The Seventh Friend (Book 1) (39 page)

Narak strode into their midst with Jiddian at his side. He looked for Havil, and found him standing by his tent, shouting orders to his men.

“What are you doing?” Narak asked.

“We are going to defend the kingdom,” Havil said. “There are Seth Yarra in Telas and they have taken the gate.”

“Who told you this?”

“I did.” He turned to see Fashmanion, Crow God, standing in the midst of the chaos, black cloak wrapped around him like folded wings. “Do you deny it is true?”

This was a new departure. Fashmanion had never dared go against him before, and the news should have been brought to Narak before Havil. Narak was the general, after all.

“I do not deny it,” he replied. “In fact I have discussed it with King Raffin, only a few hours ago. The situation is well in hand. You are needed here, Prince Havil, and your father agrees with me.”

“But the gate..?”

“Will be retaken. Even now there are thousands of men, Avilians, Berashi and Duranders converging for that purpose. You did not think I would sacrifice the gate, Havil?”

Havil stood still. He was transfixed by conflict. He desperately wanted to ride and fight and save the kingdom. Narak could see that. But his duty was to his father and to Narak, and he knew that Narak would not lie.

“So what shall we do, Deus?” he asked.

“Each army must be defeated,” Narak said. “This one first. Tell me, Prince Havil, if you rode day and night how long would it be before you came to Tor Silas?”

“Three weeks.”

“Three weeks and your horses would be dead, your men would be exhausted. Let us say five, assuming that your men wish to fight when you get there, and that they need horses to do it.”

“Five weeks.” Havil sounded defeated.

“And if Seth Yarra march, starting a week from today, from the furthest corner of Telas, when will they reach the gate?”

“Seventeen days. Perhaps three weeks. They will be through the gate before we arrive. They will be in Tor Silas.”

He laid a hand on the prince’s arm. “Havil, have faith in me. I will deliver your kingdom, I will save the gate. Seth Yarra will never tread the halls of your father’s castle. I swear it. Battles will be won, traitors will be punished, and we will be victorious. Do not doubt it for a moment.” He deliberately glanced at Fashmanion as he spoke of traitors, and saw the crow god drop his eyes. A moment later his black cloak swirled as he turned and walked away through the milling crowds of Berashi soldiers.

Havil nodded. “Deus, I do believe it,” he said. “I shall tell my men to restore the camp.”

Narak shook his head. “No, noble prince, you anticipate my order by only a few hours. The army marches tonight.”

“Where, Deus, where do we march?” Havil’s eyes were bright with the expectation of battle, but a trick doesn’t seem clever if you reveal it before it’s played.

“All in good time, Prince Havil.” He left the prince standing by his tent and, with Jiddian at his side, went to rouse the rest of the army.

Keb, son of Jarl sat alone in his cell. There was one candle, and he was, he had been told, permitted to read, though he did not think there was a book in Bas Erinor that he would willingly study. It was all taint.

The cell was small, but it was dry and not particularly cold. They had given him a straw pallet to sleep on, some small comfort above the hard wooden bed. There was even a chair. The food, too, was adequate. Apart from being deprived of his freedom he had no cause for complaint. He had expected to die, so in a way this was all a pleasant surprise.

He was sitting, staring at the blank stone wall. It was something that he did a great deal. He tried to remember his life in detail, each day going to a different part, and today he was a child, remembering his stern father, a tall man with silver and black hair, clean shaven with unsmiling eyes. His father had been a farm labourer, but dedicated to his son’s advancement. Every day he insisted that Keb explain what he had learned at school, and explain in detail.

Jarl had known what he had know – that doing something was the best way to learn - and he could not think of a way to bring this discipline to his son other than by making him the teacher. Keb knew that every night he would be forced to teach, and so he learned. He made notes. He struggled to understand his lessons with a desperation born of his father’s hard hand. He learned to ask the questions that he knew his father would ask; simple questions with simple answers. His father was not a clever man.

