Context (47 page)

‘Given the nature of their replacements,
I think it’s very bad indeed.’

‘And the Dark Fire? What is that?’

‘There are strange tales of odd
phenomena ...No-one knows, Corcorigan. But I meant it when I called it some
thing.
Whatever its nature, I don’t believe it’s human.’

‘But it’s spreading?’

‘Oh, yes. If you hear people
talking about the Blight, they’re referring to the same thing.’

Tom thought of the troops massing
around Bilyarck Gébeet’s borders, and shook his head grimly.

‘This has nothing to do,’ he
said, ‘with my objectives.’

‘Really?’

‘And they’re none of your
concern, Trevalkin.’

‘Purely selfish, then.’

Elva...

Perhaps
it was self-centred of him to search for her. Or madness. And if she existed,
might she be looking for him, too? But she would know better, he hoped, than to
look for him in the Aurineate Grand’aume.

Let them all go to Chaos, Elva.
You’re the one who’s important to me.

And yet, Kraiv’s and Draquelle’s
itinerary took them close, very close, to the former Realm Boltrivar, where
General Lord Corduven d’Ovraison was forming the Academy which was more—Tom was
sure of it—than a mere training school.

Elva. Is that where I need to go
to find you?

For certain, they would have
intelligence resources beyond anyone else that he could think of.

‘Can you get me a noble-house
thumb ring, Trevalkin?’

It would give him access to other
realms, to resources not available to any commoner. Tom’s own ring—a
replacement for the one he had been given on his ascension to Lordship -lay
somewhere in the Aurineate Grand’aume, its clearance signature automatically
wiped clean after the long absence of contact with Tom’s DNA.

‘Maybe I could get you a ring.’
Trevalkin stared at him. ‘But if you’re travelling, it might be better to go
incognito. You’d make an interesting prisoner. Valuable, I mean.’

In your own torture cells,
Trevalkin?

But Tom did not utter the words
which came first to mind. Instead, he said: ‘Then can you arrange a travel-tag,
for one person? For entry to Realm Boltrivar. I don’t need passes to the intermediate
demesnes.’

‘You want my help?’

‘You asked for mine.’

Silence, then: ‘All right. I can
do that for you.’

‘With no further questions?’

Trevalkin smiled coldly.

‘Give my regards,’ he said, ‘to
General Lord d’Ovraison.’

But
Tom did not get out of the treatment chamber that easily.

He was at the square-arched exit
when Trevalkin, with deliberate timing, called out: ‘The Codex Ariston has some
interesting entries in its most recent edition. Old noble houses dying out.
Parvenu outsiders elevated to Lordship.’

Tom paused, only half-expecting
the words to come.

‘Poet and psychopath.
Logosophical killer. Not their exact words, you understand

Tom shook his head and walked,
but the final barb followed him into the stark corridor beyond.

‘So we’re brothers under the skin
after all, my fine Lord Corcorigan. Wouldn’t you say?’

Tom walked faster.

~ * ~

27

NULAPEIRON
AD 3419-3420

The
scheduled duration was thirty to forty days: a long journey, mostly on foot,
and with no certain knowledge of how far Draquelle could walk daily, over such
a period. And the times were too uncertain to offer a closer prediction -Tom
smiled at the term—than that.

But it would not be long before
he came to realize there were more subtle factors at work, which would make the
journey both longer and more interesting than anyone expected.

‘Farewell, Ga— Tom. Er, my Lord
...’

‘Take care, Mivkin. And you,
Jasirah.’

She turned away, blinking
rapidly.

Tom bowed to Master Grenshin.

“Thank you all.’

He walked away quickly, more
saddened than he had expected at leaving his fellow merchanalysts behind. And,
in his satchel of supplies, was a small bundle: a fold-up cloak, lightweight
but insulated. A present from his friends.

A cheerfully rude gargoyle, with
long protruding stone tongue, leered above the archway before him. Tom stopped,
waved once at the small knot of people standing near the old merchanalysis
hall, then ducked into the tunnel.

Another journey.

The old excitement of wanderlust
was upon him again. In his childhood, Tom had been surrounded by families who
had lived in Salis Core for generations, and rarely travelled further than a
few kilometres from the marketplace which formed the centre of their lives.
But, since then, he had been in so many realms he had lost count, stood on the
highest and lowest strata of them all, had seen even the planet’s surface, been
airborne in its creamy lemon skies ...

I love this life.

It was an unsettled and possibly
misguided way to live. But anything else would be boredom.

‘Tom, my friend.’ Kraiv’ s basso
profundo voice was calm, as he shrugged his big backpack in place, on top of
his heavy cloak. ‘A new beginning.’

‘That it is.’

Water spilled into a round black
pool, in which tiny yellow fish with long fluorescent tendrils swam.

‘Where’s Draquelle?’

Kraiv shrugged his massive
shoulders. ‘She’s supposed -ah, there she is.’

‘Hey, fellows. Were you waiting
for me?’

There was a bright shine in her
eyes, which Tom chose to interpret as a traveller’s excitement, like his own.

‘You’re right on time.’

But there was a part of him, even
then, which recognized a kindred spirit, and remembered how it could be ...
Which knew the dragon that lurked still in his mind, whenever he saw a flagon
of cool amber beer, down whose side condensation seductively rolled; or he
passed by a ganja-mask den, its scent as sweet as sugar, cloying as an
overbearing lover’s embrace; or a membrane-enclosed amphetamist chamber, where
glowing vapours offered fire in the veins.

And if he did not smell the
fruit-tinged alcohol upon her breath, the sweet tang of orthopeach liqueur,
then why was it that he remembered now with cold clarity what eventually followed?
The crashing blackness, the trembling inner hurt, the fragility and fractured
drabness of the real external world when the bright joy had passed and only the
nerve-racking need was left.

‘Draquelle, do you want to be
official holder of the travel-tag?’

‘Sure. Come on, men. Let’s go.’

And Tom would wonder later if
Kraiv sensed some of the same vulnerability in Draquelle. For when they walked
in single file, it was with Tom leading and Kraiv in the rear, or vice versa;
and where tunnels widened into boulevards, the trio walked side by side, always
with Draquelle in the centre, as though two men could guard against the driven
need inside her.