Hand of the King's Evil - Outremer 04 (62 page)

The figure moved forward and was a man, no question, neither a demon come to curse him nor an angel come to bless. There was relief in that, but - of course - a hint of disappointment too, a sense of something missed. Ronan found it hard to remember even that he ought to draw his sword. It was a second figure that reminded him, following the first out of the light: this one more obviously a man, a young man fumbling a little for his footing, turning his head as though he found it hard to see or to understand quite where he was, or how he had come there, or why. And he overtopped the first man by a head, and had twice the breadth of shoulder.
..

A warrior, following a sorcerer? The first of a line, of an army of warriors? The Surayonnaise had hidden their land for so long, this was much their kind of magic, dark and silent; no doubt this would be much their kind of war, to attack at night and without warning.

Ronan did draw his sword, and he drew his breath also to shout that warning, the great alarm that should rouse all the camp behind him; but the first man - the little man, the sorcerer - lifted his hand, and Ronan felt that weight pressing on his tongue again, except that this time he felt it truly, like a pebble in his mouth. It gagged him, like a pebble in his mouth. Gagging, he lifted a finger to pluck it out, but there was nothing there: only his silence, the emptiness of his voice.

'Easy there,' the man said softly when Ronan might have turned to flee, except that he had never run from any man; when he might have lunged forward, except that the sorcerer was small and unarmed and old, he could see that now, and there had been too many such at the sword-point today who had felt that sword thrust home. Besides, if one hand could weave air into a stone of silencing, what might both hands do? And he had that young man at his back, and the young man had a sword and looked ready and fit to use it. Ronan thought he would never reach the sorcerer. He would die twice on the way, and farmers were practical men where young warriors were hotheads
...

He must in the end have lunged or run, and would have done one or the other if the sorcerer had so much as moved another finger of his spell; but the man stood entirely still, and went on talking.

'You've nothing to fear of me, nor of my companion. We too serve the King. This young lord is Elessan, and his family name is Karlheim; that should be enough. He is not meant to be in this war, so we will not declare him
further. My own is Coren de Ranc
e, and I am the King's Shadow in Outremer.'

The walls of night were dark and high to north and south, but there was starlight and there was riverlight, and Ronan thought that together they were enough. An honest man himself, he believed in honesty writ plain to see in others, on others' faces: in the way their eyes held his gaze, the way their jaws were set, the lineaments of their mouths.

Ronan did not, could not doubt them for a moment. He sheathed his sword, bowed to the lord, might have knelt to the Shadow but that the man
’
s swift gesture refused him leave to do so.

It seemed also to melt that absence from his tongue; he could have spoken, except that he could find no words to say in the face of mystery gifted by the King, and so - presumably - sanctioned by the God. The Church had its own mysteries, the King was a mystery in himself and a mystery altogether to his people; the King's Shadow fell somewhere between the two, a servant with a sovereign's command in his tongues tricks, a prelate's power at his fingers' ends.

As Ronan had seen. But there was to be no more magic, it seemed, unless there were spells in words alone. The King's Shadow said, 'Come: if you have no duties of watch or guard, will you take the two of us to meet with your commanders? There will be hard work in the morning, and the news of that should be broken now, to give all possible time to prepare. And be easy, man — the work may be hard, but at least it should be cleaner than the work you've done today. Enough of burning, I say, and enough of slaying the innocent.'

Something turned in the river, something rose like a rock so that the star-blanket broke and flowed like shards of shimmer falling, fleeing the great dark that divided them. Ronan touched a useless hand — cold, sweating, proclaiming its own mortality in the face of something entirely other - to a useless sword, and said, 'Of course, my lords - but come quickly, if you will. I cannot protect you here.'

'Nor we you,' the young lord said softly, his eyes on the same massive disruption in the river, watching as it sank and was gone, as the waters settled again above where it had been. 'Perhaps all the men in your army cannot protect you, or us, or each other; but that we will learn in the morning. For now, let us go and surprise some few of those men, before something comes to surprise us altogether.'

Ronan led the way, as was proper, but he couldn't keep from glancing back as he went, both at the wonder of the two men who followed him - who had come from nowhere with legends at their backs, one of them his very name a legend and yet both seemed so unsorcerous, so physical -and at the river, where something vast had moved against its current. He'd seen nothing but a darkness, an implication of body, perhaps a glimmer of starlight on black but no more; such a brief glimpse and so little to tell from it, and yet that too was a moment of magic, a demon-touch, what he had sought so long. A vision of light and a vision of its absence, in the space of two breaths or so it seemed; the first had brought perhaps the help of men and the second perhaps a monster, and the one was warm and the other chill, and both he thought were equally threatening.

'They always said this place was cursed.' He said it aloud, if quietly, only for the comfort of hearing his own voice which could cast no spells and presage no disasters; and of course he was answered, by the King's Shadow himself.

'They did say so, and they were wrong. Surayon is endangered, as it always has been. That same danger threatens us, all of us, from the Kingdom to the Sands and further, to Marasson and the lands beyond. Not a curse, though, and not attached to this small land. Surayon is only a focus, it draws the attention of the world and worse, the powers beyond the world.'

And where was the God, where was His shielding hand? Not here, Ronan thought, not poised to shield him

Even before he turned, Anton knew - or told himself so, at least, in his later solitude.

There was something in the stillness, in the silence, in the utter sense of a world in wait. He couldn't mistake that for a moment, he who had lived with his own waiting moment by moment through month after month of moments.

And so he had turned, and so he had seen Marron, and there had been no surprise in it at all. Or so he told himself later, when such a thought might have seemed a comfort, if he had needed comforting.

