Night of Knives

‘Great One below, no.’

‘What?’

‘Hattar, tie her up more securely.’

‘At once.’

‘Wait-’

A gag whipped across her mouth and yanked tight. The plainsman tied her elbows to her sides, pushed her down and bound her legs.

From the cavern opening Artan said, ‘Goodbye. Give my regards to your Aunt.’

Kiska cursed him through the gag. Hattar stood over her. He studied his handiwork. They were alone in the cave.

He knelt beside her, took out his fur hat and pulled it down over his long oiled hair. ‘If you are any good, you’ll work your way out of these bindings. If you do, don’t follow us. If I find you pursuing us again, I’ll clip your feathers, little bird. You understand?’

She cursed him to the most distant of Hood’s Paths. He chuckled — at her predicament she supposed — and left. She was alone.

For a few moments she lay still, listening to be sure she was indeed on her own and that he wasn’t watching from the opening. Then she concluded this was foolish, that he wouldn’t hang around here with his master gone, and began wriggling. She twisted and waggled her hands to wedge a thumb at just the right angle against a rock, then pressed. It dislocated with a crack and a familiar jab of pain. Then, using the edges of stones — even the walls themselves — she teased and plucked and coerced the rope coils at her wrist down toward her fingers. After that it was easy to accomplish the rest.

Throwing off the rope at her legs, she was free. And in much less time than that bastard Hattar planned on, she was sure. Not pursue them! She’d follow all right. She’d get ahead of them! She’d show what she could accomplish. No one left her trussed up like a prize pig at a banquet.

She’d climb up to Rampart Way, then sneak into the Hold. Climb the wall itself if she had to. Just as she did years ago to see if she could. Aunt Agayla’s warning then flashed into her thoughts: do not enter the Hold! But Artan would be there. And besides, if there were great things happening, and even greater powers contending, no one would pay her a mind.

CHAPTER FOUR

OLD ENEMIES, OLD FRIENDS

A lone orange ember flickered dully within a maelstrom at the heart of an icy ocean. It bobbed and surged with each heave of the fisherman’s oars that cracked and clattered off chunks of ice. Circling at a distance, Riders plunged and reared, darting in close then submerging. Javelins of ice hurled at the skiff burst into clouds of mist. The fisherman forced his chant through lips frozen to his teeth.

One Rider dared to lunge within the circle of calm surrounding the fisherman. Wave-borne, it reared close only to howl and beat at its arms as its glittering pearl armour melted, then it plunged beneath the boiling surface. Far off, amid the whitecaps and rafts of ice, five indigo-robed Riders watched, conferring. They cradled amethyst wands at their chests. Cold pulsed from them as an expanding sphere. Kneeing their churning wave-mounts, they dispersed. One raised its wand to the south.

Out of the heaving waters from far under the clouds came yet another crag of ice, this one the smallest of the flotilla. Riders at all sides shepherded its progress. The fisherman rowed on oblivious, back hunched, his whole being focused on the effort of rowing and his song. The berg loomed closer, a dark shape frozen at its heart.

The instant vapour burst from the iceberg’s leading spur the Riders plunged beneath the ice-mulched surface. Water poured in torrents down the crag’s shoulders while the gale tore streamers of frost smoke from its peak. When a shard of glacial emerald calved from its front, it raised a fountain of spray that rolled north to the skiff and disappeared under its bow. Now from the heart of the berg jutted a prow of wood. Water streamed from it, driving wisps of cloud into the wind. Caught in a mountain of ice, it bore down on the tiny skiff.

The fisherman, his back against the thrashing wind, continued rowing as the berg entombing Rheni’s Dream shattered and slid into the waves. He chanted on even as the prow of Rheni’s Dream loomed over him. He was pulling on the oars as the skiff was smashed to shards and the glowing brazier extinguished in an explosion of steam as it was driven beneath the waves. Rheni’s Dream bore on, listing, its planks heaved and warped. Caught broadside by a massive wave, it rolled further, seemed to hesitate, then ploughed into the sea. Amid the wreckage left behind one oar floated. A sheath of ice gleamed over it already. Stormriders surged past the wreck. Some raised their ice- lances high overhead and brought them down, pointing north. At the horizon of cloud and storm-tossed sea, lightning revealed a dark smudge of land.

High combers flung themselves against the south shore, driven by a freezing wind. A woman, her long black hair and layered skirts snapping, picked her way down the rock-strewn shore. She held a woven shawl close at her shoulders as she took a footpath down to a driftwood and sod hut just above the strand. Pushing open the wooden door, she peered into the dim interior. Within sat a woman, motionless, facing the door, knitting forgotten in her lap. Her bright white eyes glowed in the darkness.

The woman at the door shivered. ‘It’s me, Agayla.’ Her breath hung in the cottage’s frigid air. She stepped closer; hoarfrost crackled beneath her shoes. Ice crystals glittered on the blackened logs in the fireplace. Frost layered the sitting woman’s lips and eyes.

Agayla reached out to gather up the knitting but the wool shattered into fragments.

In what little moonlight penetrated the churning clouds, Agayla walked the edge of the strand where driftwood and old planking lay beached by the high waves. Steam rose from the freshest seawrack of dead fish and seaweed. She gazed steadily to the south, to the horizon of sea and cloud where past the foam of whitecaps flashed a bright glimmer of emerald and azure. Her route took her to a point of tall rock overlooking the shore. Another figure stood there already, an old man in shapeless brown robes, bald but for a fringe of long white hair that whipped in the wind. Arms crossed, he scowled southward.

‘Have you ever seen anything like it, Agayla?’ he said without turning as she drew near. His words reached her easily despite the roaring wind.

Skirts raised in one hand, Agayla picked her path carefully over the rocks. ‘There has never been the lik’e since the earliest assaults, Obo.’ She stopped beside him, pulled her shawl tighter.

He grunted, glowered even more deeply. ‘And the fisherman?’ Obo asked, cocking a brow at her.

‘Overcome. He was out there all alone. They knew how naked we are. They could sense it.’

‘That fool, Surly, trying to outlaw magery on the island. Why didn’t she stop to consider why this island should be such a hotbed of talent? Wind-whistlers, sea-soothers, wax-witches, warlocks, Dragons deck readers. You name it. The Riders dared not come within hundreds of leagues.’

‘She didn’t know because no one knew, Obo,’ Agayla observed.

He spat to one side. ‘I’m leaving. We can’t stop this.’

She lanced him a glare. ‘Certainly. Run back to your tower. We both know you could keep it secure. But what of the island? How would you like living on a lifeless rock continually besieged by the Riders?’

He sniffed. ‘Might have its advantages.’

Scornful, she shook her head. ‘Don’t try that. You’ve anchored yourself here in your tower and it sits on this island. You have to commit yourself. You’ve no choice.’

Obo’s mouth puckered as if tasting something repugnant. He raised his chin to the south. ‘We can’t win anyway. The two of us aren’t enough.’

‘I know. That’s why I asked someone else.’

‘What?’ Obo spun to her. ‘How dare you! Who? Who is it? Who’s coming? It’s not that raving lunatic is it?’