quite natural if you ask me, but then I don’t hold it against you.”
“Well, I thank you for your beneficence, but perhaps you noticed how quickly it healed.”
“It wasn’t that deep, was it?”
“Can’t you tell from the scar? It was to the bone.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not all as perceptive as you young folk.”
Renir humpfed. “I thought the bandage I wore around my thigh for a week would have given it away.”
“You were wearing trousers,” Bourninund pointed out.
“Yeah, well, there was that, but…”
“Hang on,” Bourninund interjected thoughtfully. “A sword through the leg and a bandage for a week.”
Renir nodded pointedly. “Now, do you see my point?”
“Hmm, you’re a man of much strangeness, but…”
This time Renir stopped the old mercenary. “…But it happens? Does it? Do people recover from a sword to the thigh in a week? I’m serious, Bourninund. I could have taken the bandage off after two days.”
Bourninund pulled at the leather binding around his wiry wrists, a thoughtful expression on his face. “That is strange.”
“Exactly!” Renir said, somewhat triumphantly.
“Well, alright, no need to get excited. Isn’t it a good thing? You might be immortal.”
“Ha,” Renir laughed pointedly. “It might seem like a good thing, but my grandmother always told me, be wary of gifts from unseen friends.”
“Grandmother?”
“Yes,” Renir said irritably, “Large lady, full of good advice and the queen of barbed comments. You don’t know her.”
“Oh,” Bourninund said wistfully. “I always was partial to the larger lady.”
“I’d noticed,” said Renir with a grin. “Sometimes it’s a wonder you haven’t suffocated in bed.”
“That’s the thing with large ladies. They’re like sponges, with all those folds and crevasses…”
“I think that’s quite enough information for the time being, thank you. I’m but a young man, Boar. Such knowledge could scar me for life.”
“Just trying to educate you in the ways of life, lad. There’s more to being a warrior than swordplay. Got to take a little entertainment between times. Let off a bit of steam.”
Renir had nothing to say to that. They both stared thoughtfully into their mugs, and set to drinking. It was better than staring at the walls.
Both thought of women. Renir’s cackled insanely, scrapping blackened nails along his spine in his sleep. Bourninund’s were merely fat.
In many respects, the Boar was the simpler of the two.
Chapter Nine
Drun Sard sat carefully stroking his greying beard. The grey was steadily winning the battle against the black, although a few patches stubbornly continued to fight. His skin was tanned leather, from more years under the suns and sea air than he cared to remember. His eyes were pale yellow, and as he stared at Carious sailing across the sky they seemed to match its glow. He wore a robe with a certain degree of surprise. He had spent so many years naked that clothing felt like a stranger’s touch on his skin.
Two old men, two young. One of those off on some fool errand yet again. It seemed Shorn was determined to kill himself. Despite Shorn’s request that Drun not look for him, Drun had not been able to resist the temptation. He had seen the approach of the mercenary’s old teacher. He could watch no more. Each man had to fight his own battles, and Shorn would never have forgiven him had he intervened. Shorn might die, he might not. Fate was not for Drun to decide. He merely guided, sometimes advised. He never pushed. He considered himself a priest of the sun, and he, like they, influenced from afar. Sometimes they scolded, come the spring they teased new shoots from the frozen earth, but mostly they watched from the sky and let matters take their course.
That was Drun’s view of Rythe’s twin suns. It was a view held by all of the Sard, but in many respects they were wrong. The suns were far from benign. They had their own plans, just as powerful as that of any other god. The only difference between Carious and Dow and the gods of Rythe was that when you looked up and called to them, they saw. All gods but the suns were blind and deaf. Many had worshipped the suns over time. They called for the summer, and a good harvest. They prayed for an end to the long winter, for clear skies above their fishing boats. Carious and Dow were unusual. They listened. They granted prayers. They were useful gods.
But even a sun, even a god, is not all powerful. Gods know fear. Gods end. Gods need believers. Believers don’t need gods.
To Drun, who thought he knew the will of his gods, such knowledge would have unmanned him. It is better that people believe their gods are immortal. It gives them hope. Often, it is the only precious thing people possess.
Drun didn’t pray. Shorn would return, or he wouldn’t. In many ways, Drun knew Shorn better than the mercenary knew himself. He had been watching him for many years. After all, that was who Drun was. He was the watcher. Tirielle was the first, the Sacrifice. Shorn was the second, the Saviour. Drun made up the triangle. Together they would wake the last wizard.
That day seemed such a long way off. The priest did not know how long remained. He did not know too much.
From his perch upon the flat roof of the coach house he could see the suns, twins lighting the way across the sea in the distance. He hoped it was bright enough. Below him shambolic residences of rotting wood sank into the loam. The middens outside squelched up to meet the tin pot patched roofs.
The dirty streets of the poor quarter turned to dust with each gust of wind. A dog yipped, the sad sound of a pauper’s dog. It was a dry day, the kind of day when backstreet sounds carried on the scorching wind. Even the few streets that were cobbled would thin with time were it not for the effluent of the beggars and starving lice.
It was not a beautiful city. Drun knew it had been a capital once. Now, it was just a sad remnant. Still, all the cities of this continent that Drun had visited were in a similar state of repair. Once, a millennium ago, Sturma had had kings, and cathedrals, and sprawling cities. That age had long passed. It was a new age. An age for warriors and beggars, for cutthroats and mercenaries. The only law was that of the blade, the only religions were those that needed no church.
Drun wondered what they were truly fighting for. What, in the end, would they win?
He turned his gaze back to the sun and cleared his mind of such thoughts.Inhaling deeply, he held his breath and lay back, opening his mind to the Carious’ touch, his god. Carious granted Drun certain gifts. It was not magic, more a question of faith.
Blackness cramped his vision at the edges as his body struggled for breath, but he did not give in. It was unnatural to starve a body of air so long, but through long years of practise, Drun had managed it. He knew his body would breathe for itself, once his will had left his body.
Darkness was absolute for an instant, that moment where the soul flees the body and nothing exists — no afterlife, no desires, no memories. Then, a blinding light intruding into his soul, the emergence of thought and remembrance. His soul flew free of his body, and he took a moment to stare down at the prostrate form. Breathe hitched in the old body’s throat, and his chest began to move. With a strange sense of detachment he noted that it was a body that had seen too many summers. The clothes were ill-fitting, the hair too long. But did such things matter?
Freed of the shell, Drun did not think so. There was only ever a passing sadness as he flew free, seeing his body age so, knowing that one day it would all end, and that he would take his final flight. But that day had not yet come. For now, he surrendered himself to the joy of freedom, and flew upon the suns’ rays, gliding, increasingly swiftly, across the sea. Soon, he lost sight of land behind him, and travelled to where the pull was strongest. There was a time, unreal time, which he was unable to judge, where there was nothing but the sea and the sun. Drun knew he passed thousands of miles of ocean. But he travelled faster when called, when there was an anchor to bring him back to earth. Communion was hard, but the joy of the flight, the sun shining clearly through his soul, that
