Songs of the Earth (36 page)

Catch me if you can!

Gair surveyed the chess board in front of him. It would take more than luck to survive this game. A distressingly large number of his pieces stood on Darin’s side of the table. He had managed to make up some ground in the last few games, earning a couple of wins and several draws, although the Belisthan was still ahead on total victories. His bold, dashing style occasionally proved to be his undoing against Gair’s patient opposition, but tonight he had the game trussed up like an Eventide goose. All that was missing was chestnuts.

‘I think I’m going to have to concede,’ Gair said.

‘No you’re not.’

‘What do you mean? You’ve got me completely boxed in. If I move a single piece you’ll just pounce on my queen and then it’s checkmate in two.’

Darin rocked his stool onto its back legs, grinning fit to split his face like a honey-melon. ‘You’ve still got a way out.’

‘The only way out of this is a hands-to-heaven miracle.’

‘Trust me, my friend: there is a way out of this dog’s breakfast you’ve made of your game that would allow you to leave this room with your head held high and your honour intact. You’re just going to have to work for it.’

‘Smugness is not becoming, you know.’

Gair folded his arms on the table and propped his chin on them,
frowning at the board. The knight on the right only had one move available to him that wouldn’t leave him immediately vulnerable, and that was backwards into wide-open territory, four squares from Darin’s nearest piece. He only had three pawns left and he was using them to protect his queen. No matter how he stared at the little carved figures, he couldn’t see a way to earn even a draw. He simply hadn’t seen it coming.

‘I can’t see it.’

‘You’re not looking hard enough.’

Growling in frustration, Gair surveyed the board again, one piece at a time. Darin continued to swing back and forth on his stool, tossing the little velvet pouch from hand to hand.

‘This isn’t like you, Gair. What’s thrown you off your game?’

Yet he should have seen it; there had been more than enough clues. How could he have been so blind? Had he been asleep? Saints have mercy, what the hell was he supposed to do?

‘Gair?’

It had begun innocently enough. They had passed the afternoon in a whirl of stalking and being stalked, no different to a dozen other such days. Then he had returned to his human form to find his two arms full of woman, and she’d taken full advantage of the momentary disorientation that followed a change. Holy Mother, his
teacher
.

Catch me if you can!

Reaching out, Gair fingered the least-essential of his three pawns. He hadn’t caught her, of course, no matter how hard he’d tried, and she had taken great delight in taunting him about it. He still didn’t know how to speak with his mind, so he couldn’t answer back, and each over-shot leap or missed lunge with his jaws had simply made her laugh as she danced out of his way.

To cap it all, she had pushed him into a stream – blindsided him, bowled him over into a foot and a half of water straight down from the snowline, and hadn’t even had the decency to wait within range of the spray when he shook himself.

But that kiss had lingered long after he had run his coat dry. For a brief interval, not much more than a heartbeat, her mouth had clung to his, as sweet as a promise of redemption. He had said a few days ago that she wasn’t scary, but dear Goddess, she was scaring him now – or at least the way she made him feel was as close to fear as made no difference. Sweating palms, dry mouth, heart thumping so hard on his ribs it was almost painful – all she had to do was turn those eyes on him.

If he had to tell someone, he supposed it would be Darin. They had become firm friends over his time on the Isles; surely he could trust him. After all, the sunny-faced Belisthan hadn’t breathed a word about his shape-shifting since learning of it. His teacher! What in the name of all the saints was he going to do?

Gair rolled the pawn round on its base with his fingertip, still trying to find the right move. Darin twirled the little velvet pouch around his finger on its string, humming tunelessly.

‘Bad move?’

‘Let’s say I wouldn’t, if I was in your position, and that’s all the help I’m going to give you.’

Gair still couldn’t see the move the Belisthan insisted was there. Goddess, his concentration was in tatters. And he couldn’t see any way for anything to happen between them, not that had any chance of working out. She was on the Council, and he’d not even been graded as novice yet, regardless of the mantle at the back of his closet.

‘I’m beaten, Darin. You know I am. Why don’t you just let me concede, then I can slink away and lick my wounds?’

‘No chance,’ the Belisthan chortled. ‘Your stunning gameplay got you here; now you’re going to play yourself out of it.’

The answer had to be somewhere here. With so many books, so much stored knowledge in this room, one of them had to contain what he sought. But all Ansel had found so far were secrets. Secrets and lies.

He scowled as he closed the volume in front of him and pushed it towards the back of the table to join the dozen others discarded over the last hour. He did not have time to read every book there; all he could do was skim a few pages and try to gauge from that whether it might be the one he needed. That was the only way to winnow the stacks of crackling parchment and mouldering leather bindings that weighed down the shelves around him, but the fear that he might overlook the one volume he needed gnawed at him constantly.

A diffident cough behind him said the librarian tasked to assist him had returned. Ansel smoothed his expression as the reedy young man in the brown robe placed another pile of books at his elbow.

‘The last books from that shelf, my lord,’ he said.

