The Right Hand of God (28 page)

And as the Company rushed through the reluctantly-opened gate and embraced their old friends from the Woods of Withwestwa, then joined with them in dancing and singing - to the surprise and bemusement of the Instruians who watched from the walls - it seemed as though the tide had indeed turned in their favour, and the defeat of the Destroyer would be only a matter of time.

The celebrations had barely begun when a worried Captain of the Guard called Leith over to him. 'I don't wish to alarm the others,' he said quietly, 'but perhaps you would come with me.

Something unpleasant has happened in The Pinion.'

After some thought, Leith gathered Kurr and the Haufuth (the latter reluctant, having spied a haunch of roast beef being passed around) and followed his captain back into the City. It was a brisk half-hour walk to The Pinion, but a horse was found for Leith as he still felt somewhat weak.

As they approached the low, long building, Leith saw

groups of guardsmen standing silently, nervously eyeing him and his Arrow, as though waiting to find out how their new rulers would react to what they would see.

'It appears someone has taken advantage of your investiture ceremony to attack The Pinion,'

said the Captain of the Guard. 'See here how the sewer has been diverted. Whoever did this got the drain to flow into The Pinion - see here -and down into the dungeon below.' He paused beside the trapdoor. 'You might want to put these on,' he said, indicating a guard standing nearby who held a number of rags. The captain took one and wound it around his mouth and nose; the three northerners copied him and, when they were ready, the guard opened the trapdoor.

The stench was beyond belief. A dreadful cloud of ammonia rose out of the pit, burning Leith in the back of the throat and bringing tears to his eyes. A glance down into the awful depths revealed where the sewer water had ended up, and Leith clamped his eyes closed so he didn't have to see what was down there.

'I recall we imprisoned the traitorous Arkhoi in the dungeons,' drawled the Arkhos of Plonya, coming into the room. 'I imagine their last few moments were extremely unpleasant.' The Plonyan seemed to be trying not to smile.

'How many prisoners were in The Pinion?' Leith asked, appalled.

'We're not sure,' came the captain's reply. 'I did ask, and sent someone off to the Hall of Meeting to check the records. The cells can hold up to two hundred people, it is said.'

'Murder,' Leith breathed. 'Cruel murder! As much as the three Arkhoi might have deserved death, many others down there did not.' Pointedly, he turned to the Arkhos of Plonya, who traded stares with him.

'My lord, this act has the finger of Nemohaim all over it,' the Captain of the Guard said in his ear. 'He will want revenge on the Arkhoi who were content to see him driven from Instruere.

All of them,' he emphasised, turning to look at the Plonyan, who now wore a worried look on his face. 'He'll have some sort of plan,' the captain continued, speaking with deliberation. 'But before he enacts it, he will want to take care of all the perceived insults and injuries he has received. I would not sleep very well if I was on the Council of Faltha when Deorc supplanted him.'

'I want the Arkhos of Nemohaim found,' said Leith, a deep and grinding anger working away inside him. 'I want him found before we depart for the Gap. I don't want to leave any enemies in the City when we leave. I want him found before anyone else dies. By the fire I hold in my hand, I want him found!'

'Yes, my lord,' the captain said.

'But before I do anything, there is someone I need to talk to. I've put this off for far too long.'

Kurr and the Haufuth looked at each other with puzzled expressions on their faces, but they could do little else than follow their young leader as he set out once more for the Inna Gate.

At least Stella wasn't down there, Leith told himself as he strode northwards along the Vitulian Way, completely ignoring the horse offered to him. At least I had the good sense to check on The Pinion last week. Wherever she is, whatever happened to her, she didn't die in that dreadful dungeon.

Stella blinked and looked around her. She had just emerged from the mouth of a deep, stone-lined cavern out into watery sunshine. Perhaps there would be something lying around that might help her, someone nearby she might be able to

call on ... but she could see nothing of use. In front of her stretched a wide, snow-streaked plain, devoid of grass or other vegetation, a dark smudge in the centre. In the distance low hills bulwarked the steel-grey sky. Behind her, prodding her forward, came the searing presence of the Undying Man. He's bringing me up here to make my death more painful, she thought. Death in the dark I was prepared for, but not out here in the light!

