The Dark Defiles (38 page)

It’s really better if you don’t look at me,
husks the voice.
I am not cloaked as I was at the crossroads, and I should hate to shatter your sanity.

You were at my back, that first time at the cliffs?

Ah. Clarity at last. What, did you think you commanded the cold legions at thousandfold strength the way you trail that truncated little trio around behind you? You think you defeated Risgillen of Illwrack
alone
?

A shiver runs through him—the memories are puddles, distorted and shattered apart with every fresh drip of recall that adds to them. He’s still not really clear what happened in the temple at Afa’marag—only that he won, and left blood and ruin in his wake.

You sent Hjel to find me, to bring me out, away from Seethlaw’s
… He swallows.
To bring me out.

I sent the dispossessed prince on an errand. He did not know it was you he was looking for. He had, I think, begun to forget you by then. To let your memory go, at least.

Ringil grimaces. Ignores the cold chill that walks along his spine with those words and all they imply. He grabs after more solid, immediate stuff.

You sent me to Hjel, that first time. You brought us together.
A sudden, flaring ember of intuition.
Was it your presence in the Grey Places, then, that twisted time so badly out of joint? Are you an intruder here, too?

The quiet again, the stealthy trickle of water, and a click and scrape as limbs rearrange themselves on the walls of the defile behind him. A sound like the sighing of a giant, somewhere a long way off. Cool air comes pushing down the passage at his back, coats his neck with a touch like ice.

You, don’t, listen,
says the Creature from the Crossroads.
I am a
builder
here, and to the considerable benefit of your whole species. Perhaps you might afford me a little respect on that account.

The Dark Queen called you a Book-Keeper.

Before a book can be kept, it must be written. Look around you, little hero, and see what my kind have written in this place.

The glyphs flare fierce blue again, then blinding white, too bright to look at directly. The whole dark defile lights up with their fire, drowns him in violent light. Ringil lifts a shielding hand to his eyes.

Then why—
he starts.

Why? Why what?
The voice seems to have flared up with the glyphs. It’s hoarse and grating still, but there’s a loaded force to it like a cold wind blowing.
Why did we mend the world? Why bother to repair the damage done? Why stitch the wounds closed with the
ikinri ‘ska
? As well ask why your mother raised you, why your father sired you. Why an oak spreads branches against the sun and thrusts roots down into the—

No.
It comes out a strained yelp—the glyph light is too much for him. He’s having to screw his eyes shut against the glare.
Not that. Why did you bring me together with Hjel?

Let us just say I perceived a symmetry.
A sudden, cold amusement in the Creature’s tones.
Do you find the arrangement with the dispossessed prince
… 
unpleasant?

You know I don’t.
He summoned poise, strength. Pours an iron calm into his voice.
But I’m sick of being a puppet for every supernatural power through the tavern door. The Dark Court, the Helmsmen, and now you. It’s getting old. If I’m being dealt into this fucking stupid game you all like so much, I want to know what we’re playing for, and I want
… 

Sudden scrape of clawed limbs in the narrow space behind him—his voice dies out, sinks back down his throat as he feels the talons grab him roughly under first one arm then the other, then between the legs. Abruptly, he’s hoisted a yard off the floor of the light-blasted passage, held dangling there amid the radiant glyphs.

You object to being a puppet, eh?
The voice is at his ear again, very close. Some sideways moving mouthpart brushes stickily at his neck, and he hears an alarming glottal clicking in three distinct stages.
There are worse fates, I assure you.

R
AKAN BROUGHT THE SALVE AND BANDAGES, AND A LOW WOODEN STOOL.
He made Gil sit down and then knelt before him to treat the burns himself, something that might have raised some eyebrows if their manpower hadn’t been quite so thinly spread across the three ships. As it was, the gathered men showed little interest in the process; they’d seen wounds dressed often enough, and it didn’t look as if Black Mage flesh was that much different to anyone else’s. They were growing restless now that the show with the Helmsman seemed to be over, so Rakan dismissed them, bridging the authority gap between Throne Eternal and imperial marine command with what Ringil thought was admirable aplomb. The young captain was growing visibly into his responsibilities as need arose; he’d make a fine commander someday.

Yeah—if you can get him home in one piece, Gil. If you can avoid getting him killed in some Trelayne back alley a couple of weeks hence.

