deflected most of its force and his armour took the rest, otherwise the sparth would have split him like a lobster for the grill.

Knowing he had saved his life, all their lives, by his own skill and cleverness was comfort of a sort, even when the ship made another lurching pitch-and-roll and his insides followed suit. He paled at the thought of being sick again, because every time his muscles convulsed to empty a long-emptied stomach, they felt as if they were tearing off his body. The various pangs of Dewan’s surgery had diverted his attention for a while, but now En Sohra’s heaving was making him heave again in sympathy.

“You should eat,” Dewan said. Aldric snarled wordlessly and groped for a bucket. “With something to bring up, it wouldn’t hurt so much.”

“Dewan…” Aldric paused, then spat. “Dewan, for a King’s Champion, you make a first-class bastard.”

“Part of his job description,” said Kyrin, coming through the door with an armful of bandages and several bottles balanced atop the heap. “Feeling better?” She glanced at the bucket. “Maybe not. Still, the gale’s blown itself out and those waves are getting smaller.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Dewan said, “and this one’s very glad to hear it.” Aldric didn’t laugh. Laughing was like everything else. It hurt.

“Funny man. Kyrin can put these bandages on, so go below and make sure the horses are all right. Now, Dewan, if you please. Out.”

“Yes, my lord. Of course, my lord. At once, my lord.” Ar Korentin looked thoughtfully at them both, then smiled, made a scornful little bow and left.

*

Aldric sat still until the door closed, then rose to unsteady feet and bolted it. “What’s wrong, Kyrin-ain?”

“I’m just tired, that’s all.”

“With such a lame excuse, you must be. Now Dewan’s gone we can talk, so why not?”

Kyrin picked up a roll of bandage to avoid both his question and his eyes. “Lift your arm,” she ordered, “and let me work in peace.”

Aldric sighed and submitted, because there wouldn’t be anything except the most banal conversation while Kyrin had some other activity to hide behind. By the time she finished, his torso was wrapped from neck to navel in strips of linen pulled so tight they made it hard to breathe. It didn’t stop him trying for an answer yet again.

“What’s the matter, why are you—?” he began, just as Kyrin took his breath away by emptying a small bottle over his dressings.

“Triple-distilled white grain spirit,” she said over his gasps and bad language. “To clean the wound.” It wasn’t what he wanted to know, but went a long way to explain why his ribs were on fire. Kyrin set the bottle down, caught its sideways slither when the ship rolled, and when she turned to face him again the words came pouring out.

“I’m Tehal Harek’s daughter and I don’t have to talk like this, so listen while I do. You said once that you’d tell me what I needed to know, no matter how little. You’ve told me hardly anything. You even wrapped half of what you said to your king in hints and vagueness. I thought this was a blood-feud, Aldric, and I understood what you were doing and why you had to do it. Now I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

Aldric sat silent, eyes hooded so the thoughts drifting through them were unreadable. He knew what she said was true, because he’d been open enough about events up to when he met Gemmel, but had gone close-mouthed about the rest. Close-mouthed? No. Secretive. And with good reason.

An eijo with his honour set aside was permitted certain liberties, and venjens-eijin could use any means necessary to complete their oath. Although it wasn’t admitted aloud, that even included sorcery – however not with the freedom Aldric had already used and definitely not to the degree he intended. The fewer people who knew about that, the better for his reputation. King Rynert had implied he might become the next Talvalin clan-lord, but if too much truth got out, he would more likely end up explaining himself at uncomfortable length to the High Council in Cerdor.

Aldric had already stretched truth out of shape about why he was bringing Ykraith the Dragonwand from Techaur. Gemmel, he said, had saved his life. In repayment he had offered any gift within his power and fetching the spellstave was that gift. Though it was far more than expected, he was honour-bound to keep his word. Any kailin could understand that, and it was convincing enough for Rynert. But not Dewan ar Korentin, who was no kailin and seemed to think the Honour-Codes were both a stumbling-block and an outdated joke.

“Kyrin, you said you’d accept whatever I chose to tell.” Aldric reached out for her hand and after an instant’s hesitation she let him take it.

“Whatever isn’t nothing.”

“I made no promises either way.”

“Then what…?”

“I want you to know something about what’s going on. More than ar Korentin. I can’t risk giving him too many details.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t trust him. I’d like to, but I can’t.”

“Your own King’s Champion?”

“Kyrin-ain, it’s because of what he is that I can’t trust him. Not with the whole truth. He’s a crown officer, what I’m doing goes against everything he represents, and I – I don’t know how he’d react. The law and those who interpret it can be…” He hunted for the right word. “Inflexible.”

“And what about me?”

“You don’t have authority to have me jailed or shortened at the neck. He does. Help me dress, please.” With Kyrin’s assistance he wriggled into a fresh shirt and tunic, and felt better for it. “We’ll put on something warm and go up on deck to talk. If we stay behind a locked door, people might wonder why.”

“When we’re behind a closed door they don’t wonder.” She smiled at him for the first time in a while. “They’re sure.”

“Things have changed since the island.”

“Barrankal’s crew don’t know about that.”

“Ar Korentin does, and Barrankal answers to him.”

“Are you always so suspicious, Aldric?”

“Call it cautious, and yes I am.” He unlocked the door then reached out and laid one finger against her neck. “I’ve got a blade at my throat, Kyrin-ain. Can you blame me for avoiding sudden movements?”

*

Kyrin stared out over the dark water for a long time when Aldric finished speaking. Stars glittered in a sky washed clean by the tempest, and an occasional white-capped wave glimmered as it slid past En Sohra’s hull.

“You see why I wasn’t free with that information.”

“Oh, indeed.” Kyrin’s voice sounded as if she had to summon up the words from a great distance. “I see many things I wasn’t sure about. I’m cold, Aldric.” When he slipped his arms about her waist she returned the embrace, briefly but hard enough to make him wince, then snuggled against him for a moment until his crest-collar touched her face. The contrast between body-heated silver and wind-chilled skin made her shiver.

“You are cold,” said Aldric. “Go below. Get some rest.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll stay here a while. I can’t sleep just yet.” It was as if he was already thinking about things long ago and far away.

“What’s troubling you?”

“Remembering. Not a good thing to do right now.”

“Because of those pirates?”

“The ones I cut down had an even chance to do the same to me. It’s the others who—”

“They deserved what they got.” Kyrin’s voice was flat and vicious.

“Maybe. Probably. But I was raised to use a taiken. A firedrake… No. What I did was too crafty, too deliberate. It makes me feel dirty. I wish there had been another way.”

“There wasn’t. ‘An even chance,’ you say? Oh no. Would your death be preying on their minds if the tables were turned? I don’t think so. My father’s a bigger, fiercer man than you, Aldric, and he once told me there’s a balance to things. Nobody should take a life without regret; nobody should waste regret when it’s not needed. Think about that.”

For a long time after she left, Aldric did.

*

Kyrin was scarcely into her bunk when the knock came at her cabin door. Aldric wouldn’t have knocked but she knew who would, so pulled the sheets high before she said: “Come in.”

Dewan ar Korentin slipped inside, closed the door behind him and sat down. He removed the stopper from the wine-jug under one arm, filled two cups and offered one to Kyrin before taking a thoughtful sip.

“Well? What did he tell you?”

Kyrin tasted her wine first. “Little enough. The spellstave is what he said it was before all this began, a gift of gratitude for Gemmel-altrou.”

“His foster-father. A wizard. And a foreigner.”

“Which makes him just like us. You’re a renegade, I’m a castaway.”

“And that was all?”

“Yes.”

“Just yes? Nothing more?”

“Nothing.”

Dewan stroked his moustache. “Aldric asks a lot of questions, or stands quiet and listens. Have you noticed how seldom he volunteers any answers?”

“Of course. It doesn’t match the rest of his character, which I know better than you.”

“So secrecy is an assumed habit. One learned from someone, or maybe insisted on by the wizard?”

“Perhaps. More wine, please.”

The Vreijek poured a second cupful for them both, then as footsteps approached down the passageway he rose and put his weight against the cabin door. Whoever was outside went past without stopping and Dewan sat down again, this time on Kyrin’s bunk. She jerked her feet aside barely in time.

“Aldric might be…” Dewan began, then shook his head. “No, not yet. Much as I’d like to, I can’t trust him until I’m sure.” Kyrin stifled a snort of ironic laughter. “What’s so funny?”

“Just a coincidence. Something he said.”

“Indeed? Don’t let your emotions into this, Kyrin. You’re an observer, nothing more.”

“You said you’d help me with a ship. It doesn’t grant you liberties with my private life.”

“In exchange for that help, you agreed to keep an eye on him.”

“I did. I have. And it proved what I already told you. He’s no threat to your king or his plans.”

“It depends on whose viewpoint I take, Kyrin-ain. Oh yes, I’ve heard the lover’s endearment, though I warned you not to get involved. It affects your judgement, and won’t influence the high-clan arlethen who’d be very dubious about how much he’s at ease with the Art Magic.”

“Let’s give them more to ponder, ar Korentin. Such as why you were so friendly with an Imperial ship-captain, and why your fellow-countryman Skawmour wasn’t more closely watched. Would they be dubious about that, do you think?”

“Let’s not be foolish.”

“Then get off my bed.”

Dewan stared at her, his expression masked by the play of light and shadow from the single lantern. When he got up, it was with all the leisured dignity of someone doing what he had intended all along. “You’re in love with Aldric Talvalin, aren’t you?”

“I’m not.”

“From the sound of it I thought—”

“You didn’t. You assumed. Not the same at all. I like him, he deserves that much, and we both needed some companionship. But love? No. Not the way you mean it. And he doesn’t love me, though he thinks he does. Infatuation describes it better.”

“Going up against a killer like your countryman was more than infatuation.” Dewan raised his hand to still the irritable correction. “Yes, I heard you before, Ersoltun mountain-men aren’t true Valhollans, and I don’t care. What matters is how Aldric got us out of a tight spot. He did that for you far more than me.”

Kyrin stared at him for several seconds. “He was a virgin when we met,” she said bluntly.

Dewan almost laughed, then took note of her expression and thought better of it. “There’s something to make a susceptible lady feel privileged. Easy to claim and hard to disprove.” He took a thoughtful sip of wine and his expression went more serious. “I once met his elder brother. A moral gentleman of the old sort you seldom encounter nowadays.”

“You mean he was ‘very Northern’? I understand the term.”

“Then you understand Joren Talvalin. After the other brother Baiart got over-fond of pleasures at court, he put Aldric on a tight leash. Too tight, by all accounts. I had another talk with Gyrek, the guard from Radmur. Remember the woman he mentioned, the haughty piece you didn’t care for? Well, long story short, young Aldric arranged a clandestine meeting with her as an Eskorrethen present to himself, as his first—”

“Ar Korentin, you’re blushing.”

Dewan ignored her. “So off he went to Radmur, head full of grown-up dreams, body full of youthful enthusiasm, and when he got there, surprise! She’d taken up with someone else. Older, richer, Father of Fires knows what. Gyrek suspects the other man was there all the time, encouraging her to play Aldric along for their amusement. It sounds about right, since she laughed in his face. He must have felt… Well, you can imagine. Then the Dunrath killings happened, he ran for his life, and left this world behind for years. He was probably telling you the truth.”

“I’m sure he was. And I won’t see him hurt simply because of your suspicions. As long as you bear that in mind, Dewan ar Korentin, any little secrets about irregular ship-captains are safe with me. You understand, don’t you?”

“Every detail, lady. It’s clear Valhollans can negotiate in other matters than trade. Just remember what I told you, and discourage him as gently as you can. If things work out as I hope, you’ll soon be going home, and… Well, he’s a Talvalin.”

“I said I didn’t want him hurt. Especially by me. I’ll manage.”

“I hope so, for both our sakes. You still don’t understand my bedtime story. The only other woman in his life dropped him without warning, so bear in mind how he might react if you do it too. Hurt? What about angry? What about insulted? You’re not Alban, you’re not protected by the rules he grew up with, you carry a sword and as I said, he’s Talvalin. Very Northern. Think about it.”

Dewan moved as if to leave, gathering the cups and empty jug, then paused theatrically at the door as if recalling a last-minute detail.

“King Rynert told me I should mention this only if I had to. After what you said about ship-captains, I have to. We know how contraband gets in and out of Alba, and who carries it. Spices and wines are harmless enough, so we also know when to turn a blind eye. Once in a while we need to prove we’re not blind after all, and some unlucky smuggler gets chosen as an example of the King’s justice.”

Instead of the rest of the threat Dewan patted her on the arm like a friendly uncle. “We also know when to blink. Or wink. As long as you bear that in mind, Tehal Kyrin, any little secrets about irregular trading routes are safe with me.” He kept her own words company with a little smile. “And after Skawmour, I need someone else with access to neutral ships. Someone I can trust.”

Kyrin let out held breath in a sound like a sigh. “I appreciate your candour, Eldheisart ar Korentin.” She pronounced the Drusalan rank like an obscure insult with a smile of her own, a gambler’s smile with more relief than triumph in it. “I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting Joren Talvalin, but I can tell you one thing. His young brother is as much an honourable gentleman as Joren could have been.”

“That’s the problem. Honour can be blind to all else, and Joren had a temper as hot as the Red Pit when he believed he had good cause. Choose your parting words with care. Good night, my dear.”

The door closed behind him with a solid, final click.

*

Kyrin awoke to the sound of more clicks, the dry carpenter-sound of wood on wood somewhere off in the distance. There was no sign of Aldric. He had arrived long after ar Korentin left, slipped into bed without speaking and they had made slow gentle love in the same wordless way. Now he was gone again, just as quietly and long enough ago for his half of the cramped bunk to go cold.

She rubbed sleep from her eyes, then opened the shutters on her cabin’s port, blinking as the recently risen sun shone full into her face. With the port open that clattering noise grew a little louder. It was like nothing Kyrin had ever heard on a ship before, yet En Sohra rode easily on a gentle deep-sea swell with the creak of structure and cordage sounding as it should. Best of all there were no shouts of alarm, only a distant murmur of many voices and, just once, enthusiastic shouts and whistling.

Kyrin washed, dressed, tucked her hair though a loop of braided leather and walked up the companionway into the usual smells of shipboard breakfast: sausage, fish and bacon, cheese, griddlebread and a strong tisane the Elherran crewmen liked as their morning drink. The odd noises had stopped, so she turned her attention to warm bread wrapped around sliced sausage and crisp bacon, washing each mouthful down with careful sips from an over-hot, over-full beaker and reflecting on the difference a day could make to appetite. Yesterday everyone had merely picked at their food, but this morning – more rashers of bacon followed the first four – it would be easy to eat too much and not notice. Or care.

There was a light-hearted atmosphere about En Sohra, if not quite a holiday since there were few holidays aboard a ship trying to make landfall on time. Hervits Barrankal had told his crew nothing of what had happened on Techaur Island, and only enough about the rest to motivate their memorably swift departure. It was useless for a friendly stranger in a wharfside tavern to ply this crew with drink, since even the drunkest sailor couldn’t let slip what he didn’t know.

That didn’t stop rumours from the quarterdeck and the Master’s cabin suggesting this voyage had been more successful than expected, with clinking tokens of appreciation when the ship reached port. Then there was the whole business of sharing close unknowing anchorage with pirates and escaping with a whole skin. It was all reason enough for good spirits, so maybe the crew had managed some celebration after all. There were none about except for the half-dozen attending to sails and cordage, since despite the fine blue day a full-rigged vessel didn’t run herself, and even the cook at the galley-hatch looked like he wanted to be elsewhere.

The noises started again, coming from near the bow and clear enough to identify at last. Leather boots scuffed and stamped against the pine deck, while wood struck wood in an irregular stutter reminiscent of…

All the things nagging at Kyrin’s still-drowsy mind since she came on deck fell together at once. How few of the crew were eating breakfast or even at their duties, why Aldric had slipped away so early, and where she’d heard that stop-start rhythm before.

She dropped her plate and ran.

Up on the foredeck, the rest of En Sohra’s crew were gathered in a ring while Aldric and Hervits Barrankal faced each other over lengths of polished hardwood. Barrankal held a fighting stave almost as long as he was tall, cross-hatched for grip at each end and the middle, while Aldric used the taidyo waster from his daily practice.

Kyrin had never seen him use a staff-sword against an opponent before. Until yesterday she had never seen him use a real taiken against one either. The wooden weapons clicked together as the combatants took each other’s measure, and watching them move to guard positions for another exchange brought back more memories than she could bear.

“Stop it! Stop it at once!”

Heads turned at the shrill outcry, there were chuckles and several smiles, and Hervits Barrankal broke ground at once. He gave her an odd look, then a courtly bow and a grin of white teeth against black skin and blue-striped beard. Aldric simply put his eyebrows up and stared. Kyrin cursed herself, for yelling like a fishwife, like a mother catching her child doing wrong…

No, like a lover seeing her beloved at risk.

Because Dewan ar Korentin was standing by the rail, and he too was smiling since she had just proved, before witnesses, that what she felt for Aldric Talvalin was more than mere ‘companionship’. He wouldn’t have forgotten what she’d said about Luent Skawmour, either. Aldric would be a clan-lord if everything came right, but there were many clan-lords in Alba and only one King’s Champion, one man so trusted that his words were believed without hesitation. Kyrin knew Dewan was a man to treat with respect. Now she realised, too late as usual with such things, that he might be one to fear.

“What under Heaven’s Light are you fussing about?” said Aldric, loud and clear so everyone could hear his cheerful nonchalance.

“I didn’t expect you’d be training this morning. Not after last night.” Someone let out a coarse guffaw and she went pink.

“This isn’t training, just the friendly meeting I arranged with Master Barrankal before we went ashore.” Those arrangements had been far from friendly, and she was about to say so when he carried on, still grinning. “Besides, I don’t want to stiffen up again.”