‘Thank you— Alquist, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, my lord.’ A smile flickered nervously across his acne-scarred face, then took fright and fled. ‘Um, my lord? Will that be all?’

‘No, my son, I have work for you yet.’

The next book was a monstrous thing with warped wooden covers held closed by straps, which had taken two librarians to wrestle onto the table. It was unlikely to be what he sought, yet he could not afford to dismiss any of them on the basis of size alone. Opening it elicited a grunt of effort, though the stiff pages were in rather better condition than the binding had given Ansel reason to expect; the ink, on the other hand, was faded to near illegibility. He brought his lamp closer. Dear Goddess, it would take him a week to decipher the first page of pinched script.

‘Only it’s past Evensong now and the archives are supposed to be closed. The keeper—’

‘Tell me, Alquist,’ Ansel sat back in his chair and quite deliberately let the golden Oak on his breast catch the light, ‘who is Preceptor of our Order? Me, or the keeper of the archives?’

‘You, my lord, of course. But the keeper—’

‘The keeper,’ said Ansel crisply, ‘will keep. Thank you, Alquist. I shall ring for you when I have need of you.’

The librarian folded his hands in his sleeves and bowed, but not before Ansel had seen the twist of misery that distorted his expression.

‘Of course, my lord,’ he said and retreated to the main library.

Ansel watched him go, lips pursed. No doubt the keeper of the archives would have some strong words for the boy, but that could not be helped. He made a mental note to see to it that the lad was not punished for being unable to overrule the Suvaeon’s highest officer, then a further note that the keeper himself might need pricking with a very large pin. The man had a vastly inflated idea of his own importance – just whom did he think he was protecting? The living, breathing Church, or Preceptors long since gone to dust?

Harrumphing, he turned his attention back to the book before him and struggled through a few lines. Ah. Transcripts of the Leahn witch trials, early Second Empire. If he had the time, it would have
made interesting reading, but alas, indulging his personal curiosity was a luxury he could not afford.

He heaved the cover closed again, releasing a bloom of dust into the air that made him cough. The spasm did not last long, but it left a tightness in his chest like steel bands around his lungs. He would have to see Hengfors soon, damn it, who would no doubt try to forbid him from leaving his rooms. He could not allow that – not yet, anyway. Once he had found what he needed, well, Hengfors could do his worst then – but not before.

The next few volumes on the table were quickly dealt with. Delirious rubbish, for the most part; he barely had to read a paragraph of each one before recognising that it could join the ever-growing stack on his right. The last but one book was a herbal, no doubt added to the Index because of the homely recipes for charms that interspersed its painstaking tracts on the medicinal properties of Syfrian marsh plants. When it too was closed and set aside, and there was just one book remaining, Ansel reached for the brass handbell next to his lamp and rang it. Alquist could empty one more shelf before he let the lad slip away to his rest.

The final book was unadorned, unremarkable. Quite small, not much taller than the length of his hand, its binding was flaking and the flyleaf was badly foxed. Not an auspicious start. It was handwritten; the script was neat – not a scribe’s hand, but certainly that of a man well accustomed to a pen. Ansel turned the fragile pages carefully, letting his eye skim over the densely worded text until a particular name arrested him. He went back to the beginning of the paragraph and read it through.

At first light, we received word of the siege. The messenger was near-incoherent with exhaustion; four days riding, with barely four hours rest! It would have been the death of many a man, but these plains rangers are hardy as their horses, it seems
.

The siege continues. All roads into the valley are held by the enemy, and they are well dug in, if I can use such terms to describe their encampment, though the tactics of assault on a fixed position are alien to
them. They make no attempt to undermine the walls or bring them down with siege-engines. Instead they are content to wait for starvation to hand them the keys to the gates. The city itself is well supplied, so Caer Ducain is far from falling yet
.

Caer Ducain. The beginning of the end of the Founding Wars. The date at the top of the page confirmed it.
At last
. Unless he was very much mistaken, he had in his hands Preceptor Malthus’ journal, and his search was almost over.

Footsteps approached from the library behind him and he let the book close.

‘Thank you, Alquist, you can start on the next shelf now,’ he said, adding, ‘Our task would be much simpler if someone had thought to catalogue this archive, or even just dust it from time to time.’

A brown robe appeared in his line of sight. From the rope girdle dangled a bunch of keys that in the right hands would have made a creditable substitute for a morningstar. Unfortunately, the keeper of the archives did not have such hands.

‘Master keeper,’ Ansel said expansively, sitting back in his chair, ‘how kind of you to stop by.’

The keeper inclined his head a fraction. ‘Lord Preceptor.’

Even the man’s voice was bloodless. From pallid pate to narrow sandalled feet, the keeper resembled something found at the bottom of a rendering kettle after pouring off all the tallow. Pale skin covered long, fleshless bones that sketched out the approximate shape of a man under the robe. His deeply shadowed sockets held eyes as dark and unblinking as those of a snake.