‘You were. Uruth, wife to Tomad Sengar, came in answer to our… distress. She drew upon Kurald Emurlahn, and has driven the Wyval away. And now she works healing upon us both. We lie side by side, Udinaas, on the blood-soaked earth. Unconscious. She wonders at our reluctance to return.’
‘Reluctance?’
‘She finds she struggles to heal our wounds – I am resisting her, for us both.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am troubled. Uruth senses nothing. Her power feels pure to her. Yet it is… stained.’
‘I do not understand. You said Kurald Emurlahn-’
‘Aye. But it has lost its purity. I do not know how, or what, but it has changed. Among all the Edur, it is
‘What are we to do?’
She sighed. ‘Return, now. Yield to her command. Offer our gratitude for her intervention, for the healing of our torn flesh. And in answer to the many questions she has, we can say little. It was confused. Battle with an unknown demon. Chaos. And of this conversation, Udinaas, we will say nothing. Do you understand?’
‘I do.’
She reached down and he felt her hand close about his – suddenly he was whole once more – and its warmth flowed through him.
He could hear his heart now, thundering in answer to that touch. And another heart, distant yet quickly closing, beating in time. But it was not hers, and Udinaas knew terror.
His mother stepped back, the knot of her brow beginning to unclench. ‘They approach,’ she said.
Trull stared down at the two slaves. Udinaas, from his own household. And the other, one of Mayen’s servants, the one they knew as Feather Witch for her divinatory powers. The blood still stained the puncture holes in their shirts, but the wounds themselves had closed. Another kind of blood was spilled across Udinaas’s chest, gold and glistening still.
‘I should outlaw these castings,’ Hannan Mosag growled. ‘Permitting Letherii sorcery in our midst is a dangerous indulgence.’
‘Yet there is value, High King,’ Uruth said, and Trull could see that she was still troubled.
‘And that is, wife of Tomad?’
‘A clarion call, High King, which we would do well to heed.’
Hannan Mosag grimaced. ‘There is Wyval blood upon the man’s shirt. Is he infected?’
‘Possibly,’ Uruth conceded. ‘Much of that which passes for a soul in a Letherii is concealed from my arts, High King.’
‘A failing that plagues us all, Uruth,’ the Warlock King said, granting her great honour by using her true name. ‘This one must be observed at all times,’ he continued, eyes on Udinaas. ‘If there is Wyval blood within him, the truth shall be revealed eventually. To whom does he belong?’
Tomad Sengar cleared his throat. ‘He is mine, Warlock King.’
Hannan Mosag frowned, and Trull knew he was thinking of his dream, and of his decision to weave into its tale the Sengar family. There were few coincidences in the world. The Warlock King spoke in a harder voice. ‘This Feather Witch, she is Mayen’s, yes? Tell me, Uruth, could you sense her power when you healed her?’
Trull’s mother shook her head. ‘Unimpressive. Or…’
‘Or what?’
Uruth shrugged. ‘Or she hid it well, despite her wounds. And if that is the case, then her power surpasses mine.’
Hannan Mosag’s grunt conveyed similar sentiments. ‘She was assailed by a Wyval, clearly a creature that proved far beyond her ability to control. No, the child stumbles. Poorly instructed, ignorant of the vastness of all with which she would play. See, she only now regains awareness.’
Feather Witch’s eyes fluttered open, revealing little comprehension, and that quickly overwhelmed by animal terror.
Hannan Mosag sighed. ‘She will be of no use to us for a time. Leave them in the care of Uruth and the other wives.’ He faced Tomad Sengar. ‘When Binadas returns…’
Tomad nodded.
Trull glanced over at Fear. Behind him knelt the slaves that had attended the casting, heads pressed to the earth and motionless, as they had been since Uruth’s arrival. It seemed Fear’s hard eyes were fixed upon something no-one else could see.
A sickly groan from Udinaas.
The Warlock King ignored it as he strode from the barn, his K’risnan flanking him, his shadow sentinel trailing a step behind. At the threshold, that monstrous wraith paused of its own accord, for a single glance back – though there was no way to tell upon whom it fixed its shapeless eyes.
Udinaas groaned a second time, and Trull saw the slave’s limbs trembling.
At the threshold, the wraith was gone.
CHAPTER TWO
Mistress to these footprints, Lover to the wake of where He has just passed, for the path he wanders is between us all. The sweet taste of loss feeds every mountain stream, Failing ice down to seas warm as blood threading thin our dreams. For where he leads her has lost its bones, And the trail he walks is flesh without life and the sea remembers nothing.
A GLANCE BACK. IN THE MISTY HAZE FAR BELOW AND TO THE WEST glimmered the innermost extent of Reach Inlet, the sky’s pallid reflection thorough in disguising that black, depthless water. On all other sides, apart from the stony trail directly behind Seren Pedac, reared jagged mountains, the snow-clad peaks gilt by a sun she could not see from where she stood at the south end of the saddle pass.
The wind rushing past her stank of ice, the winter’s lingering breath of cold decay. She drew her furs tighter and swung round to gauge the progress of the train on the trail below.
Three solid-wheeled wagons, pitching and clanking. The swarming, bare-backed figures of the Nerek tribesmen as they flowed in groups around each wagon, the ones at the head straining on ropes, the ones at the rear advancing the stop-blocks to keep the awkward conveyances from rolling backward.
In those wagons, among other trade goods, were ninety ingots of iron, thirty to each wagon. Not the famed Letherii steel, of course, since sale of that beyond the borders was forbidden, but of the next highest quality grade, carbon-tempered and virtually free of impurities. Each ingot was as long as Seren’s arm, and twice as thick.
The air was bitter cold and thin. Yet those Nerek worked half naked, the sweat steaming from their slick skins. If a stop-block failed, the nearest tribesman would throw his own body beneath the wheel. And for this, Buruk the Pale paid them two docks a day. Seren Pedac was Buruk’s Acquitor, granted passage into Edur lands, one of seven so sanctioned by the last treaty. No merchant could enter Edur territory unless guided by an Acquitor. The bidding for Seren Pedac and the six others had been high. And, for Seren, Buruk’s had been highest of all, and now he owned her. Or, rather, he owned her services as guide and finder – a distinction of which he seemed increasingly unmindful.
But this was the contract’s sixth year. Only four remaining.
She turned once more, and studied the pass ahead. They were less than a hundred paces’ worth of elevation from the treeline. Knee-high, centuries-old dwarf oaks and spruce flanked the uneven path. Mosses and lichens covered the enormous boulders that had been dragged down by the rivers of ice in ages past. Crusted patches of snow remained, clinging to shadowed places. Here the wind moved nothing, not the wiry spruce, not even the crooked, leafless branches of the oaks.