That prompted another crude laugh, and a comment in Elherran caused yet more. En Sohra’s crew were enjoying the show. Kyrin’s blush deepened and when Aldric leaned forward as if to kiss her cheek, the enthralled sailors almost had the added treat of him being slapped across the face. He deflected the blow with an upraised wrist, but it didn’t deflect her hot-eyed glare.

“Hush now.” His voice dropped to a confidential murmur. “This nonsense proves I’m healthy, and only took a tumble like any clumsy fool. Pleading anything worse,” Aldric’s lips were almost touching her ear now, “might make people wonder what caused it. And I really do need to keep the muscles working. They ache like hell.” He smiled wickedly. “Whatever I do.”

When he backed away, his obvious wink and the duration of the apparent embrace gave their delighted audience more to speculate about, if the unquiet nights sailing down from Erdhaven left any room for speculation at all. It diverted attention so well that Kyrin wondered if the whole performance had been rehearsed from ar Korentin’s script before she came on deck. It had his manipulative touch all over it, so she added a touch of her own. A fistful of Aldric’s shirt-front dragged him close again, and the kiss she planted full on his mouth lasted long enough for En Sohra’s crew to raise a sardonic cheer.

Aldric squeezed her hand, then let go and resumed the Wolf’s Guard as precisely if he’d never moved from it. Stave and taidyo met with the hollow musical resonance of seasoned hardwood, striking once, once again, then three times in a rapid flurry before the fighters parted like dancers ending a measure. Aldric moved better than Kyrin expected to see, though without the lethal grace of his killing fight in the Cavern of Firedrakes, and she wondered if he was favouring his injured side or his opponent.

Then she saw the reason. Barrankal’s fighting stave almost matched the sparth in length and reach, and Aldric was taking this opportunity for a safe bout with mismatched weapons. How safe, Kyrin wasn’t so sure. Hervits Barrankal was fighting in front of his crew against an unwanted passenger who had insulted him on his own quarterdeck. He had every reason to knock a reckoning out of Aldric if he got the chance.

That chance hadn’t happened yet.

Barrankal made two quick snap-cuts with the top end of the stave and blocked a response on the mid-section between his braced hands, then swore helplessly as Aldric pivoted his point round the bind into a thrust at the big man’s chest. It was neat enough that Barrankal gave a reluctant salute as he backed away, though he had to gesture twice at his crew before they too produced an unwilling spatter of applause. The quick economy of the move shocked them like a splash of cold water. With live steel there would have been neither salute nor hand-clap, just their shipmaster down on the deck with his left lung open to the air.

Aldric didn’t look smug at his success. The fight with Kakhur and the thud as sparth met ribs had frightened him as much as it would frighten anyone aware of their own mortality. Practicing all the things he should have done helped ease his fright and exorcise its demons, and Hervits Barrankal was a necessary part of it.

The man’s broad smiles and occasional laughter covered his impatience well, but Kyrin could see it was becoming anger and his crew’s reaction filled in the parts she hadn’t witnessed. Aldric was half the Elherran’s age, a head shorter and at least sixty pounds lighter, so Barrankal should have won by simply over-running him. Except for a single touch early on, greeted with the shouting she had heard, Aldric’s point or edge had always intervened. For all the broad smiles and dignified bows and studied courtesy, this one-sided combat rankled and the shipmaster’s tolerance was fraying fast.

The simmering stew needed one more ingredient to boil over, and Aldric unwittingly supplied it when he twirled his sword in a lazy circle. It was merely to flex his wrist-joint, but Barrankal saw the flourish differently. This arrogant Alban was showing off, demonstrating how much better he was than a mere sailor with a stave.

Barrankal levelled that stave and charged.

The quick hammer of footsteps brought Aldric around with the wooden sword whipping up to deflect whatever stroke came at him. It should have stayed low, because this time Master Barrankal’s attack was no cut and Aldric only avoided the lunging stave with a twisting sidestep that made him gasp. Barrankal recovered in an eyeblink, sliding his stave back with his right hand as he shifted aim with the left, and thrust it out like a siege-ram. The blow would knock breath from lungs and leave a spectacular bruise, nothing more. At least on healthy ribs.

On ribs already weakened, the result was more impressive.

En Sohra’s crew cheered as Aldric staggered and cried out, but they stopped when his face went white and his shirt went dark, a wet blotch spreading all down the left side. Ashwood clattered on pine as his taidyo slipped from limp fingers.

“They told me,” he mumbled to no-one in particular, “no bones broken.” It hurt to breathe, he had trouble forming his words, and when he put the flat of one hand to his side, jagged things like splinters moved beneath the sodden shirt and bandages. His senses swam and the bright morning contracted to loud red darkness. “I think. One’s gone. Now…”

With a little sigh he followed his sword to the deck.

*

Aldric’s eyelids flicked back and he was awake with no intervening period of drowsiness, but he still stared straight ahead, not daring to look right or left, in case any movement brought back the aching dark. The ceiling above was higher than he recalled, honey-coloured pine rather than the dark planks and red-oak beams of his shipboard cabin, and his bed had an actual quilt instead of those leg-tangling sheets. Rain pattered against the small panes of a draped window, and a book’s pages rustled as someone nearby leafed through them. He clenched his teeth against potential pain and sat up. Nothing hurt, nothing at all. And there were no bandages either…

“Good morning, Aldric.”

His head jerked round at the familiar voice. “Altrou?”

“Yes.” Gemmel put a marker into his book then closed it and set it down. “Welcome back.”

“How did you get here? And where is here?”

“Questions, always questions. I should have expected it and let someone else wait for you to wake. Still…” The enchanter got to his feet, crossed to the window and opened its curtains. “I came here with your king. After the incident at Erdhaven Festival—” Aldric wondered how Gemmel knew about it, but didn’t ask, “—I assumed he’d want a word with me. Which he did, to the tune of three hours’ talking without a rest. And here is Cerenau, and the port of Kerys. The real one.”

Gemmel spoke with such reassurance that Aldric wondered what the enchanter had seen in his face. Legend claimed the other Kerys lay half a mile off-shore, a lost city sunk in deep water whose bells still rang when the sea was rough. Just a story, except that after sorcerers and firedrakes and winged demons, he wasn’t so certain what was story and what was truth any more.

“Altrou, what happened?”

“You were stupid. Putting strain on any injury is foolish, the effort involved in swordwork plumbs the depths of idiocy, then to cap it off you misjudged your opponent. Ar Korentin knew there would be better doctors ashore, and kept you drugged asleep until the ship docked. He did the right thing. I was here.”

“And you healed me?”

“Of course.” Gemmel gestured to where three heavy branches lay on a small table. Green leaves and sap showed they had been fresh-cut, but the timber was already soft and rotten. “It took the strength from all three to knit your bones so quickly.” Aldric looked blank. “Did you think I could just point a wand and say Be Well? Power for any sorcery has to come from somewhere, and healing-magic more than most. Would you prefer I made some young man old? Spelled a useless peasant into his grave?”

“Light of Heaven, no! Never!”

“Easily said now. It’s a harder choice to make when your life, or a friend’s life, is draining into the dirt. Then the question of who matters most has a different answer. Now: I hear you encountered some other small difficulties.”

“Your understatements are showing, altrou.” Aldric was glad to put the uncomfortable subject of sorcery’s costs aside. “They weren’t small.” His explanation was as terse as an army report, and Gemmel’s occasional comment proved he had heard the same story from Dewan and Kyrin. “Apart from the winged thing which attacked our ship, none of it was to do with… With them.” Gemmel nodded, well aware who they were. “Yet they found me easily enough in Erdhaven.”

“Yes, the neatness of your encounter with Duergar’s sending concerned us. Coincidence always does. Well, it was no coincidence. There were Sendings in all the major seaports: Elmisford, Dunacre, Cerdor Great Port itself, even here. It’s all right, they’re long gone.” He didn’t say how. “Did you enjoy your conversation with the firedrake?”

“No, I didn’t. There wasn’t much in the way of small talk. I’m thankful you taught me what you did, because I don’t think Ymareth listens to excuses.”

“It doesn’t. You did well.”

That unexpected compliment made Aldric grin, like a half-trained puppy which against all odds had brought back a thrown stick. Quite an impressive stick, too. “Where’s the Dragonwand now?” he asked. “Someone might recognise it, or just describe it, and so much for secrecy.”

“Out of sight in a sheaf of javelins on Dewan’s saddle, under Sightwarp so it looks like all the rest.”

“Altrou, you say I’m always asking questions so here are two important ones. What does it do? And how do you plan to use it? Straightforward answers, please. No vagueness.”

Gemmel combed his beard with his fingers, neatening it, then stood up and bowed with false politeness. “Of course, my lord,” he said. “Though not at once, my lord. I’ll be telling King Rynert and part of his High Council what you want to know, my lord, and if you’re at the meeting you’ll find out. But since you’re still in bed…”

“Not for long. I want a bath and something to eat. What time is it?”

“Dawn, on a wet and windy miserable midsummer day. Well, it’s not midsummer or anything close, but the alliteration pleases me.” Aldric made a face. “Rynert expressed a particular desire to see you, and if he doesn’t, you’ll be in more hot water than your bath can hold. Your young lady wants to see you too. And afterwards… Afterwards, we can have a private talk about the Dragonwand, the Echainon spellstone and other matters. Good morning once again. Don’t be late.”

Aldric stared at the closed door for a few seconds, wanting to say any number of things. With no-one left to hear them he simply yawned, stretched and slithered quickly out of bed, because testing a king’s patience wasn’t the best way to start any day. As he wriggled into a robe he glanced out at the wet rooftops, grimacing as a gust of wind slapped raindrops against the glass.

The crow huddling for shelter under the eaves of an opposite house looked up with a jerk as he appeared at the window. Its beady eyes fastened on his face, and its pickaxe beak opened in a croak of surprise even as it shuffled farther into the shadows. When Aldric had gone the bird gurgled to itself and performed a triumphant little dance on the narrow ledge.

Then it settled down to wait.

*

Lord Endwar Ilauem-arluth Santon reined in at the crest of the same ridge where Aldric had once sat. Like the younger man before him he gazed at the might of Dunrath-hold, brooding and silent within a ring of steel six thousand strong through which nothing passed unchallenged. Santon dismounted and walked to the camp-stool set beneath his standards. The sun shone without warmth from a cloudless sky, the wind tugging the blue and purple banners was icy, and Dyran’s offered cup of hot spiced wine was most welcome.

Though Dyran Haskol’s main duty was as bugler, like any youthful low-clan kailin serving a great lord he might be warrior one minute and servant the next. His eagerness to please was a standing joke, but Lord Endwar Santon saw no humour in anything right now. His army had come up from Erdhaven in just eight days, two hundred-odd miles of hard marching, and passed from one season to another. The Spring Festival felt very far behind. He had seen with his own eyes a brief unmistakable scudding of snowflakes across the open moorland, driven by air like the breath of an underground crypt. Santon had shivered then with cold; he shivered now with something more.

When he rode to Aldric Talvalin’s Eskorrethen ceremony, the towers and citadel of Dunrath had been hard blue-grey stone from the Blue Mountains under a soft blue-grey autumn sky. Now the fortress was red with the flapping vermeil silk of Kalarr cu Ruruc’s battle banners above every wall, and every stone, every tower and every turret seemed freshly dipped in blood. The hue shifted like the cross-weave of a damask cloth with only one thing constant: the ominous arterial scarlet of the central donjon. Lord Santon had once visited the Imperial city of Egisburg on yet another of King Rynert’s diplomatic missions where he saw its Red Tower, a palace, fortress, and grim prison which had never yet released a living prisoner.

Dunrath looked like that.

He drank his wine and surveyed the siege-lines, wondering when King Rynert and the other legions would join him. It could never be too soon. The core of his army were the two thousand foot-soldiers and five hundred horse of his household retinue, with the rest levied vassals and kailinin of lesser clans returning field-service for their lands. Four thousands of foot and two of horse would bottle any garrison and put all thought of open battle from their minds. It still fell far short of any force required to take Dunrath by storm.

It was considered the strongest fortress in all Alba, not as large as the Leyruz citadel at Datherga, nor as modern and complex as Santon’s own hold of Segelin, but Dunrath’s foundations were the mountains themselves and it had never fallen to open assault. Yes, the place had left and returned to Talvalin possession within the space of three months during the Clan Wars, but that had been by treachery both times. And now treachery had taken it again.

Endwar Santon stared at the blood-red walls and the ground before them, pale with unseasonable frost. Why is it so cold? he wondered, rapping his commander’s baton against one armoured knee. And if I need to know, why was I not told?

He drained his cup and called to Dyran for another.

*

For speed’s sake Aldric used a drench-tub instead of his usual leisurely bath, taking care with the valve-ropes until its overflow was just right. Too hot would make him want to sleep again, too cold was like childhood mornings when he rinsed off sleep’s cobwebs with a jolting shock of icy water. This felt like a good day, and he wanted no reminder of bad ones.

Breakfast, so extensive and elaborate that it deserved a better title, improved that good day still further. It provided a platter heaped with bacon, peppery blood-sausage and fried apples, then fresh rolls, butter, honey and two sorts of cheese. Living under the same roof as the King had definite advantages.

Afterwards Aldric walked back to his room to prepare for the Council meeting. Protocol required an elyu-dlas Colour-Robe, and he owned one of those even though it had been packed away unworn since his Eskorr—

Unworn for a long time.

Protocol also meant wearing two of his Three Blades, and after losing his taipan overboard from En Sohra, Isileth would have to suffice. Even back-slung in peace position the taiken would raise eyebrows, but not as many as if he wore a tsepan alone. That was a convoluted message he had no desire to send.

The building swarmed with kailinin, lesser lords and legion officers, and Aldric bowed or saluted more often since leaving his bed than during the previous three weeks. He was the focus of much speculation, and several dignified heads swivelled in a most undignified manner towards the eijo croppy in black combat leathers who wore a high-clan crest-collar and whistled a jaunty tune.

Then he turned a corner and stopped whistling.

Kyrin was standing outside his bedroom door as if she had come looking for him, hadn’t found him and didn’t know what to do next. Her teeth nipped her lower lip, and she pinched a letter between her thumb and forefinger as if it was almost too hot to hold. Tear-tracks down both cheeks glistened in the wan light from the window at the end of the corridor, and that concerned him.

But when she turned she smiled, and that confused him.

Aldric Talvalin was all too familiar with tears; rage and pain, fear and grief, he had shed them all. But not tears with a smile, and for several seconds he was at a loss about how to respond. Kyrin was clearly overjoyed by the news in her letter, and expected him to be equally pleased on her behalf. But he could guess what that news would be, so even feigning any pleasure about it would take effort. The guess was right.

“Seorth’s alive! He’s alive, they all are, and now they know I’m alive as well!”

So much for the good day.

Learning that someone believed dead was still alive must be a wonderful feeling, one he could never hope for except in dreams. To envy it was wrong, even though it laid his own unspoken hopes in ruins at his feet. First Ilen, now Kyrin. If life was mocking him, it was time he stopped providing fuel for the mockery.

At least Kyrin wasn’t laughing, though she might well have done because she had been right to call him a romantic. ‘Dreamer’ or even ‘fool’ would be closer to the truth. He had always put her yearning for home to one side, hoping – or flattering himself – that persuasion and even a trace of affection might change her mind. It would probably never have happened. It certainly wouldn’t happen now.

“How did you find out?” His voice was emotionless, but she didn’t notice. Tehal Kyrin was brimming with enough emotion for both of them.

“When the coast-watchers at Dunacre reported our shipwreck it reached ar Korentin and he put two and two together. It’s all in Seorth’s letter, and he says…”

Valhollan must be a damnably concise language, decided Aldric, to get all your prattling on three sheets of paper. He could see and hear how much she had been bottling up inside. Albans were well-known for controlling their feelings, Elthanek northerners doubly so, but Kyrin’s composure about the loss of her betrothed had been astonishing and now it was all spilling out.

He was no longer needed, if he had ever been needed at all except in the physical sense. Kyrin had been honest enough to say that to his face, and if he had accepted it then he wouldn’t feel so bruised now. Aldric made his mouth smile and remembered to echo it with a crinkle of his eyes, the part that most faked smiles forget.

“I’m happy for you,” he said into a pause for breath. “Really, I am.”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have emphasised the sincerity he didn’t feel, or perhaps his smile hadn’t worked after all, because Kyrin’s expression changed from happiness to something he couldn’t identify.

“No, you’re not happy. You’re angry.”

“Would it change anything if I said yes?”

The words came out without thinking. A kailin-eir was supposed to accept ill-fortune with as much courteous equanimity as the most splendid victory. Aldric wondered how they did it, if they did it at all, and how he was doing it now. This time there was no doubt about what he was seeing, and he didn’t understand why. Kyrin looked nervous, almost frightened. Of him? That was ridiculous.

“No, Kyrin-ain, I’m not angry. You told me often enough this wouldn’t last, that we should just enjoy the time we spent together.” He tried another smile, this one more genuine. “Even if a bronze monster, a winged demon and a firedrake weren’t the enjoyment you had in mind.”

“You, uh… You did tell me it might be, uh, interesting.” She even sounded nervous. But because she was Tehal Kyrin, she was still thorough. “And you forgot the Imperial battleram.”

“Compared to the rest it’s hardly worth mentioning.”

“And the pirates?”

“Are best forgotten.” Though not in the easy way his words suggested. His mind still shied away from that whole ugly memory; not merely how he had given them to Ymareth the firedrake, but how he had gutted Kakhur and left him alive when one last cut would have been a kindness. “At least you came to say goodbye. There was another—”

“Dewan told me.”

“Ah.” What else has he told you? “Ar Korentin gossips like a washerwoman. You shouldn’t believe everything he says, it can be more for effect than truth.” Aldric said that without evidence to prove it, but the tension thrumming in the air between them like a drawn bowstring began to relax. “I should have a word with him.”

