He grunted. ‘Hardly. A wolf’s canines in the mouth of a weasel. Even a bear would run from such a beast.’
‘Yet they were the ones that fled, warlock.’
He licked chapped lips. ‘We’d killed five of them.’
She shrugged, glancing back to Caplo. ‘He would not have accounted for even one more. Leaving just you, surrounded, beleaguered on all sides. Armour or no, warlock, they would have taken you down.’
‘I know.’
When he said nothing more, she sighed. ‘Forgive me. I intrude upon your grief with my questions.’
‘You intrude with your presence, captain, but give no cause for the bitter taste in my mouth.’
‘It is said the Jheck of the south are a smaller breed.’
‘Not Jheck,’ Resh replied. ‘They were as I described them. Some animal long since vanished from the world.’
‘Why do you say that?’
He leaned forward and rubbed at his face, knuckling hard at his eyes. ‘Dispense with the scene itself, if you would understand its significance. Ruvera, my wife, discovered something ancient, buried. It slept in the manner of the dead. We believe that sleep to be eternal, do we not?’ And he looked up at the captain, his small eyes squinting.
‘Who can say?’ she replied. ‘Who can know? I have heard tales of ghosts, warlock, and spirits that once were flesh.’
‘This is a world of many veils,’ Resh said, ‘only one of which our eyes are meant to pierce. Our vision strikes through to what seems a sure place, solid and real and, above all, wholly predictable – once the mystery is expunged, and be sure: no mystery is beyond expunging.’
‘Those are not a warlock’s words,’ Finarra observed, studying him.
‘Aren’t they? By my arts do I not seek order, captain? The rules of what lies beyond the visible, the tactile? Find me answers to all things, and at last my mind will sit still.’
‘I would not think that journey outward,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Yes. There is symmetry. Outward, inward, the distances travelled matched and so doubled, yet, strangely, both seeking the same destination. It is a curious thing, is it not? This invitation to the impossible, and the faith that even the impossible has rules.’
She frowned.
Resh continued, ‘My wife spoke of the need for blood, for a price to be paid. I believe that she only half understood the meaning of that. To draw something back, from deep in death, into the living world, must – perhaps – demand the same among the living. If a warlock seeks to journey both outward and inward, in search of the one place where they meet, then the corollary is one of contraction, to collide in the same place, the same existence. For the dead to walk back into life, the living must walk into death.’
‘Then Ruvera’s life was the coin for this spirit’s resurrection?’
He sighed. ‘It is possible. Captain, the veils are … agitated.’ After a moment, he cocked his head, his gaze still fixed upon her. ‘Coin? I wonder. It may be … not coin, but food. Power, consumed, offering the strength to tear the veil between the living and the dead, and so defy the laws of time.’
‘Time, warlock? Not place?’
‘They may be one and the same. The dead dwell in the past. The living crowd the present. And the future waits for those yet to be born, yet in birth they are flung into the present, and so the future ever remains a promise. These too are veils. With our thoughts we seek to pry our way into the future, but those thoughts arrive as dead things – it is a matter of perspective, you see. To the future, both present and past are dead things. We push through, and would make the as yet unknown world a better version of our own. But with nothing but lifeless weapons to hand, we make lifeless victims of those yet to be born.’
She shook her head, feeling a strange, disquieting blend of denial and uncertainty. For all she could tell, Resh’s mind had broken, battered by shock and grief. She saw no clarity of purpose in his musings. ‘Return, if you will,’ she said, ‘to this notion of power.’
The man sighed, wearily. ‘Captain, there has been a flooding of potentialities. I know of no other way to describe sorcery – the magic now emerging. I spoke of three veils, the ones through time. And I spoke of the veil between life and death, which may indeed be but a variation, or a particularity, of the veils of time. But I now believe there are many, many veils, and the more we shred them, in our plucking of such powers, in our clumsy explorations, the less substantial they become, and the weaker the barriers between us and the unknown. And I fear what may come of it.’
Finarra looked away. ‘Forgive me, warlock. I am a Warden and nothing more-’
‘Yes, I see. You do not comprehend my warning here, captain. The newborn sorcery is all raw power, and no obvious rules.’
She thought of this man’s wife, Ruvera. It was said that the beasts had torn her limb from limb. There was shock in this, and for the Shake, terrible loss. ‘Have you spoken to the other warlocks and witches among your people?’
‘Now you begin to glean the crisis among us,’ Resh replied. He slowly lifted his hands and seemed to study them. ‘We dare not reach, now. No thoughts can truly pierce this new future.’
‘What of Mother Dark?’
He frowned, gaze still fixed on his hands – not an artist’s hands, but a soldier’s, scarred and blunt. ‘Darkness, light, nothing but veils? What manner the gifts given to her by Lord Draconus? What is the meaning of that etching upon the floor in the Citadel? This Terondai, that now so commands the Citadel?’
‘Perhaps,’ she ventured, ‘Lord Draconus seeks to impose rules.’
His frown deepened. ‘Darkness, devoid of light. Light, burned clean of darkness. Simple rules. Rules that distinguish and define. Yes, Warden, well done indeed.’ Resh pushed himself upright. He glanced at the unconscious form of his lifelong friend. ‘I must see this Terondai for myself. It holds a secret.’ Yet he did not move.
‘You have not long to wait,’ Finarra said quietly.
‘I have been contemplating,’ Resh said, ‘a journey of another sort. Into the ways of healing.’
She glanced at Caplo Dreem. ‘I imagine, warlock, the temptation is overwhelming, but did you not just speak of the dangers involved?’
‘I did.’
‘What will you do, then?’
‘I will do what a friend would do, captain.’
‘This is sanctioned?’
‘Nothing is sanctioned,’ he said in a growl.
Finarra studied the warlock, and then sighed. ‘I will assist in any way I can.’
Resh frowned at her. ‘The Shake refuse your petition. You are blocked again and again. You find us obdurate and evasive in turn, and yet here you remain. And now, captain, you offer to help me save the life of Caplo Dreem.’
She drew off her leather gloves. ‘Your walls are too high, warlock. The Shake understand little of what lies beyond.’
‘We see slaughter. We see bigotry and persecution. We see the birth of a pointless civil war. We see, as well, the slayers of our god.’
‘If these things are all that you see, warlock, then indeed you will never understand my offer.’
‘How can I trust it?’
She shrugged. ‘Consider my purpose as most crass, warlock. I seek your support. I seek to win your favour, that you might add your weight when I next speak to Higher Grace Skelenal.’
He slowly leaned back. ‘Of no value, that,’ he replied. ‘The matter is already decided. We will do nothing.’
‘Then I will leave as soon as I am able. But for now, tell me what I can do to help you heal your friend.’
‘No god looks down, captain, to add to your ledger of good deeds.’
‘I will measure my own deeds, warlock, good and bad.’
‘And how weighs the balance?’
‘I am a harsh judge of myself,’ she said. ‘Harsher than any god would dare match. I look to no priest to dissemble on my behalf.’
‘Is that a priest’s task?’
‘If not, then I would hear more.’
But he shook his head, rising with a soft groan. ‘My own dissemblers have grown quiet of late, captain. I look for no sanction now, in what I do. And for the Shake, no god observes, no god judges, and in that absence – forgive us all – we are relieved.’