There was a commotion amongst the watching throng, the guardsmen raising their pole-axes in warning as a man in a black cloak rode through the crowd. She heard Al Sorna groan in consternation. The man halted before the guards, speaking in a loud voice heavy with authority. The guard captain gave an emphatic shake of his head and a terse gesture of dismissal. Reva noticed the other guards stiffen as several more black-cloaked men appeared out of the crowd, all armed.
“Come on,” Al Sorna said, nudging his horse into motion. “Time for you to meet a kindred spirit.”
The man on the horse was thin to the point of gauntness, hollow cheekbones shaded beneath deep-seated eyes, his close-cropped hair steel-grey and thinning. He wore an expression of deep scrutiny as he offered Al Sorna a respectful nod, his gaze dark and piercing as if he were trying to cut away the Darkblade’s skin and glimpse the soul beneath. Reva noted how the guards and the black-cloaked men eyed each other with wary eyes whilst the crowd looked on in rapt silence.
“Brother,” the gaunt man said. “It gladdens my heart, and the hearts of all the truly Faithful, to see you safely returned to us.”
Al Sorna replied in clipped tones, devoid of any warmth or regard. “Aspect Tendris.”
“I told him he wasn’t welcome, my lord,” the guard captain said.
“And why would he say that, brother?” the gaunt man asked. “Why should you ever bar your door to your brother in the Faith?”
“Aspect,” Al Sorna said. “Whatever it is you want, I can’t give it to you.”
“Not true, brother.” The Aspect’s voice became fierce, his eyes wide with conviction. Reva noticed his voice was pitched loud enough to be caught by all ears in the crowd. “You can join with us. My Order welcomes you, as your own does not.”
Reva shifted in her saddle, settling the sword more comfortably on her back. This man is mad, she decided. Some lunatic luminary of their heretic faith, so lost in its lies his reason has fled.
“I no longer have an Order,” Al Sorna informed the Aspect, his own voice at an even level. “Nor do I wish another. I am commanded by our King to undertake Lordship of the North Tower.”
“The King,” Tendris rasped. “A man in thrall to a Denier witch.”
“Watch your tongue, Aspect!” the guard captain warned, causing his men to take a two-handed grip on their pole-axes. The black-cloaked men began reaching for their weapons.
“Enough of this!” Al Sorna barked, the implacable note of command in his voice sufficient to forestall further movement, even the crowd seemed to have frozen. However, there was one, Reva saw, who seemed immune to the command, one of the black-cloaks, a large, blocky man with broad, brutish features and a strikingly misshapen nose. He was careful, keeping his movements small as he shifted something beneath his cloak.
“You’ve stated your case and had your answer,” Al Sorna told the Aspect. “Now take yourself off.”
“So this is what you’ve become?” Tendris grated, his horse fidgeting as it read his mood, his wide-eyed gaze shifting from Al Sorna to Reva. “A Faithless slave of the Crown, shamelessly parading his god-worshipping whore about-”
Reva’s knife came free of its sheath in a blur. She rose in the saddle, leaning forward as the knife left her hand, barely five feet from the Aspect. It was one of her more clumsy efforts, as she had to account for the shifting of her horse, and the knife tumbled untidily as it flew past the Aspect’s ear to bury itself in the shoulder of the man with the misshapen nose. He screamed, high and shrill, collapsing to his knees, the loaded and drawn crossbow he had been raising clattering to the cobbles.
The guard captain barked an order and his men moved forward, pole-axes levelled. The other black-cloaks began to draw their swords but stopped at a shout from the Aspect. The crowd drew back at the violence, some scattering, others retreating a ways before turning to stare at the spectacle.
Al Sorna guided his horse forward a few paces, looking down at the large brother as he rolled on the ground, groaning then gasping as he drew Reva’s knife from his shoulder, staring at the bloody blade in horror. “Don’t I know you?” Al Sorna asked.
“You have shamed the Order, Iltis,” the Aspect scolded the fallen brother before addressing Al Sorna. “This man acted without my sanction.”
“I’m sure, Aspect.” Al Sorna smiled at the unfortunate Brother Iltis. “He had a debt to repay, I know.”
“Brother, I beg you.” Tendris reached out to grasp the Darkblade’s forearm. “The Faith needs you. Come back to us.”
Al Sorna turned his horse, breaking the Aspect’s grip. “There is nothing to come back to. And you and are I done here.”
The guards took charge of Brother Iltis, dragging him away as Reva dismounted to retrieve her knife. “And I’m not his whore!” she called to Tendris as he rode away, his brothers trotting in his wake. “I’m his sister! Haven’t you heard?”
“Kindred spirit?”
Al Sorna shrugged and smiled. “I thought you’d get on better. He’s as wedded to the Faith as you are to the Father’s love.”
“That man is a mad heretic wallowing in delusion,” Reva stated. “I am not.”
Al Sorna just smiled again and spurred on ahead. They were on the north road, having exited Varinshold a mile or so back, Alornis riding in morose silence amidst their escort, a full company of the Mounted Guard. Evidently, the Darkblade’s King was keen for him to reach his destination.
Another mile brought them within sight of a grim castle of dark granite. It was not as tall as the Cumbraelin castles she had seen, the inner wall only some thirty feet high, but it was larger, enclosing several acres within its walls. There were no pennants flying from the towers and Reva wondered what Asraelin noble could afford the upkeep of such a mighty stronghold. Al Sorna had reined in a short distance ahead and she spurred her mare to a trot, pulling up at his side. “What is this place?”
Al Sorna’s gaze stayed on the castle, his face betraying a sadness she hadn’t seen before. “You need to wait here,” he said. “Tell the captain I’ll be an hour or so.”
He kicked his stallion into motion, riding towards the gate in the castle’s outer wall at a steady trot. Upon reaching it he dismounted and rang a bell hanging from a nearby post. After only a few moments a tall, blue-robed figure appeared at the gate. He was too far away to make out his features, but Reva had the sense he was smiling in welcome. The tall man pulled the gate open and Al Sorna went inside, both of them quickly vanishing from view.
“The first time he went through that gate was the last time my father ever saw him.” Alornis sat on her horse a few yards away, regarding the castle with deep suspicion.
“This is the home of the Sixth Order?” Reva asked.
Alornis nodded and dismounted. She moved with a smooth precision, clearly no stranger to the saddle, holding something up to her horse’s mouth, the white-nosed mare chomping on it with evident appreciation. “You can always win a horse’s heart with a sugar lump,” she said, patting the animal’s flank then reaching for her saddlebag. “You and I have something very important to do.”
That’s not me.
The girl depicted on the parchment was very pretty, despite a slightly off-centre nose, with a tumble of lustrous hair and bright eyes that seemed to gleam with a life of their own. Despite Alornis’s obvious flattery, Reva was compelled, even a little chilled, by the talent on display. Just charcoal and parchment, she wondered. Yet she makes them live.
“Hopefully they’ll have canvas and pigment in the Northern Reaches,” Alornis said, adding a few strokes to the shadows under the too-perfect curve of Reva’s jawline. “This one’s definitely worth painting.”
They sat together under a willow tree some distance from the castle walls. Al Sorna had been inside for close to two hours. “Do you know why the Darkblade came here?” she asked Alornis.