Bafflement, more contempt. He thinks me mad, but also . . . suspicion, an unwelcome memory.
“A man who is not a man,” Vaelin went on, voice soft. “Something that wears other men like masks. I can smell him on you.”
A surge of fear mixed with recognition.
“You know him. You’ve seen him. What is he now? An archer like you?”
Fear only.
“A soldier?”
Fear only.
“A priest?”
Terror, swelling like oil poured on flame . . . A priest then . . . No, no note of recognition. Not a priest. But he knows a priest, he answers to a priest.
“Your priest sent you here. You must have known he was sending you to your death. You and your brothers.”
Anger, coloured by acceptance. They knew.
Vaelin sighed, getting to his feet. “I’m not overly familiar with the Ten Books, as you might imagine. But I do have a friend who could recite them at length. Let’s see if I have it right.” He closed his eyes, trying to remember one of Reva’s many quotations. “‘Of the Dark there can be no toleration amongst the loved. A man cannot know the Father and know the Dark. In knowing the Dark he forsakes his soul.’”
He stared down at the bound man, sensing what he had hoped to sense. Shame.
“You looked into his eyes and saw a stranger,” he said. “What was he before?”
The man looked away, eyes dulling, his emotions quieter now. Shame and acceptance. He grunted, head bobbing as he forced sound through his crippled mouth, spittle flying as he repeated the same garbled word, unknowable at first but gaining meaning with repetition. “Lord.”
“Put him on a barge to the settlements on the northern coast,” Vaelin told Adal outside. “He’s to be taken far into the forest and released with his bow and a quiver of arrows.”
“What for?” Adal said in bafflement.
Vaelin moved off towards his tent. “He’s a hunter. Perhaps he’ll find a bear.”
Nortah was waiting with Snowdance and Alornis when he got to the tent, the great cat’s purr a contented rumble as she ran a hand over the thick fur on her belly. “She’s so beautiful.”
“Yes,” Nortah agreed. “Pity there are no boy cats for her to make beautiful babies with.”
“There must be, somewhere,” Alornis said. “Her kind would have been bred from a wild ancestor.”
“In which case they’ll be far beyond the ice,” Vaelin said, accepting the cup of water Nortah passed him.
“Did he tell you anything?” his brother asked.
“More than he wanted to, less than I would have liked.” He glanced at the pack Nortah had brought, noting the sword propped against it.
“Lady Dahrena’s gift,” Nortah explained. “One I asked for. A man should have a weapon if he’s to ride to war.”
“War is no longer your province, brother. I sent no recruiters to Nehrin’s Point for a reason. You belong with your family.”
“My wife believes my family will only be safe if we lend our aid to your cause.”
“We?”
“Come.” Nortah clapped him on the shoulder. “There are some people you should meet.”
He led Vaelin to where four people waited on the outskirts of the camp, one of whom Vaelin already knew. Weaver stood staring at the ground, his usually bland but affable expression replaced by one of deep discontent, his hands constantly twitching at his sides. “Why did you bring him?” Vaelin asked Nortah. “He’s not made for this.”
“I didn’t bring him. He just came, deaf to all entreaties to go home. He’d like some flax, or twine. Anything he can weave really.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“This is Cara,” Nortah introduced the slight girl at Weaver’s side. She was perhaps sixteen with wide dark eyes, stirring a memory of a little girl peering out from behind her father’s cloak at the fallen city.
“My lord,” the girl said in a small voice, eyes continually darting about the camp. Despite her timidity, the blood-song’s greeting was strong. Whatever her gift, Vaelin decided, it has power.
“And Lorkan.” Nortah’s voice held a note of reluctance as he gestured at the young man standing nearby. He was a few years older than the girl and also slim of stature, but had none of her reticence.
“A considerable honour, my lord!” He greeted Vaelin with a deep bow and a bright smile. “Never would I have thought such a lowly soul as I could count himself a comrade to the great Vaelin Al Sorna. Why, my dearest mother would weep with pride . . .”
“All right,” Nortah said, cutting him off. “Talks too much but he has his uses.”
He moved on to the final member of the group, and the most imposing, a large, bearlike man with an extensive beard and a mass of grey-black hair.
“Marken, my lord,” the big man introduced himself in a Nilsaelin accent.
“He may be able to help,” Nortah said. “With your want of intelligence.”
The bodies had been placed in a tent on the edge of camp, the few valuables they possessed handed out as payment to the soldiers who would do the grim work of burying them in accordance with Cumbraelin custom. Marken moved to the closest one, a stocky man, as archers often were, his final grimace of terror frozen and incomplete, half his face having been torn away by the war-cat’s claws. Marken seemed untroubled by the gory sight, kneeling and touching his palm to the corpse’s forehead, eyes closed for a second, then shaking his head. “All a jumble. This one was half-mad long before Snowdance got to him.”
He moved on, touching a hand to each corpse in turn, pausing at the fourth, judging by the lines on his face the eldest of the group. “Better,” he said. “All a bit red and cloudy, but sane, after a fashion.” He looked up at Vaelin. “Does my lord have a particular point of interest? It’ll make things easier.”
“A priest,” Vaelin said. “And a lord.”
Marken nodded, placing both hands on the dead man’s head, eyes closed. He remained in the same position for several moments, unmoving, breathing soft, face placid beneath the beard. After a while Vaelin wondered if he was still present in his own body or, like Dahrena, able to fly beyond himself, except he burrowed into the mind of a corpse rather than soaring above the earth.
Eventually the big man opened his eyes with a pained grunt, moving back from the corpse, a sense of accusation in the gaze he turned on Vaelin. “My lord could’ve warned me of the nature of the thing I sought.”
“My apologies,” Vaelin replied. “Does that mean you found it?”
“The hair’s a little thicker on the sides of his head,” Marken told Alornis, pointing at her sketch. “And his mouth is not so wide.”
Alornis’s charcoal stub added a few fluid strokes to the image, wetting her finger to smudge some lines. “Like this?”
“Yes.” Marken’s beard split to reveal a brace of white teeth. “My lady is the gifted one here.”
“That’s him?” Vaelin asked as Alornis handed him the sketch. It showed a broad-faced man, balding, bearded, eyes narrow. He wondered if Alornis had indulged in Master Benril’s liking for artistic licence in adding a cruel twist to the mouth.
“As close a resemblance as memory allows, my lord,” Marken said. “That’s the face of the thing’s mask all right.”
“You felt it? When you saw it in the dead man’s memory?”
“I saw it, behind the mask. We always see more than we know, but it lingers.” He tapped a stubby finger to the side of his head. “Especially when we see something we don’t really understand.”
“You have a name for this face?”
Marken’s beard ruffled in an apologetic grimace. “My gift is limited to what they see, my lord. What they hear is beyond my reach.”
Vaelin placed the sketch next to the one Alornis had already completed, showing a younger man of handsome aspect, though his sister had opined his nose and chin were a little too sharp. “And this is the priest?”