“I will not betray you.”
“She might be recognised.”
“So might you and she has the skill to conceal herself, and you too, should you choose to use it. I can testify that her talent for disguise is a formidable one.” Asea lifted an eyebrow, and Rik suspected that at some point he was going to have to explain that last remark. There was no help for it now. He wanted Tamara to come with them. She was a trained Shadowblood assassin. That had to be useful on a mission like this. “Her skills increase our chances of success. Given the odds against us, surely that is the most important consideration.”
Asea appeared to consider this for a long time. Eventually she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Very well, but be warned, at the first sign of treachery, Tamara, you die.”
Tamara’s smile was icy. “There’s a good chance I am going to die anyway.”
Rik wished that he could disagree with that statement. He was sorry that she had made it. He was already having second thoughts about the wisdom of accompanying Asea but he was committed now. The voices screamed in protest. He told them to be silent. If things got really bad, he could always flee later.
By then it might be too late, they chorused back.
“You’ll have to remove these chains if I am to go with you,” Tamara said. “People might find the sight of you travelling with someone bound with truesilver a tad suspicious.”
Asea considered this for a moment, then nodded to Karim. He opened the locks and they waited expectantly as Tamara stepped from her fetters. They stood frozen as if expecting violence.
Tamara smiled and said, “When do we go?”
“Now,” said Asea, and picking up her pack she set off towards the East.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Rik sat by the roadside, his back against a tree-trunk. He felt exhausted and frustrated. Tamara and Karim sparred with their fists, both fast and deadly and seemingly well matched. Both were holding something back, he could tell. Neither wanted the other to know the full extent of their abilities. Still it was an education just watching them.
Tamara had kept him practising her strange sorcery for hours as they marched eastwards through the deserted lands of Eastern Kharadrea. He never seemed to be able to get it quite right. Sometimes he felt on the verge of sensing something, a vague foreboding, the slightest of premonitions, the feather touch of some sixth sense that registered the appearance of a shadow-walker.
Tamara feinted a blow at Karim’s head with the side of her fist. He ducked it and swept her legs out from under her. Tamara flipped back onto her feet, lithe as a cat. Beyond the pair Asea watched keenly, as if she might perhaps be able to divine the future in their ritual conflict.
Rik thought about the exercises. They were dull but essential. Being bored under these circumstances was not really possible. He loved sorcery and he loved the possibility of learning some new form of it. He felt as if he stood on the edge of some great sea in and beyond which lay knowledge and power. Just being there and looking out at it was exciting in exactly the same way standing by the ocean was. Out there might be monsters but there was also adventure and possibly riches.
Tamara launched a kick at Karim’s midriff. The man stepped to one side, and launched a blow at her head. She caught his arm, and threw him, bringing herself around to land on top. He rolled to one side, avoiding the blow.
Rik asked himself where he thought he was going with all this. He was slowly painstakingly acquiring a mass of knowledge for the possession of which the Inquisition would gladly burn him and which would cause most sane men to turn their faces from him if they suspected. There were times when he wondered whether he was sane any more, or whether he had gone mad a long time ago- when he had devoured the Quan or perhaps before. Not that it mattered much. He was determined now to walk this path to the end wherever it might take him.
He was starting to think that if he could combine the knowledge Asea had given him with that which Tamara was teaching him that he might be able to create something new or find a way to walk his own path and be a power in the world. It was exciting and frightening all at once and it made him feel alive in a way that nothing else did.
Tamara laughed and rose into a fighting crouch. Karim faced her, expressionless as always. Wary and coiled to respond to any threat, the two stood motionless as statues.
“Enough,” said Asea. “Save your energies for the march.”
Asea gestured for him to get up and start walking again. She seemed tireless as one of the walking dead, an automaton with but one purpose, to get them to their destination and confront their ultimate enemy. There was a wildness in her eyes that Rik did not like, but he was committed to helping her to her goal.
He pulled himself to his feet, and began to trudge along the road.
Sardec sat on the well-painted fence and surveyed the landscape around him. The sun shone brightly. There were no clouds in the sky and no sense of threat in the air. A little over a week after the defeat at Weswood, it was if the battle had never happened. Everything seemed utterly tranquil.
The place had once been an orchard. The inhabitants had been calm, orderly sort of people. Sardec could tell that from the way things were laid out. Even though the house was abandoned it gave the impression that the occupants had left the place in a measured way, without panic. The Barbarian had already pronounced the place empty. The Foragers had made camp within the building. Rena had gone to join them. She and Marcie were searching for food down in the cellars now.
There were berries on the hedges that Weasel picked for the children, filling his cap with the blue fruit, occasionally proffering a choice morsel to Marcie's youngest child, sometimes throwing them into the air and catching them in his mouth.
If he had not known differently, Sardec would never have suspected from the view that only a few leagues away, monsters walked the earth and the dead had risen from the graves. This place seemed peaceful and, for a moment, he felt that it was an oasis where they might remain unmolested if they so chose. He pushed the illusion aside. There was no safety in this world anymore. Plague and evil sorcery had seen to that.
Marcie's eldest boy approached with his hands outstretched. For a moment Sardec wondered why the boy was begging and then he realised that the child was offering him something. There were berries in his hands. Sardec almost refused but he saw the fear and embarrassment on the boy's face and realised that it had taken courage and a generous impulse for the lad to come forward under the circumstances. He helped himself to a berry and munched it down savouring the sweet taste. The boy watched him expectantly as he ate. He was waiting for Sardec to say something.
“Good,” said Sardec. “Very good. What is your name, lad?”
“Daved, sir,” said the boy, running his hand through his thick mop of curly black hair. There was something about his expression that irresistibly reminded Sardec of Sergeant Hef. It must have been the set of the features and the cast of the eye for the boy really did not resemble his father at all. He was already taller. He must have got his size from his mother.
“Do you think my father is still alive, sir? Do you think he got away like us?”
Of course, that was why the boy had summoned up the courage to approach him. A sudden pang of guilt stabbed him. This boy’s father was dead. Sardec had failed him as he had failed so many others. The boy’s intense gaze never left him and though he did not mean to accuse Sardec there was still accusation in it.
He did not know what to say. He had seen Sergeant Hef fall with his own eyes and he did not want to lie about it but there was something so pathetically hopeful about the boy’s look that he could not bring himself to speak the truth either. “I don’t know, lad.”