The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age) (19 page)

It was so easy to look now. Ever since he had borrowed the boar’s eyes, Edmund had felt that he had mastered the trick of it. He could move from gaze to gaze almost without thinking; he could even control his own movements while he
looked through another’s eyes. And yet here in the cell none of it helped at all.

He wondered for the hundredth time where they could have taken Elspeth.
The stone cell
, Orgrim had said. The words meant nothing to him. He concentrated on sending his sight out as far as he could, first in one direction, then another. Someone pounding beans at a wooden table; a woman feeding chickens; a man on horseback – a Guardian, judging by his sleek horse. A wandering dog sniffing at a meat bone. There was the stone Rede House, seen through the eyes of a woman hurrying through the square. He reached further, inside the building, and found a slave boy strewing rushes on the flagstones. But there were no steps or trapdoors in the stone floor; nothing that could be a cell, and no guards in the building to watch prisoners. And, though he strained his sight in every direction, no trace of the glowing whiteness he had seen on the one occasion that he tried to use Elspeth’s eyes.

Could she be dead?
He pushed that thought away. Orgrim had said she was to be questioned.
She will be wherever Orgrim is
, he thought.

Orgrim had tried to reach inside Edmund’s mind again when he made his entrance in the Rede House. Edmund had felt his presence at once. Orgrim had not wanted to see through Edmund’s eyes, nor even to feel the shape of his thoughts, but to let Edmund know of his power. And he did know it! It had swept through him like a storm-blast; like
screams of the sinking
Spearwa
; like the gaping, merciless grin of Torment; like the blackness of the drowning sea.

Edmund buried his face in his hands. Another thought came to him – the barest impression, like a dream that fades on waking. There was something else about Orgrim that he had noticed, something that pricked at the edge of his mind like a thorn in a shoe. Was it the way he strode into the Rede House, the way he spoke?

Edmund pictured the tall figure, his cloak the colour of blood. The raised hood meant Edmund had not even seen what the man really looked like. And yet there
was
some hint of familiarity. Was it just that he was Ripente, like Edmund? Much as Edmund recoiled from being allied to this man in any way, perhaps their shared skill bound them deeper than kinship, deeper than loyalty to any mortal king. And yet Orgrim had lied when he had told Beotrich he had seen through Edmund’s eyes and read his thoughts; he had tried and failed to steal his sight, and must know that Edmund was Ripente too.

A grating sound outside the cell door brought him to his senses. Come to hang him so soon? He fought to control the trembling in his arms and legs. They must not see him for a coward.

Something thumped against the cell wall. Then silence. Edmund held his breath and sent his mind out beyond the door. One pair of eyes. They were looking at a Guardian lying dead, an arrow through his heart. He felt the watcher’s sudden terror as the blade of a knife flew through the air towards him.

Now the terror was Edmund’s own.
A creature about to die… it would have blinded you!
He pulled back so fast, the cell spun round and he staggered. And in the spinning wall, the door flew open and there was Cluaran.

Before Edmund could speak, the minstrel dragged a dead guard into his cell, waving Edmund to help with the second. Next he was pushing the guard’s bow and quiver into Edmund’s hands before peering round the cell door.

‘All clear,’ he mouthed. ‘Come on.’

Cluaran locked the cell door behind them, then set off like the wind. Edmund struggled after. They dodged past the high-gabled mansions of the rich where house slaves swept and carried water, then on through Venta’s poorer quarters. It was afternoon and the streets were busy with traders – women with baskets of loaves and men pushing barrows laden with casks.

At last Cluaran dived into a barn, and Edmund fell gasping against a mouldy hay stook.

‘How did you find me?’ he choked. ‘Orgrim has Guardians searching for you everywhere.’

Cluaran smiled. ‘They’re easy to fool. Right now they’re hunting me through a henhouse on the other side of town. Feathers everywhere, no doubt.’

Edmund eyed him with surprise. The minstrel looked as if he enjoyed the thought of pursuit.

‘We have to find Elspeth!’ he blurted out. ‘Orgrim took her.’

The minstrel’s face darkened as Edmund told of the trial. ‘Fool of a girl!’ he muttered. ‘Why didn’t she use the sword?’

Edmund turned on him, fuming with anger. ‘If she hadn’t used it when the Guardians caught you in the square, she’d be free now.’

