The Grave Thief: Book Three of The Twilight Reign (38 page)

‘I know. Kerek, have you seen your friend Ardela recently?’

‘I have, your Eminence,’ Kerek replied with a bow that wasn’t fast enough to hide his smile.

‘You should write to her, ask her to put her debating skills to use. Perhaps afterwards you could go and see her, just to ensure she is well. It must be a trying time for her; I hear shocking news about her mistress. Invite Yeren along too, perhaps?’

‘Mistress?’ Yeren said sharply as Kerek bowed again and retreated out of the room. ‘That wouldn’t be the Lady, would it? Rumour has it that she’s dead, murdered in one of her own temples.’

‘I wouldn’t know the details, I’m afraid, but I too hear she is dead.’ Certinse watched Yeren’s face as the soldier fitted the pieces together. A devotee of the Lady. The irritant that was High Cardinal Echer.
Honestly Yeren, it’s not that difficult, is it? Or are you just trying to believe better of a man of the cloth?

‘Piss and daemons!’

Certinse smiled. ‘Not quite.’

‘Your secretary didn’t even bat an eyelid,’ Yeren protested. ‘What sort of bloody life do you clerics lead?’ The man actually looked outraged, as though he had been a paradigm of goodness throughout years of bloody civil war in Tor Milist.

‘The cut and thrust of clerical debate can be most wounding,’ Certinse agreed. ‘He will set up a meeting with Ardela after she has presented her argument to the High Cardinal. Perhaps you should take a squad with you to meet her. As with many of those with copper hair she can be somewhat fiery; perhaps it is something in the dye?’

Appetites that need paying for
. Certinse recalled Lord Isak’s words all too clearly.
Damn you, Ardela! Your sloppiness has put me in the Chief Steward’s pocket for the rest of my life, and that’s the sort of mistake you don’t get away with. I almost wish the daemon-prince had not been killed by whatever it was that managed the feat. I would be pleased to send your soul to him, but I’ll have to settle with just killing you.

‘Somewhat fiery?’ Yeren echoed, ‘I doubt she’ll be comin’ along quietly, either.’

‘The sad realities of life,’ Certinse agreed as he returned to his report.

‘We wait,’
was the only reply he received.

‘We wait for release,’
she whispered in his ear, each syllable like the last breath of a dying man.
‘We wait for our lord to claim you. Can you hear his footsteps yet? Can you feel his hounds draw closer ?’

 

‘Isak,’ the voice called as a hand nudged his shoulder.

He flinched. The hand was as hot as a furnace on his skin after the pervading chill of the dream. He squinted up at the figure standing over him, his head feeling muzzy and heavy. Xeliath held out her wasted hand towards him. She looked far stronger now than when she’d arrived. Being a stranger in a strange land had forced her to become stronger, and even crippled she was a white-eye, with more than enough stubborn resilience to rise to the challenge. Invited guest or not, many Farlan would simply see a Yeetatchen, an enemy - but after her weeks of recuperation Isak guessed Xeliath would relish the coming fight.

‘Careful where you point that thing,’ he growled, scowling at the Crystal Skull fused to her palm. Their relationship was still a little strange, neither one really sure what it was, despite the occasional visits Xeliath still made to his dreams, which were sufficiently unreal to allow an easy veneer of closeness.

She didn’t reply other than to hook over a chair with her crutch and sit down with a contented sigh. Isak took a moment to look at the fierce brown-skinned girl he’d stolen away from her people. Her figure was hardly visible under the layers of thick woollen dress she wore, but her hair - longer now than when she’d first arrived - fell loose about her ears. It had been threaded with ribbons, brown, purple and yellow, while a golden charm of Amavoq, patron of her tribe, was at her throat.

‘It is a feast day for my people,’ she explained, seeing his gaze, ‘so we all wear the colours of Jerequan, the Lady at Rest and—Well, we eat like a bear does for winter!’

‘Jerequan is a bear?’

‘An Aspect of Vrest, yes.’ She stopped and looked closer at his face. ‘Are you hungover, or are your dreams still bad?’

Isak attempted a smile. ‘How do you feel about a bit of both?’

‘Typical man! Drink away your problems and forget the rest of the Land.’ She leaned back, her chestnut-coloured nose wrinkling in distaste.

Isak looked puzzled until he noticed his mouth tasted like a mouse had crawled in and died while he was asleep. He was pushing himself upright when he suddenly remembered where he was.

‘How did you get in here?’ he demanded. He was sleeping in the room where he’d spent his first night in Tirah Palace, halfway up the Tower of Semar, and it was unique, as far as he knew, in that it had no staircase. Instead there was a well or chimney running through the centre of the tower, and a spell engraved onto the wall at its base to lift people up on a flurry of spectral wings.

Xeliath grinned, suddenly looking like the girl she was rather than the time-ravaged crone her stroke often made her seem. She gestured towards the circular hole in the floor on her left. ‘Lady Tila was helping me with my hair when she mentioned that the tower had obeyed your command your first night here.’

‘But I’m Chosen of Nartis,’ Isak protested, ‘it’s
supposed
to accept me.’

‘Hah! Anything some fool Farlan can do, I do better,’ she declared, raising her twisted left arm. ‘The tower knew what was good for it and obeyed me.’

‘Betrayed by my own tower?’ Isak muttered. ‘Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’

‘That often happens after much wine. Were you hiding here to drink, or just to sleep?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t feel much like getting a lecture on drink from anyone, least of all you.’

‘I never get like this when I drink,’ she replied scornfully.

