“I’ve heard rumours from the south,” he said, smiling and pouring the wine liberally.
“They must have flown here,” said Tali.
“They say that Cython has fallen to rebellion and its masters have abandoned it.”
“They speak truly.”
“A famous, unprecedented victory.” The chancellor went to rub his hands together, remembered he only had one, and dropped his hand, frowning.
“It changes the landscape,” said Tali.
“Rumour also says that a great army is marching north from Cython to join us. An army of small, pale folk.”
“An army, though not a great one,” said Tali.
The chancellor’s smile faded. “I heard figures of fifteen, even twenty thousand.”
“The figures are right — but only a quarter are fighters. The rest are mothers and children.”
“Five thousand? You’ve only brought me five thousand men?”
“I haven’t brought you anyone. Radl is leading them, not me.”
“Only five thousand?” he repeated. “What’s the matter with them?”
“The Pale fought bravely for their own realm,” said Tali, “and thousands of them died for it.”
“What do you mean, their own realm? Hightspall is their realm and it’s their duty — ”
“Give over, you bloody old fool,” snapped Holm. “Hightspall abandoned them a thousand years ago. Hightspall refused to ransom them, then blackened the Pale’s name to cover up its own betrayal. Do you think the Pale don’t know this? It’s burned into their very bones.”
“Are you saying most of them stayed?” the chancellor said savagely. “In the foul, stinking dungeon where they’ve been enslaved?”
“Cython is beautiful,” said Tali. “It’s spacious, airy, productive, clean — and warm. Above all, it’s safe. At least, it’s a lot safer than Hightspall can ever be.”
The chancellor sank his head in his hands. “Five thousand. Five — miserable — thousand!”
“Until a day ago, you weren’t expecting any aid from that quarter.”
“Got my damn hopes up when I heard the news.”
“It gives you fourteen or fifteen thousand, a mighty force. More than Grandys has.”
“It doesn’t give me anything like it,” said the chancellor. “My army lost two thousand on the way here, in a disastrous battle in the mountains. Another three thousand have deserted to Grandys since they crossed. I’ve only got five thousand men left.” He paused. “Five thousand and one, if one counts Rixium Ricinus, and I suppose I must.”
“Rix is here?” cried Tali and Tobry at the same time.
“Where have you been? His escape has been the talk of Hightspall for days.”
“Grandys is planning to hunt you down like a dog, Tali,” Rix said later that night. “He wants you desperately. He’ll never give in.”
Rix, Tali, Tobry, Holm, Rannilt and Glynnie had camped at the back of the ruins, in a small space where four broken walls rose above them to various heights. It was very cold, but Holm and Tobry had cut down a dead tree and made a roaring fire, and Rix and Glynnie had threaded chunks of meat and small whole onions onto skewers. With the heat reflected back from the pale walls it was pleasant enough, though the ground was quaking and shuddering again.
“I know,” said Tali, who was under a blanket with Rannilt snuggled up against her. Grandys was a problem she had no idea how to deal with.
Glynnie and Rix had made a rude couch from half a dozen slabs of fallen stone, which they had cushioned with dry bracken and covered in blankets and coats. They were sitting so close together that they touched from her shoulder to her ankle. Tali smiled to see it.
Holm had formed a chair by lashing tent canvas across an arrangement of bound branches. He had made it while talking, not even looking at what he was doing, and she marvelled at his ability to create what he wanted from whatever was to hand.
Tobry was the only one on his feet. Holm had offered to make him a chair but Tobry had refused, curtly. He kept pacing around the walls, feeling his beard and the hair on his arms as if afraid it might, any moment, change to fur.
After his berserker horror in Cython, Tali also feared it. Tobry’s prodigious water-breathing magery, and then the treble dose of potion, had left him with no reserves. He had lost so much weight that he looked gaunt. She also knew, though he had tried to conceal it from her, that his attacks were getting worse and the after effects of the ever-higher doses of potion more terrible.
It was eating him away on the inside. How much longer could he keep the madness at bay?
Rix rose and came across to Tali. He looked almost serene, and that bothered her.
“I wanted to say how sorry I am, while I still can,” said Rix.
“What are you talking about?”
“I repudiated my oath to Grandys. And even though he forced the oath from me with magery, he won’t let go.”
“What a load of rubbish!”
“An oath is an oath, Grandys says. Once given, it holds, no matter the circumstances. And forever, no matter the circumstances. To Grandys I’m the worst traitor of all, an oath-breaker and deserter who’s helped to publicly humiliate him. When he finds me, he’s going to kill me. I know it in my bones, and I’ve got to make amends before I die.”
“There’s nothing to make amends for,” said Tali. “I treated you badly too. We’re even.”
“Told you,” said Glynnie to Rix. She patted the bench beside her. He sat down gingerly and she pulled the blankets around them both.
Rannilt wriggled but did not wake. Holm leaned back in his chair, staring up at the stars. Glynnie laid her head on Rix’s broad chest. Tali’s eyes followed Tobry as he stalked around the walls, never stopping. Why wouldn’t he let anyone in?
There has to be a way, she said to herself.
Later that night, when everyone else had gone to their blankets, she cornered Holm by the fire.
“What would happen if I used my magery on Tobry anyway?”
He spun around in his chair, appalled. “Try to heal him when you’ve already chosen the path of destructive magery?” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said, already backing away from the idea.
“Your path is set, Tali. Set to destruction. You may still be able to heal small injuries in the old way, by laying on your hands, but healing with magery is forever closed to you.”
“What if I tried anyway?” she persisted.
“You wouldn’t heal — you would destroy.”
“Destroy what?”
“Maybe Tobry. Maybe yourself. Maybe both of you. But if you were able to fight those destructive forces, or Tobry did, they would burst out somewhere else. Kill an innocent child, perhaps.”
“I didn’t think of that,” she said, remembering the trusting way Rannilt had snuggled up to her.
“I assumed you understood the consequences of your choice. We’ve talked about it often enough.”
“I did, but…”
“But you feel the rule shouldn’t apply to you? That if you search hard enough for a loophole, you’ll be able to get out of your choice?”
“I suppose so.”
“That’s exactly what I was like, Tali.”
“When you…?”
“Yes,” said Holm. “When my reckless arrogance killed my wife and unborn son.”
CHAPTER 108
“Tali! Holm!” yelled Rix, galloping up. “Come on. It’s Tobry.”
“What’s happened?”
“Shifter madness. Worse than I’ve ever seen it.”
He wheeled his horse and galloped to the rear. Tali followed as fast as she dared. Though she had done a lot of riding lately, she was never sure that her seat was secure at full gallop.
She could hear the howling from two hundred yards away. Tobry had partly shifted, he was more caitsthe than man, and it was taking six soldiers to hold him. He was making incoherent howling noises, punctuated by shrieks and savage growls. Slimy foam hung in festoons from his gaping mouth, where the teeth of a caitsthe gruesomely distended his man-shaped lower jaw. He snarled, slashed with claw-tipped fingers, lunged and tried to tear the throat out of one of the men holding him, with his teeth.