For now, tonight, he felt the impact, the weight of the moment before he knew what it meant - like the stillness that presages a tremor in the earth, like the sudden suck of air before a conflagration - but only by an instant. Understanding broke over him like a wave of water, brutal and destructive; and so he turned, and so he saw Marron.

Unless in honesty it had happened the other way around, that he had turned and seen Marron and so met that swamping comprehension, so understood the dangerous silence of the men about him, his men with their eyes and focus not entirely on him. Perhaps in honesty it was that way and not the other; but it did not feel so, and he thought the God would not betray him so extremely. He thought he would be allowed a moment's warning, time to take a breath and perhaps a stance in a tipping world, he thought he had earned that much with all his years of service.

So no, he chose to believe that it was as it seemed to be, that he did know what he would see before he turned. It was no help to him.

He turned and saw Marron, and was barely conscious that the boy was not alone, that he and the boy were not alone together. His tongue reached for words, for what words were right and necessary, and for the moment could not find them; which proved to be a blessing, because the man who stood with Marron spoke first, and what he said was so meaningless, so immaterial that it acted as a reminder to Anton that some things should never be said in public, some things should never be said at all.

So he listened and said nothing while the other man spoke, while the boy stood mute.

The man spoke of monsters, of dark terrors turned material in the world, of greater evils abroad than the heretic Surayonnaise they'd come to war with or the unbelieving Sharai their scouts reported to the east. Anton believed him without question; Outremer was the land of miracles where the God had walked in flesh and sorrow, Surayon had been for thirty years safe harbour for magicians, he had himself seen wonders and terror at the
castle
of the Roq, so why not here?

But all the wickedness, all the devilry he'd seen had pivoted around Marron, had come from the boy or else followed in his shadow. And the man didn't know that, and so what he said was nonsense. He spoke of evil at the bridge, he warned of evil in the morning and never understood that the pale, silent figure at his side could be the source or the draw of more evil than he was able to imagine.

Anton let the same nonsense infest his own tongue. He commended the man and his troop for their good work in surviving, in helping to destroy the creature they'd encountered, in returning to carry the news; he spoke not a word of blame for their failure to preserve the bridge intact, the task he'd sent them to achieve; he promised to consult with his commanders on how best to meet the challenge of the dawn in these altered circumstances, where other and more deadly enemies had arisen than those they'd come to face.

Then he dismissed the man and all his other auditors, the curious circle of his confreres and their squires, their pages and servants and other hangers-on. They moved not far off, not far enough, but they did move; that was the best that he could hope for. He daren't take Marron inside his tent, that would furnish their gossip with matter enough for days of speculation, weeks of teasing. His reputation couldn't afford it.

His reputation couldn't afford even this, a quiet talk in the open, in the firelight, in the heart of the Ransomer camp if he didn't end it by ordering Marron's immediate arrest. That would happen anyway, at his orders or otherwise; already men would be racing to carry this new
s to the marshal and his priestl
y officers, that the heretic, sorcerer, traitor Marron was returned. The boy had no chance
of leaving as he had come, quietl
y and unchallenged; he had no chance of leaving at all, and surely must have realised that before he came.

And yet he had come, and must have had a reason, which could not be any of the reasons Anton had to be glad to see him come.

So Anton's first words to him could have been, should have been, must have been to ask why he was here; and yet they were not.

'Do you think you will be let leave this place?' he asked instead; which was almost but not quite another question altogether,
do you think I will let you leave this place?

Marron smiled thinly, but somehow not weakly, and certainly not in submission. 'I come and go,' he said, the first words that Anton had heard from him since the world changed, and it was astonishing that his voice was even recognisable, let alone so resonant of the boy he used to be, so redolent of the summer that had been. 'Not always at my own choice, but the Ransomers do not hinder me.'

A soft hint there of a night at the Roq, slaughter and destruction, broken gates and broken minds to back up broken oaths.

Now Anton could, did, had to ask, 'Why did you come? Not to gloat, not to flaunt your powers,'
not to kill and kill again to prove them, surely not that,
'so why?'

'Because it matters, what he just told you,' with a jerk of his head to signify the man just gone, 'because you have to listen, and you have to be ready. The people of Surayon are not your enemy, sieur; nor are the Sharai. I have been with both
...'

'And you too are our enemy, Marron. Your words prove it, if proof were needed, but it is not. Do you imagine that I or any of us have forgotten what you did at the Roq?'

'No, sieur,' though it seemed that he at least could face it squarely, stubbornly accepting the fact of it, not flinching or turning away from the reminder. 'There was a madness that night, in me and in others. I am clear of it now,' and his hand moved to touch his arm, a healed scar where there had been a living, livid wound. Anton remembered that, he had made the wound himself. He was glad it had healed now, but couldn't read the gesture otherwise. 'You need to be free likewise,' Marron went on, you need to listen without judging. If you spend your days killing men of this country and men of the Sands, if you waste your strength and your steel's edge, you will die the quicker when the 'ifrit choose to meet you. You must be ready for them, and you must understand them when they come. Have your blades and arrowheads blessed by your priests, you can do that and it will work

'I cannot order such a thing done, Marron. It would have to come from the marshal; it is a matter for the brothers, not the knights.'

'You
will die without it,' said bluntl
y, coldly, mercilessly. 'Even the best sword, even Dard would be nothing, would be a willow-wand unblessed against these creatures. Trust me, sieur

'Trust you? How?' And that was said just as bluntly, just as coldly, just as mercilessly, and it won him the silence that he'd sought, his only defence against that voice. Even the anger that he roused in response to Marron's words was entirely artificial, a cloak to cover truth. He needed not to listen, not to hear, not to be here; otherwise he was lost. And yet, where else could he be and what else do, while Marron was free and within the camp? 'Do you still carry Dard, do you still dare that, with all your history in your hand?'