He did well. With that kind of motivation he could do nothing else. His father was not impressed that he was top of his class. Jarl saw the other children playing in the street and frowned and shook his head. Wastrels. Lazy children. Derelict parents. He wanted Keb to be different. He forced Keb to be different.

Keb was brighter than his father, but he was clever enough to know that he was not clever. Other children had thoughts that startled him, ideas that amazed him, but Keb learned by rote. It was his good fortune that learning by rote was what his teachers desired. Originality was not valued, not encouraged.

What did Keb learn? He learned The Book. It had no other name, but in fact it was many books, each dealing with different aspects of life. He learned to read and write, to do arithmetic, he attended the skills classes and learned a little of weapons and ploughs, and potters wheels, though he showed no talent for manual skills.

He learned so well that he became an oracle. Other men in his village came to his father’s house to ask if they could consult Keb. They wanted to know how they could do things that would comply with the law. It was cheaper and less frightening than going to a green clad master of the rule, a priest. Keb saw his father’s pride in this, and for the first time he knew that his father was pleased with him. He redoubled his efforts, learned more, studied The Book even at home. He remembered the words well enough, and began to take seriously his duty in the advice he gave. He studied houses, and pottery, and the way that farmers planted. He struggled with the application of the words to the world around him.

Often he would sit in one place for a long time, trying to pick fault with everything he saw, because he never saw perfection. How ever many times the priests were summoned, or came of their own accord, there was always something left that was tainted, wrong, an insult to Seth Yarra.

Then came the day that ended his childhood; the day the priests came for him.

It was a day like any other summers day. It was hot. He sat indoors with The Book, a copy that his father had borrowed from a pious farmer for whom he worked. Keb was reading about clothes, about the correct dress for scholars and priests, the cloths to be used, the colours and lengths, when there was a banging on the door.

His father answered it, and he listened for a moment to quiet words spoken, and then the tiny living room was full of men, full of black and green. Keb was afraid. He had never seen so many priests in one place.

His fame had spread. Word of his knowledge, and of the advice he gave had reached even the ears of priests, and as far as the chancellor of the seminary in the great town of Larris, a hundred miles away.

What he was doing was wrong, they told his father. It was for priests alone, and masters of the rule in particular to give advice on the true path, the right way of doing.

Keb listened to them, and listened to his father whining in their presence, all his strength sapped by fear. He studied them, and was shocked to see that even here there w
as no perfection. One priest had a belt that was too broad – it did not match his rank – and another wore his cloak too long.

“Test me,” he’d said. It was an arrogant thing to say. It was the boldest and most arrogant moment of his life, and when he remembered it he cringed inwardly. Their eyes had turned on him like dogs on a trapped animal. He could see the hunger for punishment, his punishment, in their eyes. There was one priest there, however, a teacher at the seminary he later discovered, who outranked the others, and was amused by the boy’s challenge.

“Very well,” he said.

There followed a barrage of questions. When he did not know the answer he said that he did not know, but most of the time he knew, and he spoke the words from The Book. Sometimes he even expanded on the words, strove to make them plainer, as he had done so many times for the farmers and craftsmen of the village.

At the end of it the priests had been silent, all but the teacher who had asked the questions. This man turned to Jarl.

“Your boy is a prodigy, Jarl, son of Hern. You have been blessed by Seth Yarra, but your punishment is that he will be taken from you. He will return with me to the seminary and be examined to see if he is fit for the green or black.”

Jarl had bowed and scraped, smiled like an idiot. It was the moment that Keb lost respect for his father, seeing him so cowed among a group of weak men that he could have broken in two with his massive hands. Later he understood, and he forgave Jarl’s weakness. Nobody could defy the masters of the rule. They were the servants of Seth Yarra. They were his voice, bore his knowledge on behalf of the people, but that first day, the first time he saw them all together like that, he had thought them pompous and self important.

He had gone with them. It was the first time that he had left the village, and the first time he had seen a town. It was the first time for so many things. He asked the teacher if he might be loaned a copy of The Book, for it was all that he read, and the teacher had nodded with approval and gave him a fine, illuminated, leather bound volume, as fine a thing as he had ever seen.

