Forge of Darkness (Kharkanas Trilogy 1) (77 page)

You’d think a damned war was coming
—

He pushed open the door. There were bodies lying on the tiled floor, and pools of blood. He stared for a moment longer, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and then he spun round and rushed back to the dining room.

‘Setyl!’

The scarred man looked up.

‘Get the Houseblades. Get Corporal Yalad. Someone’s murdered the staff. And look –
look at us
– where’s everyone else? Abyss take me – where is the hostage? Go! The Houseblades! And make sure they’re armed.’

As Setyl rushed out, Venth crossed the chamber and plunged into a side passage, the one leading to the hostage’s quarters. His shock was giving way to dread. Nothing was more sacrosanct than the safety of a hostage of the House. If he found her dead, the Lord would never survive the consequences. Even Mother Dark would be unable to protect him.
Things go slack when Ivis isn’t around. The damned fool, wandering off into the wood all night! And now
…

He told himself that he knew nothing, since the alternative made him recoil inside. Someone, an assassin, must have found a way into the house. This was an attack upon Dracons – the Lord was away and horror was being visited upon his home.
Cowards
.

Passing the maids’ cells he paused, and then knocked upon the door of the nearest one. There was no reply.
Somewhere else or dead
. Venth continued on. He found that he had drawn his knife.

Shouts sounded from the front entrance. The Houseblades were inside. As he drew closer to the hostage’s door, he wondered if it wasn’t already too late.
They’ve killed her
.

Still five paces from the door, he saw the latch suddenly turn and the door was thrown open. The hostage stood in the threshold. ‘Venth? What has happened? I saw running, in the courtyard—’

‘Mistress, please go back inside your room,’ Venth said.

She noted the knife in his hand and stepped back and he saw fear in her eyes.

Venth shook his head. ‘Assassins, mistress. There has been slaughter in this house. Go back. I will guard this passage until a Houseblade arrives.’

‘Slaughter? Who? My maids?’

‘I don’t know about them, mistress, but I fear the worst. Only Setyl and me arrived in the dining hall – no one else. Not Atran, or Hidast or Hilith.’ He turned at the sound of someone running up the corridor. Heart suddenly pounding hard, he readied himself. He would give his life here, defending her. And he’d hurt the bastard—

But it was Corporal Yalad. The young officer was pale and he had drawn his sword. He pulled up when he saw Venth, and then Sandalath. ‘Good,’ he said with a shaky nod. ‘Both of you, with me—’

‘Corporal,’ said Venth, ‘would it not be better if the hostage remained in her—’

‘No, I want every survivor with me, in the dining room. I know – I could post guards, but to be honest, until we know the nature of our attacker, I’ll not split up my squads.’

‘Corporal, you have six hundred Houseblades at your disposal—’

‘The squads I know and trust, horse master. The rest are locking down the grounds.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Sandalath.

‘Mistress,’ replied Yalad, ‘if we’re in time, then the assassins are still with us. But no matter what, to get into the house … it is quite possible that there are co-conspirators. Indeed, given the number of new recruits we’ve been taking on, the assassins could well come from among the Houseblades. I am even now determining if anyone cannot be accounted for. For now, however, I want all the survivors in one place, where I can keep them safe. So please, both of you follow me.’

Venth gestured Sandalath between himself and Yalad, and in this formation they quickly made their way towards the dining hall.

‘Why is this happening?’ Sandalath asked.

When Yalad did not reply, Venth cleared his throat and said, ‘The Lord has enemies in the court, mistress.’

‘But he’s not even here!’

‘No, mistress, he isn’t.’

‘If he had been,’ growled Yalad ahead of them, ‘we’d be looking down at the corpses of however many assassins got in here tonight. And dead or not, Draconus would get answers from them.’

Venth grunted. ‘He’s no warlock, corporal. I don’t know where those rumours came from, but I ain’t never seen anything to suggest he is – and I wager neither have you.’

‘He is the Consort,’ Yalad countered. ‘Or would you deny Mother Dark’s ascension, horse master?’

‘I would not,’ Venth replied.

‘I may not have seen anything,’ Yalad said, ‘but Captain Ivis has.’

‘I wish the captain was here,’ said Sandalath.

‘You’re not alone in that,’ Yalad said in a growl, and Venth could not tell if the young man had taken offence. There were times when this hostage displayed all the tact of a child.

The corporal looked in each of the maid cells, but his glance was brief and he was quick to close the doors behind him before moving on. ‘I don’t get this,’ Venth heard him mutter. And then he halted.

Venth almost collided with the young man. ‘What is it, corporal?’

‘His daughters – have you seen them? Anywhere?’

‘No, but then, I rarely do,’ Venth replied.
And I’m grateful for that
.

‘Stay here,’ Yalad said, and then he edged past them, returning to the last of the cell doors. He went inside, and when he reappeared there was blood on his hands. He moved to pass them but Venth blocked him, and the thing he did not want to contemplate was now burning like a wildfire in his mind.

He met Yalad’s eyes. ‘Well?’

‘Not now, Venth.’ The corporal roughly pushed past. ‘Let’s go.’

‘But what about those little girls?’ Sandalath demanded. ‘If they’re out there with an assassin on the loose, we need to find them!’

‘Yes, mistress,’ Yalad said without turning. ‘We need to find them.’

