ran though his bones and the mage stopped dead at the sight of the small, smiling face of Ruhen rather than Ilumene’s weathered scowl.
‘Peace, brother,’ Ruhen said softly. ‘No more fighting.’
Peness stared up at the child in wonder, his mouth dropping open and hanging slack as the shadows in Ruhen’s eyes washed cool and soothing through his soul. The pain of his injuries faded, numbed by the sweep of shadow. He tried to speak, but he could only wheeze after Ilumene’s kick.
‘Peace,’ Ruhen repeated. ‘Forget your pain and breathe in the beauty around you.’
Peness blinked in surprise and looked around. There were frightened faces at windows and the mouth of a nearby alley, pinched with poverty or scarred by disease. Stinking grey water slopped over an abandoned rag in the gutter near his feet. The uneven cobbles on the ground were stained and dozens were missing A flitter of movement caught his eye: up on a windowsill the tiny form of a bird peered down at him, then returned its attention to the grey bricks of the wall beside it. Its wings were a bright green, its head was marked with a long golden stripe. The bird hopped forward along the sill and Peness saw at the end a bowl-shaped blue flower growing in the gap between bricks and a beetle the colour of finest amethyst. In a sudden burst of movement the bird darted forward and plucked the beetle from the wall, then carried it up to the slate roof of the house where wild roses were nodding in the breeze. There it sat and stared defiantly at Peness, beetle in its beak, before vanishing away over the houses.
‘Peace,’ Peness croaked, shakily trying to get to his feet.
Ilumene came forward and hauled him up. ‘Peace,’ he agreed, less than impressed with the idea, but unwilling to argue with Ruhen.
The pristine white of Ilumene’s clothes were now spotting with blood — his blood, Peness realised belatedly. He tried to find the anger inside him, but nothing came though the stiffness and returning pain.
‘How?’
‘Got my ways,’ Ilumene said with a half-smile. ‘Don’t think I’d go up against a mage without a little protection, did you?’
Peness stared at the man. He couldn’t see a charm or anything on Ilumene’s armour, but there was a silver chain peeking out from behind his tunic. ‘I suppose not,’ he admitted.
Surreptitiously he opened his senses and tried to discover what it was the man was wearing. He detected some small presence of energy in the air around Ilumene, but the weave of magic was too subtle for him to unpick further. That alone told Peness something, however: he was the most skilled mage in Byora, and if he could not discern the shape of the magics Ilumene wore, that meant it was of the highest quality, most likely ancient, and Elven-made.
‘Nah, I’d have already cut your throat by now if that was the case.’ Ilumene made a show of dusting the mage down as he spoke. ‘Best you remember in future, though: whatever you throw at me, I’ll get a shot in before I go down.’ He paused and grinned evilly at Peness. ‘And I only need one.’
Before the mage could reply Ilumene had sauntered past him and taken Ruhen’s offered hand. Incongruously the burly soldier allowed himself to be led by the child out through the gate without even a glance back. Once they were through it, he jabbed a thumb in Peness’ direction. On the other side Peness saw the tall shape of Koteer, the Demi-God, with his two remaining brother Jesters. Koteer beckoned for Peness to join them and, still wincing at the stinging rib, he did as bidden.
Ruhen continued walking into the fading sunshine of the open ground beyond the wall. Peness couldn’t hear any conversation between them, but after a while Ilumene left abruptly and with a minimum of fuss he rounded up the traders and labourers who were working just beyond the gate and ushered them all inside the wall.
‘And now we wait?’ the mage complained. ‘This is madness.’
‘Now we wait,’ confirmed Koteer in an expressionless voice.
Koteer was significantly taller than Ilumene, and he too was dressed for war, in strange armour of curved scales. But what four warriors thought they could do here was a mystery to Peness. He’d been the one to send the warning to Duchess Escral in the first place, when, for once, his daemon-guide had been unambiguous: there were scores of daemons, perhaps as many as a hundred, marching on Byora.
