the dead were bringing. Of the strength they added to the defence of Xetesk and the belief they brought to the beleaguered and the weary.
Words. Easy. And all the while his wife was organising the day in the inn. Almost normal but for the fact that nothing was normal here any more. Trade was stuttering. The prices of food and drink were rising sharply. Only the caravans coming through Understone Pass from the west still arrived every day. It was not only word that was scarce from Korina, Blackthorne, Gyernath and any other place he cared to name.
How comforting it would be to get lost in the affairs of state. To sit with Denser and organise messengers and scouts. To plan rationing and discuss defensive tactics. He envied Denser. Right now the Lord of the Mount would be heading to a meeting with Septern where the peerless genius was going to impart his knowledge on building a ward grid to protect the city.
‘But you have to stop running, old man,’ he said to himself.
Sol sighed and turned around. He walked back along a couple of side streets and back onto The Thread. The college and its great ornate gates, open to all comers, was just to his right. He paused a moment to look at it. Imposing walls fifty feet high and with the Circle Seven Towers visible as they were from every point of the city, fingers of power thrusting into the sky. Foreboding and awe-inspiring.
‘But they won’t save you, Denser. Not this time.’
Glancing to his left, he could see the sign of The Raven’s Rest swaying gently in the breeze that seemed forever to be blowing up Xetesk’s main street. The Thread ran from the north to the south gates. As colourful a street as any in Balaia. Packed with history, filled with the dark times of the old college, which were only just washing away in the face of the new Xetesk. A place of which they could all be proud.
‘And soon to be so much rubble.’
Sol chided himself. The king muttering to himself as he tried to avoid going home to his wife. No better than the midnight drunks he ejected from his inn every closing time.
He took a deep breath, calmed himself and strode down The Thread, nodding and smiling at all he passed though there was only anxiety on the streets. There was an ugly undercurrent too and he felt eyes on him, not all of which were friendly.
Sol walked down the alleyway to the side of the inn and opened the gate to the yard. In the stables to his left Jonas was grooming his horse. The other two mares were turned out into the small paddock at the back of the inn. There were the clattering sounds of work going on in the kitchens and someone was whistling tunelessly to the accompaniment of a sweeping broom.
‘Jonas, how are you feeling?’
Jonas turned a beaming face on Sol and ran over. Sol hugged him and ruffled his hair. He was going to be every bit as big and powerful as his father. Sol hoped he got his hair from his mother’s side.
‘I’m fine, Father. Did you tell them what Sha-Kaan said? What are we going to do? He’s in danger, Father, I can feel it. Despite what he says. We have to help him. What’s going to happen?’
Sol fought the urge to crush his son to him and burst into tears. A wound opened in his heart and the ache was unbearable.
‘Everything will be all right, Jonas. I promise.’
Jonas pulled back and looked up at Sol, his head cocked to one side and his eyebrows raised.
‘I’m thirteen, Father, I’m not stupid. That doesn’t mean anything. Only little Hirad would be satisfied with that sort of answer. What are you going to do? It hurts in here.’ Jonas placed his hand on his chest. ‘The Kaan are fading.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sol crouched down and took Jonas’s arms. ‘Fading how?’
‘Their link to Balaia, to me and all the Dragonene. The melde. It’s weakening. I can feel it.’
‘Then you aren’t fine, are you? Why didn’t you say this before?’
‘I didn’t know before, Father. Or I wasn’t sure what I was feeling.’
‘And I’m fifty-one and I’m not stupid either. Tell me what happened. ’
Sol stared into Jonas’s eyes. The young man was frightened beneath the bravado, and to see it in him was a sword to the soul.
‘It was the last fleeting thought Sha-Kaan gave me. The melde is attacked directly. Dragons resting in their Klenes have been killed where they lie. Inter-dimensional space is filled with enemies. What happens if they kill Sha-Kaan, Father?’
‘They won’t. He’s too smart and too powerful. But this is big information for our fight to come. Why didn’t you tell someone?’
‘Because I was waiting for you to come home. Don’t be angry with me.’
Sol pulled Jonas into another embrace. ‘All right, son. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘What happens now?’
‘We get you sorted out. I’ll speak to Denser. There will be others in your situation after all.’
‘What about the enemy? What about what you told them?’
Sol stood. ‘That’ll have to wait.’
Jonas followed Sol into the inn. The kitchens were a-buzz with activity but there was none of the usual humour in the voices he heard. Diera was wiping down tables in the bar, and when she turned to see who it was, her face turned his heart to dust.
‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Somebody die?’
Diera threw her cloth into the pail. Water slopped onto the floor.
‘You, apparently.’
‘Wait outside, Jonas.’
‘What does she-?’
‘Jonas!’ Sol caught himself. ‘Please, son, just for a moment.’
‘All right.’
Sol waited until Jonas had closed the door behind him.
‘Denser’s been here, has he? Doesn’t waste much time, I’ll give him that.’
Diera turned her back on him. ‘Yes, he has. At least there’s someone in this ridiculous city who still has a steady head on their shoulders.’
Sol moved towards her. She wrapped her arms around herself and stiffened.
‘I need you to understand why there is no choice for me.’
He reached out a hand.
‘Don’t touch me, Sol.’ She rounded on him. ‘And I understand perfectly well, thank you. Your dead friends want you to join their merry band of lost souls, and you’re too stupid and blinded by your wonderful Raven past to see you’re being sold serpents for firewood.’
‘I can hear Denser in everything you say, Diera. So let me speak. Do you really think I’d be doing this if I felt there was any other choice? It’s a long shot, granted, but we are truly desperate. Denser has no answers and the Garonin will tear this city down stone by stone. Come with me to the west. I can protect you all the way and you can be first to follow me to our new home.’
‘Follow you? You’ll be dead, damn you! What good is that to me?’
‘There is no other way to save you and the boys.’
Sol hadn’t seen her arms tense and he felt the full force of the slap across his face. The sound ricocheted about the bar and Diera was screaming at him.
‘How dare you say that to me. Your death does not save us, it damns us. What will I say to the boys when nothing comes of it? That their father threw his life away after people long dead but still more important to him? You can’t do this to me, you can’t. I can’t do this without you. It isn’t life without you.’
Sol resisted the urge to reach out to her again. She stood tall and resolute despite her words. He chest was heaving and her cheeks were damp but she would not crumble.
‘What will you tell them if, by my actions, countless thousands are saved?’ he asked quietly. ‘What then? Would that be throwing my life away?’
Diera put a hand to his face and stroked the red mark she had made.
‘No, of course it wouldn’t, my darling. But you don’t do this any more. It’s all just a memory. You have to listen to Denser, to reason. The place to stand and fight is here. Chasing heroic deeds won’t work. Look at me. At Jonas and at little Hirad. Can you really bear to know you have seen us all for the last time? Can you die knowing
