Winter Be My Shield (47 page)

For Isidro it meant days of waiting in Harwin's tent with nothing but the books to distract him. When Delphine or Harwin were there to supervise him, he was often left unchained, but with both of them absent
Delphine locked the manacle around his wrist early each morning and set Lucia to watch over him until they returned. She and Harwin never directly spoke of his attempt to kill himself, but the healing scar on his neck was all the reminder they needed. Lucia had never dared ask him about it, but Isidro sometimes caught her studying it when she thought he couldn't see.

In preparation for their long absence, Delphine had also gone through his meagre assortment of gear to make sure he hadn't acquired anything he could use to harm himself. There was pitifully little of it in the sack that now held all his worldly possessions. He had a set of bedding and a change of clothing, which Lucia laundered along with her master's garments. Delphine had given him a leather satchel so he could carry things while still leaving his one good hand free and in it there was a motley assortment of waxed tablets and a handful of battered old styluses for writing in the wax.

She had taken one of those away: a slender rod of a very hard and fine-grained wood, which Isidro had to concede could be used as a weapon in a pinch. Of the rest of the odds and ends that had been bestowed upon him by his masters, the only thing of any value was the lantern-stone strung on a leather cord he wore around his neck and, as no slave was permitted to own a magical device, it technically still belonged to Delphine.

In her master's absence and without the daily work of striking and setting up the tent, Lucia saw this time as a chance to rest. Once her daily chores of washing and cooking were completed she had nothing to do with her time but eat and doze in the warmth of the stove. After the first half-day of being imprisoned in the tent had passed, Isidro envied her the escape.

Since agreeing to serve Delphine he had thrown himself into the work with a vigour bordering on obsession. Perhaps in part it was a response to feeling so powerless, but he had set himself the task of learning all he could about the Akharian mages and their craft, as well as piecing together the true history of Vasant and the War of the Mages. If he was ever able to see Cam and Sierra again, the knowledge he was able to assemble now might be the most valuable thing he could offer them. It became his driving force and he would work until his vision grew too blurred to focus on the letters.

When he could work no more he practised the exercises Delphine had set him. The Akharian mages were still puzzled by his peculiar reaction to power, but it seemed the strange experiments they performed on him didn't produce the results they had expected — they lost interest in him after a week or so of those exhausting sessions. Delphine was the only one still curious about him; she had set him the same training exercises that were given to novice mages to teach them how to raise and focus their power.

So far the drills had taught him only one thing: the trick of activating the enchantments the mages used in their lanterns. This puzzled Delphine, as he shouldn't have been able to do it without first mastering the basics, and she ordered him to practice the meditations and visualisations for an hour each day. Isidro willingly complied in the hope that one day he would be able to make contact with Sierra, when he did have information valuable enough to pass on.

For two days he applied himself to the tasks, but on the third he fell back into the black pall of despair welling up around him. When he read the same page of the book three times without taking in a word of it, he set the text aside and lay back on his furs. Instead of emptying his mind to begin the first of the meditations, he simply stared at the roof and wondered what sort of life awaited him if Sierra and Cam could find no way to free him and he was taken back to Akhara with the rest of the slaves.

He was idly studying the ridge-pole and wondering if it would take his weight when the sound of boots crunching in the snow outside brought him out of his thoughts and back to the present. Someone was approaching the tent.

His first thought was of the teamster, come to harass Lucia again now there was no one here to prevent it, but he soon realised these steps were too light and quick.

There was a pause as the person stooped to pull the cord that freed the lacing and then shouldered her way into the tent. It was Delphine, with a dusting of snow clinging to her shoulders and her hood. When she straightened she looked him over with a narrow eye as Isidro forced himself to sit up and he wondered if she could read his black mood on his face. If she did, she didn't mention it.

‘Alright, my lad,' she said as she pulled off her mittens and her gloves. ‘On your feet. Give me your hand. The Gods must be smiling on you
today. We've found Milksprings and there's something there I want you to see.'

