the enemy were or who was killing us. We only knew something had to be done, and I fear it made us as bad as our enemies- which was surely their intention.”
Rik had a sudden inkling of the murkiness of the past from Asea and the whole Terrarch race had emerged. Theirs had not been the world of light of which the Testaments spoke. It had been like this one, perhaps worse.
“Why are you telling me this- do you intend to kill me?”
“The Old Queen would have killed you. Others would kill you even now if they knew. Azaar, for one.”
“But you will not?” Another thing occurred to Rik now. He had no idea of knowing whether this was true, and no way of checking it. If this was a way of manipulating him, of keeping him dependent on her, it was a very good one. “Why?”
She sighed. The smile she gave him held an odd mixture of defiance and sadness and complicity and self-pity. “Because, like you, I do not believe anyone is born evil. I have made many mistakes in my life, Rik, sometimes catastrophic ones, and I have learned that doing things quickly for no reason other than fear has often led to the worst of them.”
“Are you sure you have no other reasons?” He could not keep the fear or the anger out of his voice. He felt an urge to lash out.
“There are other reasons, Rik. You have great gifts in you, and they need not be put to evil use.”
“You mean they can be put to your use.” She smiled.
“Just so. If your talents can be developed as I think they can, you could be a great asset to us in the coming war.”
“That’s comforting.”
“There’s no need to sound so sullen, boy. Such talents as I suspect you possess will gain you great riches and power in the long run, if you live.”
“You think it a good idea to have your own pet Shadowblood assassin,” he said. Already he was turning the possibilities over in his mind. If he could develop the talents she claimed the Shadowblood had, he could be an all but unstoppable thief.
“Not an assassin, perhaps, but an agent for myself, and the Queen.”
“Would the Queen know about what you just told me, about the Shadowblood?”
“For the moment, no one but you and I will know about it, and if you are wise you will mention this to no one. I am in no way exaggerating- should the Inquisition hear about this, it is a death sentence. And bear something else in mind, Rik; I value your life but I value my own more.”
Rik’s mind raced. He turned the options and the possibilities over in his mind. An agent of the Queen. A high road to riches. A death sentence hanging perpetually over his head. To be eternally in thrall to this ancient, beautiful and frightening woman. He felt as if he stood on the threshold of a world he had not even known existed, and which was reaching out now to entangle him.
“How can you train me? You are not a Shadowblood? Are you?”
“There are certain disciplines I can teach you, things that should bring out your latent powers eventually. And Karim knows many of the arts that are useful to someone like you. He will tutor you in them.”
“I am a soldier. How will I find the time?”
“I have had you and your friends assigned to my service as personal guards. It is work they seem admirably suited for. We will find the time to train you, never fear.”
“What if people find out what we are doing?”
“We shall just have to see that they do not.”
Another image entered his mind and he was not sure why- of the mother he had never known, who had died so horribly, quite possibly at the hands of his father. He felt an emptiness and a longing and a sense of loss so strong it was strange, because it was for something and someone he had never known.
Perhaps some day he would be in a position to do something about that. If he lived long enough.
Chapter Ten
The Foragers marched beneath the white banner of truce. It flew alongside the bat-winged angel on a black background that marked them as being part of the Seventh Infantry regiment. Sardec rode beside Lady Asea. She was the only person mounted aside from himself and it made him feel very conspicuous. There was no reason to be nervous, he told himself. Ilmarec would not harm an ambassador.
Sardec’s mouth was dry. Pain came from where his hand once had been. Before it had happened to him, he would never have believed a hook could hurt. There were times when he woke and thought he could still feel his fingers, that the loss of his hand had all been a dream. Of course, it was the phantom hand that was a dream. He had heard that sorcerers used mystical techniques to shape reality around them, imagining things so strongly they became true. He wondered if a sorcerer could imagine himself a severed hand so strongly that it became real. He mentioned it to Lady Asea. She seemed grateful for the distraction.
“On Al’Terra, I knew mages who could manipulate objects with hands they created by pure concentration. I doubt there is enough ambient magical energy to recreate that feat here.”
“What about growing new limbs? I had heard that was possible too.”
“With sufficient power you can stimulate the body in such a way that it repairs itself, like a Serpent Man growing a new tail.” Asea seemed sympathetic. She obviously understood his interest. She looked a little odd this morning as well.
Perhaps she had taken a new lover as camp gossip suggested. The half-breed had spent a long time in her tent last night. Sardec doubted they had been just talking. There was a time when he would have condemned her for it. He still felt the urge, but given his own actions with the girl Rena yesterday evening, he was in no position to throw stones. He felt a faint thrill at the memory of the previous night.
“That’s not an attractive image,” he said, wondering if he were talking about a hand growing like a Serpent Man’s tail or the picture of Asea and the half-breed writhing in passion that passed through his mind.
“There are less attractive ones,” she said. “Some sorcerers used to saw off the hands from the living and attach them to stumps of lost limbs.”
“It worked?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes the limb rotted. Sometimes the recipient died. No one was sure why. The practise never became popular for that reason.”
“My father claimed the Princes of Shadow took limbs from the dead.”
“He was right. Necromancers could reanimate them, and make them work, but there would be no sensation. They were like the limbs of lepers. Some of the Desecrator’s Lieutenants did that, and worse things.”
“You mean Moghrag and his armour of flesh?”
“Just so.” The infamous Moghrag had built a suit of armour from reanimated corpses turned inside out. The bones were fused on the outside to form an exo-skeleton, while clumps of necromantically-animated muscles on the inside amplified his strength. He was said to have been able to rip a man’s head from his shoulders with his bare hands.
Asea said; “Moghrag was always a sick one, even as a child. He was fond of dissecting things. I think he got that idea cutting up lizards and stitching them together.”
It was sometimes hard for Sardec to grasp that to one of the First, people like Moghrag were not simply the names of ogres from the Testaments, but living breathing individuals they had once had the acquaintance of. Asea had known Moghrag before the Exile, so had Azaar, so had Ilmarec for that matter.
“Azaar killed him, did he not?”
“He did. Azaar was First Blade of the Realm then. No one could match him with a sword, not even Moghrag with his strange armour and the stolen strength of a dozen warriors.”
Silence fell between them. When he had read the tales as a child, it was sometimes hard to understand why anyone would have sided with the Princes of Shadow, but there was a dark strain in the Terrarch psyche, and now he could imagine reasons.
He remembered the odd look in Rena's eyes when the cold metal of his hook had touched her naked flesh. He
