The Black Robe (The Sword and the Spell) (38 page)

If he could change that image he might stand a chance of standing up to Tallison. He had little strength and what was left of his magic wasn’t enough to defeat the Rale and his evil god. However, if he could make the people believe he was a powerful magician sent by the Goddess to save them, then he might stand a chance of turning the crowds against his enemy and they would destroy him. It wasn’t much of a plan but it was the best he could come up with.

“When does Tallison intend holding this ceremony?”

Nyte shrugged. “I don’t know but it has to be soon before the brotherlords return.” She thought about it for a moment. “It will probably be just before the sun sets. There were men moving the altar onto the raised platform so that everyone can see Tallison making the sacrifice. They were turning it to the west so I guess the setting sun will make a perfect backdrop.”

Jonderill nodded thoughtfully. “How long does that give us to prepare?”

“Four candle lengths or so but aren’t you going to do something now? Tozaman is dying.”

“No, there’s nothing I can do now. If we are to succeed we need to prepare properly as we’ll only have the one chance.” He didn’t stop to think how Nyte was going to react to his odd request. “I need water, lots of water and a comb.”

“You want what?” demanded Nyte angrily. She wasn’t sure what she expected him to do but it wasn’t this.

“I need to bathe and wash the dirt and stink from this robe.”

“You want to bathe and make yourself look pretty whilst Tozaman hangs from a post half dead and waiting to die?” She took a belligerent step forward. “He trusted you, magician, and called you friend, but you are the same as all magicians, a self-centred coward. I will take great pleasure in watching you die!”

She turned on her heel and stalked angrily towards the door just as the two guards she’d put to sleep flung the door flaps back and charged into the pavilion with their swords drawn, their blades already raised and aimed at Nyte’s neck. Nyte screamed in terror unable to save herself from their downward slice but Jonderill reacted instantly, the thought exploding from his mind before he had chance to consider the consequences. The guards stopped as if they had hit a wall and were flung violently backwards into the side of the pavilion, their swords spinning harmlessly from their hands. They hit the floor and didn’t move as a thick line of blood dribbled from the sides of their mouths and the corner of their staring eyes.

Jonderill was so staggered by what he’d done that he couldn’t speak. Instead he stayed where he was and waited for the backlash to hit him and send him thrashing on the ground in agony, but nothing happened. It didn’t make sense. He was a white robe, unable to harm others without dire consequences, but it felt as if the ability to use his magic to defend himself was natural, as if it had been there all his life and what had gone before was a part of someone else. The girl turned to him with a stunned look on her face, and Rothers looked terrified. If only he could make Tallison look like that, then he stood a chance of defeating him.

“You want to bathe?” asked Nyte shakily.

“Yes.”

She nodded, scowled in determination and pointed at the cringing Rothers. “You, come with me, our lord has commanded us.” She turned and marched out of the unguarded pavilion with Rothers stumbling behind her.

*

He had so badly wanted to bathe, to immerse himself in hot water and let the filth slowly dissolve from his hair and his body until every part of him was clean, and the memory of his confinement was washed away. Instead he had to settle on two buckets of cold water that Nyte had stolen from the horse lines and some slightly scented, fine scrubbing sand Rothers had taken from Tallison’s sleeping room.

Rothers had helped him off with his robe, frightened at first that the robe might try to burn him as it had burnt others before, but was then relieved when the robe came away tugging dried scabs with it. Jonderill could tell by the look on Rother’s face that beneath the robe his body was a mess and what he’d asked him to do disgusted him. Rothers said nothing, took up the cloths he had torn from one of Tallison’s tunics and began the grim job of scrubbing between the open sores where the bars had pressed tightly against Jonderill’s skin.

When he’d done the best he could Rothers dabbed the balm Tozaman had left on the sores that were hot and infected and started on his hair. Jonderill would have liked to have had his hair washed in fresh water but hadn’t the heart to ask Rothers to go outside again to fetch it. Instead he leaned forward across the bucket whilst Rothers washed his matted hair in the same water in which he had washed his body and rinsed it with water from one of the skins Nyte had stolen.

