The vision shifted. They were in the same place but on a different day and it was light outside now and Kuy was making something new. And then that faded too; another came and then another, faster and faster, until one clear memory began to emerge, hauling itself out of some far closet of the stone, shrugging off cobwebs and dusting itself down. Are you wearing it? Are you wearing the stone? Do you have him, tucked safe and warm around your soft throat, girl? Watch this one carefully careful. The need will be great. It will bring you a friend and it will bring you suspicion and it will bring you hate. More important than any of the others, yet you will use them all when their time comes. I have spoken to you of the first principle of knowledge: that we are beings of two parts. Every man, from the lowest worm to the highest king, has two souls. More important than the light of the sun, to know this, but to know is but a scratch. To understand, yes, to understand, now that is the heart beneath. What priests would exalt, I shall call the Useless Part, the one that departs for far-off ideals, for the Sun or the Moon or the Stars. Or Xibaiya or elsewhere. Delights to taste some other day. What remains we shall call the Useful Part. Mindless thoughtless fodder for the living, but useful, yes, for they are the energy we draw on to work the tiny miracles that fill our lives, consumed and eaten. But what if one were to hold its form and keep its empty aimless hunger? What shall we call such a creature? Dangerous, I name it, and most potent ally too. Ephemeral pet-things, but while they remain they hunger for a life they cannot have, and they will fight to own a new coat of flesh. Men, sometimes, lifeless although they still live. Walking the streets with empty faces as though their spirits have long departed but who have yet to understand that they are dead. Or who lie still and cannot be roused yet do not pass away. In the murky places of this wretched land you will find such as these. Or strong men filled with woes they cannot explain. The housewife sapped of energy by a mystery. Crippled souls who seem as though they must fight a constant battle merely to live, and so, indeed, they do. Now you will know the cure for both. Watch carefully, for I will show you a draught to cast aside these usurpers. They will be your friends, your allies, your servants and your soldiers. One day they will crush worlds for you, little girl.
Suddenly he turned and seemed to stare straight at Berren. Listening are you, little ungrateful Berren-piece? Watching us now? Because it is not done between us, yet here I sense your fate is close to mine once more. You will have a want for this one too, I feel it. I see pain in our futures. Savour it! Relish it! Let it soak you through your skin and run ebullient through your veins, for if you hear these words, you have regained that which I took and I have given you a gift by it.
He saw it all, with absolute clarity. Everything Kuy had done, every ingredient, every motion and every method. And he understood that these things Kuy described, they were the terrors he’d seen back among the slavers, the same nightmares that Kuy had called to him as he’d battled Tasahre. Most of all, he understood what lay inside Gelisya’s teaching stone. It was him. It was the piece of his soul that Kuy had taken in the House of Cats and Gulls. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
Talon frowned. ‘You do what?’
‘I do want it back.’
Gelisya sniffed. ‘Well then you have to do it.’
‘Do what?’ Talon was close to breaking.
Berren looked him in the eye. ‘She’s right. I do know how to save Tarn.’
12
Three days later, the Fighting Hawks weighed anchor off the city of Tethis. Berren, Talon and half a dozen other mercenaries climbed down into a longboat. Tarn was lowered. Talon placed his little princess cousin carefully on his lap and the soldiers began to row. Before they were halfway to the shore, the ship was on its way back out to sea.
‘How long will this take?’ asked Talon.
In the days they’d been at sea, Tarn had wasted away. He was still alive, but for how much longer? Talon asked the same question at least once every day and Berren always gave the same answer, the only one he could: ‘I don’t know.’ He wished that he hadn’t said anything about it now; most of the time, he even wished that Gelisya had never given him the stone. He could feel how it changed him, how it made him whole and filled the tiny missing piece that had had been cut away in Deephaven. Yet at the same time what good ever came of a warlock’s gift? What would Kuy take from him now? And how had the warlock known he would be there, in that place at that particular time? Had he known it even back in Deephaven? The thought made him shiver. If Saffran Kuy could see so much of the future then what did that mean? How did you fight a man who knew how everything would end before it even started? Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress! Kuy even knew how he was going to die. I saw my apprentice kill me. That had been the golden-hafted knife, the one that cut souls. That was what showed him these things. The only thing a man could do, Berren thought, was to keep well away, and he’d have been more than happy with that. But he had to find Master Sy first. Had to, for Tasahre and her memory. And now he had to save Tarn.
‘I don’t know,’ he said again. ‘All I know is that Saffran Kuy is making all of this happen. We’re being moved about like pieces in a game of Hak-Kanad.’
Talon shook his head and frowned. He didn’t want to hear. And who would? What did you do with knowledge like that except weep?
Word had spread among the other mercenaries that Berren and the warlock at the camp had known each other once. The soldiers looked at him differently now, with suspicion and mistrust. More memories had begun to surface from the stone too. Memories of other potions, of Kuy brewing them, explaining carefully and clearly exactly what he was doing as if to a dullard apprentice. Sometimes the room around Kuy was empty, sometimes Gelisya was there, sometimes another boy — the boy from the slaver camp. Always Kuy spoke to his little Berren-piece. Mostly what he made were cures for this, that or the other; but there were other potions, and even knowing the ones that seemed harmless left Berren with a sense of dread. There would be a price for this, he was sure, a price heavier than he cared to imagine.
But he was going to save Tarn.
He shuddered. For that potion he didn’t even know what half the ingredients did; all he could remember were the names. In Deephaven he might have known how to find some of them, but here he had no idea where to even begin; then, if he did manage to lay his hands on everything, how would he know if he’d made the potion properly? He wouldn’t. For all he knew, he’d end up feeding Tarn poison. How long would it take to work? What else might it do? What other marks might it leave? He didn’t know anything except that it would cast the hungry spirit out, and that Saffran Kuy was leading him by the hand, step by cursed step. He was sinking inexorably into deep black water. Talon was right. He should have gone back home.