A smell of smoke and incense and fish and some giant was looming over him with hands that were neither kind nor gentle. He felt them touch his face. .
Dragons for one of you. Queens for both! An empress!
Daylight. He staggered along in line. They were going somewhere. He saw Tethis. He remembered the place where he and Hain had buried their swords.
Gasping, watching a reflection of himself. The golden knife clasped in both hands. It rose and fell but there was no pain, no blood. In its swirling patterns he could see his other self, clutching and clawing, his face contorted with agony. .
He remembered shouts. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but afterwards there was a warm place to lie down, and far off he heard men cry, The king is dead! Long live the king!
You have to keep it closed. Otherwise something will come through. He’s making us ready. To let it in when the Ice Witch makes the Black Moon fall.
Someone whispering in his ear in the dead of night. A terrible smell of dead fish. A true master makes a few tiny cracks in the stone just so, and then leaves time and wind and rain to finish his work. And he saw them again, the faces of the dead — of Tasahre and of all the men he’d killed — and in his fever he was gazing through a tiny window out over the sea from the stern of a ship, watching Tethis as it receded into the distance, savouring a dull pang of regret. Not for anything he’d done, but simply to be leaving, and for what he knew would await him. He held a handful of sand and slowly let it trickle through his fingers to the floor.
See, whispered the voice of the warlock. This is what happens to us all in the end.
26
Berren woke with a start. The last thing he remembered, the last thing that didn’t feel like a dream, was sitting on sodden earth, staring into the flames of a campfire with half an army around him. Now he was alone in a big room, maybe a barn, but the roof was too low, lying on a hard pile of old straw. It was uncomfortable and scratched his skin. The room stank of sweat. When he tried to stand, his legs had no strength. He threw off his blankets and looked to see if he had some injury he didn’t remember, but no. No blood, no bandages.
For a few seconds he couldn’t think where he was. He’d killed a king, or what passed for one anyway. He’d run away and hidden shivering in the rain, getting colder and colder until he could barely feel his skin. Then he’d found the Hawks and their camp, the delicious warmth of their fires, and that was where his memories began to fray.
What came after that were fragments. Marching and marching and feeling tired enough to die. ‘You’ve gone grey,’ someone had said to him. There might have been another battle, but if there was then he didn’t remember any of it. If there was, he was surprised he was still alive, because his arm barely had the strength to lift a sword, never mind wield it. But they must have won because the next things he remembered were more songs and drinking and more delicious fire. At some point he’d crawled away from the rest of them, stolen as many blankets as he could find and found a place to sleep, struggling to be warm.
Everything ached. When he walked to the door and opened it, he cringed at the brightness of the sunlight. He was standing in the yard outside Tethis castle, tents everywhere, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the Fighting Hawks. He sneezed. The winter sun shone through the clouds, warming his skin a little; still, he shivered.
‘Berren!’ Someone was waving at him. ‘Light of the Sun! You were sleeping for the dead!’ Berren squinted. Talon. The Prince of War came over and clapped him on the back. ‘You missed all the fun!’
‘What happened?’ Berren sat down on a log. The ground was cold and soft under his feet from all the rain.
‘You had the shivers.’ Talon smiled and shook his head. ‘Most of the lancers are down with it too. You Deephaveners can’t take a bit of cold and rain, eh? So was it really you who killed Meridian?’
Berren nodded.
‘You ranted something about it but you were all over the place. Stuff about Syannis and Saffran Kuy and a knife. Didn’t make much sense. But we did find Meridian with a bolt through his head.’
‘Kuy?’ Berren shivered. Yes. In Forgenver he’d been set on hunting the warlock. He remembered that. Now. . Now all he wanted to do was to sleep. ‘I don’t know what I said.’ He could barely keep his eyes open. ‘But he was here, wasn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid so. But he’s gone now.’ Talon wore a big happy-cat smile. ‘Aimes took one look at him and threw a fit. I didn’t know he had it in him, but if Syannis hadn’t been there to hold him back, I think Aimes would have ripped him apart with his bare hands.’ He shook his head and laughed again. ‘Aimes wanted his head and I’d have been more than happy to hand it to him too, but Syannis calmed him down until Aimes banished him instead. Syannis blames me, of course. He says Kuy won us the war and we should all be grateful. But he’s gone, either way. No need to go hunting him after all.’
‘Master Sy. . Syannis? He’s alive?’
Talon’s smile stayed where it was. ‘Yes. Meridian kept him in the Pit. They weren’t exactly kind but they didn’t kill him. He’s thinner than he was but he’s not missing any limbs or fingers. After Meridian died in the battle and with us coming on to the castle, no one dared touch him, and in the end they let him out. If Meridian hadn’t been killed then things might have gone differently. Syannis owes you for that.’
‘Yeh.’ He thought of Fasha, of what the thief-taker had promised. ‘Yes, he does. But then I owe him too.’
‘It’s all over now. Radek and Meridian are dead. Tethis is ours. Aimes will be king in name, but now our father’s sons will guide him, not some fat shopkeeper from Kalda.’ His smile faded. ‘Do you still want to go after him? Kuy, I mean. You don’t have to. As long as he’s far away, that’s good enough for me.’
Berren shook his head, quietly happy. ‘If he’s gone, he’s gone.’ If he was gone then Gelisya was free of him and his promise to Fasha was met.
‘I saw him onto the ship myself and then watched until it sailed to make sure he didn’t get off again. Can’t promise he won’t come back one day of course. But if he does then I’ll be waiting for him.’ Talon sat for a while longer and talked about the battle. Meridian’s army had broken before the storm of fire-globes. Hundreds of soldiers and king’s guard had been killed or scattered, but half the army had eventually managed a retreat back to Tethis. The next day, as Talon prepared to assault the castle, they’d found Meridian’s body. The mercenaries had quietly looted the castle and left. Outnumbered ten to one and with no one to tell them what to do, the last of the king’s guard had melted away too. Talon and the Hawks had walked into the castle to find the doors hanging open for them, Syannis with the keys in his hands. ‘The Black Sword cohorts and what’s left of the Panthers are camped a little way outside the city,’ Talon said. ‘They don’t have much interest in fighting. Syannis told me you were going to poison Meridian. Is that true?’