Vergence (2 page)

The sun lay low, with long shadows extending like dark fingers across the snow. In the indistinct gloom he could make out a low range of dark hills half a league to his left, and a dark smudge — undoubtedly a tree-line — a similar distance on his right. He was confident he'd managed to find his way to somewhere north of the Great Circle Sea, which is where he'd wished to be, but he now faced the problem of locating a woman and boy in this vast wilderness.

Orim closed his eyes and quietened his mind, stretching his senses out, feeling for the faint trace, a tiny spark that would reveal another power somewhere in this wilderness. Nothing.

If the woman had not already died, she was either too far away to detect, or avoiding the use of any casting. Reluctantly, he unleashed one of his two remaining shape-bound scaehrum.

Released from the form of an armband on his wrist, it dissolved, flowing like black smoke through his outer garments, adopting its natural appearance — a large headless bird of prey, with a ragged body, and wings of dark swirling vapour.

His creature, sensitive to the faintest residue, would be drawn to any form of casting within a dozen leagues as unerringly as a death crow to a battlefield feast. It flew upwards immediately, arcing towards the north-east, and flapped away. Moving slowly enough to follow if he pushed hard.

Hours later, as the first light of dawn touched the uppermost branches of the surrounding trees, Orim arrived under the weaving scaehrum.

He watched its spiralling flight with a hint of regret. At sunrise it would soon fade. Already it had started to lose its form, appearing increasingly transparent, like a black rag blown about roughly in a strong wind.

But now Orim could feel for himself the faint prickling that suggested something terrible and powerful had happened nearby recently. Like the faint rumble of a distant thunderstorm the remaining traces only hinted at the raw force it must have contained. This close he would need no help tracking to its source.

A few dozen paces on he found himself walking on churned-up snow. He angled right to follow the direction the mess of footprints and animal tracks had taken, quickening his pace. The trees were widely spaced here, the distance between each set of prints indicating a disorderly flight, and pursuit.

A short distance further the tracks separated. The main party had headed to the right, while a few sets of footprints and those of the pursuing mounts had peeled off to the left, heading directly up a steep slope.

He started to feel an edge of concern. In the growing light it was clear that one of the sets of footprints was lighter and smaller than the others. It looked like a child had come this way, and the disturbance he'd detected lay directly ahead of him now.

Mounting the crest, Orim stumbled over something concealed in the snow. Clambering back to his feet he found he'd tripped on a partially hidden helmet. He appeared to be on a snow-covered rocky outcrop, a few hundred paces across, roughly circular in shape, and devoid of trees, apart from one solitary man-high stump standing in the centre.

The bodies of armoured men and their trikawi lay scattered in all directions.

Moving cautiously, he made his way into the clearing. The soldiers appeared to have dropped directly where they were, hunched over in their saddles. Their mounts sprawled on the ground, legs sticking out at odd angles.

Close by, one soldier had tumbled backwards in his saddle, but remained seated, his face frozen halfway between an expression of surprise and something else. His helmet had come loose as he had fallen, and lay on the ground next to him.

Clearly whatever had happened here had slaughtered an entire company of men in a heartbeat, killing riders and trikawi together where they stood.

Orim paused at the body and examined it closely. The rider appeared to have died without any obvious injury. Troubled he scanned the clearing for signs of the woman or the boy.

Near the stump he noticed two other shapes lying half covered by snow — neither small enough to be the boy. He moved closer, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. A few paces before the stump lay a body, face down with arrows in its back, dressed in the heavy brown layered felt and rigid flat-topped style hood common to Kurbezh merchants.

The second body, he saw at once, was the woman he sought. And sitting pressed up to the stump next to her, a smaller figure dusted in white with the faintest trail of frosted breath coming from under his hood.

Orim stepped past the woman and knelt quickly, pulling the boy's hood roughly back, and checking for injuries. The boy's eyes were shut, and he shook uncontrollably, his breathing ragged, and uneven. Orim pulled off a glove to touch his face. Even accounting for the cold it felt much too hot.

The head of a nearby javelin caught his attention. It glittered with the characteristic grey-blue sheen of sevyric iron in the dawn sunlight, and there would be enough in all the weapons here to suppress casting as far as the edge of the clearing. This had not been some casual hunt, the dead men scattered around the stump were clearly well equipped elite soldiers.

Orim glanced round the clearing, considering. Something terrible had happened here, and whatever caused it might still be lurking in the trees. If the woman had been powerful enough to do this, surrounded by sevyric iron and riddled with arrows, he would almost certainly have known of her.

With the boy building a fever, he needed to get back to Fyrenar as quickly as possible, but to attempt to force a passage here might be hazardous. Wayfarers were at their most vulnerable in the moments they stepped between worlds, briefly stripped of all power. Any attack in that moment could be catastrophic.

Quickly reaching a decision, he stowed his snow poles, scooped the boy into his arms, and headed in the direction of the shortest distance to the edge of the forest.

Orim knelt briefly behind a tree just beyond the clearing, and drew out a pinch of yellow fire powder. He'd been warned to expect more than one party hunting the woman, and instinctively he sensed danger.