It wasn’t a good job and it would have been easier to cut his hair short but he knew that he had to keep it long if he was going to look the part he was going to play. When it was done, he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as Rothers combed out the tangles and other things which the water had not washed away, then allowed himself to be wrapped up in a blanket from one of the girl’s bed whilst Rothers attended to his next task.

Rothers took the cleanest bucket of water and started working on the robe, rubbing it with the fine sand and squeezing it out until the water turned even darker and more scummy than it had been. When he held the robe up to hang it over one of the struts which supported the pavilion’s roof it looked like a dirty floor rag, dripping brown water onto the rich rugs which covered the floor. Jonderill looked at it and tried hard not to let his disappointment show. His friend had done his best but he remembered when the robe had been pristine white and had almost shone.

He touched the waterlogged, rough fabric and his heart dropped. Dozo had been the last person to wash his robe and it had then taken almost a seven day to dry. There was only a candle length or so left until he would have to put the robe back on and any hopes he had of portraying an image of a powerful magician shattered into pieces. He turned away and walked to the furthest corner of the pavilion where Rothers would not see his disappointment. Carefully he settled himself into a small space, separated from the main area by a curtain and tried to empty his mind.

Jonderill knew it was time to go even before Rothers touched him lightly on the shoulder. It wasn’t as if the light had changed or the air in the pavilion had cooled but it just felt right, as if he’d been waiting for this time to prove himself. Rothers felt it too and looked more confident and determined than Jonderill had ever seen him. There hadn’t been enough water for them both to bathe, but Rothers had combed his hair, changed his ragged, stinking robe for one of Tallison’s long tunics and the loose leggings from one of the dead guards. Most remarkable of all, he wore boots, a bit dirty and scuffed, but a luxury after going barefoot for so long.

He held out a long strip of soft linen smiling shyly and Jonderill smiled back. Small clothes were a problem he hadn’t even considered. It would have been impossible for him to have worn anything that had belonged to Tallison, but this looked like it had once been a woman’s fine scarf. It was the perfect solution. As Rothers wrapped it around him a memory of when he was a small boy swept through his mind. He had no recollection of his mother but just for a moment he could almost see her face. He wished that the memory would stay with him, but it was only fleeting, and then it was gone.

By the time Rothers had finished Nyte had returned with soft wrappings for his feet which were cut and bruised from being pressed into the bars of the cage floor. She also had a pair of boots which would have been too large for him if his feet hadn’t been swaddled in the thick linen bands. They were not like his own boots made of soft, pliable leather but Nyte had cleaned them and had buffed them to a bright shine. They felt sturdy and solid around his feet and legs. Finally Rothers brought him his robe. It looked different to what it had a candle length ago; more dark grey than muddy brown, remarkably dry and a lot less crumpled.

He slipped it over his head and felt the soft fabric slide across his body, settling comfortably as he eased it around his shoulders. It fell to his ankles in perfectly smooth folds as if it was freshly pressed. The robe looked and felt as right as it had since the day he had come into his power, except it was the wrong colour. For a moment Jonderill wondered where a magician acquired a new robe when he needed one and decided it was probably at the Enclave. If his father had lived, he supposed it would have been one of those things that he would have taught his son. Instead he would have to ask Callabris.

It was a long time since he’d thought of his future and his sudden confidence that he was going to succeed amazed him. Even though he hadn’t worked out how he was going to do this, here he was thinking about asking Callabris daft questions. He laughed and followed Rothers into the main part of the pavilion then stopped and blinked in surprise at the changes. Apart from a clear area by the door flaps which was occupied by a couple of soft cushions and a small table laid with food and goblets, nearly everything else was piled in a heap in the centre of the pavilion.

Tallison’s clothes, bedding and the curtains which had been draped around his sleeping room were at the bottom of the pile underneath all the cushions which had once been scattered on the floor around the many tables. Stacked up and around the heap in a rough pyramid were the rolled rugs from the floor looking like brightly painted tree trunks. Wooden tables and the lanterns from the roof stuck out between the cushions and Jonderill could smell the oil which had once lit the pavilion at night.

