Vagrants: Book 2 Circles of Light series (26 page)

‘You must try to clear
your mind of the idea that all and every use of power is a foul
thing Lord Hargon,’ Kemti remarked.

‘The power brought
destruction beyond belief to our lands,’ Hargon said, leaping to
his feet. ‘Its use has been forbidden ever since those terrible
days.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Brin
rumbled. ‘But if not for the power, how could we now be speaking to
each other?’

‘The Merig told me it
was just a different way of communicating.’ Hargon
frowned.

‘It is,’ Brin agreed
reasonably, ‘but it is still accomplished only with small
manipulations of the power.’

At that point, raucous
shrieks erupted to Hargon’s left and the Merig flapped up to the
edge of the roof, a few black feathers drifting behind him. All
eyes turned to Mena. Khosa stared innocently back from her perch on
the child’s knee.

‘It is not my fault
that Merigs have no sense of humour,’ she said coolly.

Mena bent her head over
the Kephi as the Merig grumbled on from the roof.

Kemti cleared his
throat. ‘We believe Rhaki used an ancient circle device to travel
the great distance from the northern Ice Realm to Return, Lord
Hargon. Do you have any buildings, or mayhap a ruined place beyond
your town limits, where such a circle lies? It is a mosaic
patterned with crystal and jet, at least so we believe. We know of
five other such circles and they are all made so.’

Hargon shook his head.
‘No such things do we have. All were destroyed. We would not
tolerate them to remain – contaminated things of the evil
ones.’

‘Sir?’ Navan shifted
where he sat by Lord Hargon. ‘The caves the men spoke of? Could
there be such a circle hidden there?’

‘Where are these
caves?’ Tika asked.

‘Close by Rhaki’s
tower,’ Navan answered her at Hargon’s nod. ‘Two armsmen – died –
when they approached the place. We know Rhaki killed them, and
others set to watch him.’

‘How did Rhaki kill
them?’ Kemti asked sharply.

Navan swallowed. ‘We
know not. All we found was a heap of ashes. And their belt
daggers.’ He drew his own from his waist and held it hilt forward
towards Kemti. ‘All our daggers are made the same, and they were
all that remained when the men carrying them became but
ashes.’

Chapter
Eighteen

Rhaki still slept.
Serim checked on his master’s condition at regular intervals both
day and night and slept on the floor close by him.

For many days Rhaki had
lain like a corpse, his skin ashen, only shallow breaths moving his
chest slightly. Each time Serim visited his master, he sponged and
oiled his face and tried to drip a little fluid between his
cracking lips. Yesterday, he’d found Rhaki half turned on his side.
As the Delver tended him, Rhaki muttered unintelligibly and jerked
his head from Serim’s hands. Serim sat back on his heels and
studied the Grey Guardian’s unconscious face.

Rhaki lay still again
and Serim noted there was no fluttering of the hooded eyelids,
which might indicate a return to wakefulness. He gathered up the
basin, cloths, and oil jar and went quietly from the
room.

At first Rhaki had lain
in the dark, his body and mind exhausted to a nearly fatal level.
His body slept, desperate to restore its depleted energies, and his
mind floated in empty blackness. A tiny thread held the awareness
of who he was, and who he could be, but in those first days, the
thread was tenuous indeed. Now it was thickening, solidifying,
absorbing new things once more almost with Rhaki’s old craving for
information.

The thoughts that came
like pale lightnings in the deep night in which Rhaki drifted, were
like songs and dreams. They soothed him somehow although he did not
in the least understand any words. As his body rested and healed
with the rapidity of his race, Rhaki’s mind began to try and catch
at these wisping silvery dreams. To no avail.

Each time one came
within his grasp, it felt as if something else slid between. At
last, a red thread, somehow familiar, swam through the darkness and
as Rhaki’s dream hands clutched it, pain lanced his temples and
light stabbed his eyes. He gasped, screwing his eyes tighter shut
and twisting his head away.