It was empty posturing because he would do no such thing, but he wondered about Dewan ar Korentin’s real motive. The Vreijek wouldn’t have tracked down Seorth and the others then passed the news to Kyrin just from kindness of heart. Perhaps Rynert had ordered him to check the truth of her story, a needless distraction for the next Talvalin clan-lord, and do something to make Aldric more focused on his oath-taken duty. Or ar Korentin might have reasons of his own, as obscure as whatever lay behind his connection with Skawmour.

All the ideas ran together like ink on wet paper, leaving no answers and making no sense.

Only one thing remained unchanged about the past five minutes. He was still expected at the High Council meeting, to contribute something useful or simply be a representative of Clan Talvalin whose head wasn’t forfeit. That meant setting more personal matters aside for a while. Aldric opened the door of his room and went inside. Someone had been there since he left and laid out the pieces of his armour in sequence, with the elyu-dlas crest-coat last of all. Only the sword-rack was untouched and he went straight to it. Isileth Widowmaker was cool against his hands, a balanced weight of steel and wood and leather he could depend on in this changing world.

“You’ve come to terms with a far greater loss than her or me,” said Kyrin from the doorway. Aldric didn’t look back, but his right hand closed around the longsword’s grip so tightly that its knuckles went bone-white.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I have, if what I intend for Duergar Vathach is the coming to terms you mean. But I had no choice about him. Now I do. You said it yourself: I’m heir to lands and ranks and titles. I have authority and power. What did your mother tell you? When you see something worth taking, seize it while you can. Something like that.” He swung around with the taiken braced, ready to draw. “So what’s to stop me?”

Kyrin stared at him, and more tears began welling from her shocked eyes though now there was no smile to keep them company.

“You’re crying again.”

“Yes, Aldric, I’m crying. I’m crying for you. Somebody has to. What broke inside you besides that rib? What changed the man I thought I knew…?” Her voice trailed off, and she wiped the tears away with a sweep of one hand hard enough to leave a bruise. “No. I won’t accept that. Say it again. Say it to my face. But put the sword down first.”

“Why should I?”

“Why shouldn’t you? I’m not armed, I’m not an enemy, and I thought I was more than a friend. So put that sword aside, then lecture me again about the privileges of power.”

Aldric drew breath to refuse, to dismiss her unspoken suggestion. He was still eijo, but soon he would be kailin-eir and clan-lord and master of Dunrath, and this blade would help him achieve it all.

“Will you not?” Kyrin glanced from his face to the sword in his hands and back again. “Or can you not?”

“Is that a challenge?”

“Just a request. I’ve asked for other things before now and never seen this much hesitation.”

Aldric’s cheeks burned. It was all so foolish. He had no reason to put Widowmaker aside, and… And he didn’t want to. As if he was afraid to, and that was even more foolish. What had he to fear from Kyrin, or she from him? He opened his hands, and the clatter as the longsword dropped onto the bed sounded like a protest.

“Now,” said Kyrin, “repeat what you said before.”

Aldric drew a long breath, then let it out again. He couldn’t make that arrogant declaration again. His mouth wouldn’t shape the words, his voice couldn’t form the sounds, and knowing he had said it once already made his stomach turn over.

“Oh Light of Heaven, I’m sorry, truly sorry…” Hard to hurt an enemy, easier to hurt a friend, easiest of all to break the half-formed bonds of love. “P-please forgive me…”

Kyrin stayed at the threshold of the room, poised if need be to step back and slam the door, but the wary apprehension on her face had become understanding. And pity.

“There’s nothing to forgive. You only confirmed a suspicion that makes parting easier. I’m not the companion you need right now.” She glanced sidelong at Isileth lying along the centre of the bed as it had done on a night bare weeks and a lifetime ago. “That is. Gemmel gave you a faithful guardian. Perhaps too faithful, and lacking discrimination between enemies and other friends. Some of our old tales mention rataqtu-sennu, ‘eager blades’.”

Aldric looked at her sharply, as if hearing something uncomfortably familiar.

“They’re mostly swords, though the Lady of the Moon had a curved spear and… Anyway, that’s how the world got Night and Winter. They’re not magic, not cursed, just so well made they want to fulfil their function. And if it means—”

“Encouraging short tempers and provoking harsh words? Oh yes. Our stories have them too, hungry swords, an-gortaikenin, but they’re not as mythic as creating light and dark and changing seasons. Just futile heroism, broken romance and a tragic conclusion.” He produced a tight little smile. “Better on page or stage than in real life.”

“Aldric, how is it you were a wizard’s fosterling and lived for years in company with magic, yet understand so little about it?”

“At first I didn’t ask, then when I started to ask, Gemmel-altrou didn’t want to tell. So perhaps he didn’t think to tell me about that. Perhaps he didn’t even know about…” He laughed, for the notion of that particular oversight was ridiculous. “What am I saying? He knew.”

“Then ask him about it sometime. If you can, because I’ve heard that magic can slip from memory if your mind doesn’t want it there.”

“I’ll remember.”

“Maybe you will.” Kyrin looked at the taiken again. “Do your hungry swords kill lovers too? Because I think that cold lady tolerates few rivals, and you might use more than cutting words next time.”

There was a moment of silence, then by unspoken mutual agreement and in perfect unison they moved away from the bed. It could have been comical, and if someone had looked self-conscious it would have been comical, but it wasn’t.

“Lovers? Did you ever really—?”

“If you’re about to say ‘Did I ever really love you?’ then save your breath. You already know the answer, Aldric. You’ve always known it, even though you ignored that knowledge because—”

“I’m a romantic.”

“Not an insult, a compliment. Cherish it. You might need something that wholesome before you’re done.” Kyrin finally moved close enough to touch his face with her fingertips, a butterfly contact as if too much pressure would break something. “I liked you a great deal, eventually. I enjoyed your company. I enjoyed you.” She smiled a quick wicked smile that prompted one in return. “Don’t spoil it all by searching for something that was never there.”

“You should leave now, Kyrin-ain. For good or ill, I have places to go where you can’t follow.”

“Don’t linger in those places when you’re done, Aldric-ain. Come back safe from them.” She stroked his cropped hair, then pressed her lips against his forehead, each eyelid and finally his mouth. “I remember only the good things between us. All else is smoke on the wind. You acted honourably towards me, Seorth will hear of it, and our house is yours, for safety and shelter, for fire and food and friendship.” She bowed as she had seen him do so many times. “Go with your God, Alban, and may Heaven grant you long life.”

“Someone long ago had an opinion about that .‘What is life except excuse for death, or death except escape from life?’ Recall my name with kindness now and then.”

Before she was out of the room she heard the rattle of steel on wood and leather that told her he had picked up Isileth Widowmaker again. Kyrin looked back just once, at the black-clad figure cradling a black longsword in both hands as if they would never hold anything else. As she walked away she thought about his words, increasingly certain they weren’t from long ago but Aldric’s own.

And she shivered.

*

From the balcony of Dunrath’s donjon Lord Santon’s troops looked like toy soldiers set out for playtime, little blocks of men facing the fortress walls just out of arrow-shot. Duergar Vathach leaned on a parapet and frowned. Another thousand troops from Grand Warlord Etzel and he could crush the siege-force in open battle, but even after nearly four years the Warlord refused to show his hand so openly. All Duergar could do was stand up here and wish.

Fabric rustled behind him and Kalarr cu Ruruc stepped out onto the balcony, wind whipping at his forbidding vermeil robes. “Have they altered disposition at all?” he said.

“Not since dawn. Why? What difference would it make?”

“Enough to annoy me.” That was enough for Duergar to move away. He had seen cu Ruruc’s annoyance before, and it far exceeded any normal man’s blind rage. “Last night’s work was based on last night’s troop positions; I have no desire to do it all again. And the traugarin?”

“The cold stopped them rotting, but if it’s too intense they dry to leather. At least the kites and blowflies can’t—” He was interrupted by a short, humourless laugh.

“The problems of necromancy! Why didn’t you weather-work from the start?”

“I don’t like weather-magic. It’s crude, it’s hard to control, and it’s not safe.”

“Like? Safe? What kind of sorcerer are you?” Cu Ruruc turned his back on Duergar and studied a distant group of horsemen riding out from the siege-lines. They stopped well clear of bowshot and their leader made a hand-waving speech too faint to hear, then set light to straw tied around his spearhead and held it high. “How very traditional. The commander of the host sends defiance with fire and steel and awaits our response. Shall we provide one?”

“How? Surely they have some defences? Otherwise why would they dare come so close?”

“Ignorance or disbelief, call it what you will. I tested this morning with lesser enchantments – a snuffed fire here, a tumbled banner there – and encountered neither wards nor barriers. Their commander is the usual high-clan kailin-eir who won’t see farther than the end of his wellborn nose. To him and his kind the Art Magic is something from a story.”

“Not to all of them.” Baiart Talvalin stood at the stair-head behind them. “My brother understands you well enough, cu Ruruc. That’s why he’ll kill you.”

The wizards glanced at Baiart and at each other, then Kalarr’s nostrils twitched and Duergar broke into a high-pitched bray of laughter. “Your brother,” spluttered the Drusalan, “is floating on the high seas, prey to everything we throw at him.”

“My brother passed from your knowledge when the Eye was destroyed. I was there, I saw it happen, and I heard your reaction.”

Kalarr’s saturnine face darkened. “Maybe so. Wait a little longer and you’ll see what awaits bold clan-lord Aldric when he comes within my reach.”

“You’re scared of him, aren’t you?” Baiart jeered. “He killed the monster you sent after him, and he evaded your spy. Now you’re afraid!”

“If death is what you want—” Duergar levelled his open hand and Kalarr dragged it aside.

“Then it’s not what you’ll receive. No matter how much you desire it, Baiart Talvalin, death will pass you by.” Kalarr cu Ruruc smiled pleasantly, like someone promising a treat. “Others are more fortunate. Watch, and learn.”

CHAPTER NINE

Alban Great Harness was difficult to put on unaided, each part fitting to the next in sequence, but Aldric did it alone because he wanted to occupy his mind, so it wouldn’t dwell on… on too many other things.

He checked every joint and plate as they locked around his limbs. Players on-stage clanked and jingled because their armour didn’t fit, yet by the time Aldric was done, each piece slid against its neighbour with no more than a metallic whisper or a scrape of mail. His crested Colour-Robe went on with equal care. The last time King Rynert’s councillors saw Talvalin’s silver eagles they had been on Baiart’s unworthy shoulders, and Aldric was determined to wear them better.

He buckled on his weapon-belt last of all, reached for his tsepan and then hesitated, staring at the black dirk for a long moment before he picked it up and ran the sheath into its loops. Isileth Widowmaker concerned him far less, and the long hilt rearing above his shoulder was like a friend watching over him.

One he could rely on.

The bathhouse and eating hall had been in their usual places for an Alban town-house, which meant the private chambers were probably the same, so he took a shortcut through upper corridors where some servant, concerned by many military boots, had laid protective mats over the fine wood floors. They were also thick enough to muffle all but the loudest footfall.

If Aldric had been less wrapped up in his own troubles, he would have realised walking in near-silence through a house full of high-ranked lords might take him into places where he wasn’t wanted. That realisation came too late, while he crossed a high balcony lined with carved screens. Their exuberant fretwork of flowers and leaves didn’t block his view at all, and when he glimpsed movement he glanced down without a second thought.

What he saw and heard brought him to a standstill.

The murmuring voices weren’t close enough for him to understand the conversation, but anyone standing where he was now could confirm he might have overheard a few words. Even a few would be too many. It made him wish he’d gone another way, any other way, even out into the rain, and the wise thing would be to creep away and do it. He didn’t dare. Getting this far unnoticed had probably used up his day’s luck on that score.

Tall windows striped the hall into patterns of wan light and deep shadow, framing three figures like the cast of a dramatic tableau. King Rynert sat at one end, Dewan ar Korentin stood in the centre, drawn sword on shoulder, and a third man knelt on one knee with a window to either side.

It was obvious why he took such trouble over his position. In this dim place the rain-streaked windows were still bright enough to dazzle, his smoke-grey hooded cloak blended with the gloom between them until one became the other, and a pale-blond beard was the only clear thing about him. Aldric could see no weapons except for ar Korentin’s sword, but it didn’t matter. This man’s mere presence was enough for caution.

Sudden violence and a taulath went hand-in-hand.

Why King Rynert was having dealings with a Shadowthief of the Drusalan Empire was beyond Aldric’s understanding. He had never seen one, though he knew all about them: spies, kidnappers, assassins, any task at all, performed without question once an employer met their price. Eijin like himself were men who had laid aside their honour; tulathin didn’t even have the word in their vocabulary.

He remembered other words, spoken by a dead man, cut short by Dewan ar Korentin and silenced forever by Ymareth the firedrake. “Your king has a double standard,” Luent Skawmour had said. “Honour in the daylight and death in the shadows. Death by the Shad—”

Aldric would swear on his own tarnished honour that the unfinished word was Shadowthief.

Coins clinked briefly, then the taulath whisked back into those shadows as if he had never been there. The distinctive pale-blond beard, now lying on the floor, showed he might not have been blond at all, or even male. Aldric breathed a little more easily, but his pulse didn’t slow down until Dewan and the king were also gone. He wiped the sweat from brow and upper lip and shivered as unreachable drops trickled down his spine, wondering if the day held any more unpleasant surprises. Troubles, went the old saying, travel in threes.

If it was true, then the third was yet to come.

*

Lord Santon studied Dunrath from his position on the ridge. For an hour now a heavy mist had veiled the uppermost part of the donjon, and there was a dull, sonorous drone in the air like a monstrous swarm of bees, as much felt through the ground as heard in the air. Santon pushed the ominous sight and sound to the back of his mind by opening a chart and examining the list of notes running neatly down its margins, but he had barely begun when Dyran Haskol yelled an alarm.

Endwar-arluth Santon lost no time in idle questions because he could see for himself. Between looking away and looking back the entire fortress had become shrouded in that mist, now lit from within by a pallid shimmer. Spheres of brilliant light spat from the cloud, dragging long bright tails behind them as they curved down to make frosty explosions on the ground before the fortress. The dull hum grew more intense, a harsh drone to set the teeth on edge, and the air became still colder.

Santon swore, and watched the smoky breath of his curse drift away from his mouth. When he lifted his helmet he yelped and swore again, then sucked at fingertips whose skin remained on the icy metal of the neck-guard, blots of pallid tissue like the flesh of a man with frostbite. The red stone of Dunrath’s walls turned sparkling white as if snow had fallen and mingled with powdered diamonds as it fell. Long filaments of frigid mist flowed from it, drifting towards the siege-lines and the ranks of his army.

“Sound retreat!” Santon bawled, trying to smother the fear in his voice with loudness and anger. Dyran raised his bugle, then released his breath not in the ordered signal but a cry of pain as the bronze mouthpiece froze against his mouth. When he wrenched it away blood trickled from both lips down his chin, congealing there in icicles of cherry red.

The orderly regimental blocks bulged, heaved and broke as the men in those formations began to run, flinging away shields, helmets and weapons grown too cold to bear. A wind rushed out from Dunrath’s walls, its sullen moan rising fast to howl then shrieking gale. It tore flags from poles, pavilions and bivouac tents from the ground, and breath from the lungs of men too chilled by a brutal blast from between the stars to fight against it. This unfought battle had been won and lost without a single blow from any blade.

Lord Santon’s officers had become old men, their beards and eyebrows thick with frost. Some swore, some prayed and one, maddened by impotent rage or simple crazed despair, fumbled for the tsepan at his belt. There were no ritual words, no elaborate ceremony, just the long blade stabbed up so hard and deep beneath his chin that he was dead before he fell. His blood steamed as it left the wound, but was a frozen spray like shattered rubies by the time it struck the ground.

That death was honourable, not by some wizard’s choice, and Santon envied him. He was only surprised that more minds hadn’t broken, because now the mist around Dunrath had solidified into shimmering patterns of force that crawled over the massive structure and gave stone the semblance of ghastly life. Serpentine coils of energy writhed high above the donjon, their shifting, brilliant colours impossible to watch yet impossible to ignore. They were brooding, ominous, the piled thunderhead clouds of a storm ready to break.

And he dreaded what would happen when it did.

*

Aldric stopped short of the council chamber to get his features under control for when he met Dewan and King Rynert, but to the guards flanking the big double door he only looked like someone who’d been hurrying and was regaining his composure.

“You’ve plenty of time to get your breath back, arluth-an,” said one, his careful mix of respect and familiarity an attempt to reconcile high-clan crests with a croppy haircut and a back-slung longsword. “Nobody will care if you’re late, because the King isn’t there yet.”

I know he isn’t and I know why…!

Aldric swallowed an outburst that would have raised too many awkward questions, like How do you know? and Why were you spying? and Who did you tell? Instead he gave the man a crooked grin that might have meant anything. From an armoured kailin in a crest-coat, it was enough to bring both guards to attention before the quiet one saluted and opened one door. Neither said a word about his sword.

The chamber had an imposing chair at the head of the room for the king, seats along each wall for high-clan kailinin-eir, and lines of camp-stools for everyone else. Aldric made for one of those, but a retainer in the king’s colours directed him to one of the seats instead, while the gathered military and political figureheads in Alba gave a courteous bow to the newcomer in their midst.

Then both doors opened wide and Dewan ar Korentin came in, looking much as Aldric had seen him less than fifteen minutes past although his sword, still cradled in one hand, was back in its scabbard. The Vreijek took up position at the right of Rynert’s great chair, grounded the weapon with a precise clank, and a metallic rustling of armour filled the room as all present offered their Obeisance. Despite private reservations, Aldric did it too. Rynert came in past all those lowered heads and took his seat, nodded in acknowledgement as his council resumed their places, then smiled to end the formality.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have just received two communications of great interest to us all. First,” Dewan put a slip of paper into his hand, “news from abroad. Two days ago, in the Pleasure Palace at Kalitzim, Emperor Droek joined his ancestors.” There were no actual cheers, but audible relief and satisfaction ran through the assembled councillors. “This sudden demise means the Grand Warlord and his new Emperor have other matters to concern them, and no time to cause trouble here before the situation in the North has been resolved.”

