me.
'It doesn't matter that your purpose might be impossible,' she added fiercely, her Yeetatchen accent growing more noticeable with her vehemence, 'or already fulfilled. That is the fault of others, not you. They filled your dreams with prophecy and destiny. They gave you power, and forgot a white-eye is still human, no matter how great a weapon.'
'So here I am – a saviour without a cause who can't even use drink to hide from his dreams of death?' Isak hadn't meant that to sound as abjectly pathetic as it came out, but Xeliath's face fell all the same.
'How often?'
'The dreams?' he sighed and shook his head. 'Not often. Rare enough to be a shock when they do come; not so rare that I look forward to going to sleep.'
'Have you seen the hound again?'
'No, and for that at least I'm glad.' He grimaced again and rubbed his palms over his face. There was a tingle in his cheek where the single ring he wore – a tube of silver bearing his dragon crest, a replacement for the one he'd given to Commander Brandt's son back in Narkang – had caught it. 'What bell is it?' he asked as he began to tug on his boots.
'Past the fifth,' Xeliath replied, waiting until he had finished before reaching out her good arm to him. When he took it she hauled herself upright and together they entered the dark circle in the centre of the room. 'I prefer to walk the palace at night when there are not so many faces to stare.'
'You walk the palace alone?'
'When I wish. I am always pleased to have Mihn's company, and sometimes Lady Tila or Count Vesna accompany me, but I will not have a nurse.'
'Are you sure? I'd be happier with someone watching your back.'
'I am not so slow – it would take more than a soldier with a grudge,' she said, adding with a grin, 'and unlike you, I have no dreams of death!'
Before Isak could reply, her twisted left hand gave a jerk and the storm of wings enveloped them, raging ghostly and near-silent, but preventing conversation until they cleared. Isak blinked and let the shape of the lower chamber resolve in the gloom.
It was as cold as an ice-store, and the only light was the faint glow of magic emanating from the sigils and spells chalked on the wall. There were two separate spells, one keeping the high and slender tower standing through even the winter storms, the second to carry people up the tower.
Dermeness Chirialt, a mage from the College of Magic, had gladly taken upon himself Isak's magical education, though his speciality was the production of armour; the price for his help was that Isak help him with his own research. One of the first tasks he'd set the young lord was to translate each of these runes, letting the syllables flow through his mind until he gained a sense of their shape and power.
He passed a hand over them as they passed, remembering those lessons, then asked Xeliath, 'Where do you want to walk?'
'Walk?' she replied as she hobbled through the doorway towards the Great Hall. 'Tonight I want to ride.'
'There's a heavy ground-frost again. It won't be safe.'
She rounded on him, her expression changed all of a sudden. 'Safe? I tell you something: guess how many times I have longed Cor the death you hide from? The months I lay in bed unable to move at all, only to find if I could move, still I was manacled to it because they thought I was a prophet?' Her accent became thicker the angrier she got.
'The pain, the loss of my beauty and strength! Pretend your future was tied to another's like a dog, as twisted as your broken body. Not safe? You entered Scree with just a bodyguard, was that safe? I will not again ride well, but I will ride. If I risk death to avoid white faces staring, I choose it.'
She turned back towards the Great Hall, adding under her breath, 'It is the only choice I have left. Everything else is decided by a saviour who cannot even save himself.'
Isak watched her go, not trusting himself to reply. His hands had tightened into fists with the effort of keeping silent, but the next voice to echo down the corridor was Xeliath's, snapping at a servant on duty in the Great Hall, demanding a horse.
'Bloody white-eyes, eh?' said a voice to Isak's right. He turned and saw Carel standing halfway up the wide stone staircase that led up to the state apartments. His former mentor wore a long green overcoat with a white collar as befitted his status as a former Palace Guard, his left sleeve was pinned back, while his right hand held a silver-headed cane. Carel claimed his balance was still a little off since Isak had performed a battlefield amputation on his right arm, but the Duke of Tirah wasn't convinced.
Tila had confirmed his guess that duels could only be demanded of to those in the habit of wearing a sword, and Carel, having passed his sabre, Arugin, on to Major Jachen, was now officially a pensioned retainer of Lord Isak's. The net result was that he could pretty well be as rude as he liked to any nobleman, and any demand for apology in the form of a duel would have to be offered to Lord Isak instead. Of course, if Isak judged his friend correctly, any illegal attack on Carel's person would see the former elite guardsman thumb a catch on his cane and suddenly regain the balance of forty years' superb swordsmanship.
'Reminding you of anything, old man?'
'No, not at all,' Carel replied breezily. 'You were much worse.'
'Were?' Isak said sourly. 'You heard her; I'm now a Saviour who can't even save himself. At the moment I'm inclined to think that might be worse than a petulant child.'
'So a petulant child might claim, but I know which one I'd prefer to share a pipe with out in the moonlight.' Carel gestured towards the Great Hall and they walked in side by side. The servant now tending the fire still had a shocked look on her face, the result of Xeliath's passing. It took a moment of panic before she remembered to curtsey to Isak as the three rangers sitting at a table rose and bowed.
Once out on the moonlit training ground, Isak took Card's proffered tobacco pouch and thumbed a wad bf tobacco into his pipe. He lit it and took a deep breath of the warm smoke before passing it over.
'I cringe every time I hear the word 'Saviour'.'
Carel nodded, his face partly obscured by the shadow of hair made silvery in Alterr's light. 'Don't surprise me, that's a bastard term to live up to no matter who you are.'
'I never realised how powerful the word was, the hold it takes on some folk.'
'Ah, folk are dumb as mules, you know that,' Carel declared carelessly, gesturing to the other side of the training ground where they could just make out a flurry of activity at the stables. 'Sometimes as stubborn too.'
The sky was dark. It was well past midnight, and all they could see ahead was the moonlight catching the frost on the many peaked roofs of the palace.
'Whether a saviour is needed or not, that don't matter to some. We're mortal, whatever tribe or colour.' The veteran shrugged, the stump that was all that remained of his left arm nudging Isak's sleeve. ' 'Frail mortals, weak and fearful' – isn't that what it says in the Devotionals, the one to Lord Death? That's what we are, my boy, frail and weak. We don't lead perfect lives and deep down every one of us knows we could be better, as people, and as servants of the Gods. Who then wouldn't want a saviour to be the light showing us the way?'
'And they look to me?' Isak shook his head in disbelief. 'Because at some point years ago the Gods feared Aryn Bwr's revenge, only to have their tool twisted awry? I'm no example.'
'Ah, but you are, like it or not,' Carel said firmly. The man handed back the pipe then knocked the head of his cane against Isak's massive thigh. 'Whatever playing was done with your destiny, it made others see a leader in those oversized boots of yours.'
'And what about me?' Isak countered, rounding on the veteran and ducking his head so he could look the smaller man in the eye. 'Who do I look to when I run out of answers? I'll tell you now I've got sod-all clue how to deal with the fact that I can feel my own death creeping up behind me, let alone whatever games Azaer is playing. So do I look to Kastan Styrax, perhaps the only man in this Land more trouble than I am? The man I feel in my bones is going to kill me?'
'No need to take that tone with me,' Carel said sternly, 'I ain't saying I've got all the answers.' He jabbed his cane against Isak's chest and after an angry moment the white-eye stepped back. 'I'm just out here for a smoke,' Carel continued with an approving grin as he watched Isak swallow his temper, 'and who'm I to say what manner your salvation might come in?'
