Warlock's shadow

any thought of protest. ‘I am no hedge witch! You cannot do this! Not here! This is my domain!’ As Kuy’s words rang out, the candles that lit the room seemed to burn ever brighter, yet the air itself was turning black. Unseen hands gripped Berren, holding him rigid. Forms grew out of the blackness in the air; they swirled around the warlock, shifting and morphing so Berren caught only glimpses of what they were, but those glimpses were of monstrous terrors, with eyes that glared and teeth that snapped, of claws and spines and withered hands that would reach through flesh to scar his soul. The nightmares strained, as though somehow tethered to the warlock. Horrors.

Kuy lurched forward and slashed at Berren with the knife. He was like a ghost now, a translucent milky white, half there and half not, but the knife was still real enough. Desperately, Berren threw up a hand to ward off the blow. Pain seared down his left arm. ‘They hunger,’ shrieked Saffran Kuy. Black mist poured out of his mouth. His voice had become something else, a deep growling thing that seemed to come from the walls themselves and filled every corner of Berren’s head. ‘They have your scent! They will find you! However far you run, they will seek you out and gorge themselves on you! Do you understand, boy? You can’t just walk away from here, not from me!’

Behind him the room filled with light, sunlight pouring in through the broken door. Tasahre had two fingers raised, held out towards the warlock. She was quivering with tension, while the sunlight flowed around her. Her outstretched hand shone so bright Berren had to squeeze his eyes shut.

‘Shadows be gone!’ cried Tasahre. The nightmares vanished and Kuy reeled away, staggering, still with Tasahre’s swords stuck through him. His voice broke to his usual whisper.

‘Destiny!’ He staggered away into the darkness. Tasahre strode after him, burning with light. Berren followed after her.

‘Be gone!’

Kuy stumbled away, crashing past crates and boxes and piles of books, knocking down candles. A bundle of old parchments tumbled together and caught aflame. ‘You will die twice, boy! At your own hands each time!’

The warlock was falling apart, his hands dissolving like smoke. He lurched down a hallway and into another room at the end, as cavernous as the first.

‘Be gone!’ Tasahre was closing on him. One by one, candles flickered and died, plunging the room into darkness except for the light that shone from her. The warlock was half vanished, his arms and legs formless stumps, shadows swirling around him. But here he stopped and turned.

Tasahre’s light flared. ‘Be gone!’

‘No!’

The warlock’s face twisted. The shadows around him began to swirl, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

‘Tasahre!’ Now was the time to run, Berren had no doubts about that. Whatever the warlock was doing, he wasn’t dying.

She flared again but not as brightly as she had at first. Berren could see the sweat on her now. She was drenched, almost steaming. The shadows around the warlock recoiled but they didn’t vanish.

‘Tasahre!’ His hand felt as though it was on fire where the warlock’s knife had cut him. Daylight! There was no daylight here, that’s what it was, there was no sun, none at all! This was the warlock’s place, his domain, his heart! He grabbed Tasahre’s shoulder and pulled at her. The light shining from her skin flickered and failed. They were in darkness now, and a faint glimmer from where they’d entered was the only light.

She screamed at him: ‘What are you doing?’

‘It wasn’t enough!’ He pulled her to the door and then they were both running, sprinting away as fast as they could, out of the House of Cats and Gulls with Tasahre’s swords still in the warlock and the warlock still alive and flinging curses in their wake. Out into the glorious daylight, into the afternoon rains come early, up the Godsway towards the temple. Halfway there, he remembered that his hand was hurting.

It was the little finger of his left hand. Half of it was missing.

26

SOME THINGS CAN’T BE HAD

Berren was almost sick when he saw the damage to his hand, but Tasahre pulled him on. He paused long enough to tear his sleeve and wrap some cloth around his hand, then ran the rest of the way dripping blood behind him. They didn’t stop until they were standing in the gateway to the Temple of the Sun.

They were holding hands. He didn’t remember when that had happened.

Tasahre jumped away. They were wet, both of them, soaked through. The air smelled of the rains, but the sky was clearing again, the sun breaking through the cloud.

Berren looked at his hand and whimpered. It burned. The last joint of his little finger was gone. He felt faint.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

Berren blinked. What he’d expected was a torrent of anger for pulling her away, or for having gone there in the first place, or for a hundred and one other things he’d done wrong.

Tasahre put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘He was too strong for me.’ She winced and screwed up her face, put a hand to her head. Berren looked at her then. Looked at her eyes, searching for any trace of what the warlock had done to her. There were no marks, no scars, nothing. She was scared, that was all, scared like he was.

His head throbbed, a searing ache that pushed through the pain of his finger and slowly devoured it.

‘Why did you go to that place, Berren?’

‘I thought I might find Master Sy. I’m sorry. You saved my life.’

‘And you mine,’ she said. ‘Come. You have unmasked a monster. It cannot be allowed to escape.’

‘No.’ Berren shook his head. ‘You go.’ The more he looked at her, the more it hurt that he’d have to leave again. He would though. He couldn’t stay here. The House of Records, the Headsman, now the warlock, they were all too much. No, he couldn’t stay. ‘You tell them. I can’t … Look, I just can’t. There’ll be lots of questions and I’m so tired. I can’t.’ His head was crippling him.

Tasahre stared at him and he didn’t know what to make of what he saw in her face. Longing? Or was that just a reflection of his own? She touched his cheek. ‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’

Master Sy had said something like that. He nodded, knowing full well he’d be gone before she got back.

‘Stay,’ she said again.

He bit his lip. Made to touch her and then thought better of it.

‘Your hand!’

She took his hand in her own and looked at it, and then all of a sudden he was telling her everything, right from the start. The prince, the assassin in the scent garden, Kasmin, Kol, the Headsman, the papers they’d found and what he’d seen in the Two Cranes and what the Headsman had said after he was dead, all of it. It was too much to keep inside him any more and he had to let it out. He watched her as he spoke, looking for any sign of what she already knew. When he was done she looked at him, brow furrowed and face fierce.

‘Show me the wound.’

Berren held out his finger. It was hurting badly now. Blood was oozing out from under his makeshift bandage. He didn’t dare look. Thinking about it made him shiver and feel sick.

She looked at him then shook her head. ‘This needs to be dressed, and properly. Come!’

‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you need to go tell someone about the witch-doctor?’

‘More likely than not the abomination has already fled, if he has the power, and this will not take long. Today is the day of the Abyss, the day of the dark, a bad time to face such a creature. Perhaps that’s why my strength was not enough to break him, even as wounded as he was. Come!’

The practice yard was empty. The clouds had unveiled the sun and the sky was bright again. All the monks and the priests and the novices were closeted away in their temples. Tasahre took Berren into a small low hut with a sliding door, the place where the monks kept the tools and devices they used for training along with their