Rynert glanced at the message again. “Droek was found dead in bed. Whose bed, isn’t mentioned.” That did provoke a little burst of laughter, the mirth of men freed from the threat of invasion.

Just one man didn’t laugh. Aldric Talvalin was remembering a grey-clad taulath neither long ago nor far away, and the sound of money changing hands. He wondered if it was Rynert’s first venture into political murder and thought not. Four years ago an accident had removed Prince Taroen from the succession and made way for a younger brother not raised as the Grand Warlord’s tame signer of decrees. Now that brother was the Emperor, and even harder for Etzel to control.

It was pragmatic, it diverted the Imperial threat, and it spat on the honourable traditions Aldric was trying so hard to maintain. Even Skawmour the pirate had ridiculed Rynert for it. As he stared at the King, he found it very hard to keep open contempt from his face.

“My second communication is more local,” Rynert continued, “and arrived less than an hour ago. Lord Santon is in the North at the head of six thousand men, and the fortress of Dunrath is under close siege. So I intend—”

His intention went unheard, because a tall, lean figure rose from the rearmost row of the low-clan seats and strode towards him with a javelin in one hand. There were shouts of dismay and warning, several councillors sprang up with taipanin drawn and Dewan stepped forward, sword chest-high and halfway from its scabbard.

Aldric too was on his feet, poised to let Isileth Widowmaker drop towards his hand, but Gemmel Errekren stopped well out of danger, gazed at the king with cold emerald eyes then made a sketchy bow that held the merest token of respect. Rynert ignored his lack of manners more from consideration of Gemmel’s age than any fear of his powers. The King of Alba was afraid of nothing he had yet met in his life.

“Have someone say a funeral service for those six thousand men, Lord King,” said Gemmel. “They’ll be dead before the sun sets.”

Now silence became an almost physical presence, stifling and heavy. The hard, bright clack as Dewan sheathed his sword was loud enough to make men jump, but was a measure of Gemmel’s imposing presence and the King’s quiet authority that not one looked away from them to identify the sound.

“Explain.”

“I wanted Lord Santon to wait, and I wanted him told why. But you chose not to tell him, for fear of offending a lord who shunned the Art Magic, though I warned you the sorcerer he faced would use it as readily as kailinin use their swords.”

Gemmel gestured at the javelin and its outline shivered like a reflection in windblown water, transforming from a simple spear to Ykraith the Dragonwand. He rested its tail-spike on the floor and stared past the dragonhead at Rynert.

“Lord King, Aldric Talvalin put himself at some considerable risk to fetch this spellstave. I wouldn’t have asked him to do that for some mere trinket. It’s your best defence against Kalarr cu Ruruc.” The name sent a nervous mutter round the room and told Aldric what he already suspected: Endwar Santon wasn’t the only high-clan lord unaware of who really held Dunrath. “It’s a defence you denied Lord Santon. Read your Books of Years, Rynert of Alba. Kalarr holds a grudge against this land and all the people in it, a grudge centuries old and grown more bitter over time.”

“What can we do, pestreyr-an?” asked old Lord Dacurre, and Aldric smiled a grim inward smile at the suddenly respectful way he spoke.

“March north at once. I’ll be with you, to ward whatever spells the sorcerers in Dunrath might use.”

“And Endwar Santon? Can you do nothing for him? My second daughter is his wife…”

“His widow,” corrected Gemmel brutally. “Lord Dacurre, spells have a limited reach. This,” he nodded at the Dragonwand, “augments my power to strike or shield, but even that will dwindle as I tire. And tire I will, because magic’s no easy matter whatever the stories say. Lord Santon and his army are already far beyond my help.”

*

Kalarr’s storm broke.

The rings of energy above the citadel contracted, swirling like visions from a drug-dream given shape and substance. Then they exploded outwards as needles of blazing white light, slashing through battle armour like so much sodden paper, punching men to the ground with the shock of their impact or striking them dead on their feet.

One flashed over Santon’s shoulder, struck Dyran Haskol full in the chest and enveloped him in a cloud of misty radiance. The young man spun half round on sagging knees then fell flat, and when Santon turned over the already-rigid body he gasped in horror as three frozen fingers broke off like twigs. Dyran had the face of a corpse six weeks dead, nose shrivelled into suppurating pits and tight-stretched leathery skin the colour of lead. His gaping, rag-lipped mouth bared gums and teeth, and the frightened eyes were little more than blobs of dirty ice.

Death had been quick, but neither clean nor painless.

The air blurred and flickered as bolts of sorcerous power scythed through Lord Santon’s host and cut men down like ripe wheat. There was hardly any sound, just a thin, protracted hissing while the bright streaks of energy descended and the crackle when they struck home. The arluth’s mind babbled that all this was wrong, that slaughtering a legion should be noisier, more difficult, not mere erasure like wiping chalk-marks from a slate.

Then it was over. Dunrath was once more grey stone slashed and crowned by scarlet banners. The drifts of hoarfrost had vanished from its walls and a gentle breeze scoured away the last remnants of mist.

The army was also gone, reduced to a litter of twisted, discoloured corpses. There, in a pair of dense wedges, lay two thousand regular troops who had died in their places to a man. Straggled farther away were others who had broken near the end, and almost out of sight lay the levied vassals who were the first to run. Of the six thousand laying siege to Dunrath, only Lord Santon remained.

He stood up straight and waited for a final blast of magic to strike him down, but none came. Even when a blizzard of the things straddled his position on the ridge and smashed his officers to frozen meat, he stood unharmed. Santon realised his survival was neither accident nor mercy, and a great voice booming from the sombre fortress confirmed it.

“Commander!” it blared, “go back to your King and tell him what awaits those who oppose me. Thank him for these reinforcements. Once you tell him all these things, commander, you have my leave to die.”

*

“That was quite a performance,” said Aldric as he poured himself a strong drink. “I mean,” he was babbling, and aware of the nervousness that made him do it, “if you’d been in a play you’d have got a standing ovation for the sheer intensity of your opening speech.”

Gemmel didn’t respond until his pipe was lit, then stared at his foster-son through a veil of fragrant smoke. “Intensity? Yes, knowing one’s words are true does give their delivery a certain weight.”

“You’re certain Santon’s dead?” Aldric hadn’t liked the saturnine lord, but respected him as a proud, honourable, worthy gentleman of a kind growing rare. And from the sound of it, rarer still.

“As good as. We’ll find out soon enough. Forget other people for the moment, Aldric. You heard me describe what the Dragonwand can do, and I presume you’ve been talking to King Rynert for the past half-hour.”

“Talking isn’t how I’d put it. There are things I didn’t want him to think about, me using magic for one, but he twists words until answering one question leaves you open for three more. Rynert’s worse than ar Korentin at that lawyer’s crooked questioning style, and before Heaven Dewan’s bad enough.”

Gemmel shrugged. “It’s all in the degree of practice.”

“They’ve both had far too much, and most of it on me.”

“If you’ve quite finished…?”

“Yes. Yes, I have. Say your piece.”

“Thank you. It’s best you know I overstated Ykraith’s power of protection.”

“What?”

“It’s a weapon, an offensive weapon. Like a sword, with block and ward subordinate to cut and thrust. Defence against cu Ruruc comes from my own abilities, and from this.” Gemmel set a small box on the table, opened the lid, and the aura of the Echainon stone spilled out so intensely blue that it seemed the light would leave a stain.

“What about Duergar?”

“Duergar doesn’t concern me.” There was contempt in Gemmel’s voice. “He’s a necromancer, bringing life to dead things like that bronze monstrosity in Erdhaven. Battlefield sorcery is beyond him.”

“Then why lie about the Dragonwand?”

“Because of the military mind. Once those clan-lords knew it was a weapon, they’d insist on using it their way, and that would lead to chaos.”

“So why not say—”

“What could I say? ‘Regrettably, lord king, my personal strategy will leave your army unshielded for a while. Bad luck.’ Rynert would lock me up and throw away the key.”

“Personal strategy? I have a feeling that includes me.”

“Of course it does. You’re an oath-sworn venjens-eijo. You have to kill Duergar Vathach. I can’t do it for you otherwise all other oaths, lands and loyalties are void. You’ll never be a clan-lord, perhaps not even a kailin again. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Then we understand one another. While you deal with the necromancer, I’ll prevent Kalarr from turning you to a smear of crisped fat—”

Aldric’s mouth quirked the way it had done when he encountered Kyrin’s pickled fish. “Thank you. Though not for the description.”

“It concentrated your mind. I can’t protect you and Rynert both at once, and he isn’t my fosterling. I’ll lay what warding-charms I can until we go—”

“Go? Where? Why?”

“Use your brains. Where else but Dunrath, why else but after Duergar?”

“And if things go wrong, what will you say to Rynert?”

“I’ll tell him that his men went beyond the limits of my guard-spell, or… Or something.” Gemmel made a dismissive gesture with the stem of his pipe. “There are any number of plausible excuses. But if things go really wrong, excuses will be the least of our problems. We may not be alive to worry about them.”

“Sometimes, altrou-ain, you say the most reassuring things. Like Ymareth. Now there was another…” He sat bolt upright in his chair. “Oh, Blazing Light of Heaven!”

“What’s the matter? Are you ill, or is it something else?” Gemmel’s right hand was already moving in the patterns of a spell-ward, and Aldric waved it to stillness.

“No… No, I’m all right,” he said. “Just stupid.”

“Don’t take names to yourself without reason.”

“I’ve reason enough. You’d think I’d remember anything a full-grown firedrake told me, wouldn’t you? Well, I didn’t. Haven’t. Not until now. I’ve had other things on my mind.” Gemmel said nothing. “If you hold anything of Kalarr’s, pretend to destroy it and await events. Ymareth’s words. I don’t know what it meant, and—”

“You forgot that? The Lord and the Lady guard us from lovelorn idiots! Yes, stupid is right! Damnably, brainlessly stupid!” Gemmel raised both fists as if to pound them on the table then relaxed again and flicked his fingers as if shaking water or something far more dangerous from their tips. He even produced a shrug and a crooked smile. “But not fatally stupid, because you remembered it in time.”

“What did the firedrake mean, altrou?” asked Aldric now the storm had passed. “All we have is the wristband, and destroying it is the last thing we should do.”

“Take it away, and we take away Kalarr’s fear of Duergar’s hold over him. Their alliance will fall apart. And,” Gemmel raised one finger for emphasis, “if we do this well enough, he’ll think I’ve also destroyed the Echainon stone. It’s the kind of mistake a petty wizard would make, a wizard he can ignore as unimportant. It might encourage him to make a mistake of his own, like leaving the security of his fortress—”

“My fortress.”

“No airs and graces, Aldric, not after what you almost forgot to tell me. All right, he might leave his stolen fortress to personally lead his forces against Rynert. Playing at being a great captain killed him last time, so vengeful victory the same way should be most enticing.”

“Well,” Aldric finished his drink and stood up, “let’s do it. Have you seen any crows in Kerys?”

“A few.”

“Not very imaginative, are they? Gulls would be much less obvious near a seaport. Come on, altrou.”

*

The regiments were forming up as Aldric and Gemmel walked through the streets of Kerys, well aware of the black bird keeping pace with them along the rooftops. Before they left the house Gemmel slipped away for a few moments, and though Aldric didn’t ask where he’d acquired the sapphire in his hand, he saw how well it fitted the recess in the ancient bronze wristband. A word from the enchanter gave it the inner light of the Echainon spellstone, and a cap of hammered copper completed its disguise.

Now they were looking for some deserted courtyard invisible to ordinary spies, but not from the changeling-crow that flapped and glided in their wake. Aldric stopped every few yards to glance about, always slowly enough for the crow to hide. Making his charade convincing was more difficult than he thought.

“Careful now,” Gemmel said softly. “Don’t make our spy suspect all this is for his benefit.”

“Or Cu Ruruc will wonder about deception?”

“More than just wonder. I’d rather not—” Gemmel grabbed Aldric’s arm and jerked him out of sight, deliberately not quite fast enough. Aldric could hear a quick beat of wings as they made for an old stable at the end of a narrow, sour-smelling alley. Its roof was open to the sky and something moved furtively between the broken rafters.

“This will do well enough,” said Gemmel. He looked around the hovel with every sign of satisfaction, then laid the wristband on a heap of rotting straw and surrounded it with complicated patterns drawn on the dank floor with a piece of wood. They were meaningless but seemed significant, like the nonsense-words he mumbled and the imposing gestures which accompanied them. Aldric almost smiled at this performance of a fussy, inexperienced sorcerer faced for once with an important spell, while above their heads the changeling-crow strained to see.

Steam rose from the damp straw, sluggish at first then faster, becoming dense white smoke as the bronze of the band heated from dull red to vivid orange. As it reached an eye-hurting white it slumped out of shape and its metal ran like wax. For an instant the azure shimmer of the false spellstone threw harsh shadows across the stable, and then it died like a snuffed candle with only ash and spark-pitted cinders left behind.

“What was that?” demanded Gemmel. “Did you see a strange light?” The sudden concern in his voice was real or at least convincing, and Aldric played along.

“There was some flaw in the metal,” he said, “or muck in the straw. Nothing important, or you’d have known about it.”

“Yes. Yes, of course I would.” Now Gemmel sounded smug and complacent. A large black rat scuttled from its lair to escape the smoke and stench of burning, and he put its appearance to good use by levelling his hand and shouting, “A spy!”

This time the gesture wasn’t meaningless. A shockwave warped the dim daylight as it leapt from his fingertips, there was a crack like a monstrous whip and the rat burst apart, sending bones and entrails all over the stable. The speed and violence of Gemmel’s action made Aldric jump, but he still saw the crow’s frantic tumble out of sight and the clatter of wings as it fled.

“I think he’s convinced,” he said, forcing a laugh as he glanced towards the mess of rat. “What was that trick?”

“Trick? It was the High Accelerator. A lesser form.”

“Lesser?”

“There was no need to flatten the stable.”

“Could you have—? Why am I even asking, altrou, of course you could.”

“And could you stop asking questions for a while?” Gemmel’s hand was throbbing with the aftermath of channelled energy and the pain was doing nothing for his temper. Then he relented. “Yes I could, all too easily. The High Accelerator is fierce magic. It can push a man’s eyeballs through the back of his skull, or his skull out of his head. Hurling down a wall isn’t difficult. Satisfied?”

“For now, yes.”

*

“He destroyed it? Are you sure?”

The thin, yellow-eyed changeling nodded emphatically. “Yes, lord. I saw it done.”

Kalarr cu Ruruc was still drained and exhausted by his great spell three days before, but now fierce delight replaced his weariness. He walked to a window and stared down at where Duergar worked necromancy on the wreckage of Endwar Santon’s legion. Then he chuckled.

“Losing the spellstone is unfortunate. Yet not so great a loss to me as the wristband is to you, Drusalan.” He fixed the spy with a baleful glare. “Duergar Vathach must not hear of this.” An ominous note in his voice made the changeling quake, knowing all too well the easiest way of ensuring silence. “I see you understand me. Remember it. Now get out!”

The spy needed no second bidding and scurried away as cu Ruruc settled back in his chair, already planning how to deal with King Rynert’s host when it came within reach. There would be no help from the Empire. With the old Emperor dead and the succession in doubt, Grand Warlord Etzel was too busy jockeying for real power to concern himself with long-delayed notions of foreign conquest. He was even too busy to punish the agent whose indecision caused that delay.

It was just as well, because Kalarr needed Duergar’s necromantic skill to maintain the traugarin which made up most of his own army, and another spell like the one which had slaughtered Santon’s legion was impossible at present. It would be more than a month before he could bear the physical pressures of High Magic without risking hideous deformity.

Besides, military victory had a value of its own. Thanks to Baiart Talvalin he knew of certain ambitious lesser clan-lords who would never smirch their honour by aiding a wizard, but would eagerly follow a successful field commander. Kalarr sneered. He cared nothing for what they thought, but the proprieties had to be observed.

He opened Lord Santon’s battle orders and began to read.

*

The great army roads crisscrossing Alba, and the legions which used them, had been created by Rynert’s great-grandfather in the early days of the Imperial threat. Neither had yet been used for their original purpose, but they had seen service against border raiders and an occasional lord who fancied a return to the independent days of the Clan Wars. For years the six legions had been no more than a watch-force with a kingdom as their beat. That was changing with every mile farther north.

They had passed villages along the highways, with inns and lodging-houses for travellers and merchants and marketplaces where they could buy and sell their goods. Now Aldric looked around the marketplace of one such village, home to three hundred people. It was a jumble of tumbled stones and shattered timbers, stained by greasy smoke and heavy with the cloying stink of houses that had burned with people still inside. Even the little gardens were just a morass of hoof-prints, flowers and vegetables alike trodden to pulp.

More than Clan Talvalin had suffered loss at the hands of his enemies, but those losses were anonymous and distant. There was nothing anonymous about this, and he realised why the Albans of the Old Time sometimes answered it with the savagery he had read of in the Books of Years. War was for warriors, and any man who visited its horrors on the helpless deserved whatever ingenuities the dark and secret places of the mind could conceive.

He heard hoofbeats and looked up. King Rynert and Dewan ar Korentin were picking their way through the devastation and both, Aldric could see, felt the same way as he did. When they drew closer he asked simply, “Why?”

Dewan had seen such things before and knew the reasoning behind them. “To discourage us,” he said. “A Drusalan tactic, done at Duergar Vathach’s prompting. To take the heart from an advancing army.”

“In the Empire, maybe.” Aldric’s voice was flinty. “This is Alba.”