Oh, shut up. Like any of us have a choice right now.

Sure you do. Crowd on sail and make a run for it. Swing out wide of the cape, dodge the League pickets or bluff them somehow if you have to, run south till we’re in safe waters. Let Jhiral negotiate to get the others back ransomed and unharmed.

But he knew he wasn’t going to do any of that, so instead he sat there with hand held docilely out, and watched his young imperial lover smear salve liberally over the burns on his fingers and palm. Enjoyed the soft, slick touch while he could. When Rakan looked up, Ringil caught his eye and dropped the flicker of a wink. Rakan flushed and lowered his gaze.

Never mind command responsibilities. Wouldn’t mind seeing him grow visibly somewhere else, if we can get six minutes’ privacy between the two of us.

Pack it in, Gil. Really. Not like the balance here isn’t ticklish enough as it is, without the two of you getting caught trading sweet nothings.

Rakan finished up with the salve, bound Gil’s whole hand from fingertips to wrist, and then muttered a brief prayer over it. Gil didn’t know if this last was out of genuine faith, ingrained custom, or just for show. The Revelation wasn’t an area they’d really touched on. The scant trysts and stolen hours in the bustle of preparing for the expedition had been far too precious to waste on other men’s abstracts, and once they actually set out for the Hironish, opportunities for anything much more significant than a quick fuck had been rare. It all added a poignant spice to their intimacy, it kept the relationship fresh and new, but it also meant—this dawning now on Gil for possibly the first time—that he barely knew the younger man at all.

Knows how to set a good field dressing.
Flexing his hand experimentally in the windings of the bandage.
Torso like a god, arse like a peach, legs like a battle marshal’s runner. Sucks cock like there’s no tomorrow. What else you need to know, Gil?

He stood up and nodded his thanks. Curt and manly, in case anyone was watching. He faced Anasharal again. Paced around the upended iron hull a couple of times.

“So then, Helmsman,” he said breezily. “You want to tell me what you
really
dragged us all up here to the arse end of the known world for?”

Long silence. A couple of the Helmsman’s limbs twitched pettishly at the air.

“Oh, very well,” it grumbled.

attlefield aftermath calm.

The day’s light was all but gone—Archeth stood in closing gloom amid a quiet laced with the groans and clenched curses of injured men. She shook off the postcombat daze she was sinking into and set about retrieving her knives. Stooped beside the dead warrior caste lizard and worked at pulling first Falling Angel then Quarterless out of its eye sockets. It took some doing; the blades had gone home hard. The wounds in her side stung with the effort of pulling and she spiked her knuckles more than once on the protective spines before she was done. Aware of the Dragonbane coming over to watch, she bit back each yelp as it rose to her lips.

“You want a hand with that?”

“No, I got it.”

For some reason she couldn’t name, she didn’t want anyone to touch the knives right now. Flash recall of the fight came and went, impressions she didn’t know whether to trust or not. Falling Angel, jumping out of her boot and into her reaching hand. Quarterless, gone, wasted in a flubbed throw and lying loose on the boulevard paving until … she’d grabbed it back up, hadn’t she? Reached back with her empty left hand, somehow found it, somehow
knew
it was there, and … 

She knew where all of them were.

It dawned on her, crouched there twisting Quarterless back and forth by tiny increments, working it loose of the bony ridges around the lizard’s eye. With the same certainty that she felt the butt of Quarterless in her hand, she felt Falling Angel
here,
laid neatly by the toe of her boot, yet to be cleaned of the gore it was clotted with; Wraithslayer,
there,
jammed in under the soft reptile armpit a yard down from the head where she crouched; Laughing Girl and Bandgleam, both buried in dead reptile peon eye sockets,
there
and over
there.
She felt the locations to the inch, the same way she’d know exactly where to reach and pick up her goblet at breakfast without ever lifting her eyes from the book in her lap.

It is a meditative, communing state
… 

Quarterless came clear with a sticky scrape. She held it up, then cast around in vain for something to wipe the blade clean. Silently, the Dragonbane handed her a torn piece of cloth, already much stained and marked.

“Thanks. Is this … ?”

Egar nodded over toward the chunk of rubble in the middle of the boulevard. There was a crumpled body lying beside it. “Privateer kid’s shirt. He’s not going to need it.”