Then he felt coolness
laid across his forehead and his eyes. Rhaki’s thoughts thrashed,
seeking memory, order, coherence. After what seemed an endless
time, he was able to whisper: ‘Serim.’

‘Yes Master. Lie still.
You have slept many days and are very weak. I will fetch broth for
you soon but for now here is water.’

A hand gently raised
Rhaki’s head without disturbing the cloth across his upper face,
and the rim of a mug was held to his sore mouth. He sucked greedily
at the water but long before he had satisfied his thirst, the mug
was removed.

‘Enough for now
Master,’ Serim’s voice soothed as his fingers soothed more balm on
Rhaki’s lips.

Rhaki sank into
darkness once more, but not as helplessly as before. This time, he
looked for the silver threads and strained to hear the songs. The
sounds came first, faint murmurs that he could not decipher or
recognise. Then the jagged lines of pearly light began to flicker
again. He exhausted himself quickly, vainly grabbing for the
threads, and he slid back to true unconsciousness yet
again.

More days passed as
Rhaki fought his way back to the world. It took longer because he
was distracted and seduced by the dreams and the lights. But at
last the red thread Rhaki had captured and drawn back into what was
his life-thread, strengthened itself and blasted rage through the
Grey One’s body.

Rhaki groaned, his eyes
opening after stars knew how many days. He lifted a hand to rub his
brow and stared at it in astonishment. This spidery,
near-translucent object was his hand. He flexed his fingers and
marvelled at the movement of narrow bones sliding beneath the skin.
His elbow bumped something and he turned his head.

A jug stood on the
floor beside him, and a shallow dish of soft berries. Rhaki tried
to raise himself. His spine felt as if it was made of water and
would never support him. Eventually though, he managed to half
roll, half push himself to a near sitting position against the wall
behind his head. He sat for a while, fluid he could ill afford to
lose, drenching his face. With a renewed effort, he opened his eyes
again and stretched a trembling hand for the berries. He was fairly
sure that he would not be able to lift the jug, much as he longed
for drink, but lifting a few small berries might be possible. His
head throbbed with the effort he had expended in lifting a dozen
berries to his mouth, chewing them and swallowing, when Serim
entered the room.

The Delver’s face lit
with delight as he saw his master awkwardly propped against the
stone wall. He put down the bowl and cloths he carried and knelt at
Rhaki’s side, pushing pillows behind his shoulders and lifting the
jug of water to Rhaki’s lips. The jug held only a small amount of
water, Serim had feared to leave too much lest his master drink it
all and make himself ill from it.

He studied the gaunt
face yet again. The skin was tight and flaking across the prominent
cheekbones and blood seeped from cracked lips. But as Rhaki opened
his eyes, Serim noted with relief that his master was back in his
body, and that he recognised Serim.

‘Many days?’ Rhaki
croaked.

‘Many days Master, but
over the last four you have woken enough to let me give you a few
spoonfuls of broth to strengthen you. I will bring you soft foods
until you are able to move a little easier.’

‘Talk?’ Rhaki whispered
hoarsely again.

Serim smiled gently.
‘You said words that made no sense Master. Search through my mind
when you are stronger if you will. No one but I have approached you
all this time.’

Rhaki closed his eyes,
it was just too tiring to keep them open. ‘Hargon?’ he
asked.

‘Gone to the north
Master, to spend some time with his children. No one knows of your
weakness Master. I ordered the builders as I thought you might
wish, saying you were most busy with further plans. I brought
parchments and inks in here, so they believe you to have secluded
yourself to work.’

Blood dribbled as
Rhaki’s mouth stretched in a rictus of a smile. Serim wiped the
blood away.

‘Sleep again Master.
Soon you will be restored.’ Serim eased Rhaki’s long body back to
the mattress and drew the quilts carefully over him. Then he
quietly withdrew.