 

For the sake of speed he was allowed to ride to the temple, although one of the soldiers who had escorted Delphine back to the camp held the reins and led his horse. Delphine studiously ignored him, but he was used to that. With only Harwin and her students as witnesses, she permitted a certain degree of familiarity, but around strangers she spoke to him no more than was necessary and with a distinct and chilly formality. By now, Isidro knew enough of Akharian society to understand why. No one cared what a man did with his slaves, but for a woman the same degree of intimacy was not just scandalous, but criminal. If the wrong impression was given, Isidro was certain the consequences would be bad for both of them, so he remained silent.

The weather was worsening and the soldiers led them through a pall of driving snow that limited visibility to within a few hundred feet. Once they were beyond the perimeter of the camp Isidro surreptitiously glanced behind, trying to get a rough idea of how many men were under the general's command but the soldier leading his horse growled a warning to keep his eyes ahead. He needn't have bothered. The camp was already lost to the weather and Isidro couldn't make out any more than a portion of it.

The snow also hid the cave and it wasn't until they were nearly on top of it that Isidro realised they had arrived. A dark scar of rubble and earth excavated from within had been dumped to stain the slope below the jagged crevice of the cave mouth, but already a scatter of snow was covering it. Once there must have been a proper path leading up to the entrance but now there was just a switchback track trampled into the snow, its twists and turns marked with mage-lights and flags of red cloth.

As the soldiers led the horses away to a rough windbreak that sheltered them and the men watching over them, Delphine beckoned Isidro with an imperious gesture. ‘Attend, Aleksar,' she said and started up the slope without looking around to see if he followed.

Even with his improved condition the path was still a challenge for him. It was steep and narrow, threatening to crumble at the edges, and had been trampled by so many feet that the packed surface offered no grip to the felt soles of his boots. A rope strung between the marker posts
tempted him with a hand-hold, but he had no way of knowing how deep the posts had been sunk and whether it would hold his weight. Delphine took pity on him and paused at each of the turns to give him a chance to rest, while pretending it was she who needed to catch her breath.

When they reached the cave entrance at the top of the path Isidro paused to look out over the valley, shrouded beneath a thick haze of snow. Vasant had stood here, as had Cam's ancestor, Leandra the Great; as had Sofera and Delcarion and countless others from a world that was now lost.

‘Come along,' Delphine scolded him, but she entered the cave slowly, giving him a chance to absorb the sight.

When clear the passage would have been wide enough to lead four horses abreast, although the edges of it were still choked with rubble. From outside the mouth of the cave appeared to be a natural feature, but within a few lengths the interior seemed more like a man-made structure than anything carved by nature. The natural caves Isidro had seen never conformed so conveniently to man's dimensions. They were usually low and wide, more easily traversed on hands and knees than on two feet, and with floors that were a jumble of rock fallen from the cavern roof. This passage had a high ceiling and was more square in cross-section than oval. The walls were suspiciously smooth and upright, but it was the floor that was the least natural. It had been smoothed flat, then etched with a crosshatch of grooves that would give grip to smooth-soled boots, though these were currently filled in with grit and windblown snow.

‘The first thirty paces of this passage was filled with rock and rubble,' Delphine informed him. ‘Some of the rocks were as big as an ox and they'd been fitted together like a stone wall. It must have taken months to fill it in without power to speed the work.'

And yet the Akharian mages had cleared it in less than half a day.

The days were growing longer as the seasons shifted towards spring, but the heavy clouds outside had turned the daylight dim and within twenty paces of the entrance the passage was as dark as night. Delphine pulled her lantern out of her satchel and set it glowing and Isidro did the same with the tiny lantern-stone he wore around his neck. The stone cast a pale yellow light around him, enough to let him avoid the cobbles and rocks still littering the floor.

Thirty paces past the entrance the passage was clear as Delphine had said, except for a wooden trunk shoved against one wall. The wood was damp and crusted with what Isidro took at first glance to be salt, but something had been painted onto the lid and was still visible beneath the crust — a few lines of Ricalani script.