“Go away from here, Aldric-eir,” said Rynert. “Brooding will do no good.”

“As you wish, Lord King.” Aldric saluted, then rode Lyard towards the road, towards the army, towards anywhere that was away from the dead village. Rynert watched him go, then looked across at Dewan.

“There goes a young man who lives his life most intensely,” he said. “And he misses the Valhollan woman, despite your report. What we just saw is a part of it.”

“All I reported was the word ‘infatuation’, Lord King. I didn’t choose it, she did. Perhaps we were both wrong.”

“What’s your opinion of him?”

“The kourgath cat makes a good crest, Lord King. He’s lazy, lecherous, fond of food and comfort, and capable of doing remarkable damage when pressed. He’s intelligent, well-educated in a most interesting variety of subjects, and foul-tempered when the mood’s on him. Talvalin could be a dangerous enemy. Ruthless and pitiless.”

“Not all the time, Dewan. I saw pity in his eyes just now.”

“I saw it too.”

“Would you trust him?”

“With my life.”

“With your wife?” The king was teasing, as he sometimes did with his small, select group of friends, and Dewan felt able to laugh even here where laughter was so out of place.

“I’m not a jealous husband, Lord King!” It was an old joke that Lyseun was jealous enough for both. “Anyway, she doesn’t like him. She never likes people who take me away from her. But yes, I’d trust Aldric with her. He’s an honourable gentleman.” Dewan’s smile faded. “It’s part of what makes him dangerous.”

“I’ll bear it in mind. Now, as for Baiart, if he’s taken alive he’s to stay alive. I want a treason trial and an execution.”

Dewan glanced back to make sure Aldric was out of earshot. “Then the Talvalin lands will fall forfeit to…” His confusion cleared. “Ah. I understand.”

“Quite. That young man needs to learn that he has other obligations than his own honour. When I return his lands – which I’m not required to do – it should prompt some gratitude.”

“You might prompt something else.” Ar Korentin straightened in his saddle. “I admire your cleverness, Lord King. I also make formal objection to this scheme. If he ever finds out, Talvalin may resent such an underhanded trick. Be warned, Rynert. And be careful.”

“I will.” The king let Dewan’s use of his name go by without comment. “But it’ll remind him he can’t gain everything by his own efforts. I want my high-clan lords under obligation to me.”

“As you wish. I still—”

Ar Korentin broke off as three horsemen with the orange plumes of couriers came clattering towards them. The foremost was off his skidding steed before the beast halted, and down on one knee before the others dismounted at all.

“Lord King,” he said, “we’ve found Lord Santon!”

*

Endwar Santon told his tale to a ring of grim-faced, silent men, and if they looked like mourners at a funeral, he looked like the corpse. He had wandered for more than a week, eating what little he could scavenge though with Duergar’s raiders out and busy there was little enough of that, while making his unsteady way south to the road where friends might pass. And there he waited in hiding, through days darkened by his memories and nights bright with the flames of burning cottages.

Rynert’s army was less than three days hard march from Dunrath, but its strength of fourteen thousand was no longer enough to obliterate cu Ruruc’s forces in open battle after their reinforcement with the six thousand traugarin who had been Lord Santon’s legion. Only Gemmel gained grim satisfaction from what Kalarr had done, because there was no longer risk of some awesome spell devastating the entire host while he was unable to protect it. Step by step, Duergar and Kalarr were moving up to lay their heads on the block, and neither of them knew it.

“He said I couldn’t die until I spoke to you, Lord King,” Santon said. “I thought he just mocked me, but I couldn’t draw my tsepan. My own hands wouldn’t obey me. I couldn’t even fall on my sword.” He croaked a low, ugly laugh. “So I threw it away. Kalarr said I had to tell you everything myself. I had to make my shame complete. All right, I’ve done it.” Santon set down his cup of wine. “And now I want to join my men.”

Rynert had been expecting that request since the couriers arrived, and trying to invent a reason to refuse it. But there was really only one response, and it was to give consent.

Preparations were brief and simple, just the privacy of screens made from the great clan war-banners where Lord Santon could be alone with a priest. Aldric and several of the other younger lords stood around in horrified fascination, none of them aware he had been within a tsepan’s length of the same situation, and when Rynert beckoned to him he felt his mouth go dry.

“Endwar was your father’s closest friend, Aldric-eir,” the king said in a low, private voice, “so it would be appropriate if you would…” Aldric shook his head. While Duergar lived he remained eijo, and giving his name its noble form didn’t meant Rynert could compel him to anything. “Very well. Dewan ar Korentin will act for him instead. May he use your sword?”

Aldric unhooked the sheathed taiken from her slings and gave it to ar Korentin. He accepted with a deep, courteous bow, backed away three paces, and bowed again before walking behind the makeshift screens. Rynert watched him go. “Will you at least be a witness?” he said.

Aldric hesitated, refusal no more than an indrawn breath away, then drew himself up very straight. “As you say, Lord King, Endwar Santon was my father’s friend. He was a hearth-companion of clan Talvalin, and the absence of the clan-lord—” he watched for reaction and saw none, “—would dishonour him and us. Yes, I will be a witness.”

*

After it was over everything went still for a moment, then the witnesses bowed in unison and departed without a backward glance. All except Aldric. He waited through the various rituals until Dewan was able to hand back Widowmaker and strapped the taiken in place, grateful she hadn’t been needed. Like much else in his life, Lord Santon required no one’s help to leave it.

“What will they do with him?” the Vreijek asked. “There’s not enough wood for a proper funeral.”

Aldric stared at the huddled form under its scarlet cloth. “There is. We’re carrying fuel for the cookfires, and I’ll eat cold food if I have to. His courage deserves more than a hole in the ground.”

Dewan shivered inside his armour as if a chilly breeze had stroked his neck. He wasn’t Alban, he hadn’t been raised with a tsepan as an acceptable end to life, and the unquestioning approval of Santon’s act disturbed him. With the risk of battle mere days away, squandering all those accumulated years of wisdom and military skill to satisfy something as intangible as honour was pure stupidity.

“I wonder will Baiart be as brave?”

Dewan drew breath to answer, realised just in time that Aldric was thinking aloud rather than asking a question, and closed his teeth on what might have been a perilously wrong answer.

“He’s a Talvalin,” he said, and walked away.

CHAPTER TEN

“Lord King, I’ve been trying to speak to you for the past three days!” Gemmel didn’t hide the impatience in his voice.

“I’ve been somewhat busy, Master Gemmel. An army to command, a kingdom to rule at second hand – small things, but time-consuming.” The enchanter glared, trying to keep his temper in check, until Rynert decided enough was enough and turned business-like. “Well, what do you want?”

“It concerns your battle-plans, Lord King:”

Rynert frowned as he hadn’t done at Gemmel’s irritation; some things were unwarranted interference by outsiders, and this was one. “So you’re a military commander on top of all else? Imperial service, no doubt.”

“I’m merely an enchanter, Lord King.” His tone suggested there was nothing ‘mere’ about it.

“Then how does my strategy become any business of yours?”

“What you’ll be fighting makes it my business. Let me remind you once again, these aren’t Imperial soldiers. They’re traugarin raised by a necromancer from Lord Santon’s destroyed legion. The numbers may be equal on both sides, Lord King, but your troops can be killed. They can’t.”

“The Drusalan necromancer’s spell will fail once he is killed, yes?”

“Yes. An honourable fulfilment of Aldric’s oath, and an end to his time as eijo.” The twitch of expression that crossed Rynert’s face was so small and brief that Gemmel almost missed it, but confirmed what he had begun to suspect. Aldric would find inheriting Clan Talvalin’s lands and title, perhaps even his own return to kailin rank, far less certain than he believed.

“Until then, what about my army?” The king gestured at maps and troop-dispositions. “You told the council you would protect it.”

“And I will. I can turn most—”

“Most?”

“Most. You needn’t fear High Magic like the invocation cu Ruruc sent against Lord Santon. That took time to prepare, maybe an entire night and day, and Kalarr isn’t strong enough to weave another yet without tearing himself apart.”

“I know.” Rynert wasn’t bluffing to save face. He had read about the merciless rules of high sorcery, the warping pressures they put on mind and body, and why powerful sorcerers weren’t the bearded ancients of stories but sturdy men who could pass for warriors.

“Besides, he won’t want to defeat you with magic. Not if he wants allies.” If this king meant to keep or break his promises as expedience dictated, he needed reminded of how many others thought the same way. “From my reading of Alban history, only a battlefield victory will be accepted by… Call them supporters who can’t decide which horse to back, and avoid the course until the race is won.”

“I’ll call them what they are, traitors who lack the courage to declare for either side. They’re the lesser lords who sent no troops, only reasons why not. Many are associates of Baiart Talvalin. And treason is treason.”

Rynert’s flash of severity caught Gemmel off-balance. “Aldric said you were the one who suggested Baiart might be under spellbond. Doesn’t that count in his favour?”

“No. And your fosterling wasn’t convinced either.” Gemmel had heard the king address Aldric correctly to his face, yet now wouldn’t even use his name. Whatever was going on in that subtle mind needed no encouragement, so he said nothing and let Rynert talk on. “It angered him so much he cracked a wall-panel with his fist. Compulsion by sorcery or duress is no defence, Master Gemmel, because I saw Baiart many times at court and he always wore the means to escape.” Rynert touched the tsepan dirk at his belt. “If he chose not to use it, he must have made a different choice.”

“But Lord Santon—”

“Lord Santon had a message to deliver. Once his duty was complete, you saw what happened. Baiart Talvalin is long past such excuses.”

“Then what choice have you made for my – for Aldric?”

“None to concern you. I have my reasons, so let be. Stop meddling in affairs of state!”

“I beg pardon.”

Rynert had never heard a less heartfelt apology. “All right, meddle in the affairs of war. What will I do, Lord General Gemmel?” It was part sneer, part sincere. “Advance? Stand fast? Run away? We’re less than a day from Dunrath and the commanders need their orders.”

“Not run, at least. However, you— “ Gemmel paused as cavalry clattered past the pavilion, drowning his words, and Rynert twitched the door-flap aside to watch them.

“Dawn patrol,” he said. “Riding point for the column. We’ll be moving soon.” Rather than summon servants he started putting on his armour by himself. The fewer eyes and ears to witness him discussing tactics with a wizard, the better. “Well? You were lecturing me. Continue.”

“Don’t run. And don’t meet cu Ruruc head-on either. Skirmish. Duck and weave and sidestep. Any set-piece battle is out of the question, you know that now, so break your troops into small formations of two hundred at most, and disperse them. Their purpose is to keep Kalarr occupied. The busier you keep him, the better chance Aldric and I will have of slipping unnoticed into Dunrath.”

Rynert grunted; it might have been an opinion, or just the effort of tightening a strap. “What’s to stop cu Ruruc overwhelming several of these small units at once?”

“Two things. First, I’ll destroy the spies watching us, and second, I’ll lay a Concealment over the army before they can be replaced. Kalarr’s troops have to find your men before they fight them, and there’s no point massing troops against an invisible opponent. One to one or outnumbered, you risk losing only two hundred men each time they engage.”

“It’s brutal, and I don’t like it. It’s also good sense, and I like that. What about the spies? When will you deal with them?”

“Now.” Gemmel shifted the Dragonwand into both hands, a spear-fighter’s stance. “Your host is breaking camp, so they’ll be watching.”

Rynert followed the enchanter outside, adjusting buckles as he went and unsure whether he worked at his armour to make it comfortable or to cover the eagerness of seeing magic in action. Gemmel muttered under his breath and Rynert moved a little closer, drawing breath to reply, Then he realised with a little shiver that Gemmel was speaking to the spellstave.

“Abath arhan, Ykraith,” the enchanter said. “Acchuad eiya ilearath dua’hr.” There was a deep, melodious thrumming like the bass drones of a gurdy, and a translucent shimmer enveloped the crystal in the carved firedrake’s mouth. Rynert sensed its gathering power just as he would have felt a stove being opened, and a great stillness settled over the camp. The only things moving were crows, spiralling lazily high above. Gemmel gave them the brief glance of a man taking aim and when he raised the Dragonwand above his head, Rynert almost ducked.

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” said Gemmel. If it was meant to reassure, it didn’t. Then he spoke a single phrase and needles of white heat burst from the Dragonwand’s crystal flame in a great expanding hemisphere, flashing out across the camp to pierce each changeling-crow through the body. They trailed smoke as they tumbled from the cold blue sky, and left it cleaner than before.

Gemmel lowered the spellstave, satisfied with work well done. “Nothing,” he repeated, “at all.”

*

Kalarr cu Ruruc stared at his magic mirror, drumming armoured fingers against the black ebony table-top, but the obsidian glass showed only his own shadowy reflection. He strode across the chamber floor and back again, noisy in his shell of scarlet steel, then stripped off one gauntlet and touched his fingertips to the volcanic scry-glass. Even with his own power flowing through its substance there was no change, as if the mirror itself defied him. Kalarr swore, and sent such a blast of force into it that the obsidian shivered, cracked, and shattered into fragments.

Duergar Vathach turned at the sound and glanced unimpressed at the glittering shards. “Feeling better now?” he said. The window behind him looked out on a wall of slowly drifting fog. “Only your Eye could find its way through this murk. You should have made another at once.”

“I told you then,” Kalarr leaned forward and his mailed fists crunched broken glass to dust against the table, “but since you clearly paid no heed, I’ll tell you again. Until the next moon-phase, I can’t.”

Such blatant lack of attention was not just disrespectful, it showed a misplaced confidence Duergar would have done well to hide. Not one of his secret plans had ever been as secret as he thought, making use of his summoned ally was more often that ally making use of him and best of all, the wristband and spellstone were gone. Kalarr sometimes toyed with telling him how things really stood, just to see the look on his face.

Such a revelation, no matter how amusing, would have to end with Duergar’s immediate death, and Kalarr still needed the necromancer’s traugarin army until Alba fell into his hand like a ripe plum. Then he would squeeze it so the juice ran through his fingers. And he would squeeze Duergar too, a snapped bone for every insult, a strip of torn flesh for every scornful glance, a scream for every lie, until the mangled remnants were beyond use even as material for necromancy.

The thought made Kalarr warm inside.

“Not much use, is it?” said Duergar, so provocative that Kalarr wondered if the man had been drinking. “Compared to my changelings—”

“Which made their last report at dawn, and nothing since. Yes. Explain how your changelings are so much better.”

The Drusalan hesitated, as if only now aware he was dancing on thin ice. “Can’t you dispel the fog?”

“If it was natural, yes. This is spell-built Concealment, and you know what the attempt would do to me.” Kalarr smirked like a shark, all teeth and no mirth, knowing how often Duergar tried to check the truth behind these claims of limitation and weakness. “Or are you hoping for it?”

“I could summon up a wish-wind,” said Duergar evasively, changing the subject. Kalarr’s smile grew wider.

“No. Don’t divide your focus. Just keep the traugarin strong until I’ve finished with the Albans.” He lifted his helmet and left the chamber, clattering down the spiral stairs with the necromancer at his heels. There were none of the usual guards, either living or traugur undead. They were all in the army gathered outside to obliterate King Rynert’s host, to win a victory so resounding even the most vacillating Alban clan-lords would accept it. Kalarr reached the donjon’s double doors and flung them open.

The boom as they bounced from their stops matched a reverberating stamp of feet as the army outside slammed to attention. Soldiers choked the courtyard, overflowing through its gates in rank upon rank until lost to sight in the swirling mist. Vermeil banners marked with cu Ruruc’s winged-viper crest hung above them, motionless in the damp grey air. There was a burst of cheering from his cavalry, human mercenaries since traugarin made useless horsemen, but heavy silence from the rest even when he swung into his horse’s saddle and raised one hand in salute.

“That’s what I miss about commanding corpses,” he said, running the chains of the flail he carried as a baton through his fingers. “The affection troops have for their general. These are so—”

“Lifeless?” Baiart Talvalin leaned against the stone balustrade of the stairs, a stoneware bottle of grainfire in one hand and an ale-mug in the other. “Hail to th’ mighty gen’ral!” He was very drunk, increasingly common for him, and consequently very bold. “Who d’you plan to kill next?” He gave Kalarr a wink from one watery blue eye then grinned at Duergar. “I mean, who else?”

The Drusalan necromancer glared and said nothing, while Kalarr merely pulled his helmet on and buckled its war-mask into place. The red armour made his face seem flushed with rage, but he was smiling as he walked his big roan charger across to Baiart and caressed one cheek with the flail’s dangling chains. Baiart flinched at the contact.

“You, perhaps,” cu Ruruc said in the kindly tones of a parent promising his child a treat. His helmet-crest nodded above him as he leaned closer to lay the flail’s haft along Baiart’s nose, between his eyes. “If you’re lucky, it might be quick. If you’re very, very lucky it might even be permanent…”

*

Gemmel leaned his weight on the Dragonwand as a bank of grey-white mist flowed across the distant Alban camp like milk poured into water, growing denser with every second. “That should hold for long enough. I’ve done everything I can.”

Aldric sat astride Lyard some distance away, shield on arm and slender spear braced against one mailed boot. Full battle armour encased both horse and man and, as Gemmel studied them, he felt once again that his foster-son was just as dangerous as any enchantment. There had always been a hard edge to Aldric. His father murdered, one brother murdered, the other disloyal; nothing to lighten the life of any young man, least of all a Northern Alban clan-lord. And now… Gemmel didn’t know if it was parting from Kyrin, or seeing the destroyed village, or some incident kept secret. What he did know was that menace hung about Aldric Talvalin like the fog, and it was on a very short leash indeed.

“What did you do?”

“I screened the army against death from a distance, so whatever Kalarr and Duergar might try will be useless effort. And I made sure this fog won’t lift until I do it myself. Barring accidents.”

“Accidents?”

