Scar Felice (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 3) (29 page)

The guardsman was unknown to her, but he was as well turned out as any she had seen, broad shouldered, with a pleasing, serious face, the sort that invited trust. His mail and weapons were polished and glittering in every detail, and he was scrupulously polite. Felice had never really worked out how a man with a long sword strapped to his waist could walk about all day without tripping over it, but this man seemed to have mastered the art. He opened the door and stepped neatly to one side with a minimal bow.

“Ima, please enter,” he said.

She paused for a moment, peering through the door into a world of quiet opulence, comfortable chaos, a great room filled with tapestries and woven rugs, illuminated by a huge window that dominated one wall. She could see nobody within. A glance behind her met only the fixed smile of the guardsman and the anxious eyes of the others who waited. There were six of them, but she only knew Carn. He nodded encouragement and smiled. In this place he was a man among children. The others were younger and fretted more.

This was White Rock. Again. A group of them had been brought here at Serhan’s request, no reason given, and been asked to wait in a sort of holding room. It was not an interesting space. New windows had been recently knocked through one wall, but the view was monotonous – flat plains, forests stretching away. The room seemed stacked with too many pillars so that it was difficult to get a clear view across to the other side. The others did not seem talkative, so they had all passed a fortunately brief wait in anxious silence.

These exact chambers, it was whispered, had once been inhabited by Gerique, greatest of the Faer Karan, a ruthless and clever monster feared even by his own kind. Now it was an audience chamber, a private version of the great hall downstairs, where the Mage Lord received his most important visitors, but a hint of darkness lingered here, a shadow of terror.

She stepped inside, and the door closed softly behind her. The great window looked north or west, she could not say which, but it showed snow and mountains, blue skies, a portrait of the approaching autumn. The few places where the floor was not covered by rugs it showed the same dark cream stone as the keep. She had never seen a stone like it anywhere else. The rugs were ornamental and favoured reds, blues, and black in abstract patterns in the Saratan style. In places they were three deep. Where there were no windows or doors the walls were hung with tapestries of the finest weave. The scenes were varied, but mostly traditional folk scenes; harvest, the hunt, lovers in a forest.

“Felice?” The voice came from a chair by the fireplace. There were no flames in the hearth, it being a good late summer day, but two comfortable chairs were set before it none the less.

“My Lord?” Here Serhan’s title seemed oddly necessary. To have failed to voice it would have been disrespectful. She would have thought it mattered least in private, but found that it was in private that it mattered most.

“Come and sit by me.”

She did, lowering herself into the embrace of the chair, its high arms pushing her own into her lap, and she was cradled in slightly uneasy comfort. Serhan did not speak for a while, but sat staring into the dead fire, his eyes reflecting nothing but ashes. She had never seen him look so unfocussed, so unguarded.

“I had a lover once,” he said. His eyes did not leave the fire. It was almost as though he was speaking to himself. “She died.”

Felice did not know what to say. She had heard stories, of course, but one never quite knew what was truth and what was myth with Serhan. His story had been reinvented so many times.

“She killed herself.”

She sat very still. He still felt the pain of that loss. It was in his voice, damping it down as though he spoke from beneath the surface of some private reservoir of grief, muting it until it was barely more than a whisper. So quiet a voice was less likely to betray, to crack beneath the weight of memory. He stayed in the past for a long moment his eyes looking far beyond the fire, and then they focussed again. He lifted his head.

“On the table,” he said. “You see the small bottle?”

She looked, and picked it up. It was a tiny thing, no more than the length of her smallest finger. Through the thin glass she could see a number of small spheres, pills, little grey pills.

“What are they?” She asked.

“Poison; deadly and fast acting. It seems painless, and takes about a minute to kill. The Shan will tell me what it is, I expect, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the same poison that killed Mai, my lover.”

“The same? Are you sure? Where did you find it?” The questions tumbled out. She halted them, feeling gauche, and waited. She would hear what he wanted her to hear.

“They’re all dead,” he said. “Except for Jarrow, who knows nothing, and Haken, who we cannot find. They all took these pills when they realised they had been caught. All of them, just like Mai.”

All dead? That meant the landlord, the woman who had served her the drugged meal, and many more. Probably everyone who worked at the tavern was part of it, either completely, or ignorantly serving their ends, like Jarrow. So many dead, and by their own hands.  It was not something that she could have believed possible. The degree of dedication to a cause that you would give your life so easily was hard to understand. All dead. All but one, she realised. Not the leader, not the man in the hood who whispered to conceal his voice. That one would still be alive.

“I had not heard,” she said. “What does it mean?”

“She was part of something, Mai I mean, a group of people opposed to the Faer Karan. They were working to the same end as I, or so they thought. Their leader was someone I had known when I was a boy, trained as I had been trained, but he had given up, reached the conclusion that there was no way to win. His solution was to provoke Gerique to wipe out as many as possible, to deprive the Faer Karan of humanity, of their toys. I killed him.” He shrugged. “It was self defence, I suppose. He struck the first blow. He intended to kill me.”

“These people were the same group?” She could not guess why he was confiding in her, treating her as a trusted aide.

“I have to assume it. I thought they would be dissolved, disbanded. After all, there are no more Faer Karan, and men now rule men. What purpose can they have?”

“One of them, the landlord, I think, used to term
usurper
. He meant you.”

“Usurper?” Because I maintain the power of the Faer Karan, sit in the seat they once occupied? Whatever, it seems that they have grown in strength, spread out, become more organised. I will have to look into it.”

She waited. He reached out and took a sip from a cup that stood beside him. His face seemed drawn, his arm heavy.

