Warlock's shadow

wars. That is not what we are for. Come. The priests will know what to do.’ she smiled once more, and he watched her walk away through the afternoon sun towards the temple doors. He made as if to follow but lagged behind a little. She didn’t look back, didn’t wait for him but kept walking, as though she believed he was at her side.

Sooner or later, Master Sy would come looking for his old friend Kuy again.

He stared at the temple gate. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was somewhere he was meant to be, somewhere that wasn’t here.

He turned back to Tasahre, still walking away with the sun on her back, still not looking over her shoulder towards him. She was letting him go, he knew, letting him run if he wanted. She was letting him be free.

No. This was where he was meant to be. He’d made his choice, back in the House of Cats and Gulls, even if he hadn’t known it.

He trotted across the practice yard and followed Tasahre into the temple.

27

ERRANDS ON ABYSS-DAY

The monks didn’t wait for the next day. Berren watched them go, seven of them with the elder dragon himself, as many priests and a score of temple soldiers. Tasahre went with them. They were gone the next day too, Sun-Day, all of them. When Tasahre came back she had her swords with her. She held them up to Berren. ‘They were lying on the floor,’ she told him. ‘The abomination has disappeared.’ And that was all she had to say. For the rest of that day she worked him hard, mercilessly hard; the more questions he asked, the more she pushed him. Twice he tried to ask her about the golden knife, whether it had been found, tried to find the words to ask about what the warlock had done to him. Both times she came at him with a sword for an answer. Gone, he slowly pieced together, meant vanished gone. Not dead gone. Not finished.

And that was all there was. Neither of them talked about what they’d seen there. No one came with questions about Master Sy. There were no visits from Justicar Kol and for the rest of that day it was as though nothing had ever happened; at least until the next sunrise when Berren found himself being shaken out of bed.

‘We have duties,’ Tasahre told him. Once he was dressed, she told him they were going back to the House of Cats and Gulls.

‘No.’ Berren shook his head.

The look she gave him was a strange one, half sadness, half affection. ‘Yes, Berren. Yes you can and you will. We are both going. We will not be alone, it will be daylight, and the abomination is gone. He is merely driven away for now, but my brothers and sisters are hunting for him and they will find him and end him. You have nothing to fear while we are close to you.’

Berren shook his head again. ‘If he’s not there, why do we have to go back?’

She looked away. ‘We must face our fears, Berren. That is what makes us strong. He touched us both and we must take back what is ours.’

However true that was, it wasn’t why they were going. Berren waited.

‘I cannot tell you,’ she said after a bit. ‘I have sworn I would not. Your master had dealings with the warlock. There may be papers. You said you had seen some.’ An uneasy look crossed her face. ‘There may be other things, too.’

Like the golden-handled knife. Berren shuddered.

‘Please.’ She looked him in the eye, full of earnest hope. ‘I cannot offer you much in return, but I will teach you what I can while we are there.’

They’d have more time together. Yes, he’d like that, but not spent in some stinking gloomy old warehouse.

‘We might find where your master is hiding.’

They wouldn’t, but he followed her anyway, out to the practice yard and the dawning sun where a few priests and a dozen temple soldiers were already gathered. The priests gave him hostile stares. One of them was Sterm. That made Berren smile.

‘They will cleanse the house,’ Tasahre told him, which made him wonder why they needed a sword-monk at all, until he realised that they didn’t, what they wanted was him, and because they wanted him, Tasahre had to be there as well. They were most of the way down the Godsway before he’d worked that one out.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘For making you be here.’

She laughed. ‘Are you making me be here, Berren? Are there shackles around my feet? Do you lead me in chains? I am here because the elder dragon commands it and because I choose to obey. There is no reason for you to be sorry.’

‘But it’s still my fault. You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.’

‘The sun put you in my path, Berren.’ She put a calm hand on his shoulder. ‘Should I rail against the sun? What use is there in that?’

Which made him want to press her even harder. How could anyone be so calm, so accepting of whatever happened? ‘What if I had run away when I had the chance? What if I’d left you there with him, eh? What would have happened to you then?’

‘I don’t know. The abomination would have destroyed me. Turned me against my path, perhaps.’

‘Would that have been the sun’s fault too?’

‘Fault?’ She laughed again. ‘If that was to be my fate then yes, I suppose so. But you didn’t run, Berren.’

‘But I might have.’ She’d never know how close it had been. Or maybe she did and maybe that was why she was smiling at him.

‘But you didn’t,’ she said again, and then they were at the bottom of the Godsway and by the door to the House of Cats and Gulls and the air was full of the stink of dead fish. He watched the priests wrinkle their noses, watched Sterm screw up his face, and tried not to giggle. When you came past the River Gate often enough, eventually you got used to the stink. Sometimes, when he’d been on his way back from Sweetwater with Master Sy’s buckets pressing into his shoulders, he’d even put them down for a quick rest. He had an idea that the cats and the gulls knew when someone was coming out. He’d watch the cats gathering, vying for dominance. The gulls would flock to the warehouse roof, its windows, anywhere they could find purchase; and then someone would come out and leave their basket and hurry away and the frenzy would begin. A short, violent free-for-all between the feral cats while the air filled with gulls, wheeling in to steal whatever they could. The cats hissed and clawed at the gulls and each other alike, and the gulls snapped at anything and everything.

That had been back when he’d carried water up to Master Sy’s house every Abyss-Day morning. He’d come down the Godsway just like this, right about this time of day. Now those days were gone forever.

He took a deep breath. The eyes were there, the cats, skulking in their shadows, watching, the gulls on the window ledges and on the roof. There wasn’t much of a door left after what Tasahre had done to it. There were baskets, though, baskets that hadn’t been there the day before. Like the priests, the warlock had his faithful. How he got them … Berren shivered. He didn’t want to think about that. When he closed his eyes he could still see the web of his own soul, spread out before the golden knife. His life wouldn’t be his own, one way or another, until Saffran Kuy was dead. That alone was a good enough reason to be here, helping these priests.

‘Come.’ Tasahre led the way. There were other smells inside, smells of old and musty clothes, of decay and damp. As Berren and the priests walked cautiously from room to room, a reek of rotting flesh wafted past and then was gone. Berren thought he smelled burnt hair once. Some of the rooms were dark, the windows still shuttered and boarded; once the priests saw that, they mumbled amongst themselves and then had Tasahre and Berren rip off the last remaining boards, flinging open the shutters and letting in the light. In the deeper rooms where there were no windows and no place for the sunlight to enter, they lit candles laden with incense. The warehouse became a feast of smells, burning tallow and sulphur and a hundred scents that Berren couldn’t name adding themselves to the ever-present stink of rot and decay. The richness of the air seemed all the more imposing set against the