“Unforeseen eventualities. I should be aching and exhausted after such an invocation, but thanks to this,” Gemmel patted the Dragonwand as a man might pat the neck of a favourite horse, “I’m not even tired.” He wiped one hand across his forehead and looked at the perspiration gleaming on his palm. “Well, not very.”

He pulled a small wooden box from his belt-pouch, flicked back the lid and took out the Stone of Echainon. When he placed it where Aldric had long suspected it belonged, in the dragon-head’s empty eye-socket, it locked there as if set by a master jeweller. For a second spellstone and spellstave glowed together, turning the mist skimmed-milk blue, until the light dimmed and everything returned to muted grey.

“Now we can meet Kalarr on—” He leapt aside as a small troop of horsemen thundered out of the fog, pennons fluttering with their speed, then laughed. “Though he may have more than us to—”

“Mount up, altrou! Move it!” Aldric’s yelled command didn’t invite questions. It sent Gemmel into his saddle more nimbly than he believed possible, but the Dragonwand hadn’t returned to its scabbard behind one stirrup when four of the riders came back. This time they had weapons out and ready.

Aldric met them head-on, driving his spear through one man’s chest and smashing another out of the saddle with the boss of his shield. Gemmel had vanished into the fog and he hoped the old man was all right. Then the other two horseman came charging in and he stopped worrying about other people.

A mace-head struck his shield hard enough to punch it back against his body, then poised high for an instant as its wielder decided between smashing skull or shoulder. That decision took a lifetime too long. Widowmaker sank half her length into the exposed armpit before the upraised mace fell and its owner fell with it, coughing a fan of blood across his horse’s neck as he tumbled to the ground.

The last rider’s war-hammer hit Aldric’s armoured back at an awkward angle, and the lamellar scales on their web of lacing spread its bone-breaking impact into one that only knocked the breath from him. He twisted, flung up his shield against the next stroke, and replied with a forehand cut at a target almost out of reach. Almost was still close enough for a longsword. Isileth Widowmaker slithered along the hammer’s haft, snipped off four fingers at the knuckle like so many carrots and ended by splitting the man’s thigh bone-deep from hip to knee.

Aldric could still hear him, long after his horse had carried him out of sight.

Gemmel drew level again a few minutes later, glanced at the carnage and turned away with a shudder. For all his ability with a taiken it had been a long, long time since he last used one in earnest, and the sounds, smells and hazy images glimpsed through the drifting fog reminded him of why. Death from a distance by missile or sorcery was one thing. Steel was so…

Intimate.

Aldric watched Gemmel’s expression of controlled disgust for a few seconds while several brutal comments crossed his mind. He dismissed them all, because some hunters were like that. Unerring aim with spear and bow against animal targets didn’t always grant ability to kill human ones, or being at ease around someone who could. He had wondered sometimes which was better. Now he knew.

“Reality is never the same as practice, is it?” he said eventually. “You were a good teacher.”

“How…” Gemmel cleared his throat. “How did you know they were enemies?”

“I didn’t recognise their pennons, and I was wary. Then they attacked us, and I was sure.” Aldric wiped Widowmaker clean and slid her away. “If Kalarr hired horsemen he might have hired footsoldiers as well, and…” Distant bugles shrilled and he put the undeveloped notion from his mind. “Forget it. We’d better go. I don’t know what that troop was doing, and I’m not staying to find out. Follow me, altrou.”

“In this fog? Are you sure where you’re going?”

“I think so. I hope so. You’d better hope so too.”

*

On a clear, bright day the distant citadel of Dunrath-hold was visible from the crest of Embeyan Ridge where King Rynert raised his banners, but now there was only a wall of grey vapour with soldiers fading in and out of it like figures in a dream.

They were solid blocks of men rather than the small units Gemmel had advised. It would have meant proposing the tactic to his senior officers, then revealing where the suggestion came from, and finally explaining why they should take their instructions from a wizard. That word would be sneered, even though they all knew who had provided the dense fog protecting them. Rynert would have to persuade or, worse still, order them to do it, and with one confrontation inevitable he chose to avoid any others.

Instead he turned to the battle manuals every Alban general carried on campaign and drew up the army in open regimental order on the forward and reverse slopes of the ridge. Even if it wasn’t quite what Gemmel wanted, the formation was more flexible than a shield-wall. Whether it would be successful was another matter, because though regular soldiers followed orders with drill and precision, the aristocratic kailinin and their household warriors all too often went their own way.

With none of them able to see more than fifty yards, that way could easily be the wrong way.

The first engagement had already happened, an hour before. A flying-column of scout cavalry had surged from the fog to probe the fog-screened defences. They had been repulsed easily enough, in fact too easily because they were living men not traugarin, able to think for themselves, to realise when an unsuccessful attack should break off, or spot and exploit a weakness. Rynert wondered how many more were out there in the fog, a hazard out of all proportion to their numbers.

His army shifted with a chorus of rattling and clinking; shields raised, swords eased in scabbards and helmets pulled a little farther down. The noises stopped and silence returned, a vast oppressive stillness even more frightening than the sound of an army taking up final position. It was that same army, all preparation over, nothing left to do but wait for the killing and the dying to begin. Most men on this battlefield had never heard that stillness before, and all but the most headstrong hoped never to hear it again.

Rynert shuddered so violently that it made his armour rattle. He frowned, wondering why, then stripped off a gauntlet, licked one fingertip and held it up. The frown deepened to a scowl and a soft, venomous oath hissed past his teeth. A wind was rising. It was still no more than a movement in the air, but already the banks of fog were starting to drift.

And growing thinner even as he watched.

*

“It’s blowing away!” The impenetrable grey wall was now a shifting curtain growing more insubstantial with every passing second, and when Aldric swung round his voice was harsh and angry. “You told me this wouldn’t happen! What’s going on?”

Gemmel took the outburst calmly. “Wind,” he said. “An ordinary thrice-damned wind. About the only thing I didn’t cast securing-spells against.”

“You didn’t? Why the hell not?”

“Countering magic is difficult enough, but wind’s a force of nature. You have no idea how much power it would take to hold this fragile stuff against it.”

“But…” A warning glare from beneath the wizard’s eyebrows made Aldric hesitate for a second before stubbornness took over. “But isn’t this Kalarr’s doing?”

“What did I tell you? Don’t just ask bloody stupid questions, think. The strain would tear him to tatters if he even tried. And before you ask, it’s not Duergar either. He’s too busy maintaining the traugur-charm. No, this is just a breeze.”

“Just a breeze, he says.” Aldric laughed, hollow and sarcastic. “So despite all the plots and plans there’ll still be a battle.”

“There was always going to be a battle. But if Rynert doesn’t follow my instructions there’ll be a bloody massacre, and if we can’t find cover before this clears we’ll be part of it.”

“That would never do, now would it?” Aldric heeled Lyard to a canter and vanished for a moment, and when he returned he was wearing what passed for a smile. “You needn’t worry, altrou, not on that score. It’s this way.”

Gemmel didn’t move. Instead he watched Aldric’s face through thoughtful eyes until the younger man’s gaze flinched away. “So what score are you worrying on? Why are you so prickly? Was it those men you killed?”

The black helmet turned so the expression within its war-mask was unreadable. “I… Yes, a little. It was so easy. There was no risk, I was better armoured, better armed, better trained… Altrou, it was like killing children.”

“Children? You were the youngest of them all, and there was risk enough. Do your ribs hurt when you breathe? Children don’t carry maces, Aldric. They don’t try to break your bones. You’ve been bottling something up since we left Kerys, I won’t ask what, and you needed to vent some emotion.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“This is a battlefield. People die on a battlefield. They did, you didn’t. Forget about them.”

“Easily said.” The straps and scales of Aldric’s armour creaked as he drew in a slow, deep breath and stood in his stirrups, gasping with discomfort as yes indeed, the movement reminded him of that blow across the back. “Not easily done.” He looked at the wind-swirled fog, already able to see farther through it than he liked, then pointed at a clump of trees. Minutes earlier they had been invisible. “No more delays. Follow me.”

In managed woodland one coppice looked very much like another, and as they rode deep into the shadows Gemmel wondered what made this one different from any of the others condensing into view. Then Aldric told him.

The oldest trees had been trained down and sideways over many years, a growth so natural-seeming that whether in full leaf or winter starkness, only eyes trained in what to look for and where to look from would see them. North or south was “tau” for Talvalin, east-west was “hai” for halathan, the old name for any crest-bird with wings spread wide like clan Talvalin’s eagle.

“Is this Dunrath’s back door?” asked Gemmel, trying to lighten the mood, “or the trade entrance?”

“It’s a last-ditch exit.” Aldric unholstered one telek, pushed it through his weapon-belt and tethered Lyard to a branch, loosely enough for the horse to pull free if no-one came back for him. “From the bad old days of the Clan Wars. If the lord had to escape from inside his own walls, his family would come up,” he leaned against a hollow stump and pushed with all his strength, “here!”

The whole stump shifted sideways and became the mouth of a tunnel dropping into darkness. “The entrance is low and narrow. Men wearing armour have to leave one at a time, bent double.” His right hand chopped downward. “So the lord could hold off an army while his people got away.”

“Until he got tired,” said Gemmel. “What then?”

“What do you think?” Aldric tapped the hilt of his black tsepan dirk. “When you’re hip-deep in heads, you don’t want to be taken alive by their friends.”

“I imagine not. Who told you about this useful place?”

“My father, years ago. It’s known only to the cseirin-born.”

“The lord’s immediate family?” Gemmel jumped to the obvious conclusion. “Baiart must know about it too! What if he betrayed it?”

“I hope not. He may have kept it secret for his own escape.”

“You hope? He may have? That’s flimsy, Aldric. That’s bordering on reckless.”

Aldric was already crouched in the tunnel-mouth, shuffling his feet for purchase on steep, half-remembered steps. “I know. But there’s one way to be sure, and I’m prepared to risk it. Are you?” With a scrape and rustle of black steel that proved how cramped the entrance was, he backed out of sight.

Gemmel was alone with the disinterested horses and a mist growing dangerously thin. “I’m right behind you,” he called, and worked the Dragonwand’s inflexible length through the narrow entrance before swinging his own lean, lanky frame down and in. “As if there was any other choice.”

*

The sun was a straw-pale disc in a chilly azure sky, and King Rynert sat on a camp-stool at the crest of Embeyan Hill with banners around him rippling in that accursed wind. Not a shred of fog remained, and his troops could move and fight like sighted men rather than blind ones. So could Kalarr’s.

It was almost noon and though they had stood down for their midday meal they remained in formation, neat and purposeful. It wasn’t much reassurance. Lord Santon’s host would have looked equally neat before catastrophe wiped it out.

Dewan ar Korentin stood a little farther down the slope, wearing a close-fitting Imperial helmet distinctive among the peaks and wide neck-guards of Alban war-helms. He was rapping his cavalry-commander’s baton against one armoured knee, but the jerky lack of rhythm showed how this uneventful waiting was eroding even his iron nerves. Rynert wanted to get up and talk to the man, ask him a needless question, do something, do anything, to end the annoying, irregular tap-tap-tap.

It stopped. Several of the other lords and officers on the hill glanced sideways at the sudden silence, then heard the distant, hollow muttering like faraway thunder that had caught Dewan’s attention. They shifted their gaze to the ridge north of Radmur Plain as he cleared his throat and moved his baton in a long, slow arc taking in half the northern horizon.

“Places, gentlemen,” he said. “Here they come.”

As if in response to ar Korentin’s cue the distant ridge went jagged with the helmets of a rank of men advancing at a pace measured by the sullen thud of drums until the skyline was clear. They stopped, spear-points twinkling in the weak sunlight, and another rank followed. And another, and another, and another, like the ripples of an incoming tide, until the slope was dense with men.

No, thought Rynert. Not men, not any more. Just puppets of dead flesh pulled by the strings of a necromancer’s will.

There was a blare of horns, their sonorous bellow thinned by distance, and the ranks closed into steel-fringed wedges faced with scarlet shields. Groups of horsemen moved up alongside. The Alban drums and bugles sounded a response, sending couriers galloping down from the generals on the ridge as each regiment shifted into close order against cavalry they could kill or open dispersion to avoid the traugarin they could not.

From any lower vantage-point the enemy formation was a straightforward frontal assault, but Rynert’s advantage of height meant he could see movement at the rear flanks that might be a planned encirclement. First open engagement, then stab in the back, they were tactics well suited to Kalarr’s reputation.

The drums boomed again, the horns wailed and the red shields began to lumber forward. Ar Korentin, mounted now, waved his baton towards Lord Dacurre’s cavalry and unleashed them against cu Ruruc’s horsemen. It gave the haughty, hard-to-control kailinin a chance to do something useful, because the likelihood of their doing something stupid increased the longer he held them in reserve.

Arrows flickered between the riders as they closed, then the Albans returned bows to cases, twirled out their long spears in the same movement, hefted shields high and ploughed into the enemy with a great howling crash. Men on both sides were unhorsed or skewered as the two galloping ranks passed through one another with the bugles on both sides already sounding recall.

Rynert tried to remain dispassionate as a general should, but he was all too aware of his racing pulse and sweaty hands. Other commanders had already given way to their excitement with shouts and waving batons, standing in their stirrups for a better view or hammering iron-clad fists on armoured knees. The King raised his own baton to the signallers. It was time his foot-regiments fell back, and concentrating on their disciplined manoeuvres would force the drama of the cavalry duel to the back of his mind.

Then he heard someone swear harshly and looked around to where a troop of Kalarr’s horsemen galloped headlong towards Embeyan Ridge. Lord Dacurre’s crack household troops were hard after them, bows drawn again and shooting as they rode. The Alban kailinin were clearing saddles at almost two hundred yards, and they weren’t doing it fast enough.

Because these mercenaries were coming for the King.

*

A swirling cloud of green foxfire hung around Ykraith’s uplifted point, mingling with the shimmer of the Echainon stone to give eyes accustomed to the gloom enough light to see by. But only just. After Aldric stumbled for a third or maybe fourth time he glanced irritably at the feeble glow. “Can’t you do better than that?”

“Yes, I can,” said Gemmel. “And I won’t. The better we can see, the better we can be seen.”

Aldric didn’t argue; the silent darkness had been playing tricks on him, creating footsteps inside his head and shapes from light reflecting off quartz, drops of water, even his own eyelashes. He’d been along this tunnel only once before, fourteen years ago, and what little he recalled reminded him of the Cavern of Firedrakes. The memory was enough to make anyone uneasy.

The passage turned a sharp corner and ended in a wall of rough-hewn granite blocks - some no larger than bricks, others six feet or more across.

“Your move, I think.” Gemmel held the Dragonwand aloft, letting power flow into it until the foxfire swelled and grew, driving back the shadows. “Where does this open? If it’s a guardroom, I’d like to know now rather than find out later.”

“It’s not.” Aldric didn’t expand on the reply. Instead he studied the wall for a moment, then pushed against a stone no different to the others until it sank a handspan into the wall. With a muffled rumbled of counterweights, one of the huge slabs ground slowly open.

“I was afraid that might have rusted solid,” he said, more relieved than he probably intended, and made for the doorway. Then he laughed, an odd little sound, and gestured Gemmel through in a bitter show of manners. “Gemmel-altrou, I bid you welcome to my house.”

Old supply-bins lined the chamber beyond, their lids thick with long-undisturbed dust and a shroud of cobwebs. The foxfire had died back again, but there was still enough to show faint traces where footprints, one set large and one small, had gone out and back again. Aldric stared at them.

“My feet, years ago. And my father’s. When he showed me this route.” He cleared his throat and walked away as if leaving the memories behind. A fine grey cloud rose in his wake and drifted again without a sound, blurring the older footprints and the new.

The door at the far end of the chamber opened with only a slight creak from its hinges. Aldric hesitated on the threshold, lowered his head in the ghost of a bow and made a curious little gesture Gemmel didn’t understand until he was inside. Then he too made the small salute of respect to honour generations of Talvalin dead. Their tombs filled the crypt, some elaborately carved, others merely polished and inscribed. More recent burial markers were pillars for cremation ashes not coffined bodies, and he caught up with Aldric beside one of them, guessing without being told whose was the frail-featured pretty face etched into its surface.

“My mother,” Aldric said. There was a barely discernible catch in his voice. “She died when I was born. My father’s place should be at her side. It isn’t, because…” The words faltered, he blinked in the soft, pale light, and Gemmel saw one emotion harden into another. “That’s why I’ve come back.”

*

Rynert stared at the enemy riders surging inexorably up the slope towards him, feeling like someone taking refuge from the spring tide atop a sandhill. Being out-thought and out-fought by a better general was one thing, but this was ridiculous. Death-or-glory charges went out with the Clan Wars, personal challenges and single combat, and weren’t what he expected from mercenaries who knew the cash value of staying alive throughout a battle.

The king tucked his baton through his belt, flinching from contact with the tsepan dirk alongside it, and laid hand to the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t afraid. Fear should have been a natural reaction to the imminence of death, yet all he felt was indignation at being cut down by an outdated tactic from the past.

Then the threat was gone.

Dewan’s personal troops, the Bodyguard cavalry, had been in their usual position behind him, drawn up Drusalan-style knee-to-knee and four rows deep. Rynert had asked none of them, junior kailinin of good clans, what they thought of being put under Imperial military discipline, but he was glad of it now. As they surged forward the troop opened just enough to pass either side of him, then closed again into a solid mass of armoured men on armoured horses pouring down on Kalarr’s men with the irresistible shock of a flash flood.

The impact broke what little formation remained to them, swept them away in swirling disarray, hurled them from their saddles and pounded them out of existence.

The savage little battle-within-a-battle with its clangour of weapons, its war-cries and its screams took place less than a hundred yards away, and Rynert forced himself to ignore the ragged spaces being torn in the Bodyguard’s formation. Instead he sent out more commands to his infantry, grouping some to counter another cavalry charge, dispersing others away from the futile assaults of sluggish traugur wedges that would roll right over any regiment they could engage.

