Dark Heart (24 page)

‘That’s what I’ve been worried about too. Do you think we should write our own scroll of apology?’

‘Uh,’ said Kannwar, struggling to sit up. He waved a barely controlled arm in the direction of his gag. Robal looked at Phemanderac enquiringly.

‘We must,’ he said to the guard. ‘I’ll do it, while you start rowing.’

The cloth came off easily and, for a wonder, the man thanked him. ‘Is Stella all right?’ he asked in a shaken voice.

‘I don’t know,’ Phemanderac said.

‘She’s cold, and so am I,’ the man said. ‘Would it be possible to divert to the nearest land? I could start a fire, and we could warm ourselves before returning to Dhauria.’

‘We need to get back to the city,’ Robal growled.

‘It would give Stella time to recover. And if we judged it necessary to return to the Fountain, we would be close by.’

Persuasive words, Phemanderac knew, but that didn’t mean the man was telling the truth.

Stella’s deathly cold face decided him.

They had to lift her from the boat, as she remained unconscious. It took a while for Robal to assemble enough driftwood for a fire, but no time at all for Kannwar to bring forth a flame.

Phemanderac and Robal took turns rubbing Stella’s icy hands. She was alive, of that he was as certain as anyone could be when dealing with immortals. She breathed, at least, albeit raggedly. The Water of Life was at work in her, strengthening—or poisoning—and healing. Already the bruises were fading, and the more seriously damaged internal organs were no doubt being restored as they waited.

The faint sound of splashing came to them across the water. ‘Ho, the shore!’ someone called.

‘Who is that?’ Robal hissed. ‘
Dominie
, we should put out the fire and hide. Explaining ourselves will be awkward at best.’

Phemanderac was deathly tired and did not react as quickly as he might. ‘A boat?’ he said, stupidly.

‘Yes, and it draws closer.’

Kannwar drew a pouch from under his tunic, not caring to hide his actions. Phemanderac saw him moving but thought little of it, preoccupied with the oncoming craft. The man sprinkled a small amount of powder on the fire and muttered a few words under his breath.

The world around them exploded in a flash of blue. There were cries of fear and pain everywhere, one of which came from Phemanderac’s own mouth. They were all drawn inside the flames, consumed by them, suffering horrible agonies. Betrayed by the Destroyer! Phemanderac begged the fire to slay him swiftly. It took a long time, but eventually the sound and pain faded away, away, away to nothing.

INTERLUDE

Husk has imperilled his own plans. He knows himself for a fool. If the future goes against him, his precipitous action may cost him his life. Such as it is.

But what else could he have done?

If his story is ever written, if he is ever revealed as the one who vanquished the Undying Man, he hopes his biographer makes mention of the many mitigating circumstances surrounding the rash decision he has made today. He will make sure they are noted. Chief of these, of course, is the sheer agony of seventy years of struggle. Day after day he has endured pain and suffering beyond anything he ever inflicted on others, and yet over the years he has returned from the house of death to a place of strength. He has achieved this by suppressing rigorously every emotion and exercising an inhuman, costly patience.

But patience has failed him today.

He stretches his vestigial forelimbs forward a finger-width, takes a grip on the next stair, and begins to haul himself upwards. Patience. He moves literally an inch at a time; he remembers using the phrase ‘inching’ once in his former life to describe slow political progress, but had never imagined what the word might literally mean.

Now he knows.

One year to climb from the dungeon to the Tower of Farsight. A whole year to travel a thousand paces. Every pace takes hours of inching. He cannot devote all his strength to this task, of course, as he has to mask himself whenever someone comes down the corridor. Of late, however, much of his energy is absorbed by fighting to maintain the spikes he has set in his three unwitting servants. And in fighting off the increasing depredations of the unknown powers exploiting them.

A whole year, of which months have already passed. He is far above the dungeons now, and his body is burned during the day by bright sunlight coming from high above him. He has nearly reached ground level. The most difficult part of his journey lies ahead.

Patience, he tells himself. Patience. He has lived by this mantra, so why did he lose control?

Conal of Yosse had been a poor choice for a spike. Husk’s roving mind had found him lying in a bed on the seventeenth level of the keep, the place usually reserved for those suffering illness. Husk had found no illness in the boy save a deep lassitude, the sort of weakness associated with a large, but not life-threatening, drawdown of essenza by a skilled magician. This was a puzzle, as Husk had detected no significant magic use in the keep for days. So he had investigated further.