* * *

It was just past dawn when Ivis stepped on to the track wending its way up to the grounds. He was exhausted, and in his mind, haunting him, was the face of the goddess who had been impaled on the stakes in the clearing. He remembered her smile and the absence of pain in her eyes – as if wounds meant nothing. Yet each time he saw that face, taking
form
in his mind’s eye as if reassembled from pieces, he thought about cruelty, and all the other faces he had seen in his life then crowded his skull as if clamouring for attention.

He feared the attention of gods. They had the faces of children, but these were not kind children, and all that was revealed in them, why, he could see it mirrored among the many men and women he had known. The same venality. The same unashamed indifference.

Cruelty was the bridge between mortals and the gods, and both sides had a hand in building it, stone upon stone, face upon face.

We are – each and every one of us – artists. And this is our creation
.

When he came within sight of the keep wall, he saw Houseblades swarming the grounds, and a moment later a half-dozen of them were rushing towards him. Looking like children, when something has gone wrong. The sun’s light was hard and strangely harsh, as if every colour was paint, and every hue and every shade held in it, somewhere, a hint of iron. Ivis paused, and then made his way across the moat bridge to meet his Houseblades.

FOURTEEN

WHEN HE WAS
young and still living with his family on the Durav estate, Cryl remembered one summer when a tree-fall blocked a stream in the wood of the grounds. Water backed up to form a pool, and then a pond. He recalled seeing the mound of an ant nest in the path of that rising water. Day after day he returned to it, watching one side of the nest slowly crumbling to the seep of water. Atop the mound the ants continued their usual frenetic activity, as if blind to what was coming. On the last day of his visit, he discovered only a sodden heap of mud and twigs where the nest had been, and in the black muck he saw eggs and drowned ants.

He thought of that nest now, inexplicably, as he stood staring at the smear of smoke above the forest to the east, watching it spread across the sky. The procession had drawn to a halt while Lord Jaen rode out with a dozen Houseblades to investigate, a venture from which they were yet to return. Cryl remained with the carriage, ostensibly in command of the remaining eight Houseblades, although there were no orders to give.

Upon this journey, to the place of the wedding, Enesdia was required to remain cloistered, hidden from sight by the closed shutters on the carriage windows, and communicating only via a tube with her maid, Ephalla, who sat beside the driver on the bench. Somewhere, on the north road out from Kharkanas, Lord Andarist would be similarly bound to solitude, assuming they had departed the city yet. There were symbolic meanings to this ancient tradition, but Cryl wasn’t much interested in them. As the poet Gallan once said, traditions hid the obvious and habits steadied the world.

When next he rested eyes upon Enesdia, she would be facing her future husband, on the threshold of the edifice Andarist had built to proclaim his love for her. And Cryl would smile, from where he stood at her father’s side – a hostage made brother and a brother filled with brotherly love.

But I am not her brother
.

There was virtually no traffic upon the road, and the line of trees off to their left, gap-holed by the beginnings of trails, seemed empty of life: wood like bone, leaves like flakes of ash. The river on the right showed them a mud-clotted bank where plants had torn away in unseasonal currents and high water. As they had travelled down from Enes House, they had almost kept pace with Dorssan Ryl’s southward flow, but now the familiar water seemed to have rushed past and in its place was something darker, stranger. He knew that such notions were nonsense. The currents were unending, and whatever sources of the river existed high in the mountains of the north, they too never ceased.

After one more long searching study of the trail mouth in which the troop had vanished some time earlier, Cryl turned and strode down from the road to draw closer to the river. The black water held hidden every promise, and even to reach down into it was to find nothing to grasp. He thought of its chill touch, and the numbness waiting in its depths.
River god. Your water does not run clear, and so you remain blind to the shore and the lands beyond. But I wonder … do you hunger? For all that you cannot have? All that you cannot defeat? The traditions of current, the habits of flooding, and the mysteries you guard: these are the things the Deniers would worship. And I see no crime in that
.

This wedding would be his last responsibility to the Enes family. His days of being a hostage were coming to an end. He felt like a crow lost in a flock of songbirds, beleaguered by gentle songs and shamed by his own croaking call. The Duravs had given themselves to the sword, had made their lives traditions of violence and habits of killing, and though Cryl had yet to end someone else’s life, he knew that should the necessity arise he would not hesitate.

He thought back to Captain Scara Bandaris and his troop, and the miserable, snarling pack of Jheleck children they had been escorting. He had felt comfortable in their presence. Understanding the mind of a soldier was a simple task; even meeting the feral eyes of those savage pups had proved an exercise in recognition, despite the shiver that ran up the back of his neck.

The Enes family now felt alien to him, and his ties to it were stretching, pulling apart, fraying like rotted tendons. He was ready to draw a blade and slash through the last of them.
I am done with flighty young women and sad old men. I am done with foul-tempered artists
who
see too much. Done with giggling maids who flash bared flesh my way at every opportunity, as if I am but a slave to temptation. I leave Osserc to such legendary prowess – if Scara’s tales are of any worth on that account
.

Spinnock, where are you now? I would ride at your side, and feel at home
.

He might even join Scara’s troop. The Greater House of Durav was dying. It might already be dead, slipping into the shadow of their cousins, the Hend, who were surely on the rise. Cryl had been isolating himself and besides, he had no loyal retainer to bring rumours to him – rumours and opinions none would dare utter to Cryl himself. But he suspected that his station was low, his prospects few. In any case, even the thought of prowling the Citadel, like a cur hunting noble blood, disgusted him.