“No, I guess not.” She cleaned Quarterless thoroughly, put it away at the small of her back, picked up Falling Angel. “How many’d we lose?”

“Looks like nine.” The Dragonbane grimaced—as if he was trying to work a deeply lodged piece of meat out from between two of his front teeth. “Just closed the eyes on number eight, and there’s one of Tand’s still not finished dying, but he won’t be long. Fucking peon opened him right up, hip to heartstrings.”

She stowed Falling Angel in her boot and stood up. “Do anything for him?”

“Fed him some of that powder your iron demon gave us. Seemed to work. His pals are there, praying with him. Like I said, won’t be long.”

“All right.” Twinge of krinzanz longing at the mention of powders and pain—she crushed it out. Set one boot against the bulk of the dead warrior caste lizard, bent her leg and shoved hard so it rolled over and she could get to Wraithslayer. A thought struck her. “What about Kaptal?”

“Yeah, not a scratch on him. He was brandishing that knife you gave him, but I didn’t see any blood on it. Don’t know if the lizards even tried to touch him.”

“Neat trick if you can pull it off.” She stood up with Wraithslayer in her hand, inspected the blade minutely. “We got anybody too badly hurt to march?”

Egar shook his head. “They’ll march. They’ll fucking double-time it, if it gets them out of this place any faster.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not getting out of here tonight, that’s for sure. Going to have to camp somewhere close.”

“Yeah.” He hesitated. “Should have stayed up on the ridge.”

“But we didn’t.” She shot him a glance. “Probably wasn’t any safer up there anyway, Eg.”

He grunted.

She stowed Wraithslayer in the magical upside-down sheath on her left breast. Drifted across the boulevard paving to the dead reptile peon she’d killed with Bandgleam. “You notice anything about this stonework?”

“It’s warm.” The Dragonbane trailed after her, scuffing at the paving with a boot tip. “In patches, anyway.”

“Yeah.” She stooped for the knife, tugged it free. Slim-bladed Bandgleam came easily out of the blood-glutted eye socket, rested lightly in her hand as she wiped it down. “The way I figure it, either the dwenda built it like this, or it’s maybe something the Warhelm’s weapons did when they brought this lot down. Either way, it must have been a beacon for any Scaled Folk that washed up this far north.”

“Looks that way.”

She put the knife away, across from Wraithslayer on her chest. Looked around at the scattered reptile corpses and the men who had died. Shook her head.

“I doubt this is all of them, Eg.”

T
AND’S MAN TOOK LONGER DYING THAN ANYONE EXPECTED, AND HE WENT
hard despite the Warhelm’s painkilling powders. Some horror of letting go in this haunted place, leaving his mortal remains here for whatever might stalk down these desolate boulevards once night fell. His fellow freebooters reassured him as best they could, but their own faces were portraits in ill-ease and the dying man was no fool. So they set out a few of the radiant bowls against the encroaching dark and stood or sat around in the glow they cast, trying not to listen to the mercenary’s slowly weakening curses and groans. Yilmar Kaptal was impatient to move on, but his protests dried up in the face of a grim stare from one of the other freebooters. Archeth stowed her own impatience where no one could see it, sat at another bowl instead and submitted stoically to the Dragonbane’s blue-lit ministrations with needle and thread. Turned out he was a nifty little seamstress when he wanted to be.

A little later, the fire sprite showed up, bright orange and red in the windy darkness. It flickered about on the fringes of the company, like an embarrassed late guest shown in to a dinner already begun. Egar noticed before she did—she was lost in the soft blue glow from the bowl. He leaned across to where she sat cross-legged and touched her on one knee.

“Hsst. Our friend’s back.”

“About fucking time,” she said sourly. Her wounds ached, and the dying mercenary’s dribble of imprecation and pleading was getting to her worse than she’d expected.

“Occurs to me,” said the Dragonbane slowly, “it maybe went off to scout a route that didn’t take us in sniffing range of any lizard nests. We should have waited up on that fucking ridge.”

“Yeah, but we didn’t. Let it go, Eg.”

He said nothing, and they sat in silence together, listening to the dying man and the hoot of the wind in the architecture. Presently, one of the other freebooters came over and made brief obeisance. Archeth nodded bleakly up at him.