The boy had a strange mind. Immense potential, but all stoppered up with knowledge, so his higher reasoning faculties could not work effectively. This one would believe whatever he was told. An ideal candidate to be used as a spy. A thought confirmed as Husk rummaged around in the lad’s mind, finding links to Instruere and Stella. Husk claimed him then and there, hammering his spike in deeply, delighted at his good luck.

Problems had arisen almost immediately. The boy was a priest, and wished to see things as his superiors told him. However, on the return journey to Faltha Husk realised the boy’s own view of his importance was enormously inflated. He would never gain a senior position in the Koinobia.

Not unless Husk helped him.

When he recommenced his studies on the Destroyer’s Consort, the boy found himself able to concentrate more effectively, read more quickly and reason more creatively. The lad never suspected he was being magically aided. Most importantly, Husk fed him small details of Stella’s life not part of the official record, things that captured the attention of his seniors.

But it was such hard work. Husk spent hours every day immobile, working to make this flaccid mind into a blade-sharp weapon to suit his purposes. It cost him dearly, and set his plans back months. However, with the death of the fop Leith and Stella’s subsequent flight, Conal was easily manoeuvred into position.

Unfortunately, the boy is now beginning to think for himself. He is much less easy to control, and suffers from the nearest thing to megalomania Husk has ever seen. He honestly believes he is at the heart of the Most High’s plans. Ironically, of course, he is at the heart of someone’s plans. If he would only remain tractable, he could stay there.

It was Conal himself who gave Husk the idea. Standing there, listening to Stella and the sorcerer talking, and having to endure the priest’s maudlin fears that his impossible love had been thwarted, Husk almost missed Conal’s impulsive thought.

Push them over the edge.

Of course, Conal was not the sort of man with the courage to obey such an instinct. By the time he had weighed up all the benefits and costs of executing such a notion, the opportunity would be lost. Husk scorned his vassal.

But then Conal heard—to Husk’s enormous shock—that Heredrew was the Undying Man. Was addressed so by Stella.

This time the thought was Husk’s.

Husk poured himself into the priest, seized control of him and threw him at the pair, all without consideration. Patience be damned, here was a chance to revenge himself on his torturers. But even as Conal’s shoulder drove up into Stella’s back, propelling her into the Undying Man, he recognised the impulse for what it was. An instinctive reaction in which good sense played no part. Realisation of the deeply buried need to do something after all this time. An action doomed to fail.

He was right. Even as the bodies crashed together to the street below, the Undying Man was busy drawing enormous energies from wherever he could find them. Everyone in Dhauria would feel tired and unwell for a time as a result. The Undying Man even contrived to land first, cushioning Stella from the worst of the fall.

Husk wishes he had forced Conal to watch their fall: that sight would have almost been worth the danger he is now in. Together, writhing in pain on the ground below, ah. He will make do with his imagination. He thought that if the pair were not broken beyond mortal repair, then at least they would be sidelined for some time. Husk amused himself imagining what he might do to Andratan in its master’s extended absence.

But Husk forgot the nature of the city in which these things happened. Dhauria, the place of the Fountain, that unapproachable, forbidden magic.

Conal has not been confined, and Husk sends him nosing: what he hears, particularly from the incautious lips of the guardsman, frightens the magician. Within hours the Undying Man is taking steps to undo any advantage Husk enjoys from the incident. Within weeks, perhaps even days, the two immortals will be as strong as ever; as ready to interfere as ever; and Husk’s action has rendered vulnerable one of his spikes. Kannwar will ask Conal harsh questions and the truth might well emerge.

Husk will have to plan.

A moment’s thought. He snaps his fingers—or would have, had he any fingers to snap. Conal must observe the immortals drinking from the Fountain, and he must bring witnesses with him, people who will make the Undying Man’s immediate future difficult.

A whisper in his dupe’s ear is enough to set things in motion.
Hurry,
he croons into the man’s mind.
Hurry, hurry, hurry.
He sends reassuring self-congratulatory feelings to ensure his idea takes hold, then withdraws a little to watch.

