Vergence (55 page)

Surely, as knowledge flowed up to great men, such as Vittore, the same must hold true in the ephemeral planes. Fla scoured old parchments, gathered together in binders, small flakes falling to the floor as his rough fingers plucked at each leaf in turn. Years before, he'd come across a reference to one of the principalities of his taxa. Not a ruler — one of the ultimate archons of darkness — but a prince.

Fla couldn't recall the name he sought, looking instead for the image, drawn almost as an afterthought into the corner of the page. The drawing had shown nothing but a swirl, like a cloud of sparks, yet he had stopped and stared at it for a long time, and years later he remembered.

When he found it, he no longer cared that he might have neither the skill, nor the power, to protect himself from such a powerful ephemeral.

Working quickly, he created a containing circle on the stone floor — an unbroken shape, using the last of his silvered salt. Enough, he hoped, to hold his summoning long enough.

It appeared first as a disjointed hedge of razor-thin black needles, sliding soundlessly into the prepared circle, a handful at first, and then thousands all at once.

It coalesced into a solid form, its lower half like the body of a coiled serpent, its upper part like a man. The limited light in the room reflected from rippling skin made of countless impossibly sharp points, twisting this way and that as the summoning turned hollow eyes to examine the binding on the floor surrounding it.

Its presence pressed on Fla, a prickling sensation on his skin, the feeling of frozen grit against his eyes, and an unpleasantly high-pitched keening sound inside his ears.

Fla had a sense of being watched by a vast and ancient intelligence, something which viewed men with the same indifference they, in turn, might the common louse. Yet he instinctively felt he had a measure of control over this thing, which could have towered nearly twice his height, but for the low ceiling.

“What do you desire of me son of darkness?” the creature asked.

The breath almost caught in Fla's throat. “Do you know about the blending together — the merging of your kind and mine?”

“I do.”

“The binding of heartwood and bundlewisp — do you know how it is done, how I can bind with them?”

“I know how it is done,” the creature said. “For you it cannot ever be.”

Fla felt as if his chest had constricted.

“Why not?

Hunting Yale

O
RIM PLACED THE HEAD
carefully on the table and waited. Plyntoure had shown him into the dining room, and gone to find Aara Sur. The building felt unused — filled with echoing silence, and shuttered windows. Most of the other quarters given over to the Orders would be bustling with activity, fortunate if not overcrowded with young apprentices.

Plyntoure moved around the interior of the Genestuer building like a straw-coloured ghost, seemingly forgotten, and abandoned when Tenlier left. Orim had heard Tenlier's people were researching elsewhere, but had not expected to find the building all but vacated.

Plyntoure returned, leading Aara. She wore a full-length dress in pale blue, with headscarf and veil. She carefully avoided looking him in the eye as she entered the room, glancing briefly at the head on the table before looking at the floor.

“Here is Aara Sur,” Plyntoure said, his ears folding backwards.

“Do you know who I am?” Orim asked.

“I explained,” Plyntoure said.

“Yes? Good,” Orim said, moving to where he'd placed the head. “I seek a man with this likeness. Have you the skill to find a likeness?”

“Are you able to do this for the Ronyon?” Plyntoure asked. “We are obliged to help him if we are asked.”

Aara looked at the model head.

“I do not know,” she said, speaking quietly.

Orim had visited many worlds, and found a number where women, and sometimes men, wore veils or masks. In some places jewellery could be so elaborate it concealed much of the face. The strangeness of this had never left him.

In his homeland, women wore heavy furs, and sometimes wraps to protect the face during the harshest part of the winter. But men and women would go naked when they shared the steam lodge, or swam together in the icy water of the nearby lake. Even disfigurements, and marks which portended bad luck — white eyes or red birthmarks — were openly displayed by his people. A hidden face was an untrustworthy thing, and without truth, there could be no honour.

Aara stepped forward and touched the face, her fingers brushing the skin gently, cautiously, running over the temple, and pushing away a few stray hairs.

“It feels like real skin … is it real?” she asked.

“It is something devised to produce the exact likeness of another. What it is, how it was fashioned, I cannot say.”

“Why do you want this man — what did he do?” Aara asked.

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

Orim smiled into his beard. The hint of defiance was unexpected — a little like grabbing the tail of a tiny long-haired snow maesa, and finding himself holding onto the end of a vyseloryn.

“Sent to protect him, I am. I cannot swear he will go unharmed, if I find where he is hidden, yet I know, should another discover him before me, he will die. And so, will you do this?”

Aara nodded, but still wouldn't meet his eyes. She placed both hands on the head and spoke a pattern of words, a kind of rhyme in her own language that seemed to cycle back and forth, repeating first one part, then another.

Orim stood patiently, feeling the flow of her casting, while Plyntoure watched, eyes moving from one to the other, ears twitching.

Eventually, Aara looked up. “He's in the city, some distance from here.”

