No, no. Don’t close your eyes. You swore you wouldn’t do that.
‘I have to help him.’
You could end his pain but he won’t let you, and you are so crucified by your respect for a human that you acquiesce to that. Or is it that your hatred for him is so intense that you drink the pain of your enemy like the sweetest of honeys?
Garan fell onto his back, an exhalation of relief ending in a violent coughing fit that sprayed a fine mist of blood into the air and left him clutching at his stomach. There was a thud on the door. Takaar froze. He saw the handle move ever so slightly downwards.
‘Garan, do you need assistance?’
Garan’s response was another fusillade of coughs.
‘Garan!’
The handle moved further and the door opened a crack. Takaar readied to flee.
‘I’m fine,’ croaked Garan. ‘Never felt better. Now bugger off and let me sleep in peace.’
The door closed on a muttered insult. Takaar smiled.
‘So what happens now? Will your lungs sink through your back and into the mattress?’
Garan choked back a laugh. His voice dropped back to a whisper.
‘Listen to me, Takaar. We don’t have long before someone comes in to check I haven’t suffocated myself with my blanket.’ Garan’s eyes bored into Takaar’s face, searching for his features in the darkness. ‘Change at home will bring changes here. Unless we are fortunate indeed, there is going to be a hideous struggle for magical dominance, so bad that those stationed here will be glad they are.
‘There are more styles of magic than you have seen. Four schools dominate and the ethics controlling them mix poorly. Ystormun and his ilk represent a school of magic that deals in things best left untouched. You and your kind deal in a far purer magic which Ystormun has been under pressure to repress ever since it flared all those years ago. Now he is tasked with destroying it.
‘And you’re playing into his hands.’
Takaar felt slapped. ‘How?’
‘Because those you assume are the natural practitioners of elvish magic are not.’
‘The Ynissul are the natural masters of the elves and the only thread to demonstrate any feeling for the Il-Aryn.’
Garan closed his eyes and brought trembling hands to his face.
‘And you call yourself the father of the harmony? Your prejudice is entrenched as firmly as Sildaan’s. Did it never occur to you to wonder why Ystormun wanted to exterminate the Ixii and the Gyalans? The Ixii? Didn’t that give you the smallest clue?’
Takaar opened his mouth to reply but closed it sharply against a rising nausea.
Oh for shame. A hundred and fifty years passed and so much of it wasted on the wrong elves. How does it feel to know you have failed again, through your own blindness? I’d be running for the forest to hide again if I were you.
‘You’ve known this all the time?’
‘Of course.’
‘But-’
‘Don’t be naive, Takaar. We’re friends. Friends of the most curious kind, to be sure, but friends nonetheless. But when have you or I ever passed each other useful information, eh? Never forget that I believe in our occupation. Or I did.’
The last was almost inaudible.
‘And now?’
‘This occupation is no longer to the benefit of Triverne. It is merely a resource base that will tip the balance in the magical struggle to come. Ystormun and his dark magic must be driven out before he becomes unstoppable. The future of both Calaius and Balaia depend on it. You understand what I’m saying?’
Takaar nodded, mumbled his assent.
‘There’s something else,’ said Garan.
The bedroom door slapped open, lantern light flooded in. Takaar leapt straight upwards, his fingers snagging on the timber roof supports high above the bed. He swung his legs up and his body swivelled, planting him astride a central beam. He flattened his body along it, one eye peering down through the dust he had dislodged, which spiralled towards the ground.
Ystormun swept into the room flanked by four of his cabal of mages and two guards. Garan watched him come and, though any other man might quail, he rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically.
‘He’s been here. I can smell the mana on him. Give him to me.’
‘Naturally,’ said Garan. ‘He’s hiding under my blanket.’
One of the mages moved to pull the blanket back. Ystormun stopped him with a hiss.
‘Idiot,’ he snapped. ‘Don’t waste my time, Garan. Where is he?’
Garan, lying prone, shrugged extravagantly. ‘There are so many places to hide in this room.’
Ystormun glared at Garan. He snapped his fingers and gestured towards the door to the washroom. A mage scurried off to check.
‘You are testing my patience,’ said the mage lord.
‘It is the only pleasure remaining to me,’ said Garan.
Takaar was calm. Seven enemies in all. He could kill six before they touched him, three of those before they even knew he was there. But Ystormun was an unknown factor. There was an aura of invulnerability about him mixed up with the reek of magical power that enveloped him. And something else too: something seething and malevolent that ran through his veins and every cell of his being.
Takaar waited and watched. He needed Ystormun to move directly beneath him. Dropping on him like a constrictor from a tree was his best and only chance. But as if he could sense Takaar’s intent, Garan stared upwards for a heartbeat and gave an almost imperceptible shake of the head.
‘Last chance,’ said Ystormun.
‘Or what?’ rasped Garan. ‘You’ll torture me for the truth? Have me executed? There is nothing you can do to me that I do not crave, nothing you have not already done that I fear. Even a demon-addled skeleton like you should realise he left through the window some time ago. Now get lost, Ystormun, and let me sleep. I’m an old man in case you hadn’t noticed.’
Takaar felt the air chill and saw the mages shrivel in anticipation of Ystormun’s response. But the mage lord merely nodded. Takaar’s heart began to thrash in his chest. Ystormun was going to leave. Alive.
You don’t have the guts. You never did.
Wrong.
Takaar dropped head first from the rafters, arms outstretched. A guard stood below him. Takaar caught the man’s head in his hands, twisting his neck while his body slammed into the victim’s back. The guard crumpled. Takaar turned a forward roll and was on his feet, twin blades in his hands.
Takaar slashed the first through a mage’s midriff and the second through the neck of a guard still trying to draw his sword from its scabbard. Takaar ran forward, turned a roll over Garan’s bed, thumped to the floor the other side and cracked a roundhouse kick into the second mage’s temple.
Takaar kept his momentum into the turn, ducked a flailing fist and sliced up through the guard’s face. The final mage was casting. Takaar dropped his left-hand blade, reached into the jaqrui pouch at his waist and threw the crescent blade. The keen edge buried itself above the mage’s nose.
Takaar stretched out his right arm, the blade he held touched Ystormun’s neck.
‘Your turn.’
Takaar pushed hard. The blade would not penetrate Ystormun’s flesh. He pulled back and hacked at it. The blade bounced, not even unbalancing the mage lord, whose fleshless face modelled a parody of a smile.
‘Very impressive, Takaar of the TaiGethen, but as you can see I am made of sterner stuff.’ Ystormun pushed Takaar’s blade aside. ‘Now, what to do with you, I wonder. I’m disappointed in you, Garan. Didn’t you warn him about me?’
‘I tried to.’
Ystormun was deceptively quick of hand. He loomed over Takaar and grabbed him by the throat, pulling him close. Takaar gagged. There was a reek to the man that was unlike any other he had experienced. The odour of power clad in the darkest of nights. It was as if his soul was a channel for an extraordinary malevolence.
Takaar reached up to try and dislodge Ystormun’s fingers but instead the grip on his neck tightened, the mage lord’s nails drawing blood. Ystormun studied him as though he could see right through his flesh to the mind and soul that lay within.