When the Bodyguard returned up the hill they were already dressing ranks, and by the time they resumed their place at Rynert’s back those spaces had closed. But now there were only three rows of horsemen, and each row was only two-thirds its original length.

Dewan ar Korentin faced his depleted command and gave them a brief, sincere salute then swung down from the saddle of his big grey horse. Mount and rider were both spattered with blood but, from the easy way they both moved, it belonged to someone else. One source swung, dripping, from Dewan’s left hand. Rynert looked at the severed head, then at his Captain of Guards.

“Are you making a bad joke, Dewan? Or is it something from the Books of Years? Albans haven’t taken battle-trophies like that for centuries.”

“I’m not Alban, Lord King, and if it’s a joke, this bastard isn’t laughing. He’s not a trophy either.” He held the head up, so Rynert could see the jagged scar from brow to jaw that drew a chalk-white scrawl through the dark beard. “You wanted proof of Imperial involvement? Hartel Belareg wasn’t a mercenary when I last met him, he was Kortagor of Horse in the Kalitzim garrison. And I doubt he was a mercenary today. They wouldn’t have sent someone so well-marked unless it was deliberate.”

“Deliberate? A message?”

“If you know how to read it.”

“What about Imperial uniforms and colours? What about support?”

“Father of Fires, there was support enough! Didn’t you see what they did to the Bodyguard!”

“Yes, I did.” Rynert looked sidelong at Dewan’s angry face. “And I saw what the Bodyguard did to them. They’ll be rewarded for it when all this is done.” He studied Belareg’s severed head and its distinctive scar again. The heavy-lidded eyes were glazed and the slack-jawed mouth had nothing to say, but the tangle of matted hair still showed remnants of a neat military bowl-crop like Dewan’s own. “Do you think Kalarr and Duergar understood the message?”

“I doubt it. This,” Dewan glanced at the head a final time and dropped it onto the ground by his feet, “is how the Empire claims credit for success and rejects association with failure. Less obvious than a banner and more easily disowned. They’ve done it before. If Hartel’s men had won, he would have been Grand Captain of Alba after the Empire took over. Instead he lost, so within a week there won’t be anything to prove he even existed, and—”

A bugle from the plain interrupted him, no simple rallying-call or movement order this time but a frantic brazen yell for help. It blared again and again, cutting through all the other battle noises, and when Rynert realised what had provoked it he ground his teeth.

More than just Kalarr’s cavalry were human; one wedge of armoured infantry was living, breathing men. They looked no different to the rest of his army, and had moved at the typical slow pace of the traugarin until they got close enough to an Alban regiment, then charged home with unexpected, unavoidable speed. That regiment, now locked in combat, couldn’t manoeuvre to avoid the real, deadly traugur-troops closing in like so many wasps to a honeypot.

Worst of all, rather than abandon the solitary regiment to its inevitable fate someone – probably Lord Andvar, who had objected at noisy length to such a ruthless order – had sent four more regiments in support. It was no more a reinforcement than patching a broken tide-wall with a bucket of mud, because they were advancing straight into the jaws of the pincers. Gemmel had been right, Rynert had been wrong, and now his soldiers would pay the price of it by the hundreds instead of only by the score.

“Look there!” Dewan pointed as the cluster of vermeil banners along the distant ridge shifted position. “Isn’t this what he’s been waiting for?” A distant blare of horns and a hammer of drums confirmed cu Ruruc’s answer.

It was a stark and simple yes.

*

“There, Lord, you see?” said the mercenary captain. “I was right. It’s much harder to hold troops back than send them forward.”

Kalarr cu Ruruc’s steel-sheathed fingers opened wide like a clutching metal talon then closed to a fist. He rose in his stirrups and made a great sweep through the air with his flail. Drums rolled and all across the plain the uncommitted wedges broke, reforming in a crescent which moved forward to outflank the Alban host, to buckle its formations and encircle it before annihilation.

“Good,” he said. “Very, very good. Now here are your final orders.”

“Command me, Lord, and I shall see it done.”

“Those who oppose me are my sworn enemies. I need no ransoms. No hostages. No prisoners. Kill them all.”

*

“Where is everyone?” Aldric whispered. “No guards, no retainers, no servants. Nothing.”

“All gone to the battle,” Gemmel replied just as quietly. “Cu Ruruc emptied the fortress. He wants to make absolutely sure this time.”

“He should have made absolutely sure that nobody would be creeping about behind him.” Aldric lowered Widowmaker from across his back and made her scabbard secure on his weapon-belt. “So where’s Duergar?”

“Somewhere with a lot of floor-space. He’s keeping thousands of traugarin on their feet. That needs a gigantic conjuration circle.”

“Then I know where to find him. The feast-hall. Follow me.” Aldric made off at a quick, stealthy pace, flitting through the dim, familiar galleries in his black armour like an ominous spectre from the citadel’s past. Gemmel followed at a safe distance, because respect for the skill he had helped to refine tempered any fondness for his fosterling and, if Isileth Widowmaker was suddenly unsheathed, he had no wish to be within the arc of the blade. He remembered thinking, when they first met, that this young man was frightening. Now he was sure of it.

Aldric stopped at the foot of a flight of stairs and nodded towards the door at the top. “Is he there? Can you sense anything?”

Besides the ferocity you wear like a garment, my son? “Nothing.”

“Not even a sentry to guard his back?” The shadows shifting within his war-mask hid Aldric’s expression, but Gemmel heard him let out a stutter of breath in what sympathetic ears might have recognised as a laugh. “I should thank him.” He went up the stairs three at a time and for an instant Gemmel thought he had put all sense aside and would burst straight into the hall. Instead he stopped short, listened for a second, and gently eased the door open.

Inside was dark, the daylight kept at bay by curtains over every window, and the air was heavy with incense. It tingled with enchantments, a shudder-provoking sensation that raised the hairs on Aldric’s neck and made him sweat. There was a sound of chanting from the lord’s dais at the far end of the hall, one sonorous phrase punctuated by the striking of a gong. After a brief flicker of greenish light and a pause while the threads of scented smoke grew thicker, the chant began again and the gong chimed its single note.

Gemmel recognised the spell. It held charmed Undeath in the traugarin, keeping their cold flesh from corruption, and it would shatter beyond recovery if Aldric’s mission succeeded. He swore silently at himself and made a sign to avert ill-luck. When he succeeded. When, not if. When!

Duergar’s unmistakable silhouette, outlined by half a dozen lamps, was a perfect target. Aldric drew the telek from his belt and released its safety-slide as he slipped along the shadows connecting each tall pillar to its neighbour. He had no scruples about putting a dart through the back of his unsuspecting victim’s head. Not this victim.

Still chanting, the Drusalan strode to one side of the dais and returned with a metal wand, using it first to strike the gong, next to sketch an outline in the air. Aldric tensed, moved a little clear of the sheltering pillar, levelled the telek and squeezed its trigger-bar. In that same instant the necromancer turned, his left hand thrust out and syllables of destruction tumbled from his lips.

The telek-dart flashed to dust in mid-flight and Aldric threw himself down and sideways as a jolt of power whipcracked through where he had been standing. Duergar looked down at the sprawling armoured body and grinned.

“Hate has a smell, Talvalin,” he said. “You stink of it.”

Aldric said nothing, trying to anticipate which way to roll before the inevitable second blast of power smashed him to a pulp. Then there was a flash like a midsummer thunderstorm and a monstrous detonation shattered every window in the hall. Burn-stench swamped the sickly incense odour and when Aldric raised his face from the floor there was a channel gouged into the stone dais. The basalt flowed sluggishly, like black honey.

“He’s no challenge, Drusalan. Why not test your skill against me?” Gemmel’s hard-edged voice was a verbal slap in the face and Duergar responded with a throwing movement of one hand. An invisible force wrenched at the smouldering curtains, and the door where Gemmel stood exploded into kindling.

Or rather, where he had been standing, for now he was yards clear of the target even though Aldric hadn’t even seen him move.

“Impressive,” he said. “But slow. Very, very slow.”

Duergar snarled and levelled his wand, the end of it already orange-red like the mouth of a furnace. Then the thing spat a crackling globe of fire. Gemmel replied with the Dragonwand, and flaring streaks of energy and heat laced the smoky air of the hall. Pillars erupted with flame-cored smoke, fabrics flashed to crumbling ash. All was searing light and noise and colour.

Aldric went flat against the floor and shut his eyes.

*

“If Aldric and the old man can do anything, they’d better do it soon,” Dewan muttered to the king as he stared at the encircling shields. “What I wouldn’t give for a clear charge across the plain. I’d scour the ridge clean of Kalarr and—”

“Dewan, old friend, stop dreaming.” Rynert’s face was grim. “We’re finished, and you know it. If the fog hadn’t blown away, if Andvar hadn’t broken ranks…”

“If, if, if! Stop using that stupid little word, Rynert! If you give up now, you might as well use your tsepan. We’re not beaten until cu Ruruc can ride across this slope without fearing for his dirty life, and he can’t do it yet.”

The ranks contracted a little more, swords and spears flickering about the iron-rimmed shields. Arrows slashed through the air and Kalarr’s host drew their noose another notch tighter. More of the king’s men died. Rynert settled his own shield on his arm, drew his taiken and made to throw the scabbard away. Instead he laid it across his camp-stool.

“I’ll collect this later,” he told Dewan with a wry grin that fooled neither of them. “I wouldn’t want the tooled leather to get scratched…”

*

The mercenary captain turned to look for more approval on Kalarr cu Ruruc’s face and his smile evaporated, because the sorcerer’s features were pale and pinched, and though his mouth moved no sound came out. “My lord? My lord, are you unwell?”

Kalarr jerked like a man awakening from nightmare and stared at the soldier with wide, wild eyes. “Something’s happening. Something’s going wrong. I can feel it. Finish them! Hurry!” His voice rose to a scream of fury. “I won’t lose this time! Not again!”

Horns wailed and war-drums thundered while messengers galloped across the plain with orders to hasten the killing. Kalarr watched them go, the glazed dullness of his eyes seeming to see other things and other places. Then a perceptible shiver passed through the traugarin and they faltered in their advance.

Kalarr reeled, recovered himself and twisted round to glare towards Dunrath. He swayed in his saddle again and the mercenary captain grabbed his arm, then flinched away from the snarl of feral rage that twisted his master’s face.

“My lord,” the man yelled, his voice hoarse with panic, “what’s the matter?” Kalarr ignored him. He rode to the crest of the ridge and stared at the distant spike-edged shadow of the fortress.

“The chant,” he shouted. “Continue the chant. The charm’s failing, damn you! Ignore Talvalin and continue the chant! Duergar, you’re betraying me!” Kalarr’s roan stallion reared and squealed as its rider sawed savagely on the reins, filled with a sudden need to hurt. “Renew my host, you Drusalan bastard!” he howled, and rode like a storm for the citadel.

*

Aldric lifted his head in the sudden shocking silence and looked from side to side before he dared stand up. Duergar’s wand was gone, the Dragonwand was on the floor behind Gemmel, and both men had their open hands raised as if pressing against a great weight. The air between them rippled and distorted with currents of energy, and the first to weaken would die in the same instant.

“Take Ykraith and use it, Aldric!” Gemmel’s voice strained to be heard above the high, eldritch howl of power. “Use it now!”

Aldric might have protested that he didn’t know how, but there was no time for questions and Gemmel would never have given such a command without good reason.

“Abath arhan, Ykraith!” he shouted as he had done in the Cavern of Firedrakes, scooping the spellstave from where it had fallen. If there were other words, none came. Instead a low rumbling sound more felt than heard tore the shimmer of enchantment apart like a cobweb in a high wind. Duergar staggered and levelled his hand to deliver the Invocation of Fire, but Aldric parried instinctively with the Dragonwand as if it had been a sword and the billow of sorcerous flame splashed impotently against an invisible shield just feet short of where he stood.

“Duergar,” he said. “Look at me.”

The necromancer cringed as if threatened with a whip, then lowered his arms to his sides. Aldric stared at him, trembling. He had rehearsed what he would say when this moment finally arrived, high-sounding noble phrases practiced over and over. But in all that practice he had been holding an honourable taiken, not a spellstave thrumming like a living creature. Now none of those fine words mattered and his voice was passionless and weary beyond belief.

“I bring you a gift. The thing you’ve cheated and defied and used for far too long.” He raised the Dragonwand until it aimed straight at the Drusalan’s chest. “I bring you Death.” Nothing happened, and Duergar licked his lips then let out a harsh bray of laughter.

“You can’t!” he sneered. “You don’t know how to—!”

A sound like a storm through trees drowned out his scorn as Ykraith took Aldric’s stored-up hatred and amplified it into a dazzling pulse of force. The crystal flame of the dragonhead flared intolerably bright and sent that force swirling across the hall to enfold Duergar Vathach in a white-hot embrace. His skin split and blackened, his flesh flaked until the bones showed through, and his charring skull gaped in a soundless shriek as a tongue of living flame licked his calcined teeth. The fierce glare dimmed and faded into nothing. A twisted, flaking charcoal thing lay shrivelled in a puddle of its own still-molten grease. It was no bigger than a doll and it sizzled, sounding and smelling like meat too long in the pan.

Aldric took a deep breath, coughed on the horrible savoury smoke clogging his nostrils, and stabbed the Dragonwand into the floor. He felt drained, and sick, and fouled. Duergar’s last words had been right; he didn’t know how to use it and never had, but the spellstave had used him. No-one could deny he had fulfilled the oath made to his dying father, but now, too late to undo what he had done, he was certain that the most brutal vengeance of his imagination would have been more honourable than this.

He wondered if it was that way every time.

*

The silence and the stench of death hung heavy over Radmur Plain. King Rynert’s soldiers remained in a tight mass along the crest of Embeyan Hill, because moving from their positions meant walking ankle-deep in a morass of rotting corpses.

The fighting was over, because Kalarr’s mercenaries, appalled, outnumbered and most importantly, without an employer, were in panicked flight, and there was no one else left standing under the winged-viper banners. One minute, his victory had been a foregone conclusion. Then between one sword-swing and the next the bulk of his army had dropped where they stood, like thousands of string-cut marionettes, as weeks or months of decomposition caught up with them all at once.

“Gemmel-an was right, Lord King,” said Dewan ar Korentin. “Kill the master and the puppets die.”

Rynert fingered his nose tenderly, wondering if it was broken or not. The last few minutes of the battle had been a savage brawl very different from the dignified, elegant combats outlined in the war-manuals.

“There’s a stink about this whole business, Dewan, and it’s more than just the filth out there.”

“You’re being suspicious again. Aldric-arluth took oath to kill the Drusalan necromancer, and he succeeded. That’s all.”

“All? Perhaps.” Rynert gave no sign of noticing what was now Aldric’s correct title. “We should get to Dunrath as fast as we can. Kalarr’s still unaccounted for, and he was last seen heading for the fortress. I don’t want to go from battle to siege in a single day. And don’t forget what I said about Baiart Talvalin.”

Dewan nodded, then issued rapid orders for disposal of the carrion fouling the hilltop. Those orders involved wood from Baelen Forest and oil from Dunrath, to prevent another necromancer at another time finding the same raw material as Duergar had done.

“The old Overlord Erhal should have done this in the first place,” he said, then shrugged. “But he was killed, of course.”

“So he was, Dewan.” Rynert signalled for remounts. “So were many people, then and today. My concern is with who’s still alive.”

Dewan ar Korentin watched, expressionless, as the king mounted a horse and cantered away. He hadn’t said “inconveniently alive”, at least not aloud, but the word had been there all the same.

Ar Korentin wondered whose inconvenience King Rynert meant.

*

“Aldric?” The voice from behind him wasn’t Gemmel’s, and he drew Isileth as he turned. “Go ahead,” said the man in the doorway. “I would welcome it.”

“Baiart.” Aldric lowered the taiken but didn’t sheathe it. Not yet. “Baiart, before Heaven, why?”

Baiart Talvalin walked forward into the smoke-diluted sunlight coming from the shattered windows. “Why indeed? Aldric, telling you the whole story would be more than I could stomach. The short answer is, I wanted to live. They caught me that first time when I came back from Cerdor, and they gave me the choice of life as their figurehead or… Or Undeath as one of Duergar’s creatures. I chose life. Existence, rather.”

What Aldric saw in his brother’s face made him look away.

“I’ve been dead for years, but Kalarr never confirmed it even when I played the drunk to make him angry. He did worse than that. He laid a spellbond on me to make me harmless.” The word came out like a whimper of pain. “I couldn’t kill him, I couldn’t kill Duergar, I couldn’t even kill myself. He left me able to wear my tsepan every day, Aldric, and I couldn’t use it. He took away the only privilege I had left.”

That was when Aldric returned Widowmaker to her scabbard, because the longing in Baiart’s eyes whenever they glanced at the long blade was making him shiver.

“Baiart is the son of a clan-lord.” This time the voice was Gemmel’s. “He has the right.”

“No. No, I won’t.” Weeks ago, in a bruising burst of fury, Aldric had imagined himself watching Baiart die without a qualm. Times had changed. He had changed. “I can’t. Not my own brother.”

“You don’t have to. Give him your own tsepan. There were never any spells on it. Otherwise you’ll be a witness at his execution, because for all sorts of reasons, King Rynert will insist.”

“His what? He’s kailin-eir, entitled to—”

“To something you can’t refuse me, Aldric,” Baiart was almost pleading. “Not for the sake of our past, we never had one. For the sake of my future.”

Aldric had no memory of handing the dirk to Baiart or his sword to Gemmel, but he must have done, for the old enchanter came back moments later with both weapons in his hands.

“It’s over,” he said gently. “And Widowmaker is still clean.”

Aldric looked at the taiken, and it was several long seconds before he sheathed it by his side again. He didn’t touch the tsepan at all.