‘This is why I brought you here,' Delphine said. ‘What does it say?'

‘“Searcher, here is what you seek,”' Isidro said. ‘“Vasant's books are gone to ashes. Here is all that remains.” There's a name underneath it — “Leandra, first of that name, Queen of all the North.”' He turned to Delphine. ‘What's inside, madame?'

‘Take a look,' she said, standing back with her arms folded across her chest.

Isidro knelt down to lift the lid. The wood was soft and spongy under his hands. The air inside the caves was different, moist and humid. Before the blockage had been cleared and allowed the dry air of winter to mix in from outside it must have been even more so. The trunk had been made from one of the species of wood that resisted rot, but even so it was slowly decaying.

The trunk was full of blackened and corroded shards of metal. Isidro lifted one out and held it up to the light. It was a thin shaft of green and crumbling bronze. He could make out the remains of decorative scrollwork and an oval fitting that would hold a cabochon stone. This one held nothing in the setting but others had the cracked and chalky remains of stones, which crumbled to powder at a touch; some of them bore flecks of gold amid the corroded metal. They had been the sort of metal fittings that would be affixed to the covers of valuable books and from the looks of it some had borne enchantments as well.

‘They burned them,' Isidro said.

‘Or at least that's what they wanted us to think,' Delphine said. ‘Why would they close off the caves if they knew the books had been burned?'

The unnaturally smooth and regular passage curved away from them into the rock. ‘This passage is mage-crafted,' Isidro said. ‘Leandra wouldn't have wanted future generations to speculate on what else mages could do.' He turned the corroded fitting over in his hand and then placed it back with the others. ‘Even his enemies said Vasant was a brilliant man.'

‘So how could he have been stupid enough to leave his treasures where people of no talent at all would be able to find and destroy them?'

‘A decoy?' Isidro said. There were soldiers standing guard at the entrance huddled in furs as they stood around a brazier. Delphine paid them no mind. She was too absorbed now to care what observers might think. There were men deeper in the caves, too. Their voices echoed along the passage, too diffuse to be understood but undoubtedly there. The Akharians hadn't come all this way to be so easily discouraged.

‘I imagine a queen would be able to read Ricalani script,' Delphine said. ‘Or her retainers could, if she was illiterate.'

‘A member of a ruling clan would know how to read,' Isidro said.

‘So she wouldn't have been fooled if Vasant had put the covers on other books,' Delphine said.

‘Not necessarily,' Isidro said, thinking of the book Sierra had stolen from Kell. ‘Maybe there were enchantments locking them shut.'

‘Ah,' Delphine said, with a faint smile. ‘Perhaps. Or perhaps the queen felt it was all too easy. Vasant could have concealed the books where none but another mage would have been able to find them. She must have been suspicious that she was able to get hold of them so easily. But she left the remains here anyway, to discourage anyone who did make it through that wall.'

The voices in the passage were heading their way. Isidro gazed hungrily into the darkness. He wanted desperately to explore this place, but he knew it was now a privilege beyond his station.

Harwin appeared around the curve of the passage holding his lantern high and raised his free hand in greeting when he saw them. ‘Delphi, you're back. Good. They've found another one and they're about to try and open it.'

‘Another one, sir?' Isidro said.

‘We've found chambers hidden behind the walls,' Delphine said. ‘If Vasant was as clever as they say he must have been smart enough not to put all his eggs in one basket. We may as well go and watch, but I'm not sure what we'll find. The air in here is so damp I hate to imagine what state a book would be in after five years, let alone a hundred.'

‘Madame, aren't there enchantments that can be used to prevent mould?'

‘By drying the air, you mean? There are, but they only last for a few days at most before needing to be renewed. Even if the Ricalani mages had some other technique I can't imagine it would be so far ahead of ours that it could go without maintenance for a century. The cold would help preserve them, but unless they're frozen solid this dampness would have reduced them to pulp by now …'