“The words of the book are for all,” the teacher had said. “But this form of the book is appropriate only for those who have taken the green cloth, as I hope you may.”

Keb had been impressed. At the seminary he was prodded and questioned and taken to a village. It was not a real village. It was a place that had been built as an examination, a place tainted with error. Find the taint, they had told him, find all that is wrong and tell the man who walks with you.

Two hours later he had returned to the gate where the priests waited and the man, not a priest, but a scribe and servant to priests, had given over a paper to the teacher who compared it with a list. The comparison took some time, and Keb had stood anxiously by while his future was decided.

The teacher raised his head, and to this day Keb remembered the words he had spoken.

“He has correctly identified the twenty seven grave errors,” he said. “In addition to that he had identified forty-two of the sixty-five lesser errors, and fifteen of the twenty-three trivial errors. There are no false errors.”

There was a muttering among the priests.

“Let me see,” another said. The teacher had handed over both lists, and they waited again while the man made his own comparison.

“It is true,” he said eventually. “The boy has passed the exam.”

It was only later he learned that the exam was one given to students after their first year of study. It was an exam for boys of age nineteen, and Keb was sixteen. That had decided his future. He had entered the seminary, studied for a year and formally chosen the green cloth. After another eight years he had been selected, taken away from his studies, and sent here.

Keb was startled from his reverie by keys rattling in the door of his cell. Had he been asleep? It was surely not yet time for the clockwork progression of his meals?

The figure that came through the door was not the one that he expected, and he recoiled from the sight. It was the demon, Fenris Godkiller, the one they named Narak.

There was nowhere for Keb to go. He could not run, but he feared this one more than all the others. He had not seen him since the day of his capture, since his questioning and the threat of torture.

The wolf god moved the chair so that it faced the bed where Keb sat, and sat down.

“I have meant to come here for some time,” he said. “But I have been busy.” He smiled.

“I have no other secrets,” Keb said.

“Secrets,” Narak mused. “You have knowledge that I do not have. You have lived in a place that I have never seen. Tell me about it.”

Keb shrugged. “Tell you what?”

“Tell me what is important.”

“Different things are important to different people. I do not understand the question.”

“Think about it.”

Keb thought. He thought about the village where he grew up, about the seminary, about the work he had done here, about the men who had sent him.

“The rule,” he said. “The rule is important.”

“Then tell me.”

Keb laughed. “I studied it for ten years. How could I tell it to you?”

“Tell me about it. I do not want to know the details. What is it for?”

“The rule is the law of Seth Yarra. It tells us how we must live.” Keb saw no harm in this. A part of the law was that he spread the word, correct innocent error, make sure that people understood.

“How you must live? In what sense?”

“In every sense. It tells how we should build houses, how we should dress, plant crops, make pots. It defines the proper way of living.”

“Everything?”

“Everything.”

“And what does it say about gods?”

Keb studied Narak, but there was no threat in his voice or his demeanour. He knew that Narak was considered a god here, a god of wolves, and he was wary of angering him, but the truth was the truth, and it was written in The Book.

“That there is only one god,” he said.

“I have never met a god,” Narak said. “I am disinclined to believe in them.”

The statement shocked Keb to the core. “Then what are you?” he asked.

“I am a man. I was born a man, and nothing has happened since to convince me that I have become anything else.”

“Your powers? You do not fight like a man.”

“I have certain abilities, it is true,” Narak agreed. “Many people consider me a god, but in here,” he tapped the side of his head. “I am the same man chosen by Pelion hundreds of years ago to protect the wolves and the forest. The ‘powers’ as you call them are merely tools to help me do those things.”

“And Pelion?”

“A man. I knew him. He liked wine, and he liked cheese that had been allowed to mature a while, and venison, and he liked the sound of his own voice.”

“Yet you permit men to worship you.” Keb was even more outraged. He was angry, but he checked himself, sat back again. It would not do to make this one angry. For all his protestations of manhood this demon could strike him dead in a moment.

“It helps them,” Narak said. “And who am I to say that I am not a god? Pelion named us so, and men have accepted it, for the most part.”