“One way or another I didn’t think we would be coming back here,” explained Rothers.

He led Jonderill to the table by the tent flaps which were pulled back just far enough to allow a breeze to enter along with the distant sound of chanting. There was flatbread on the table, a pot of the hot red paste that Jonderill remembered eating once before, and two goblets of ardas which made him gasp when Rothers held the goblet for him to drink. He supposed the girl had been out scavenging again and wondered where she was.

As if he had read his mind Rothers supplied the answer. “A gift from Nyte to give you strength and courage, although I think it’s her who might need it. She said she had a plan just in case things went wrong.”

“You should have stopped her.”

Rothers raised his eyebrows. “I don’t think the lady is one to be stopped when she has decided to do something and least of all by someone like me.” He hesitated for a moment then dared to ask the question. “Lord, do you have a plan?”

It was a good question. The bonfire Rothers had made had given him an idea, but he wasn’t ready to put it into words yet, so he asked a question of his own. “Does Northshield have a temple to Federa?” Rothers looked puzzled but nodded. “Have you ever been inside and seen the face of the Goddess?”

“I’ve been inside but there are no images of the Goddess in that temple or anywhere else as far as I know.”

“No, there aren’t. So what do you think the Goddess would look like?”

“I don’t know, something dark and exotic with green eyes, a bit like Nyte really.”

Jonderill nodded. “That’s what I thought too.” He looked up suddenly and listened. Where a moment before there had been the constant drone of chanting voices, now there was only silence. He stood, shook the long sleeves of his robe down over the stumps at the end of his arms and stepped through the door flaps into the dying evening sunlight. Rothers came behind him, ready to follow him wherever he decided to go. The heat of the day had passed and a sultry breeze was blowing the dust and sand around his boots and the hem of his robe. Hopefully there would be plenty of that if the idea which was slowly forming was going to work. He looked up at the sky seeking the moon and the stars but it wasn’t dark enough yet for them to be seen, the sun had not quite set.

“I need you to stay here and create another sun for me, a blaze so bright that they will think that the sun has dropped from the sky. I will send you a sign if I can but if not I will leave it to you to find the right time.”

Rothers looked terrified and went to ask a question but Jonderill just smiled, turned and walked across the deserted compound to where he knew Talis’s altar now stood. He could feel its pull, a challenging, mocking, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. What he was about to do was complete and utter madness. His powers may have changed, but he had no idea of what they had changed into or what he was capable of.

Callabris would have scolded him for not practising his magic first before launching into an escapade where his life would depend upon it, but there hadn’t been time. The idea had only just come to him and even now the plan was only a rough idea dependent on him doing things he’d never tried before, and others being where he wanted them to be without ever telling them where that was. The more he thought about it, the more impossible it seemed, but he had to try, he could think of no other option.

By the time he’d walked passed half the length of the deserted tented city, where its thousands of starving, desperate people eked out an existence, he could see that Nyte had been right about Tallison’s intentions. In the cleared area where Tallison addressed his people, the entire inhabitants of the rotting city had been crowded together to watch the spectacle. They were silent now, apart from the shuffling of feet and the occasional frightened whimper as the armsbrothers at the rear herded them closer together with the tips of their spears. He could feel the mob’s fear but also something else, something much darker and more sinister.

Beyond them was the raised platform, and for the first time he saw the sacrificial altar, a great slab of red sandstone streaked dark brown with dried blood. It made his skin crawl just to look at it. To one side, two brotherlords stood bound and heavily guarded, and to the other side Tozaman hung limply from the chains that held his hands above his head. There was another post, an empty one, and he wondered if that one was meant for him. Behind the altar a blood red sun touched the desert sands sending crimson rays across the sacrificial stone. As he watched a figure appeared, rising slowly behind the altar as if it was coming out of the sun itself. The crowd gasped and as one, thousands of people raised their voices in awe and devotion, chanting the name of Talis until the ground trembled with their noise.