Baiart was covered to the chin with one of the few wall-hangings to survive the sorcerous combat of… Was it really only ten minutes ago? His eyes were closed and his features had relaxed from whatever pains had twisted it. Aldric looked down at his brother and realised he was alone at last. Alone like Gemmel, utterly, irrevocably alone. The thought no longer frightened him as once it had done. He went down on one knee, lifted a corner of the tapestry and lightly, as if not to waken him, laid it over Baiart’s face.

*

“Is everyone in this damned fortress dead or deaf?”

The speaker was a tall man in full battle armour covered by a leather cymar, with a light flail tucked through his belt and a taiken slung across his back. His war-mask hung from loosened straps at his neck, revealing the moustached, sweaty face of someone in a hurry.

“Who are you, kailin?” Aldric was ready for any answer except, perhaps, the one he got.

“I’m a courier from the battlefield. Rynert is victorious, and cu Ruruc is dead.”

The news, delivered so dry and flat, gave Aldric little satisfaction. Duergar’s death and the manner of it had made him sick of slaughter, and with Baiart’s suicide following so soon after, his mood was introspective and his thoughts elsewhere.

“This place is Duergar Vathach’s citadel,” said the courier. Steel chains rang as he tugged the flail from his belt and looped its strap round his left wrist while he shot suspicious glances at every shadow. “Where is he?”

“Also dead,” said Aldric. “I killed him.”

Gemmel came up beside him with the Dragonwand in both hands, holding it so one of them covered the Echainon stone. A spark of realisation sprang to life in Aldric’s gloomy mind, and he made a tiny gesture of acknowledgement with one hand.

No horseman could have covered the distance between Radmur Plain and Dunrath if he’d waited till the fighting was over. Even riding his mount into the ground, this warrior must have started out a good ten minutes before knowing which way any victory would go. Under that blue leather overrobe the courier’s armour was vermeil red, and all the associations of the colour fought for prominence, each all too close to the reality standing in the doorway. Most significant of all, there was no tsepan at his belt. Any warrior facing battle would make sure he carried one as a last resort. But not a wizard who had met death before, whose necromancer ally treated death as a harvest, and who hated Alba, kailinin, and everything they honoured.

“You must be Talvalin,” the man said as he stalked up the hall, examining the extensive, still-smoking damage. “I’ve heard about you, ilauem-arluth.”

Aldric braced his feet a little wider and kept a careful eye on the flail swinging from the courier’s wrist. Only Gemmel knew the rank had become his. Or someone who realised the significance of the shrouded body on the floor. Someone like the scarlet-armoured kailin facing him.

Someone like Kalarr cu Ruruc.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Lord Aldric,” the man said. “To give you my commiserations. To give you my compliments. To give you my congratulations. To give you this!”

Despite unease, despite anticipation, that slow, deceptive repetition nearly worked. When the flail slashed at Aldric’s face it almost took him by surprise. Almost, but not quite. In his eagerness Kalarr had come too close, and as he ducked under the stroke Aldric threw his armoured weight against cu Ruruc’s belly, shoulder foremost.

Breath went out of the sorcerer’s lungs in a throaty grunt and he staggered backwards, dodging the savage jab of armoured fingers at his eyes by pure luck and mere inches. The steel-sheathed hand chopped under his chin, where the flexible coif gave less protection against percussive blows, and left him coughing, dazed and shocked. Full battle harness made the man who wore it into a weapon, and even an empty fist became as deadly as a mace.

Kalarr swung his flail again to make his adversary back off, but Aldric caught its chains on one upraised forearm. They coiled around it, their spiked tips rattling impotently a link-length short of doing harm, and he wrenched the braced arm backwards. Kalarr’s flail came out of his grasp like a tent-peg from wet earth, there was an instant’s resistance as its leather strap took the strain, then it snapped and the flail whirled away overhead to clatter down somewhere out of sight.

Even before it landed, Aldric’s hand was on Widowmaker’s hilt.

“Ye must naymore bear weaponis at yer wrist, cu Ruruc,” he said. “Ye han nay luck there-by.” His Elthan accent was heavy and archaic, close to how it would have sounded the last time Kalarr met an armed Talvalin clan-lord and a deliberate reminder of what had happened then.

“Don’t play games!” shouted Gemmel. “Draw and finish him!”

“Let be, altrou. Everything in good time.”

The changes that came and went in his foster-son’s voice made Gemmel take several long steps backwards as his sorcery-trained senses read its cause. He moved clear of where the inevitable clash would happen, and very well clear of Isileth Widowmaker, whose hunger had become as tangible as heat or cold.

“Not too far!” It was more an order than a request. “Watch this bastard for magic. If he tries anything besides steel, obliterate him.”

Kalarr’s eyes narrowed, wondering if Aldric’s performance was all hollow bravado or something more. Then his thin lips writhed into a grin and he released the taiken across his back. As the scabbard dropped to his belt, Kalarr put hand to hilt in a practiced movement.

“I need no spells, Talvalin.”

“From your past showing, pestreyr, you need something.”

Kalarr flicked a warning glance at Gemmel. “Don’t interfere with this,” he said. The enchanter shook his head.

“I wouldn’t dream of it. But I hope you know how to use your sword.”

“I’ve forgotten more about the taiken than this fatherless brat ever learned. He’s dead, old man. And so are you.”

“I don’t think so.” He opened his hand and Kalarr gaped at the blue crystal, whole and undamaged in the long black staff. “I have the Dragonwand, with the Echainon spellstone restored to its place. And Aldric has a sword. Have you looked at it? Look more closely.”

Aldric saw Kalarr give him full attention for the first time, and it provoked a mirthless smile within the shadows of his war-mask. He gripped Isileth Widowmaker’s long hilt, gave it the fractional twist needed to free the blade, and drew with a faint whisper of steel that for a second was the loudest sound in the hall. Louder than the beat of his heart, louder than the blood whose rushing filled his ears. And far, far louder than the tiny indrawn gasp as cu Ruruc realised what Gemmel meant.

“Isileth,” he whispered, and flexed his sword-hand as if an old, long-forgotten hurt had seared it.

“Isileth,” echoed Aldric, and said nothing more. The time for words was past. Instead he unhooked the taiken’s scabbard from his weapon-belt and pulled its cross-strap so it rose slantwise to his back, well clear of his legs. Then with as much care as if under instruction from an intolerant tutor he moved into the Boar’s Guard, blade slanted low to rip up at his opponent’s belly, and waited for Kalarr’s first move. There was no honour-bound need for a fair fight, no reason why he shouldn’t step aside and let Gemmel use the Dragonwand to finish this. No reason at all, except for the leaden sickness in his gut after Duergar’s death by magic. Aldric didn’t want to feel that again, even second-hand.

Kalarr buckled his war-mask into place then took up a counter-guard and crabbed sideways, watching Aldric’s response, waiting for an opportunity. Then with a shout to overawe his youthful opponent, he sprang forward and cut all in the same instant.

Aldric wasn’t overawed. He sidestepped, deflected and returned a cut of his own, the swords ringing together in a series of blurred strokes before both men separated. When they closed again it was with more caution and a tentative scissory touch of edge on edge, before another explosive exchange and a chance slash drew a glistening scarlet ribbon from between the armoured plates of his left wrist. When Widowmaker braced in Wolf’s Guard, the levelled point trembled and lowered out of line as if the injured wrist couldn’t support it. A lesser swordsman would have missed the error, a better one would have suspected the trap.

Cu Ruruc fell between the two.

He took one quick pace forward and slashed viciously towards the opening, only to see it close and Widowmaker’s point come back up to stab at his throat. Kalarr charged onto the waiting point, jolted to a stop and lurched sideways, clawing at the steel through his neck until it pulled free.

Then instead of falling dead to the floor he regained his balance and made a thrust in turn, so fast, so ferocious and so unexpected that though Aldric twisted aside he couldn’t avoid the point that scored across his hip. As wave of black and crimson sparks threatened to swamp his senses as he jerked away, but he would have been skewered like meat on a spit without that partial evasion. He wasn’t dead yet.

Neither was Kalarr cu Ruruc. His mangled throat closed, ripped flesh running like hot wax, until in seconds only the torn coif showed any damage. He laughed at the shock on Aldric’s pain-blanched face, said half a dozen harsh words under his breath and resumed his attack. Soon more blood spurted onto the black armour and smeared the tiled floor underfoot. It came from small cuts, wounds without importance, but receiving them when he should have blocked or sidestepped every single one was an omen of how this fight might end.

Gemmel knew those sluggish reactions came from the sense-dulling charm created by Kalarr’s words. It was an invocation like sorcery-induced drunkenness, and in normal circumstances an attempt to disrupt the magic from a distance would enhance instead of cancel it. Kalarr knew that before he cast the spell. He must also have known the Dragonwand could focus any counter as accurately as a telek-dart, yet he had dismissed its presence despite the way it had impressed him. That might have been arrogance, contempt for Gemmel’s ability, distraction at the sight of Isileth or simply a mocking reliance on Aldric’s sense of honour.

The reason didn’t matter, and the result was immediate.

This time the light from the spellstave was no more than a flicker like distant lightning, yet Aldric twitched as if stung and the fog cleared instantly from mind and eyes. He enveloped yet another thrust in a circular block bringing both swords hilt to hilt, trapped cu Ruruc’s blade in the loops and bars of Widowmaker’s guard, then wrenched it from the sorcerer’s hand. A kick from one booted foot sent the weapon skidding out of reach with Kalarr hard after it.

Aldric turned the other way and caught the Dragonwand in his left hand as Gemmel hurled it across the hall. If he had expected his wounds to heal the instant his fingers closed on it he was disappointed, but the frantic dismay on Kalarr’s face was fair compensation.

“Odds more even, yes?” Aldric was done with old words and accents, and he levelled the carved dragonhead at Kalarr’s face. “You have magic. I have magic.” Even if I still hate it and don’t know what to do with it. “Come on, you scarlet bastard. Let’s dance. Come on!”

Kalarr whirled his sword in a blow to shatter armour or cleave flesh and bone, but the cut never landed. Aldric sidestepped just far enough as momentum carried his opponent past, slewed around with him despite the injured hip, and stabbed with Ykraith. Its crystal flame punched through the lamellar scales of Kalarr’s armour as if they were thick parchment, and the Echainon stone’s glow became so blue and vivid that for an instant it cast shadows.

Then its light went out.

Kalarr cu Ruruc chuckled as he reached behind him to pluck the Dragonwand from his flesh like the sting of some small, irritating insect. There was no blood either on its point or on his back. Aldric made a small shocked sound under his breath as the sorcerer turned to face him with sword and spellstave raised. When he saw the young man’s startled, disappointed face, cu Ruruc laughed aloud.

“I knew how to use the Stone of Echainon before your ancestors built this place,” he said, and laughed again.

He was still laughing when Widowmaker scythed down onto his helmet, splitting its vermeil metal and the coif beneath, silencing his laughter and shaking the brain within his skull. The impact’s echoes rang down the pillared hall. Kalarr reeled, and the weapons slithered from his nerveless fingers onto the floor. A thin trickle wandered down his face, vivid crimson, as if the battered helmet bled.

Aldric looked at the blood, the shock-pale skin, the dark, unfocused eyes, and drew a long breath deep into his lungs. His armoured fingers clenched the wire and leather of Isileth’s long hilt, tighter and tighter until the blade trembled and his energy came boiling up as it had done against Duergar. Aldric fought it down again. Despite his hungry sword, despite the enchantments thrumming in the air, he would do this thing the kailin’s way with the clean steel of a taiken, free from the Art Magic.

“Oh, my son!”

Aldric winced as memory and loss drove their twin daggers into him and he stared as Kalarr’s features blurred and shifted, becoming between heartbeats a blue-eyed, white-bearded, lovingly remembered face that had been dust and ashes these four long years. His throat grew dry and choked, making the name he spoke just a muted whisper:

“Haranil-arluth?” A throbbing, persuasive pressure in his brain made him want to believe. “Oh, father…”

The wise, dignified face smiled from inside its vermeil war-mask, and the figure wearing it leaned forward to lift something from the floor. There was a faint sound of steel.

The glamour broke.

Haranil’s face crumpled, became cu Ruruc’s face grinning past a raised longsword, then collapsed again into a smear of ruptured tissue. For all his brag about the spellstone, cu Ruruc had taken three wounds which would have killed any man not bolstered by sorcery. His last, desperation-invoked spell was no illusory disguise, but a true Shaping which drew more power than he could spare. Kalarr still hadn’t recovered from the great spell used against Lord Santon’s legion, and more High Magic was too much for his injured body.

He paid the price.

Then Widowmaker blurred out in a single thrust with years of grief riding on her blade, and Kalarr cu Ruruc paid again.

The sword burst between his armour’s scarlet scales, punched through mail and leather, skin and meat and breastbone, and severed the great blood-vessels above his heart before it wrenched free. This time blood spewed from the wound as it would from any ordinary man and spattered on the floor with a sound like rain, laying ruby droplets over Baiart’s shrouded face.

Aldric backed away, wondering even as he did so why he hadn’t taken off cu Ruruc’s suppurating head. To leave it on was to invite a dying curse, but the sorcerer looked beyond the power of speech.

He wasn’t. Even as he slumped to his knees, Kalarr’s lips tried to shape words that refused to come.

“Misjudged you, Talvalin,” he croaked at last. His mouth twisted as a spasm ripped through him, then relaxed and even tried to form a smile. “Should have known. A better killer. Than myself.” He coughed and bloody bubbles trickled down his chin. “Foolish. I’ll not make. That mistake ag—”

The smile went fixed and his body sagged, still kneeling upright though all life had fled.

Aldric stared at the corpse for several seconds, oblivious to gore that puddled boot-sole deep. Oath kept, vengeance complete, and all done with a blade as tradition required. Did it taste any sweeter than when he blasted Duergar with magic? He didn’t know. All he could taste was fear and sourness and the metallic tang of his own blood.

A single double-handed sweep lopped off Kalarr’s once-handsome head, but Aldric didn’t bend to pick it up. Instead he made a small sound lost between a snarl and a half-stifled sob, and kicked the grisly trophy out of sight.

*

“He’s dead, Lord King. By his own hand and his own choice. By my own choice, I didn’t witness it.”

“I see.” Rynert looked beyond Aldric’s bowed head and caught Dewan watching them with an odd expression on his face. Almost like a smile. “You’re aware,” the king continued, “that Baiart’s death forestalls any seizure of Talvalin lands? If I had intended such a step, of course.”

“Of course.” Aldric looked up with all the stiff-lipped pride of past generations frozen on his face and his eyes unreadable. “Yes, Lord King, I’m aware of it. If I said otherwise I’d be a liar or a fool. But my concern was with my brother’s honour. Believe it or not, as you wish. I care neither way.”

“I believe you, Aldric-arluth.” Rynert watched for a reaction as he used the title. It wasn’t what he’d been expecting.

“I plead exception from lordship for a while, mathern-an,” said Aldric. “I was never trained for it, and this fortress holds too many memories. In a year, maybe. Or two. Appoint a castellan to hold it for me, until I come back.”

“Come back from where, Lord King? Valhol, perhaps?”

“The memories are there too.”

“Then perhaps a journey to the Empire?”

“Mathern-an, why should I do that?” Aldric’s tone of voice suggested the question wasn’t as naïve as he made it sound, and Rynert let a faint smile cross his face.

“As a favour to, let’s say, a high-ranked friend whose friendship should be valued.”

“I may indeed visit the Drusalan Empire after all. At some time or other.”

“When you do, I would have you convey messages of a certain delicacy to my allies there. Emperor Droek’s death has changed our rather awkward situation. Many high officials are more concerned by affairs within the Empire than with wars of conquest. To that end they need assurance of my neutrality.”

“And a promise there’ll be no more shipments of roofing lead?” It might not have been the wisest thing to say, but Aldric was growing tired of scheming. The king tried another smile. This time it didn’t work properly.

“Just so.” Rynert cleared his throat. “You now have sufficient rank to carry such assurance.”

But not enough importance to be missed if things turn ugly. This time Aldric didn’t say it aloud. Better not to tempt fate more than once a day.

“I will have certain phrases encharmed here,” Rynert touched one fingertip lightly to Aldric’s forehead, “where they’ll lie forgotten until the counter-charm releases them. Do you understand?”

Aldric understood well enough, and didn’t like it. Taking secrets into the Drusalan Empire was bad enough, taking them under sorcerous lock was much, much worse. Yet it was all of a piece with everything else Rynert had been willing to do: things like the privateers on Techaur Island, the smuggled gold aboard En Sohra, the Shadowthief and Emperor Droek’s timely death.

“Is that all?” he asked in a voice sharper than usually addressed to kings.

“Not quite. If you have any other opportunity to prove my friendship, I expect it to be done. As a token of good will, of course.”

“Of course.” Aldric rose, bowed and limped from the room, wondering whether a blunt refusal would have been more hazardous than this half-hearted agreement. Then he shrugged. One way or another, the thing was done.

*

It was cold in the courtyard; the sun hadn’t yet risen and a thin layer of night-mist still hung in the air. Aldric rose to his saddle and with packhorse in tow rode east from Dunrath to join the Radmur road. From the ramparts of the donjon, three people watched him go.

“Hold this place till I come back.” King Rynert sounded dubious. “Now we’ve let him go, will he come back at all?”

The distant rider crested the eastern slope just as the sun rose above it, and he vanished in a glare of white light. Gemmel leaned against the battlements, gazing over them though there was nothing even he could see. He made no reply to Rynert’s question, perhaps not even heard above a bell on the fortress walls ringing to announce the dawn.

“He will,” said Dewan ar Korentin. “Duergar and cu Ruruc learnt that much. Aldric Talvalin always comes back. When it suits him, and in his own good time.”

Warmed by the sun, a last skein of mist thinned from the empty ridge, then faded and was gone.

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