“I didn’t bring him. He just came, deaf to all entreaties to go home. He’d like some flax, or twine. Anything he can weave really.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“This is Cara,” Nortah introduced the slight girl at Weaver’s side. She was perhaps sixteen with wide dark eyes, stirring a memory of a little girl peering out from behind her father’s cloak at the fallen city.
“My lord,” the girl said in a small voice, eyes continually darting about the camp. Despite her timidity, the blood-song’s greeting was strong. Whatever her gift, Vaelin decided, it has power.
“And Lorkan.” Nortah’s voice held a note of reluctance as he gestured at the young man standing nearby. He was a few years older than the girl and also slim of stature, but had none of her reticence.
“A considerable honour, my lord!” He greeted Vaelin with a deep bow and a bright smile. “Never would I have thought such a lowly soul as I could count himself a comrade to the great Vaelin Al Sorna. Why, my dearest mother would weep with pride . . .”
“All right,” Nortah said, cutting him off. “Talks too much but he has his uses.”
He moved on to the final member of the group, and the most imposing, a large, bearlike man with an extensive beard and a mass of grey-black hair.
“Marken, my lord,” the big man introduced himself in a Nilsaelin accent.
“He may be able to help,” Nortah said. “With your want of intelligence.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The bodies had been placed in a tent on the edge of camp, the few valuables they possessed handed out as payment to the soldiers who would do the grim work of burying them in accordance with Cumbraelin custom. Marken moved to the closest one, a stocky man, as archers often were, his final grimace of terror frozen and incomplete, half his face having been torn away by the war-cat’s claws. Marken seemed untroubled by the gory sight, kneeling and touching his palm to the corpse’s forehead, eyes closed for a second, then shaking his head. “All a jumble. This one was half-mad long before Snowdance got to him.”
He moved on, touching a hand to each corpse in turn, pausing at the fourth, judging by the lines on his face the eldest of the group. “Better,” he said. “All a bit red and cloudy, but sane, after a fashion.” He looked up at Vaelin. “Does my lord have a particular point of interest? It’ll make things easier.”
“A priest,” Vaelin said. “And a lord.”
Marken nodded, placing both hands on the dead man’s head, eyes closed. He remained in the same position for several moments, unmoving, breathing soft, face placid beneath the beard. After a while Vaelin wondered if he was still present in his own body or, like Dahrena, able to fly beyond himself, except he burrowed into the mind of a corpse rather than soaring above the earth.
Eventually the big man opened his eyes with a pained grunt, moving back from the corpse, a sense of accusation in the gaze he turned on Vaelin. “My lord could’ve warned me of the nature of the thing I sought.”
“My apologies,” Vaelin replied. “Does that mean you found it?”
◆ ◆ ◆
“The hair’s a little thicker on the sides of his head,” Marken told Alornis, pointing at her sketch. “And his mouth is not so wide.”
Alornis’s charcoal stub added a few fluid strokes to the image, wetting her finger to smudge some lines. “Like this?”
“Yes.” Marken’s beard split to reveal a brace of white teeth. “My lady is the gifted one here.”
“That’s him?” Vaelin asked as Alornis handed him the sketch. It showed a broad-faced man, balding, bearded, eyes narrow. He wondered if Alornis had indulged in Master Benril’s liking for artistic licence in adding a cruel twist to the mouth.
“As close a resemblance as memory allows, my lord,” Marken said. “That’s the face of the thing’s mask all right.”
“You felt it? When you saw it in the dead man’s memory?”
“I saw it, behind the mask. We always see more than we know, but it lingers.” He tapped a stubby finger to the side of his head. “Especially when we see something we don’t really understand.”
“You have a name for this face?”
Marken’s beard ruffled in an apologetic grimace. “My gift is limited to what they see, my lord. What they hear is beyond my reach.”
Vaelin placed the sketch next to the one Alornis had already completed, showing a younger man of handsome aspect, though his sister had opined his nose and chin were a little too sharp. “And this is the priest?”