The boundaries of the Land, like the Gods, had been weakened. Daemons still shunned the daylight, but dusk was fast approaching. The people of Byora had rejected their Gods, and consequently the border was weakest here. Byora would see a feeding of daemons not witnessed since the end of the Great War, when the Gods’ strength had been taxed almost to extinction.
‘What did he do?’ Peness whispered, then cringed as he realised he’d spoken the words aloud.
Koteer turned to face him, his expression hidden behind his white mask. ‘Who?’
‘The, ah, the Menin lord. The Gods must remember how weak they were left after striking Aryn Bwr’s name from history — what could have made them do so again?’
Koteer regarded him for a long while, then turned his attention back to Ruhen without replying. Peness stared at the grey-skinned son of Death and wondered at his motivations too, but this time he managed not to speak them aloud. The Jesters had lived as Raylin mercenaries for centuries now; violence would always be their first recourse.
At last Ilumene returned to Ruhen’s side and the pair stood on the road out of Byora, looking towards the treacherous, spirit-haunted fens in the distance. The sun had dropped behind the montain called Blackfang now and Byora was in shadow again. Even in summer the ghost-hour started early there. The evening gloom was still further advanced over the watery fens, where solitary ghost-willows lurked on the banks of ponds and lakes, and copses of marsh-alder hid the deepest parts from sight. Still waters were gateways to the other lands and it would be through the fens that any daemons came to Byora — the people’s innate fear of that place would ensure it.
‘Not long now,’ Ilumene commented to Ruhen as Peness watched them from a safe distance. ‘How many do you bet there’ll be?’
‘You are not a King’s Man now,’ the child said. ‘A wager serves no purpose here.’
‘Keeps me from getting bored.’
‘There is enough to consider already.’
Ilumene sniffed and inspected the bloodstain on his gauntlet. ‘The fabric of existence ain’t really my department. What the Gods have done to the Land I’ll leave to greater minds.’
‘Flattery is one lie that does not come easily to your tongue. Tell me your thoughts.’
‘On the weakening of boundaries? Not much to tell. I’ve no idea how Emin managed to force the Gods into that position — he must have known the result. Most likely the only God walking the Land right now is the Wither Queen and that’s only with Jackdaw’s help.’
‘Perhaps the Gods did not fear it. Their enemy was Aryn Bwr; the Menin lord was their potential rival. We do not figure by comparison, not in a way that threatens the divine. The Menin lord defied them, turned from the path they had prophesied, so he appeared a threat, but they do not care to involve themselves in the power-struggles of nations and men, and with both threats defeated they had no reason to hold back.’
‘Well, whatever the reason, it speeds up our plans another notch. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear the Farlan boy was the one who started it off somehow, gave Emin the means or something.’
Ruhen stopped dead and laughed, high and innocent, as realisation struck him. ‘We gave him the means,’ the child said. ‘We sacrificed it for the journal — the Skull of Ruling, the prize we dangled before Emin so he would kill the abbot in Scree for us. How else would he compel the Gods to expend such power?’
‘That’s what did it? Worked out better than we’d planned, then.’
‘Indeed. Your king has embraced its chaotic nature with greater relish than anyone could have anticipated. Now he just needs to bring the Key of Magic into play and every piece will finally be on the board — more than we even need, now the Gods are so weakened.’ He raised a hand to stop any reply from Ilumene, and took a deep breath of the evening air. He glanced back at Blackfang and saw the halo of evening sun dimming around the broken mountain’s ragged brow. ‘I smell them,’ he murmured.
‘Here?’
‘In the air. They’re waiting, watching and waiting.’
‘No doubt. Not much beats a daemon for looking forward to a bit of slaughter.’ Ilumene fitted his round shield properly onto his arm and loosened the ties around his sword-hilt. ‘We’ll make ’em think twice about it, though.’
The pair walked slowly down the road beside one of the many streams that ran from Byora to the fens. The
