Pattern

'I'm sorry,' the younger man said. 'About what I did to you in the forge. I don't know what came over me. You were flying around screaming and I guess I panicked.'

The crow laughed, a harsh, painful noise. 'Oh, that,' it said. 'Please, think nothing of it. You'd done it before and you'll do it again. You never could abide us when you were a kid, you'd sit out with your slingshot and your pile of stones and kill us by the dozen. And then you helped burn Deymeson, which was no better and no worse. You've been punished for that, of course. In fact, I'm not sure which tends to come first in your case, the punishment or the crime. If you will insist on being reborn every five minutes, it makes it bloody hard to keep track. Most people are content to live in a straight line, but you've always been a dog with a burning tail, running round in frantic circles trying to bite off your own arse. Of course, from here I can see it all so much more clearly-a bird's-eye view, if you like-and what really saddens me is the hopelessness of it all. Why bother? I ask myself; but that's hindsight for you. Did you know that we birds have all-round vision? Comes of having little round eyes on the sides of our heads, instead of oval ones in the front. You can't see what's beside you or behind you; we can. Very useful attribute, almost makes up for not having minds of our own. A bit like a religious order, with its centuries of tradition, its prophetic insights into the future, its access to additional dimensions of perception. And that, in case you're wondering, is why we wear the crow-black dressing gowns. I say "we", because of course you're one of us; just as much right to this livery as I have, if not better. Am I still making something vaguely approaching sense, or did I leave you behind some time ago?'

He shook his head. 'I think I can see what you're getting at,' he said. 'I just don't get the relevance, that's all.'

'Oh. Damn.' The crow's wings dissolved into black ash, which drifted up in a spiral as the hot air rose. 'And yet you were always top of the class in textual interpretation. Used to do my homework for me, or I'd never have got past fourth grade. All right, here it is in baby language. You killed me in the forge, and the mountain stopped puking up fire. You killed me in the fields, and you found true love-twice, actually, but that was a dirty trick, not my idea. You killed me here, and you shot to the top of the tree. You killed me at Deymeson, and that's how you came to be the heir apparent of Haldersness. Next time you kill me-or maybe the time after that, I'm a bit hazy about details-you'll usurp the imperial throne, get the girl, find out what you really wanted to know all along. Do you see a pattern emerging here, or what?'

'I see,' he said. 'You're my enemy.'

The fire turned to glowing cinders around the crow's skull. 'Absolutely not,' it said. 'I'm the best friend you ever had, even though you're going to burn me alive in your own house-and if you think this mess we're in now is rough, you just wait till then, it'll hurt you a whole lot more than it hurts me. But that's a given, because-'

The scorched and charred remains of the crow vanished and became Poldarn, holding the rake that was crushing him down into the forge fire. He screamed, flapped his wings desperately, but the weight of the rake pinned him down like a fallen rafter as the fire ran up his feathers into his flesh and bone. 'That's who you really are, you see,' the voice went on, 'just who you've always been. It's a cliche, your own worst enemy, but in your case it's absolutely appropriate. When you're pinned down in Poldarn's forge and everything around you is burning-but you won't remember a word of this when you wake up, which is a real shame. Life can be so cruel.'

He sat up. He was in a cart, and Copis was beside him on the box, her face hidden by the cowl of her riding cloak. He lifted it away and saw her face, but the voice remained the same. It sounded like his own, but he was hardly qualified to be sure about that.

'It's what I was born for,' Copis said, 'to drive you around, round and round in circles, from this mountain to the next and back again, year after bloody year.' She sighed melodramatically. 'Always a priestess, never a god, just my rotten luck. I get the blame, you get all the burnt offerings. I really wish you could remember at least some of this when you wake up, it'd save me a great deal of physical pain, not to mention the emotional shit. But there we go. I think we're here,' she added, as the mountain, belching fire, appeared in the background. 'You're on. Break a leg.'

He opened his eyes.

'So there you are.' The older man's face: Feron Amathy, staring at him as if he'd seen a rather unsatisfactory ghost, not the one he'd been waiting for. 'You kept on dying and we were all set to bury you, and then you'd start breathing again, you bugger. God, you've cost me a lot of money.'

He tried to sit up, but that proved to be a very bad idea. Everything hurt, very badly.

'The good news is,' Feron Amathy went on (and behind his head was the peak of a tent, with other faces peering over his shoulder), 'apart from a broken leg and some scratches and singes, you're all right, you'll live.' He frowned. 'Did I say that was the good news? Matter of viewpoint, I guess. The bad news is, you fucked up and cost the lives of three good men, as well as buggering up my plans and ruining six months' work. If I didn't love you like my own son, I'd rip your stomach open and peg you out for the crows.'

He remembered what had happened. 'Sergeant Bofor-'

Feron Amathy shook his head. 'Make that three good men and one buffoon, though I'm not holding Fat Bofor against you. I'm assuming that it was his own stupidity that got him killed. Is that right?'

He tried to nod, but it hurt too much. 'He pulled a bookcase down on his head,' he croaked, 'I think it must have knocked him out.'

'Figures. But the other three are your fault, for rushing into a burning building to save a dead idiot. Different for them, of course; they rushed into a burning building too, but there was a slight chance their idiot was still alive. Since they were proved to be correct, I'm calling them heroes rather than irresponsible arseholes. Benefit of the doubt, and all that.'

He closed his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I was only trying to do the right thing.'

'I know,' Feron Amathy said tenderly. 'That's what makes you such a fucking menace. In case you're remotely interested, the men you killed-not too strong a word, in my opinion-were Has Gilla, Cuon Borilec and Fern Ilzen. Tully Galac got out alive-dragged you out with him-but he's burnt to hell and he's lost one eye, it's touch and go whether he'll make it or not. If this is what you achieve when you're trying to be good, Poldarn help us all if you ever decide to be bad.'

He could feel tears forming in his eyes. 'The library,' he said.

'Oh, that. You failed. I have no idea how you managed it, but only about half the books actually got burned; a wall fell in and cut the rest off from the fire-it's a bloody miracle, if you ask me. Anyway, who gives a shit about a load of old books? The point is, with you hovering on death's door like a hummingbird, we had to call off the attack on Josequin and hole up here; and now the bloody rain's set in, we haven't got a hope in hell of getting back down the mountain with the roads all turned to mud, so it looks like we're stuck here for a month at the very least. If the food holds out it'll be another bloody miracle. Can you do miracles? Apart from coming back from the dead, I mean. If so, now would be a really good time.'

A sharp pain shot up his leg and paralysed him for a very long moment. 'I don't think I can,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

'Oh, great,' Feron Amathy sighed. 'A fat lot of use you turned out to be, then.'