Conal, you are a lecher at heart,
Husk thinks as he observes the priest’s choice of neutral observers. Women, mostly. They take some persuading, especially the council member, and Husk worries.
Hurry, hurry.
The priest employs clever arguments to persuade his targets that the truth about the outsiders has not been satisfactorily explained, that something dire is planned, and plays on their distrust of their own scholar. Eventually Conal assembles his cast and, as they make their way to the docks, Husk luxuriates once again in the immense satisfaction of controlling events half a world away.

His plan nearly founders when the council member has difficulty in securing a vessel. No one goes out on the water after dark, apparently, despite the good night fishing to be had. It is a religious thing, a desire not to desecrate the ruins of Dona Mihst by foundering on them. A thin excuse for laziness. Two boats are found, and the owning clan release them to the councilman unwillingly. ‘Hurry,’ he compels the priest to say. ‘I have uncovered a plan to interfere with the Fountain itself. We must stop them.’

A short time later the two boats are cutting through the dark waters. Husk hates the sea. He often wonders if his true mistake was not when he made an enemy of Stella Pellwen, but to have left his beloved Jasweyan Mountains in the first instance. He withdraws further from Conal’s mind.

Husk has Conal position the boats so the immortals are between them and the moon, making their silhouettes clearly visible. They are in time to see the immortals drink from the Fountain, but are too far away to interfere. The councilman is incensed; Conal sees this from the other boat. The young scholar from the scriptorium is also angered at what she has seen, and urges Conal to intercept the imprudent outlanders. The uncouth plainsman and his father say little, but they are no doubt surprised at the day’s events.

World’s not as simple as you thought,
Husk wants to say to them. He tired long ago of their humorous interplay.
Wrap your drollery around that.

Oars dip into the water and they are off in pursuit. Conal’s boat leads; the members of the other boat, the council member and representatives of various clans, are still debating the intentions of the outsiders among themselves.
Ask them yourselves, fools! Just get on with it!

‘Ho, the shore!’ Conal calls out as they draw near their quarry. The immortals have conveniently set a fire, an inadvertent beacon to guide Husk’s people to them. His only worry now is that the second boat is some distance behind—

A blue light flashes. Explodes outwards. There is one person in this world most likely to know what this is: the one watching the scene through Conal’s eyes.
No!
The Undying Man’s blue fire, his method of communication over long distances. And a sometime haphazard way of transporting people over those same distances. He can do nothing; nothing but watch the flame roll towards Conal and his passengers, envelop the boat and ensnare it in powerful sorcery.

He has seen this before, oh yes, on the day Stella ruined his life. He had entered Instruere using subterfuge and had risen to command the city—in the name of Faltha, but in reality on behalf of his master, the Undying Man. Of course, he had his own schemes. Why should he not plot to oust his master from his throne? Would his master not expect it? Of course, but nothing would be said, as long as he was not caught. But then the she-dog Stella had been captured—through Husk’s own manoeuvring, of course—and had told the Undying Man what she knew of his plotting. Enough to ensure that the next time he contacted his master through the blue fire, Husk had found himself jerked into the flames and transported through tunnels of endless, searing pain, to be deposited at his master’s feet.

Now he watches as Conal suffers the same fate.

Husk cannot withdraw completely. The fire requires life-force essenza to function, and it pulls with irresistible strength at his magical link with Conal. It is all Husk can do not to be drained himself.

To Husk’s enhanced senses Conal is everywhere and nowhere, smeared across space between Dhauria and Andratan. The priest is in agony. Husk smiles. This is the pain he feels every day. Then a thought snares his attention…

Only now does Husk wake to the true danger he is in. It is not that Conal has been discovered and will soon be questioned by the Undying Man. It is that they will soon be here, in Andratan—not only the Undying Man, but also Conal and Stella. Far, far too soon for his purposes.

His breath falters. His raw, bleeding hide shivers. He has failed.

And then his unknown enemies save him. Astonishingly, beyond all hope, they intervene, pulling at the metaphysical connection between the blue fire set on the shores of Dhau Ria and the fire blazing out of control in the hearth of the Undying Man’s Farsight Tower, consuming the men who served there. Godlike hands reach through twin holes in the immutable fabric separating the physical and spiritual worlds and bend the passage of the blue fire to their own purposes. Pull it towards them.

Only one question remains in Husk’s mind as his avatar falls helplessly towards his unknown enemies. Better or worse than the enemies he knows, they are certainly more powerful. Can they be made allies?