“Can’t say for sure, but he’s the one the dead man and the others deferred to. His most vivid memory, besides Snowdance bearing down on him, was of this man talking. They were on a dock somewhere, about to board ship.”
Vaelin stared at both sketches for a long time, hoping for a note from the song, hearing nothing.
“Shall I show master Marken to the meal tent?” Alornis said, breaking his concentration.
“Yes, of course.” Vaelin offered a smile of gratitude to Marken. “My thanks sir.”
“We are here to help, my lord.” The big man got to his feet with a groan, rubbing his back. “Though I wish this war had come a few years earlier.”
◆ ◆ ◆
He found Nortah at the butts they had arrayed along the riverbank. He had brought his own bow, an Eorhil weapon similar to their old Order strongbows. It seemed his skill had actually increased since their service, the shafts flying towards the target with unerring speed and precision, the other archers pausing to watch the spectacle.
“You’ve drawn an audience,” Vaelin observed.
Nortah glanced at the onlookers and sent his last arrow into the centre of the butt. “A small one. You don’t have many archers in this little army.”
“Mostly hunters and a few veteran Realm Guard from the settlements,” Vaelin acceded. “How would you like to be their captain? Perhaps pick out some likely extra hands from the recruits.”
“As my lord commands.”
“I don’t command anything from you, brother. In fact I’m sorely tempted to send you home.”
Nortah’s expression became sombre, upending his bow and resting his hands on the tip. “It wasn’t only Lohren who had a dream, brother. She just dreamt of you fighting many men with bows. She thought it so exciting. Sella . . . Sella dreamt she watched us die. Me, Lohren and Artis, and the twins yet to be born. All of us, taken, tortured and slaughtered before her eyes, as Nehrin’s Point burned. If you had heard her screams, you would know why she sent me and why I came, though I relish no part of what we are about to do.”
“Can you . . .” Vaelin hesitated then made himself say it. “Do you think you’ll still be able to kill?”
Nortah raised an eyebrow and for an instant the bearded teacher disappeared, replaced by the caustic youth with the bitter tongue. “Do you? I have a shiny new sword. Yours seems to be wrapped up and hidden from the world.”
Maybe I’m worried unsheathing it will loose something worse than an invading army. He left the thought unsaid and changed the subject. “These companions of yours. I know Weaver’s power, and I’ve seen what Marken can do. What of the other two?”
“Cara can call the rains, though you’ll want to think long and hard before asking her to do so. The effect is . . . dramatic, but the consequences unpredictable.”
“And the boy?”
“Lorkan can’t be seen.”
Vaelin frowned. “I can see him.”
Nortah just smiled. “It’s . . . difficult to explain. No doubt, before this is over there’ll be plenty of opportunity for a demonstration.”
“No doubt.” Vaelin reached out to clasp his brother’s hand, finding the grip strong, and warm. “I’m glad you’re here, brother. Be quick about picking your men. Tomorrow we march for the Realm.”
CHAPTER THREE
Lyrna
Water . . . Falling . . . A slow, regular liquid beat, birthing an echo.
Am I in a cave? Later, she would remember this as her first coherent thought as Queen of the Unified Realm. Her second being the fact that she was now queen. Her third would be a silent wail of despair at the agony searing its way into her mind, summoning horror and making her thrash and scream . . . The flames spouting from the Volarian woman’s hands, Malcius, Ordella, Janus, little Dirna, the stench of her skin and hair as it burned . . . She choked as the scream spluttered to silence. There was something in her mouth, something hard and unyielding clamped between her teeth. She tried to pull it free but found her hands unwilling to respond, restrained somehow. It occurred to her that she should open her eyes.
Darkness, broken by a dim shaft of light, hazy shapes huddled in catacombs. A cave after all. But why is it swaying so? And why do chains dangle from the ceiling?
A jerking movement from one of the huddled shapes commanded her eye, a loud retching reaching her ears along with the spatter of vomit. Silence returned, save for a faint whimpering, the occasional jangle of linked metal, and the creak of protesting wood.
Not a cave. A ship.
“So,” a soft, gravelled voice muttered in the shadows to her left. “The screamer’s awake again.”