‘’Tis true,’ Cluaran said quietly. ‘Then it is for me to rescue them.’

Edmund frowned.
Them?
Was Cluaran talking of Elspeth
and
the sword?

Cluaran jumped to his feet and began pacing the length of the barn. ‘Where in these Haunts of Adam has he taken them?’ he muttered. ‘I know the town well, but I’ve never heard of a stone cell.’ Suddenly he was standing in front of Edmund, so suddenly that Edmund shrank back.

‘I know you cannot look through Elspeth’s eyes,’ said the minstrel, ‘the sword will not permit you – but you could look through Orgrim’s eyes, couldn’t you?’ When Edmund opened his mouth to object, the minstrel went on, ‘I know it is hard for Ripente to use each other’s sight. But you are more powerful than most Ripente. Will you try?’

Again the storm raged through Edmund’s mind. Again he was falling, tossed between Torment and the drowning sea. No! Not Orgrim’s eyes. He’d rather ransack every head in Venta – anything with eyes to see, from man to horse to dog to cat to skittering lizard and skulking rat – anything but trespass in that evil mind …

Suddenly Cluaran grasped his arms like a vice, and the crush of his hands conjured another scene. It was the dream Edmund had had after their ride through the maze: the
hooded figure, Elspeth chained to some monstrous machine, the knife coming down …

And then he thought of Medwel and another dream whose warning he had ignored.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

Edmund sat on the ground, leaning against the hay, while Cluaran watched by the door. Slowly, slowly he pushed out his thoughts, trying to find Orgrim.
What if I can’t hide from him?
he wondered.
Won’t he know that I’m trying to use his eyes, just as I know when he’s using mine?

But the thought of Elspeth on that dreadful machine drove him on, weaving among the citizens of Venta as his mind reeled out on silken lines, further than he had ever sent it before.

He knew it at once when he found it, felt his body wince at the cold, metallic cast of Orgrim’s thoughts. He plunged onwards, and looked through the Ripente’s eyes.

He saw a room walled with stone, not lofty and pillared like the Rede House, but low, square and gloomy. Torches burned in brackets, their smoke blackening the walls, and in one corner, a three-legged brazier glowed. The door was small and close-fitting; no chink of light beneath it.

Along one wall were rough-hewn shelves: a row of books, a pile of knives, spikes, straps, and other tools Edmund could not name. Then a perch on which sat a great black bird, still as stone. Orgrim went to the shelf and chose a knife. Its long blade gleamed red in the torchlight. He turned …

Edmund knew exactly what he would see next. His instincts screamed to get away.
Calm! Be calm!
his mind commanded.
Don’t give yourself away
. He let his eyes follow Orgrim’s. There in the shadows were the great, ugly contraptions from his dream: a long wooden platform set with straps; then ropes strung from a roof beam, and there, in an angled iron frame as tall as a man, hung Elspeth, crushed like a deer in a trap.

Her neck was held by a collar. Tight metal cuffs clamped her wrists by her sides, and two more held her ankles. She seemed unconscious, but as Orgrim drew near, her eyes opened. The crystal sword burst into her gauntleted hand, flaring uselessly against the manacle. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream.

Orgrim spoke but Edmund could not hear the words. Elspeth glared into his face.
She’s so brave
, Edmund thought despairingly,
but all the courage in the world won’t save her now
.

Then a voice came to him from outside: ‘Edmund. What do you see?’ He had forgotten Cluaran. He was meant to be leading the minstrel to Orgrim – but how could he tell where he was? He struggled to find his voice, eyes still fixed on Elspeth’s furious, agonised face.

‘She’s in a room … dark … lit by torches. Maybe underground? But no ladder, no steps …’ He broke off. Orgrim had torn the sleeve from Elspeth’s right arm and was pressing the point of his knife into her skin. Her eyes widened in pain.

‘He’s hurting her!’ Edmund cried.

‘Tell me what else you see.’ Cluaran’s voice sounded calm, detached.

‘The floor seems uneven … the roof too. There’s a prop holding it up.’

Elspeth screamed.

‘Stone walls,’ Edmund told Cluaran fiercely. ‘No – wait …’ The wall behind Elspeth was not quarried stone – it was rough, like a cave wall. And there, where the prop was lodged on the floor – wasn’t that packed earth?