Rhaki lay awake,
feeling the aches and stresses his body had suffered during the
prolonged use of power he had endured to construct this tower in
which he lay. He thought of Serim, of the respect and, yes, the
affection he had glimpsed in the Delver’s dark eyes. He had needed
to focus all his energy on his tower since Serim’s arrival here,
but soon he would question him closely. Who were the Delvers? And
why had this one felt he must come to serve him?

He must retrieve the
books from the chest in the cave as soon as he could. Perhaps in
that ancient volume he had found among Guardian Kovas’s library, he
would find clues to the white lightning threads that he had seen.
Rhaki’s body lay still but his mind was fully alert again. The
harder he thought of those strange lines and stranger voices, the
more he was convinced that these things were not in his mind.
Rather his mind had wandered into a different realm, a realm
belonging to those singing dreamers. He pondered hard over the fact
that ‘something’ had impeded his reaching them. All except the red
thread, and he knew what that was. That was the worm of rage that
had sprung into being when he found himself spied upon.

But now he wondered:
had he brought it into being as he had believed, or, had it been
existing in that other place and chosen to attach itself to Rhaki?
He knew better than most – if not all – of the fools in the
Asataria of the existence of other worlds. He had not thought
before though that perhaps a powerful mind, enhanced with the
power, could contact the minds of otherworld beings. Briefly, Rhaki
regretted Bark’s death. He had been useful in his way and Bark too
had studied the most ancient and forgotten texts in the Asatarian
library archives. Indeed, Bark had been the one to draw Rhaki’s
attention to them, and he had never known that Rhaki had stolen
many of them.

Rhaki smiled, then
frowned as he felt the dried blood on his lips crack apart again. A
few of those old texts he had destroyed, enraged that he could not
decipher them. A few he had taken to the Ice Realm, where all but
one scroll in the hidden chest remained on the shelves of his old
study. And a few others were still hidden in the Asataria itself.
If he could get hold of them again! It was from some of those
documents that he had learned of the strengthening power of both
blood and incantation. None of the People other than he knew that
that was the way to move one’s mind into another’s body, as he had
done with the Shardi.

Patience was difficult
to endure at any time, but Rhaki forced himself to accept that he
needed to recover fully before he could actively move in his search
for power over all things. Feeling wearier and older than ever
before in his already long life, Lord Rhaki slept once
more.

Never before had life
within Vagrantia’s sheltered Circles been so disrupted. Only the
youngest of the children carried on in their usual way. Everyone
else talked of the notices posted in all the places where people
gathered, of the public announcements made by High Speaker Thryssa
herself.

There had been no
reaction whatsoever for the two days following the appearance of
the first notices. Then Thryssa had emerged from the great Corvida
building and addressed the people right there in the middle of the
main market square. She spoke clearly and kindly, and as she left
the square she stopped to talk to many in the crowd.

Thryssa was known to
all in Parima of course, but usually now she only came from the
Corvida for official occasions, naming ceremonies for new-borns,
graduation celebrations of students, and the like. It had been many
cycles since she had stopped her old habit of wandering the
streets, speaking with shopkeepers and artisans.

The day after Thryssa’s
speech to the market crowd, rumours began to creep in, naming many
who remembered the forbidden things. By the fourth day, the Scribes
and Assessors were working non-stop, talking to and testing
everyone who claimed special knowledge.

Thryssa’s worktable was
now covered with hurriedly written reports of all those tested so
far. She was trying to put them into some sort of order before
working her way through each and every one when Kwanzi’s head poked
around the edge of the door.

‘Alya begs a few
minutes. Shall I ask her to come later?’

‘No.’ Thryssa closed a
folder, written by stars knew whom, but whoever – they could
certainly do with instruction in the art of writing legibly. ‘I’ll
see her now.’

A moment later Alya
came in and dropped onto a chair across from Thryssa.

‘Elyssa,’ she said
succinctly.

‘Well, don’t just sit
there looking smug. What about her?’