‘I don’t remember — it feels as though I’ve lost an hour.’
Because the wrythen is still possessing you, hiding in the background for the right moment? Tobry’s arm was now confining her, binding her. She pulled away.
‘Something the matter?’ he said.
No, trust your feelings. If he is still possessed, you’ll know it. Tobry wasn’t himself when the wrythen attacked, and neither was Tinyhead. She had to trust Tobry.
‘That’s how the wrythen found me before. Via my
‘How
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s making it?’ Tobry mused. ‘To call across such a distance is no small matter. Only great magians can do it at all, and only with the aid of a power fully enchanted device. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it mind to mind.’
‘Can you locate Rannilt with magery?’
‘Mine doesn’t want to work here.’
‘Why not?’ she said hoarsely. ‘Does that mean
‘Could mean anything, or nothing. Some places the gift just doesn’t work. It would be easier to sniff out the horses.’
‘I have a keen nose.’
‘You’d need to be well away from my horse. And upwind. But I don’t think — ’
‘Help me down.’
He did so reluctantly.
The pain in her thigh was still there, though muted, and the swelling had gone down. His healing had done more good than hers.
‘Take this.’ Tobry was holding out a knife by the point. The hilt was wound with yellow, worn leather.
She took it, though she could not imagine it being any use against the shadow shifter. Tali moved upwind, into the dark, a herb-scented night breeze cold on her face. Her thigh felt peculiar, almost numb, though each time a spear of pain broke through it was worse than the one before. The healing was wearing off.
She caught the odour she now recognised as horse manure and began to follow it, moving slowly across the stony ground to avoid being heard, but lost it again. The night had too many other smells: leaves crushed underfoot, some pungent, others with a lemony sharpness; baked earth; her own sweat; fresh blood as the arrow wound broke open. Finally she picked up the smell of horse again and began to track it up the wind.
Tali stopped, took a deep sniff and gagged on the reek of carrion, blood and guts and ordure. The shifter could not be far away.
‘Rannilt!’ she whispered.
Light flashed behind her and Tobry’s horse broke into a trot. ‘Stay where you are.’ He was holding the elbrot high, staring at the ground. ‘It’s come this way.’
A series of large, blurred footprints were steaming, the grass shrivelled around them and brown decay creeping out in all directions. What manner of beast was it?
In the light she saw a big, unmoving heap twenty feet ahead, a mound with long legs and guts spilled across the uneven ground. A dead horse, chestnut with a white mark on its forehead.
‘Beetle,’ said Tobry heavily. ‘Stay back.’
Tali wanted to be a thousand miles away. She knew what she was going to find next and could not bear to think about it, but she had to be sure. She had to keep searching, just in case. ‘Rannilt!’
There was no answer.
Tobry swung down from the saddle, drawing Rix’s sword. The elbrot’s light caused an answering shimmer along the curved blade.
‘Is the sword — ?’ said Tali.
‘It has an enchantment against magery.’
They stood together. Chunks had been bitten out of Beetle’s haunches, pieces of flesh the size of her head gone in single bites. Fear coiled up her backbone.
‘Where’s Leather?’ said Tobry, looking around.
‘What’s Leather?’
‘Rix’s horse. A huge, ugly brute, much tougher than poor old Beetle.’
Something gave a shrieking howl, a piercing note that rasped along every nerve fibre and echoed back from the rocky crest of the hill. It came from the same throat as those earlier cries.
Then a small golden light appeared between a group of rocks twenty yards ahead, a gentle, pulsing glow Tali recognised instantly, like a globe of sunshine held in cupped hands. Momentarily it lit up the small, skinny girl as though she were a princess, and Tali’s eyes flooded.
‘You’re alive,’ she whispered.
‘It’s a trap!’ shrilled Rannilt. ‘Run, Tali, run.’
CHAPTER 56
What was worse? What Lady Ricinus was going to do to him, or the nightmares that were bound to return once he was back in his chambers with that voice in his head, ordering him to commit a terrible atrocity.
As Tobry had said, Rix’s heritage was a honeyed trap. He would be better off abandoning it and galloping to the most distant outpost of Hightspall. He could still fight for his country there.
He was tempted to. Had it not been for his duty to his troubled house, he would have fled. Besides, wherever he went, Parby would come after him. The seneschal had been ordered to fetch Rix back and if he did not his own head would be on the line. Lady Ricinus did not permit failure.
‘Where are the enemy?’ he asked as they approached the city.
‘Scuttled back to their rat holes.’ Parby spat on to the grass. ‘They won’t find Caulderon such an easy target.’
‘You left before the attack, then?’ asked Rix.
‘Been searching for you for three days.’
Rix’s sole consolation was that the chancellor would be pleased with the intelligence he was bringing about the enemy’s weapons and tactics, and what the wrythen was up to. Not as pleased as if Rix had been able to provide advance warning of the war, but the news might be enough to get him out of Lady Ricinus’s clutches.
The road was full of refugees here, some pushing hand carts, some dragging their miserable possessions on skids, many staggering along with nothing save what they could carry on their bent backs. At every sound they whirled, staring, shaking. Rix saw terror in a thousand eyes.
The cavalcade passed two shattered towns and many razed villages. Here, in the rye fields to either side, burned crops were still smoking. The road turned a corner, passed through a copse of leafless trees and ahead, on the right, stood a rudely built stockade with guards patrolling outside the walls. Brown, greasy smoke rose from the far side, and they weren’t burning wood.
‘What’s going on here?’ He turned towards the stockade.
‘Stay back!’ said Parby.
Rix stood up in the stirrups to see over the wall, and quailed. The place was wreathed with stinking smoke, though not enough to hide the dozens of men, women and children imprisoned inside, some so covered in purple buboes that they could be seen from thirty yards away.
‘They’re be’poxed,’ said Parby. ‘We’ve seen the same, or worse, half a dozen times since the attack began.’
Driven into pens to die, Rix thought bleakly as they rode on. The living burnt the dead, and doubtless some who weren’t quite dead, on the pyre at the back — the last service the doomed ones could do for their country.
