The Heretic Kings

wholesome enough.”

They gave in and joined the soldiers, wolfing down meat and slaking their thirst with pitchers of clear water. But they could not manage more than half a dozen mouthfuls ere their stomachs closed up. Bloated on nothing, they paused and saw that Kersik was gone. The heavy doors were shut and the attendants had disappeared.

Murad sprang up with a cry and threw himself at the doors. They creaked, but would not move.

“Locked! By the Saints, they’ve locked us in!”

The tiny windows high in the walls, though open to the outside, were too small for a man to worm through.

“The guests have become prisoners, it would seem,” Bardolin said. He did not seem outraged.

“You had an idea this would happen,” Murad accused him.

“Perhaps.” Even to himself, Bardolin’s calm seemed odd. He wondered privately if something had indeed been slipped into the food.

“Did you think they would leave us free to wander about the city like pilgrims?” Bardolin asked the nobleman. The meat was like a ball of stone in his stomach. He was no longer used to such rich fare. But there was something else, something in his head which disquieted him and at the same time stole away his unease. It was like being drunk; that feeling of invulnerability.

“Are you all right, Bardolin?” Hawkwood asked him, concerned.

“I—I—” Nothing. There was nothing to worry about. He was tired, was all, and needed to get himself some sleep.

“Bardolin!” they called. But he no longer heard them.

FOURTEEN

W HAT is your name?

“Bardolin, son of Carnolan, of Carreirida in the Kingdom of Hebrion.” Was he speaking? It did not matter. He felt as safe as a babe in the womb. Nothing would touch him.

That’s right. You will not be harmed. You are a rare bird, my boy. How many of the Disciplines?

“Four. Cantrimy, mindrhyming, feralism and true theurgy.”

Is that what they call it now? Feralism—the ability to see into the hearts of beasts, and sometimes the craft to duplicate their like. You have mastered the most technical of the Seven Domains, my friend. You are to be congratulated. Many long hours in some wizard’s tower poring over the manuals of Gramarye, eh? And yet you have none of the instinctive Disciplines—soothsaying, weather-working. Shifting.

A tiny prick in the bubble of well-being which enfolded Bardolin, like a sudden draught in a sturdy house, a breath of winter.

“Who are you?”

Kersik! She has much to learn of herbalism yet. Rest easy, brother of mine. All will come to light in the end. I find you interesting. There has not been much to seize my interest this last century and more. Did you know that when I was an apprentice there were nine disciplines? But that was a long time ago. Common witchery and herbalism. They were amalgamated, I believe, in the fifth century and brought under that umbrella term “true theurgy,” to the profit of the Thaumaturgists’ Guild and the loss of the lesser Dweomer-folk. But such is the way of things. You interest me greatly, Bardolin son of Carnolan. There is a smell about you that I know. Something there is of the beast in you. I find it intriguing . . . We will speak again. Rejoin your friends. They worry about you, worthy fellows that they are.

H E opened his eyes. He was on the floor and they were clustered around him with alarm on their faces, even Murad. He felt an insane urge to giggle, like a schoolboy caught out in some misdeed, but fought down the impulse.

A wave of relief. He felt it as a tactile thing. The imp clung to his shoulder whimpering and smiling at the same time. Of course. If he had been drugged it would have been left bereft, lost, the guiding light of his mind gone from it. He stroked it soothingly. He had put too much into his familiar, too much of himself. The things were meant to be expendable. He felt a thrill of fear as he caressed it and it clung to him. Much of his own life force had gone into the imp, giving it an existence beyond him. That might not be to the good any more.

Drugged? Where had that thought come from?

“What happened?” Hawkwood was asking. “Was it the food?”

It was an enormous effort to think, to speak with any sense.

“I—I don’t know. Perhaps. How long was I gone?”

“A few minutes,” Murad told him, frowning. “It happened to no one else.”

“They are playing with us, I think,” Bardolin said, getting to his feet rather unsteadily. Hawkwood supported him.

“Lock us up, drug one of us—what else do they have in store?” the mariner said.

The soldiers had retrieved their arms and lit their match; it stank out the room.

“We’ll have that door down, and shoot our way out of here if we have to,” Murad said grimly. “I’ll not meet my end caught like some fox in a trap.”

“No,” Bardolin said. “If they are expecting anything, they are expecting that. We must do it another way.”

“What? Await yonder wizard with a tercio of his beast-headed guards?”

“There is another way.” Bardolin felt his heart sink as he said the words. He knew now what he would do. “The imp will go for us. It can get out of the window and see what is happening outside. It may even be able to open the door for us.”

Murad appeared undecided for a moment; clearly, he had had his heart set on a fighting escape. He was still wound up too tightly; they all were. A spark would set them off and they would die here with the questions un- answered, and that was intolerable.

“All right, we’ll let the imp go,” Murad conceded at last.

Bardolin let out a sigh. He was utterly tired. He felt sometimes that this land had fastened on him like a succubus and would feed off him until there was nothing left but a withered husk that would blow away to ash in the wind. Soothsaying was not one of his Disciplines, and yet the presentiment had been upon him ever since they had made landfall that there was something deadly to the ship’s company and to the world they had left behind, and it resided here, on this continent. If they escaped they would take it back to the old world with them like a disease which clung to their clothing and nestled in their blood. Like the rats which scurried in the darkness of the ship’s hold.

He bent to the bewildered imp, stroking it.

“Time to go, my little friend.” Can you see the way out, up there in the wall? Up you go. Yes! That’s it. Where the last of the daylight is coming through.

The imp was peering through the narrow aperture in the wall. The entire company watched it in silence.

“I may leave you for some time,” Bardolin told them. “But don’t be alarmed. I am travelling with the imp. I will return. In the meantime, stand fast.”

Murad said something in reply, but he was already gone. The world had become a vaster place in the wink of an eye, and the very quality of Bardolin’s sight had changed. The imp’s eyes operated in a different spectrum of colours: to it the world was a multivaried blend of greens and golds, some so bright they hurt to look at. Stone walls were not merely a blank facade, but their warmth and thickness produced different shadows, glowing outlines.

The imp looked back once, down at the silent room full of men, and then it was through the high, narrow window. It was hungry and would have liked to share in the meats that had been laid out for the company, but its master’s will was working in it. It did as it was told.

Indeed, in some ways Bardolin became the imp. He felt its appetites and fears, he experienced the sensation of the rough tufa blocks under his hands and feet, he heard the noises of the city and the jungle with an enhanced clarity that was almost unbearable until he became used to it.

The rain had ended, and the city was a dripping, steam-shrouded place, fogged as a dawn riverbank. The light was dimmer than it should be; the crater sides would cut out much of the light in the later afternoon.