A short while later, Orim and Aara sat in a symor, travelling towards the centre of Vergence.

“Find him, could you, if he were dead?” Orim asked.

Aara paused. “Perhaps, if his face remained the same.”

She cradled the head in her lap, concentrating hard and murmuring a repeating phrase. This form of far-sensing was unknown to Orim, and he tried to feel his way into it, to discover Aara's method, but her casting felt as diffused and elusive as the mist on the surface of a morning lake. No sooner did he think he'd grasped a part, than it slipped away from his him, as insubstantial as breath between his fingers.

He sat back in his seat, and watched Aara work. Tenlier's subtlety in seeing her value was impressive. He remembered the general apathy at her test, recalling her later only because Tenlier had taken the odd decision to accept her alongside Ebryn.

By the light of the street lamps he could make out the features of her face under her veil, careworn creases around the sides of her eyes, clearer under the stark blue-green light, a fine etching of emptiness, sorrow, loss.

Orim had seen the same haunting expression in the face of Fein, not the fresh lacerations of grief for a man lost beyond the storm-blown seas, but lines left afterwards like scars, a cold void bearing down on her spirit.

Aara frowned, and broke off from her recitation.

“Moved again, has he?” Orim asked.

“He's been moving for a little while, now I cannot find him.”

“He may be near sevyric iron. Try once again, when we are closer.”

He watched her curiously, from the corner of his eye. She sat calmly, cradling in her lap, what might easily be a severed head, all the while with the strength of mind to track a man half-way across the city.

“Where are you from?” Orim asked.

“Lalaerin.”

“Do you mean Deldeon?”

“It is Lalaerin to my people,” Aara said. “It is Deldeon to the Alamas.”

“Others are here, from Deldeon. Do you know of them?”

Aara gave the smallest of nods, and turned her head in the other direction.

“They are Alamas?” Orim asked, reading what he could of her expression. “Not friends? Yet you know them?”

She nodded again, keeping her eyes down.

“You came to Vergence, why?”

“There was a woman from here called Saray. The Alamas discovered my power — she warned me. I had to leave.”

“Saray?”

Aara glanced quickly at Orim. “Do you know her?”

“She is Hemetuen. It is Vittore she works for.”

“Like you—”

“Know you Saray's purpose with your people?”

“She tried to stop the war between us and the Alamas. The elders feared Saray, even the young men, but they wouldn't listen to her.”

Orim leant back into the seat, wondering why Saray had sent Aara to Vergence. It seemed unlikely she'd have the insight to see the value of Aara's narrow skill. Yet people could change, and grow, he reminded himself.

He remembered her as a newly arrived apprentice — troublesome, fearless, and talented. Seldom patient. Instinctively, he felt something more lay behind the choice. Orim decided he would ask Vittore about it later.

They travelled on in silence until they'd passed over the circle road into the heart of the city.

Aara tried again, inclining her head, indicating they should head in the direction of the temple district. Orim wondered if Yale had hidden away, disguised as a priest or monk. If so, a temple would be a cunning choice for a fugitive. Many would have inner sanctums, difficult to enter unnoticed, and bound to cause outrage amongst the followers of all but the meekest gods if he tried without permission.

Just before the temple district Aara indicated another left turn. “We are near. We must go slowly.”

Not the temple district, Orim thought, as they edged through an area of expensive looking houses and large buildings — nearing the administrative centre, where the Margave held their courts, and foreign embassies were located.

“In there,” Aara said, pointing as they passed by a very tall building.

Surrounded on all sides by a substantial wall and a garden, it had two guards stationed outside the front gate, each with a spear and large shield. Orim recognised the uniform and style of their shields — Ulpitorian soldiers. Combat veterans too, Orim judged, by the way they stood.

He breathed out heavily, indicating to the driver they should stop at the side of the building. A better place to hunt Yale than inside one of the temples, but perhaps still difficult.

The symor came to a stop out of sight of the guards, and a few yards from a small side gate. Orim dropped silently to the cobbled street, holding a finger to his lips, hoping Aara would look at him long enough to see, or at least have the good sense to make no noise. He accepted the head from her, feeling her flinch as his hand brushed her arm.

“Return her safely home,” he said quietly to the driver.

Orim thought he felt Aara's eyes on him as he walked towards the gate, but by the time he looked back the symor had pulled away, and she was hidden from sight.

Orim waved his hand at the lock, using a casting to force it open. The power of his casting twisted and slid away from him, appearing along the edge of the entrance as the briefest shower of sparkling light. Protected by a small lode of sevyric iron — not enough to block his casting, but sufficient to disrupt the subtleties of the kind used for opening. The door lock remained closed.

Orim clenched his jaw and extended his hand again. Sixty slow heartbeats later the entire housing for the lock melted, glowing bright red, and dribbled down the reinforced wood with a faint hiss.

Orim pushed the gate open, and stepped through.

Conspirators