“We are quite different, you and I,” he said after a while. She did not reply. The statement did not seem to require an answer. “And yet so similar. They gave me a name, too. The Shan – just as they gave you a name.”

“An error, my lord,” she said. He seemed not to hear her. He did not look up, but continued to stare into the cold hearth.

“Keshte Moru,” he said. “Do you know what it means?”

“No, my lord.”

“Death’s Enemy,” he said. “It means Death’s Enemy.” He paused. “Actually that is a bad translation. The word Keshte is a difficult one. In the old literature it is often used to refer to friends or competitors. I can do better than enemy. Something like: ‘the one who keeps death honest’. Yes, that is better.”

“It means little then?”

“On the contrary, it is most apposite,” Serhan said, raising his eyes to meet hers. “Think about it for a moment. You insisted that Jarrow be spared. He is little more than a thug, and one who was tasked with your death, and yet you would not see him die. Then there is Karnack, a killer who took your brother’s life, who scarred your face, and yet you would not see him die. Your friends benefit also. Ennis Sabra would be dead if not for you; Tann and Pasha would be dead if not for you. It is a theme that runs through your tale. It begins with a death, your brother, and then, from that time, life wins over death.”

“But not for Kalnistine.” The words were out quickly, before she could think to hold them back. She could not help but remember that death, and believed that it would stay with her for ever. Would Serhan understand sympathy for a monster? He seemed not to take offence.

“True, not for Kalnistine, but I’d wager that even his death went against the grain.”

Felice said nothing. What he said was true enough. She had hated seeing the Faer Karani die. It had seemed such a waste of life. Yet again Serhan allowed the silence to extend. He lowered his eyes once more to the fire, and she wondered why she had been summoned; surely not for this maudlin conversation?

“They call me Frateri Moru – Death’s Brother. It is a compliment, apparently, and indicates that I am the father of a new age. Death’s brother is life, so they say, but in many ways I have been a better friend to death. We were both foretold, you and I. It is why we have such names.”

“Foretold?” Repeating the world seemed pointless, but she was startled that anyone would bother to foretell anything about her.

“Yes. They were expecting you. I don’t really understand Shanish prophecy, but it seems that they expect a figure to arise but can never say who it will be, or quite when. A number of individuals can fill the vacancy, but only one of them ever does, and they grow more certain of the details as the time approaches.”

“Why would anyone expect me?”

“We will get to that,” he smiled. It was an indulgent smile. Serhan’s spirits seemed quite recovered from the melancholy of just a few moments ago, but that was not really possible. It was a mask, she realised, behind which he dwelled constantly.

“You wonder why you are here.” It was a statement.

“Yes, my lord.”

“You wonder why I confide these private things to you.”

“Indeed.”

“It is because you are one of the five.”

“The five?” For a moment it meant nothing to her, and she knew that it should. He was watching her like a parent watching a child opening a present. Five? Five What? It came to her suddenly. Five students. Five chosen to train in the ways of magic. Five new Mage Lords.

“It is a mistake, my lord,” the words came out in a rush, almost as though the phrase had been waiting to be spoken. She was embarrassed. This all went back to that silly Mataga thing on the ship from Yasu when she’d had the fever.

“There is no mistake, Felice.”

“But you have not tested me,” she protested. “The candidates were all interviewed, you have not…” The words died on her lips. It was all an interview, she realised. Everything she had seen and done and said. All of it was watched and noted. “I have no talent for it,” she finished weakly.

Serhan laughed. “Please allow me to explain something, Felice,” he said. “Magic obeys laws. It is nothing more than the manipulation of power by the will of an individual, but all individuals differ in their ability. You can divide magical talent, as you call it, into two basic components. I will call them strength and art. Strength is innate, and cannot be taught. Imagine it is like a pipe through which water flows. The size of the pipe limits the amount of water that can flow, and so it is with magic. To wield great power one must have the capacity for it. Art can be taught, but again it is not entirely so. In much the same way as any dullard can be shown how to scrape a fiddle with a bow, so anyone with strength can be taught art to a certain extent, but it requires intelligence and delicacy to master it.”

“I do not see…”

“Hush. Let me finish.” Serhan sipped from his cup again. “We heard, of course, the tales of the weather witch who saved the ship. It was a tale, and we set little store by it, but because the search had begun we made note of it. Then we heard the story of your escape from the bandits on the road to White Rock. When we realised it was the same person involved we sent Borbonil to investigate, and he discovered that you held Pathfinder, so the escape was not so remarkable after all. Then at White Rock you were observed, of all things, using Pathfinder at the dining table. This made us very curious, because the knife does not work like that.”

“It does.”

“So you believe, but I have had the chance to examine the blade, and I have understood the spell that created it. Pathfinder is little more than a map with the intelligence of a retarded child. It cannot do the things that you made it do. The magic is not there.”

“But I asked it,” she protested. “I asked if it could find things, and it showed me that it could.”

“Part of you knows the power that you have. It is a part of you that you deny. Tell me that you have not had strange feelings, premonitions, dreams – something that you could not explain.”

She shook her head. “A few dreams, but everyone dreams. They mean nothing.”

“They mean nothing on their own, Felice, but added to what we have seen, what you have done, they take on a great significance. Did you think that the bonds simply came loose when you were held in the tavern, a happy coincidence?”

“But I tried to undo them, to cut them. If I could do it any time I wished, why would I not?”

“You deny your abilities. It is not a conscious thing, but you
know
that you cannot do things, and so you do not. It is only in anger and desperation that you permit yourself to reach for it. You used the knife to hide your own power.”