She was pushed forward by nothing but his irresistible will, still blinking against the harshness of the sun. Something was different about the light. It hurt her head. Was there a problem with her head, she wondered. With the rough treatment she'd received, this seemed likely.

Slowly the dark smudge on the plain came into focus, and her heart sank. An army. She knew what it was for and where it was headed.

The Destroyer led her to a rocky platform, from where he could look down on his army and their last, their very last drill before they marched forth. There were many thousands assembled on the plain before them, before just the two of them, so it seemed.

'Raise my arm,' he commanded her, and she obeyed without thinking, shuddering at the touch.

As his arm was raised his army gave a great shout, then began to manoeuvre. Left and right they marched, splitting apart and re-forming with a frightening precision, their war cries echoing across the plain.

All that day the army paraded for their master. Stella held up the arm of the black-robed man until she could bear it no longer, and slumped to the cold stone, hands on her aching head. Yet she was not allowed to rest. His power compelled her to her feet, and she did not have the strength to resist as he forced her to raise his arm again. In an agony of exhaustion, she found strength to do his bidding. She dared not think where it came from, what it was doing to her. Deorc had told her in detail how the Destroyer gained the strength to do his magic.

As the sun set and the deep cold of this far northern clime began to bite, the Destroyer finally allowed her to lower his hand. He laughed at her extremity as she grovelled on the ground, then yanked her to her feet with his one hand. 'Behold my handmaiden!' he cried, and Stella felt the gaze of the great Army of Bhrudwo turn to her. 'Behold my future bride!'

Fifty thousand throats cried 'Hail!' and the woman from Loulea swooned into unconsciousness.

Farr was indeed drunk, the first time in his life, so he claimed. A fortnight of celebration with the Fodhram had been enough to overcome his reserve, and now he was sharing the forest-dwellers' deep mugs of ale. Gaily he greeted his friends from the Company, a broad smile never far from his face, all anger seemingly forgotten.

Time and again he told the Company how he found the losian army on the road north of Deuverre, his tongue tripping over lyrical descriptions of the singing and the moonlight on the open fields of the Borderlands. He talked of his friends the Fodhram, and of new friends he had found among the Fenni and the Widuz. He made his own part in their arrival sound comical, as though they had rescued him from being lost, and the four Fodhram laughed with him every time he told it.

'I have a few questions for you,' Perdu began, but Farr wasn't listening. 'How is it that enemies match together as friends?' Perdu persisted, to no effect. 'How can Widuz and Fodhram sleep back to back?' His cousin just laughed at him and offered him his mug. 'Aaah!'

Perdu exclaimed after a few minutes of this. 'I need to speak to my clan chief. Is he here?'

'He is beyond the river with the other leaders, waiting for an invitation into the city,' said a woman's voice from just behind him, the sweet voice speaking a language he had not heard for months. 'Will you speak to me instead?'

'Haldemar!' the adopted Fenni cried, spinning around to catch his wife in an embrace. 'You're here! And the boys . . .'

'Safe at home on the vidda, where they should be. Where you should be. Come and speak with me, my husband, and tell me why you should not be beaten for staying away from me.' Her words were sharp, but there was a playfulness about them. Then she could speak no longer, as Perdu pulled her face down on to his breast.

Leith brushed past Perdu and Haldemar, his mind on one person only. He strode up to his crippled brother, who was talking quietly with his parents and with Achtal the Bhrudwan, and grabbed him by the shoulder. As Hal spun awkwardly around, a stray thought flashed through Leith's mind: how long since 1 last touched him?

'Leith! We were just talking—'

'That's all you ever do!' Leith snapped, pulling Hal aside, away from his shocked parents.

Achtal watched them walk away, a frown on his face, then turned and muttered something to Mahnum. The Trader nodded agreement, and went looking for Kurr and the Haufuth.

'Leith, what's the matter—' Hal began, but again his younger brother didn't let him speak, pulling him down to sit on an upturned barrel close to the shore of the River.

'What's the matter?' he threw back at his brother. 'Perhaps

two hundred people dead, killed in the foulest possible way by the Arkhos of Nemohaim, that's what's the matter!' Don't look at his face, don't get pulled into his arguments. 'This is the man you made a bargain with, Hal. You knew he was a traitor, a killer, and that he would betray us too as soon as he could. Why didn't you put him to death in the desert when he was in your power, like he deserved?'