“What is it?”

“A boon, my lady. Ninesh asks if you can leave the walking flame here to watch over him in death.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously fucking not, no.”

“Or then, if the demon at An-Kirilnar might be asked to send out another flame to do it.” The mercenary made an awkward gesture. “He’s delirious, my lady. But it would comfort him to be told the lie. It would help him to let go.”

Archeth remembered the stench of voided bowels and burned flesh in the house at Ornley, the unending keening from the next room. What Tand’s men had done to the islander—she tried to recall his name, but it wouldn’t come—and his family. She couldn’t recall if this dying thug had been there or not, but she imagined it wouldn’t have made much difference one way or the other. The mercenaries were all cut from the same grubby cloth—veteran soldiers of fortune, recruited by reputation for the expressed purpose of securing their master’s slave caravans, shipments, and stables. It was grim, brutal work and Tand wouldn’t have been choosing them for the milk of human kindness in their hearts.

She shot a glance at Egar. The Dragonbane shrugged.

“If it gets us moving any quicker.”

“Oh, all
right.
I’m going.”

She levered herself to her feet, wincing at the twinge across her ribs from the stitches. She made her way over to the dying man and his companions, no clear sense of how she was supposed to do this at all. Giving comfort had never been her strong point—too much stored bitterness of her own to carry around, never mind anyone else’s fucking pain.

Around the makeshift encampment, men stopped their conversations and watched her.

Great.

You walk, Archidi, you find the strength.
The Dragonbane’s words filtered back through her memory.
Some men don’t have that strength, so you have to lend it to them.

The other mercenaries shuffled back, gave her access. The dying man looked up at her in the blue gloom, face beaded with sweat, breath sawing from his lungs in tight little gusts. They’d pillowed him on his bedroll, put a blanket over his body and his wound, but he was shivering as if they’d stripped him naked.

She crouched at his side. His eyes tracked the motion, she saw how he flinched from her. Burned black witch. She put a hand on his shoulder and he made a noise like the snort of a panicking horse. But his eyes were on her face and his gaze clung there, fearful and wondering, like some almost drowned man, staring at the grim rise of a shoreline beyond the chop of the waves he struggled against.

“You have fought well.” The words were out of her mouth before she fully realized what she was going to say. “You have stood against dragons.”

“I, I … yeah. Fuckers got me good, Mom. Got me good.” The tormented features twisted. “They, they, I couldn’t—”

“They are all slain now,” she said, astonished at the ease with which the banalities spilled from her lips. “And we are victorious, and, uhm, in your eternal debt for your part in that victory. You have given your blood so that your comrades might go on. Among the Black Folk, that is a sacred act. Know, then, that the Great Spirit at An-Kirilnar has also seen your sacrifice and will send a flame guardian to mark your passing. Go to rest in pride. From now until, uhm, the end of all days, the fire will stand here, in memory of your hero’s name and in protection of your resting place.”

“I …” A trace of clarity surfaced through the delirium in the desperate eyes. “Is it so, my lady? Really?”

“Really,” she said firmly. She took one of his scarred and calloused hands, pressed it between her own. “Now go to good rest. Let go.”

The mercenary hung on a little longer regardless, but his breathing seemed less panicked now, and he cursed less than he had before. He confused Archeth with his mother some more, asked her not to leave him, asked her why her face was so sooted up, was anything wrong, had something happened to Bereth§ . He mumbled to his comrades, and to others who were not there, told them all he was a hero in the eyes of the Black Folk, smiled like a child with the

words.

Shortly after that, his breathing stumbled and then stopped.

They sat around him for a still couple of moments, just to be sure. One of the other mercenaries leaned in and pressed fingers to the neck. Held the back of his hand to the open mouth. Nodded. Archeth got up, a little stiffly.

“Right. Do what you need to do for him. But get it done fast, we’re pulling out. This isn’t a safe place to spend the night.”

She nodded across at Egar, and the Dragonbane stood up, started barking orders. The men scrambled for their gear, relief palpable in the sudden surge of motion. She moved, too, trying to shrug off the dead man at her back. But something of him clung stubbornly on. She paused on her way to get her pack, stood a moment looking back, watching the surviving freebooters with their dead comrade in the light from the radiant bowl.

They were frisking the newly made corpse for valuables.