‘I know,’ Isak said with a smirk. ‘I’ve seen how you get! Makes me nervous to go to sleep when you’re like that.’

She looked him up and down critically, and Isak tried to pull his clothes to order, his shirt having somehow twisted around his body while he slept. ‘It is better that I’m drunk. Anyway, most men would be happy to be allowed to sleep at the same time.’

Isak gave up. ‘Not complaining, just saying I should be allowed to drink in peace if I want. Makes me feel better - and it doesn’t kill anyone, which, frankly, is better than anything else I’ve done as Lord of the Farlan.’

He looked around for the wine jar he’d been drinking from and found it on its side by the bed. There was enough left to swill around his mouth to get rid of the worst of the sour taste his dreams had left there. ‘If you want to know what happened to the Land that makes a devotee of the Lady go mad and kill the High Cardinal - well, I’ll tell you: it was me. I’m what happened; I’m the stone in the path of history, the start of all the shit that’s happening around here.’

Xeliath shook her head, the ribbons dancing like butterfly tails. ‘The death of the Lady wasn’t your fault, nor the rage of the Gods. Whatever you did to the Reapers, you couldn’t have predicted it - I doubt even Azaer’s disciples did, and they planned most of it.’

Isak looked down. ‘Then why do I still feel guilty?’

To his surprise, the fierce-eyed Yeetatchen white-eye laughed, not mockingly, but affectionately.

‘Because you are human, you fool! Whatever the Gods - or anyone - asks of you, they cannot take away your humanity. The Gods made you that way, and anyone who argues otherwise will have to explain themselves to me.

‘It doesn’t matter that your purpose might be impossible,’ she added fiercely, her Yeetatchen accent growing more noticeable with her vehemence, ‘or already fulfilled. That is the fault of others, not you. They filled your dreams with prophecy and destiny. They gave you power, and forgot a white-eye is still human, no matter how great a weapon.’

‘So here I am - a saviour without a cause who can’t even use drink to hide from his dreams of death?’ Isak hadn’t meant that to sound as abjectly pathetic as it came out, but Xeliath’s face fell all the same.

‘How often?’

‘The dreams?’ he sighed and shook his head. ‘Not often. Rare enough to be a shock when they do come; not so rare that I look forward to going to sleep.’

‘Have you seen the hound again?’

‘No, and for that at least I’m glad.’ He grimaced again and rubbed his palms over his face. There was a tingle in his cheek where the single ring he wore - a tube of silver bearing his dragon crest, a replacement for the one he’d given to Commander Brandt’s son back in Narkang - had caught it. ‘What bell is it?’ he asked as he began to tug on his boots.

‘Past the fifth,’ Xeliath replied, waiting until he had finished before reaching out her good arm to him. When he took it she hauled herself upright and together they entered the dark circle in the centre of the room. ‘I prefer to walk the palace at night when there are not so many faces to stare.’

‘You walk the palace alone?’

‘When I wish. I am always pleased to have Mihn’s company, and sometimes Lady Tila or Count Vesna accompany me, but I will not have a nurse.’

‘Are you sure? I’d be happier with someone watching your back.’

‘I am not so slow - it would take more than a soldier with a grudge,’ she said, adding with a grin, ‘and unlike you, I have no dreams of death!’

Before Isak could reply, her twisted left hand gave a jerk and the storm of wings enveloped them, raging ghostly and near-silent, but preventing conversation until they cleared. Isak blinked and let the shape of the lower chamber resolve in the gloom.

It was as cold as an ice-store, and the only light was the faint glow of magic emanating from the sigils and spells chalked on the wall. There were two separate spells, one keeping the high and slender tower standing through even the winter storms, the second to carry people up the tower.

Dermeness Chirialt, a mage from the College of Magic, had gladly taken upon himself Isak’s magical education, though his speciality was the production of armour; the price for his help was that Isak help him with his own research. One of the first tasks he’d set the young lord was to translate each of these runes, letting the syllables flow through his mind until he gained a sense of their shape and power.

He passed a hand over them as they passed, remembering those lessons, then asked Xeliath, ‘Where do you want to walk?’

‘Walk?’ she replied as she hobbled through the doorway towards the Great Hall. ‘Tonight I want to ride.’

‘There’s a heavy ground-frost again. It won’t be safe.’

She rounded on him, her expression changed all of a sudden. ‘Safe? I tell you something: guess how many times I have longed for the death you hide from? The months I lay in bed unable to move at all, only to find if I could move, still I was manacled to it because they thought I was a prophet?’ Her accent became thicker the angrier she got.

‘The pain, the loss of my beauty and strength! Pretend your future was tied to another’s like a dog, as twisted as your broken body. Not safe? You entered Scree with just a bodyguard, was that safe? I will not again ride well, but I
will
ride. If I risk death to avoid white faces staring, I choose it.’

She turned back towards the Great Hall, adding under her breath, ‘It is the only choice I have left. Everything else is decided by a saviour who cannot even save himself.’

Isak watched her go, not trusting himself to reply. His hands had tightened into fists with the effort of keeping silent, but the next voice to echo down the corridor was Xeliath’s, snapping at a servant on duty in the Great Hall, demanding a horse.

‘Bloody white-eyes, eh?’ said a voice to Isak’s right. He turned and saw Carel standing halfway up the wide stone staircase that led up to the state apartments. His former mentor wore a long green overcoat with a white collar as befitted his status as a former Palace Guard, his left sleeve was pinned back, while his right hand held a silver-headed cane. Carel claimed his balance was still a little off since Isak had performed a battlefield amputation on his right arm, but the Duke of Tirah wasn’t convinced.