‘Well? Are you going to throw it or not …?’
Berren slammed a knee between the witch-doctor’s legs. Kuy grunted. The vision faded.
‘I have seen my own, too. It showed me. I saw my apprentice kill me. But not you. Ah, my poor brother Vallas. Both of you such hunters!’ Kuy bore down on him with the knife. With a last fling of strength, Berren pushed the witch-doctor away. He cast wildly about for anything he could use as a weapon. The warlock still held the knife. He was grinning like a madman, pointing at Tasahre. ‘Look at her!’ Shadows swirled around Kuy like a maelstrom now, while the witch-doctor himself was as white as a ghost. In flashes, Berren could see right through him to the candle-flames and the gloomy shapes beyond. ‘For Syannis I will let you live. But her?’ He slashed the golden knife through the air. ‘You brought her here, Berren. What would you give to save her, little traitor?’
Give? Berren’s mouth ran dry. There was nothing here that he could use to fight, there were no weapons, at least not as Berren would understand one.
Behind Kuy, Tasahre moved a fraction. Her head turned. Her eyes opened. She looked at Berren.
‘Well? A leg? An eye? A voice? A day? Three lovers you’ll never have? An emperor? Take it!’ He pressed the golden knife forward. Berren collapsed, helpless. The way the ghost-face of the warlock was looking at him made his insides squirm.
Tasahre was starting to rise. Berren’s hands reached out of their own accord and took the knife, just as they had taken paper and quill before. They clutched the hilt together. Slowly, no matter how hard he tried to tell them not to, they turned the blade towards him. He knelt forward.
‘Yes! Now see!’ The rage of shadows around Kuy was fading. He was using all of his power on Berren now. Tasahre was almost on her feet.
He couldn’t help himself. The knife jerked, the blade pushing into his skin, his own hands pressing it deeper and deeper towards his heart. He screamed but there was no pain. Instead he felt a pressure in his head and suddenly he could see himself, as though he was looking in a mirror; but he wasn’t seeing his skin, he was looking at what lay underneath, at his soul, an endless tangle of threads like a spider’s web wrapped within itself.
‘Tell the knife! Make it your promise: You will be unswervingly loyal to my desires. And then cut, Berren, cut! Three little slices. You! Obey! Me!’
With each command the knife sliced a little piece away from Berren’s soul. His own hand was making him into the warlock’s slave! Even as he cut, he could see it working, see how each thread mattered, how each strand made up what he was, how each cut made him more of a slave. The knife showed him all of it, exactly as it was and would be. Kuy crouched over him. He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Stupid boy! I could have given you everything and you throw it in my face and for what? For a monk? For a girl? Stupid, foolish-’
Tasahre rose behind him and drove both her swords into the witch-doctor’s back. He screamed and staggered away, wringing his hands, looking down at himself, at the two sword-points sticking out of his chest.
‘What have you done?’ Darkness poured from the corner of his mouth. Berren hoped it was blood. He scrabbled backwards to get away, still on his hands and knees.
Kuy’s voice grew stronger and full of fury. An invisible force clamped itself around Berren’s throat, strangling any thought of protest. ‘I am no hedge witch! You cannot do this! Not here! This is my domain!’ As Kuy’s words rang out, the candles that lit the room seemed to burn ever brighter, yet the air itself was turning black. Unseen hands gripped Berren, holding him rigid. Forms grew out of the blackness in the air; they swirled around the warlock, shifting and morphing so Berren caught only glimpses of what they were, but those glimpses were of monstrous terrors, with eyes that glared and teeth that snapped, of claws and spines and withered hands that would reach through flesh to scar his soul. The nightmares strained, as though somehow tethered to the warlock. Horrors.
Kuy lurched forward and slashed at Berren with the knife. He was like a ghost now, a translucent milky white, half there and half not, but the knife was still real enough. Desperately, Berren threw up a hand to ward off the blow. Pain seared down his left arm. ‘They hunger,’ shrieked Saffran Kuy. Black mist poured out of his mouth. His voice had become something else, a deep growling thing that seemed to come from the walls themselves and filled every corner of Berren’s head. ‘They have your scent! They will find you! However far you run, they will seek you out and gorge themselves on you! Do you understand, boy? You can’t just walk away from here, not from me!’
Behind him the room filled with light, sunlight pouring in through the broken door. Tasahre had two fingers raised, held out towards the warlock. She was quivering with tension, while the sunlight flowed around her. Her outstretched hand shone so bright Berren had to squeeze his eyes shut.
‘Shadows be gone!’ cried Tasahre. The nightmares vanished and Kuy reeled away, staggering, still with Tasahre’s swords stuck through him. His voice broke to his usual whisper.
‘Destiny!’ He staggered away into the darkness. Tasahre strode after him, burning with light. Berren followed after her.
‘Be gone!’
Kuy stumbled away, crashing past crates and boxes and piles of books, knocking down candles. A bundle of old parchments tumbled together and caught aflame. ‘You will die twice, boy! At your own hands each time!’
The warlock was falling apart, his hands dissolving like smoke. He lurched down a hallway and into another room at the end, as cavernous as the first.
‘Be gone!’ Tasahre was closing on him. One by one, candles flickered and died, plunging the room into darkness except for the light that shone from her. The warlock was half vanished, his arms and legs formless stumps, shadows swirling around him. But here he stopped and turned.
Tasahre’s light flared. ‘Be gone!’
‘No!’
The warlock’s face twisted. The shadows around him began to swirl, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
‘Tasahre!’ Now was the time to run, Berren had no doubts about that. Whatever the warlock was doing, he wasn’t dying.
She flared again but not as brightly as she had at first. Berren could see the sweat on her now. She was drenched, almost steaming. The shadows around the warlock recoiled but they didn’t vanish.
‘Tasahre!’ His hand felt as though it was on fire where the warlock’s knife had cut him. Daylight! There was no daylight here, that’s what it was, there was no sun, none at all! This was the warlock’s place, his domain, his heart! He grabbed Tasahre’s shoulder and pulled at her. The light shining from her skin flickered and failed. They were in darkness now, and a faint glimmer from where they’d entered was the only light.
She screamed at him: ‘What are you doing?’
‘It wasn’t enough!’ He pulled her to the door and then they were both running, sprinting away as fast as they could, out of the House of Cats and Gulls with Tasahre’s swords still in the warlock and the warlock still alive and flinging curses in their wake. Out into the glorious daylight, into the afternoon rains come early, up the Godsway towards the temple. Halfway there, he remembered that his hand was hurting.
It was the little finger of his left hand. Half of it was missing.
26
Berren was almost sick when he saw the damage to his hand, but Tasahre pulled him on. He paused long enough to tear his sleeve and wrap some cloth around his hand, then ran the rest of the way dripping blood behind him. They didn’t stop until they were standing in the gateway to the Temple of the Sun.