Saben was sceptical, but he didn’t push her further. Her mind was obviously made up and in the end, one direction was as good as any other.
BOOK I
The Larion Spell Table
WRAITHS
Jacrys awakened, and listened carefully. There were others in the chamber: Pace, and someone with a familiar accent, a lilt in his voice that was not unpleasant. It was the one leading the Orindale hunt for Sallax Farro. What’s his name?
He could hear them talking.
‘About twenty-five days now, almost a Moon,’ said one.
‘Querlis?’ came the reply.
‘Every day, but progress is slow. The only healer in the barracks that night was a lieutenant from Averil, a farmer’s son who knew something about horses and pigs. He helped us stabilise him until the general’s healer could get back on the Medera.’
‘En route to Rona by then, I’m sure.’
‘Yes sir, he was.’
‘How bad?’
‘Lung punctured and collapsed. Thankfully, the general’s healer had enough magic to clot the blood and inflate the lung. Otherwise we would have lost him.’
‘And Oaklen left his healer here?’
‘Not the only one in the division, sir, but yes. He ordered me to remain behind as well… wants Jacrys healed, said something about the prince.’
‘Word of him?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Dead.’
‘Perhaps.’
The voices drifted too far away for him to hear any more so he turned to his own body. He tuned his senses to the hollow cavity inside his ribs. The pain was gone; it had been astonishing. He tried to fill his lungs, but failed. Time passed, and he tried again. Still no good. He was breathing, but not well. Twenty-five days, almost a Moon. That seemed significant, but he couldn’t home in on why, exactly; answers eluded him, sneaking away behind shadowy folds of confusion. After a while he didn’t care.
More time passed, and the voices, Pace and the other, the lilting one, returned.
‘Is he coherent?’
‘When he wakes, he tries to talk. He seems concerned that the girl got away.’
‘Carderic, right?’
‘Yes, sir. Brexan Carderic, a deserter. She had been posted along the Forbidden Forest outside Estrad. She disappeared the morning Jacrys ordered the siege on Riverend Palace.’
‘Must have known they were hiding something there.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And she was with this partisan, what’s his name again?’
‘Sallax Farro, sir, Sallax of Estrad, one of their leaders.’
‘But he was killed?’
Yes, sir. The girl escaped. She stripped half naked and pretended to be a whore. She walked right out of the barracks.’
Did you now? Good show, Brexan, good show, indeed. You’ve become an adequate spy after all. Jacrys surveyed the room through one slitted eye. The chamber was blurry and indistinct. He could see the two men, little more than smears of black and gold: Colonel Pace and Captain Someone, the one from the searches. Good news about Sallax, though. That rutting horsecock needed to die. Jacrys let the knowledge seep through the paralysis and fatigue holding him hostage. It felt good to know the traitorous partisan was gone. As for you, Brexan Carderic, if I see you again, my succulent little morsel, I’ll gut you and mount your insides on the wall of my dining room.
His eye fell shut; the hushed conversation, somewhere on the other side of the room, faded once again. Dreaming, Jacrys felt the bedding wrap him in a gentle embrace, a comforting, woman’s touch, perhaps even Brexan’s. She was a beautiful girl. And if I don’t see you again, my dear, well, then goodbye.
‘Oh, and Thadrake?’
‘Yes, sir?’
Somewhere out beyond the coverlet’s billowy embrace, Jacrys heard them pushing their way into his dreams. That’s his name, Captain Thadrake.
‘What news do you have on the murders?’
‘We believe it was Sallax all along, sir… killed a Seron with a knife, did it one-handed… same description as the assailant who had been haunting the waterfront…’ Thadrake’s voice tumbled back over itself in layers of sound, until, unable to decipher any more, Jacrys let go. Twenty-five days, that’s a long time. I’ve been here a long time. Jacrys heard footsteps; that would be Colonel Pace leaving the chamber. Thadrake remained behind, but the Malakasian spy didn’t care. It’s time, he thought before spiralling back into oblivion. It’s time to go home.
‘I still don’t understand.’ Kellin Mora stood near the water’s edge. Her cloak covered underclothes, tunic and overtunic, making her look like a wrinkled beige bag topped off with a thin-faced blonde-haired head.
Steven Taylor, wiry, pale and tired-looking, waded calf-deep in the river, his boots and socks in a heap beside the fallen pine he’d been sitting on.
Kellin was still wary of the power she had witnessed Steven wielding against the Malakasian girl, Bellan – or Nerak, or Prince Malagon, or whoever that had been – and she felt a pang of distrust for the foreigner. She wished she was back in Traver’s Notch, with Gita Kamrec and the rest of the Falkan Resistance. Covert strikes, guerrilla attacks, hoarding silver and weapons: she understood these things. Battling wraiths, bone-collecting river monsters and possessed Larion sorcerers was unfamiliar and frightening, and she remained hesitant to trust this man completely, despite Brand Krug’s apparent complacency with their current assignment. Only her loyalty to Gita and Falkan kept her from sneaking back home.
‘Which part don’t you understand?’ Garec Haile, the good-looking bowman from Estrad, joined her near the river. He liked Kellin and welcomed her company.
‘Most of it, I suppose,’ Kellin said. ‘If that little girl was Prince Malagon-’
‘It wasn’t,’ Garec interrupted. ‘It was Bellan, Malagon’s daughter. Prince Malagon’s body was dropped in-’
‘South Carolina,’ Steven interjected without looking back. He gazed across the river, choosing landmarks on the opposite shoreline and lining them up with a rocky cliff above and behind them. The cliff face was dotted with pine trees clinging to the craggy granite. ‘Probably in Charleston Harbour, near Folly Beach. I know that doesn’t mean much to you, Kellin, but rest assured, it’s a long night’s travel from here.’
‘Wherever here is,’ Garec mumbled.
‘Have a little faith.’ Steven turned and smiled at them. ‘This is it. Don’t you remember that hill? It looks like my grandfather’s nose. That’s a hard mountain to forget.’
‘That’s quite a grandfather you have,’ Kellin said.
‘Yeah, well, he wasn’t much of an underwear model, but he could drink his own weight in Milwaukee beer and he could read cigarette ashes in my grandmother’s ashtray. That has to count for something.’ Steven turned back to the river.
‘I thought it was tea leaves,’ Gilmour said.
‘It should be, but old Grandpop never liked tea, and my grandmother smoked enough to kill the neighbour’s dog. So it gave us all something to do between dinner and dessert.’
Kellin raised an eyebrow at Garec, who shrugged. She returned to the previous conversation. ‘So, Prince Malagon’s body lies abandoned in your world?’
‘Right,’ Garec answered for his friend. ‘Nerak, the Larion Senator who had been controlling Prince Malagon, had not been to Steven’s world in a thousand Twinmoons. So when he arrived, he dropped Malagon’s body and probably took the first person he found.’
‘Why?’
‘A head full of updated knowledge,’ Garec said.
‘He can read your thoughts?’
‘Only from the inside, Kellin.’
‘So Malagon was inside his own daughter?’
‘Nope,’ Steven said, ‘that was Nerak.’
‘Oh, yes, right. Sorry,’ she said, ‘I get them confused.’
‘It’s easy to do.’
‘So, Nerak returned here to Eldarn and took Bellan’s body?’
‘Right again.’ Steven wandered through the water, which crept above his bare knees to dampen his rolled-up leggings. ‘Ah, crap. Now I have to dry these again.’