His strong affinity for flame meant he seldom needed any assistance beyond invocation and gesture, but the nature of the element made it unpredictable, and liable to flare out quickly. Here he wanted to produce living sparks, and hold them ready.

The powder flared and blew from his hands in a shower of bright points, some dying immediately as his summoning finished. The others he infused with a primal hunger for the living wood in the trees, and they swarmed around him like a cloud of incandescent insects.

A ward would have been safest, but impossible to take with him for any distance, and the blended motes of were-flame, which danced and trailed after him in a loose cloud, could be easily turned to many uses.

A hundred paces further into the forest Orim felt something, a prickling sensation against his skin like the trembling of a spider's web. He sensed power there too, carefully shielded to appear like an empty space a less skilled caster might have easily passed over, and under the concealment he detected a small group moving towards him.

He lowered the boy to the snow behind a broad tree and calmly stepped forward, controlling his breathing, and relaxing his awareness. Against a group, he couldn't hope to press an attack while still protecting the boy.

Two dozen dark-clad figures moved through the trees towards him, running across the snow with unnatural swiftness. Even at a distance of forty or fifty yards their speed might have allowed for an effective ambush if he'd been unprepared.

The ones facing him slowed as they closed, whilst those on the sides raced forward to outflank him. A detached part of him noted the orchestrated pattern of attack — not chance, but the product of careful training.

Subliminally he registered no tracks in the snow under the feet of most of the figures. So skilfully crafted illusions, copies of the two or three real men, intended to distract and confuse.

He felt surges in his extended awareness from left and right as his real foes unleashed simultaneous attacks. A hail of stones snapped into the air between Orim and the man on his left, each the size of a small egg, hissing towards him like a volley of sling-shots. From the other side, a fraction behind the stones, a shower of razor-edged darts humming in a broad sweep.

Reacting smoothly, Orim flicked out an expanding shield of flame before him, a cluster of tiny flaming motes, each ballooning outwards, and merging together to form a rushing wall of fire across an arc to his front.

The stones fell smoking from the air and came to a rest near his feet, glowing hot, and hissing in the snow. The darts turned to small puffs of flying ash.

As the expanding wave of roiling flame crashed into surrounding trees and slowed, Orim cast his remaining three were-flames directly ahead, aiming at where he sensed the illusionist, the flames growing as they created erratic spark-filled smoky trails through the cold air.

With a flash brighter than the sun, each fireball slammed into tree or earth, and exploded. Fragments of wood flew past Orim and a gigantic eruption of flaming gas rolled outwards from the impact points, shrouding the forest for scores of paces, rising in a couple of heartbeats to many times higher than the surrounding trees.

The shock felt like a single extended convulsion running through the ground, and the illusions flickered, vanishing to reveal two flanking attackers closing fast between the burning trees.

He recognised the tactic now. Most casters would prefer to stay at a distance, having no experience in fighting at close quarters. These men were trained to close quickly.

With a flick of his hand, one of the stones at his feet jumped into the air, another gesture shooting it at the man closing on his left. A dull thud recorded the hit — but Orim had already moved to his right. His final opponent lunged forward with a raking thrust from his short-sword.

The familiar weight of Orim's hidden axe settled into his right hand as he stepped forward, angling inside the attack in a single fluid motion. He swung in a short arc, leaning his weight behind the blow.

The head of the axe caught the man just below his chin, slamming him backwards in a spray of crimson, and Orim allowed the momentum of the swing to carry him round as he dropped to one knee, facing in the other direction with his weapon poised to throw.

Ten paces away, the man struck by his own stone lay motionless with his arms flung out, weapons lying loose in the snow.

Both wore the distinctive black garb of Cassadian mercenary assassins, and contracts for men such as these were always costly.

Without pausing, Orim stood and returned to where the boy lay behind the tree, face bright with fever. Ignoring the choking sounds from the dying man on the ground, he hoisted the boy onto his shoulder, and prepared to return to Fyrenar.

So much trouble for one so small.

A Visitor

E
BRYN WAS IN HIS
eighteenth year, with the trees turning to shades of rust, and the first icy winter winds blowing from the northern mountains, scattering their broad leaves, when he was summoned to an audience with Lord Conant.

Ezo, the gardener, found him in the stables, brushing down his horse after a morning riding. He'd named the large palomino stallion Soren, in the local dialect, for its wilful temperament. The squeaking of the wheelbarrow that heralded Ezo's arrival unsettled the horse, causing it to pull away, ears folding back.

Ezo appeared at the open stable doors, an empty wheelbarrow in front of him, and peered inside and grunted, “You’re wanted by the lord, there's a stranger f'ya”

Clearly satisfied he'd delivered his message adequately Ezo shuffled round and started back down the path to the manor without waiting for a reply.

Placing a calming hand on Soren's neck Ebryn eased carefully out of the stall. He rinsed his hands in the trough at the front of the stable block before splashing his face and hair.

Watching Ezo make his way slowly down the slope towards the orchard, Ebryn considered whether he should go directly to Lord Conant's chambers, or first change from his riding clothes.