'Leith, it doesn't matter what he did, he deserved—'

'And don't use words like honour or forgiveness or sacrifice!' Leith growled. 'Always you have a justification for your noble acts. Two hundred people, Hal!'

A troubled look creased the cripple's face, as though reflecting unfamiliar doubts. Leith drank it in like the elixir of life.

'I - I did not think he would do such a thing. But even so, it was right to give him the chance.'

Despite his words Hal looked uncertain, Leith was sure of it.

'It was not right. He deserved no chances. It could never be right to give him the chance to murder more innocent people. You haven't even asked me how the people died. Don't you care?'

'I thought you were talking about the Battle of the Four Halls,' his brother replied. 'Is there -

was there another time?'

'Just now,' said Leith wearily. 'Somehow he flooded The Pinion and finished off his former fellow traitors, and no one knows how many others as well. Hal, they died choking on the city's excrement. They died horribly because you provided the Arkhos of Nemohaim a way to return to Instruere. Because you wanted to prove to everyone just how holy you are, how full of goodness, how pure and untainted by evil' The words flew like fiery darts across the pace or so between them, and as they were spoken everything else around them faded away, such was their vehemence. 'Your hands are tainted. You might as well have drowned them yourself. Two hundred people paid the price for your pride.'

Leith could not believe his eyes. Silent tears began to run slowly down Hal's face. A small place deep within him exulted at the sight.

A voice intruded upon their private world of pain. 'Leith! Leith! What are you doing?' His mother's voice.

'Make it short, boy,' came another voice, a voice that had once intimidated him but now had no power over him. 'You have leaders to meet, an army to inspect. You don't have time for this.'

Without turning his head, Leith waved his right hand behind him in the direction of the voices, signalling for them to stay out of it, and did not see the blue-tinged flame surge from the Arrow, driving his parents and fellow villagers back.

'Don't do this, Leith,' his father's voice warned him.

'If you wish to remain, then do so,' Leith said. 'What I have to say should be said in front of witnesses.' He turned towards them, and only then noticed the Haufuth patting down scorch marks on his robe.

'I accuse Hal of siding with the Destroyer,' said Leith deliberately, and again the words took on a life of their own, cocooning them from the real world, enclosing them in a weaving of words. 'Not only did he make an alliance with the Arkhos of Nemohaim, he counselled friendship with the traitorous King of Straux. And he made a pawn out of Achtal, the Bhrudwan warrior. To what purpose, Hal? To what purpose?'

'Leith!' his father cried angrily. 'What are you saying?'

'Whatever it is, it needs to be said,' the old farmer growled, surprising the others. '1 want to hear the answer

to his question. I have often wondered about Hal Mahnumsen on this journey.'

'He's just a boy!' Indrett exclaimed. 'He wouldn't hurt anyone!'

'You can't see it,' retorted Kurr. 'You're too close to him, too familiar with him. But I see it.

He knows too much to be just a boy.' There was an ache in his voice like old pain.

'What do you. mean?'

Leith took up the thread. 'Tell them about your enhancing, Hal. Tell them about how you influenced us at Kantara, pulling our strings like the puppet show at the Vapnatak fair. You can do magic, Hal. It was you who overpowered Maendraga and Belladonna, the guardians of the Arrow. Do you deny it?'

Indrett let out a derisive snort at her son's words, but Mahnum put a hand on her arm.

'No. No, I don't deny it. I know how to use the Way of Fire to change the way things happen.'

Hal's voice was quiet, strained, bereft of its usual knowing timbre. Behind him, his mother gasped. Kurr grunted agreement.

'It's true,' the old farmer said. 'I thought you were just fey, a kind of throwback to the days when the First Men were closer to the land, closer to the old gods. But you can actually do magic. Where did you learn to do it?'

Hal swallowed before he replied, and as he spoke he had a hunted look in his eyes. 'I spent a lot of time by myself, owing to - well, I observed what happens in the forest and the field, and somehow found I could bend - enhance -speed up many things that happen. Leith, I hear the voice of the Most High. You want me to say that I do not. How can I make what is into what is not7. Why does it matter so much?'