‘Very clear.’
Leksandr rolled his shoulders and settled into a meditative pose. ‘You can leave now.’
Belinda inclined her head, and walked from the room. She ignored the demigod courtier on the way out and went down the stairs to her own quarters. Her head was buzzing as she swept past her servants, and she ordered those who were tidying her bedroom to leave. Alone, she sat on the bed, her stomach coiled, her chest aching.
She thought about fleeing, but where could she go? The other Ascendants would track her self-healing powers and come after her. They would be relentless, and would chase her to the far corners of Khatanax. She tried to calm her breathing. She needed to act, but running away would achieve nothing.
She lay down on the bed in the darkness, her head on the pillow as she gazed at the dark sky through the open window.
She would think of something; she had to.
Chapter 3
Low
K in Dai, Kinell, Eastern Khatanax – 17th Tuminch 5252
Corthie’s stomach jolted as he lay in bed. He tried to get up, but pain shot through him as soon as he moved, and he vomited across the bed and floor of the small room. He hugged himself, agony reaching every part of his body. For a moment it was so bad that he wished he could die, then slowly, it passed, and he lay back down on the wet sheets, panting, his forehead glistening with sweat.
He opened his eyes to the darkness. Even without any light in the room, his head spun, so he closed his eyes again, fighting a wave of dizziness.
Someone knocked on his door, but he ignored it.
Images of Aila swam round his head, as they had done on each of the thirty-five days since she had been taken by Amalia. He had failed her; he had failed everyone, and Aila was staring at him in his visions with accusing eyes, telling him that he was stupid to have believed he had a destiny, and demanding to know why he hadn’t listened to her.
‘Corthie?’ came a voice through the door. ‘Are you alright?’
The words came to Corthie through a fog of pain and exhaustion. Were they real, he thought, or were they just another fevered dream?
The door opened, the squeal of the hinges tearing through Corthie’s head.
‘By the Ascendants,’ muttered Sohul from the open doorway.
‘What’s the matter?’ came a woman’s voice from somewhere else.
‘Nothing,’ said Sohul, as he eased himself into the small room. He closed the door behind him, and opened the shutters, pulling the warped and paint-blistered wood clear to allow the morning light to penetrate the room.
Corthie lay still.
He heard Sohul sigh. ‘You have to stop doing this to yourself, Corthie,’ he said. ‘You’re still sick; you shouldn’t be drinking.’
He felt a hand touch his forehead.
‘And you’re burning up,’ Sohul went on. ‘Listen, I’ll get a mop and some rags to clean this up; I’ll be back in a minute.’
Corthie heard the door open and close again, and opened his eyes, keeping them narrow to avoid the light from hurting his head more than it already ached. He shifted on the bed, and felt a wet patch from the vomit touch his skin, and then the smell reached his nose, a strong odour of alcohol and bile. He began to swing his legs free from the twisted sheets, keeping his movements slow and gradual, then placed his feet onto the wooden floor as he sat up. He hugged his stomach again, fighting the searing cramps that threatened to immobilise him.
He glanced around the small room as if in a dream. Clothes lay heaped and abandoned across the floor, and some of them had been hit by the vomit, while pools of it sat on the wood by his toes. He picked up a clean-looking pair of shorts, and pulled them on. A pounding began behind his eyes, worse than any hangover he had experienced. He felt for his battle-vision. He found it, but it was too weak to do anything to help him. It felt like a tiny spark inside him, instead of the raging inferno that was usually there. His powers hadn’t recovered since he had been brought back by Belinda. They were there, but were feeble and sickly compared to what they had been like before his death.
His death.
He almost laughed, but the thought of the pain it would bring stopped him. He had died, truly died in the cavern of Fordamere, and he could still remember lying on the stone ground with Leksandr’s sword through his chest. After that? After that, it all became hazy, and his first clear memory was of being in the back of a wagon as it had travelled down from a valley into the plains of Kinell.
The door opened again, and Sohul re-entered with a mop, bucket, and a pile of rags. He smiled nervously at Corthie, then placed a few of the rags onto the floor to cover the pools of vomit. The call and screech of gulls came in through the open shutters, and Sohul glanced out at the view of the river for a moment, then got to work.
Corthie stared at him.
‘We’ll get this sorted in a minute,’ the mercenary officer said, as he dipped the mop into the bucket. ‘Your clothes will need a wash too, I daresay. I can take care of that this morning for you; we can’t have you dressed in sweat and sick-covered clothes now, can we? We can pile them all up for now, and then I’ll heat some water…’
‘Stop talking,’ Corthie muttered. ‘The noise is hurting my head.’
Sohul fell into silence as he carried on cleaning the floor of the room. The mopping didn’t take long, and when he had finished, he crouched down, and