‘It’s not a room – it’s a cave! Or a hut set into a hillside. The stone gives way to rock and earth.’

‘The hermit’s lodge!’ the minstrel cried. ‘Against the town wall, to the north-east.’ There was a sound of rapid footsteps and he was gone.

Edmund knew he should follow, but his eyes were drawn back to Elspeth. Blood was trickling from a shallow cut in her arm; her eyes were shut and she was sweating. He could see Orgrim’s hands streaked with blood, making complicated gestures around the crystal sword, which seemed to pulse in time with the twisting, folding fingers. Elspeth seemed barely conscious, her face as white as the crystal sword.

From behind Orgrim’s eyes, Edmund knew exactly what the sorcerer meant to do. He was tearing the sword from her. And then Elspeth would die.

Edmund gave a soundless roar of outrage – and Orgrim’s thoughts turned from his task. Edmund felt the familiar, horrible pressure in his own mind – then froze with shock.

Welcome, little one.

Edmund struggled to open his eyes, but could not. With horror, he realised he was trapped. His own body had gone, and there was nothing but the scene before him.

You should not have meddled
, the cold voice said.
What did you think you could do?

Leave her alone!
Edmund tried to scream.

But the voice laughed at him.
You must go now. I’ll come for you later, little Whitewing.

There was a violent shove – and Edmund was lying facedown in the barn, his mouth full of hay.

The world was a red blur of pain. Elspeth’s trapped limbs throbbed and the knife cuts on her arm burned like white-hot flames. The cuts were shallow and deliberate, as if Orgrim had drawn some strange design on her skin. With every cut, her sinews screamed with more than pain. She could not tell at whose insistence the sword was still there. Had Orgrim summoned it? Or had the sword decided to appear to fight its own battle?

At first, each new cut had brought a new demand: ‘What is the sword’s name?’, ‘How did you come by it?’ And finally the same one, over and over: ‘Give up the sword willingly, and I will not need to harm you.’

Before the pain took away her speech, she had spat at him, ‘Find out for yourself, if you’re so wise.’ But the handsome face hovering over her had remained calm. Nothing she could
say would move him, so she had shut her mouth, determined not to cry out.

When he saw she would not answer, he stopped speaking and began to chant and sway, moving in and out of her vision. All she could hear was an endless incantation. The crystal sword throbbed in time with it, and with each throb Elspeth’s strength flowed out in a river of pain. She wondered how much longer she could last. Fear had left her long ago, but there was still anger. Such a stupid way to be caught, such a waste.

The chanting stopped. Elspeth floated back into consciousness, risked opening her eyes. As she moved her head, the brace that gripped it sent agonising shock waves down her spine. Orgrim was still standing over her, but he seemed to have fallen into a trance – staring into space, talking to himself. Elspeth sent all her will into her sword hand. The effort shot such a searing pain through her arm and shoulder that she sobbed aloud. She could not even lift the blade.
Father!
she thought.

Suddenly a voice filled her mind. Its sound was like the bright white of the sword itself; its edge glacial; its power a torrent’s spate. The voice was ancient and achingly familiar, as if Elspeth had heard it in her heart for a hundred years.

He won’t get the sword that way!

The words crackled like ice sheets shattering on a winter pond.

He’ll just destroy us both. There’s only one way a hero can pass on the crystal sword
.

How?
Elspeth begged.
Please, help me!

You must want to give me up
, said the voice.
And you don’t want to, do you, Elspeth?

Orgrim grimaced, and his whole body twitched. His eyes fixed on Elspeth again.

‘You’ll never take it from me!’ she cried. She saw his eyes harden.

‘Kill me like this,’ she persisted, ‘and the sword goes too. I have to give it up freely. That means I can’t be bound, or … or damaged. If you cripple me to get the sword, you will cripple it too.’

Orgrim narrowed his eyes. Then he nodded. ‘Yes. I have other ways.’

He loosed the strap around her neck and freed her feet. Elspeth crumpled to the ground as her legs gave way beneath her. Barely conscious, she wondered vaguely how it was that the crystal sword drew no blood from her, even though it had sliced hard across her knees.

She lay like frozen stone, thinking once more of death. Again the voice rang through her head.

Get up, get up! You have to help me!