Fearsome Journeys (The New Solaris Book of Fantasy)

CAMP FOLLOWER

TRUDI CANAVAN

CONTRARY TO WHAT the soldiers said, it was not after battle that Captain Reny enjoyed the services of the whore in his tent. After battle, he was too exhausted to do more than wash off the blood and gore, even if he only ever fought when the King decided to join the fight, or to protect his leader. Reny was too old for the victorious lustful celebrations the soldiers imagined their commanders enjoyed.

It was during the time between battles, after long meetings to discuss strategy, that he made use of the woman. Aside from the physical release and the sensual pleasure, he gained something even more valuable—a time in which he was free from thought and care. The past and the future did not penetrate his mind.

But all too soon he would be lying awake, his mind starting to dwell on matters best forgotten or ignored. As he was now.

To delay the return of those memories, he looked down at the woman sleeping on the floor beside his narrow stretcher-bed, and thought about her instead. She’d told him her name was Kala, but he doubted that was her true name. It was too common among the camp followers. Apparently it meant ‘lucky charm’, which was far too appealing a name in a time of war to be a real one.

Her waist was narrow, but she widened above and below in ways a woman ought to. He guessed she’d joined the other camp followers not long before he’d noticed her, or she would have been as skinny and wasted as they were. Yet he hadn’t chosen her for her body alone. Something in her eyes reassured him. It was an awareness that told him she knew exactly what she was doing, despite her obvious youth, and wasn’t tormented by it. It was the absence of desperation, loathing, horror or resignation in her face that had caused him to look twice, and invite her to join him.

All his doubts about her had faded as the days and weeks, villages and towns had fallen to the advancing army. She did not chatter, did not fawn or beg, and never complained. She was quiet, obedient and willing. She rubbed his sore muscles after battle. She had a skill with the cook pot that could turn the worst of rationed foodstuffs into edible fare.

Choosing her had been the best thing he’d done since joining the Conquest.

LOOKING DOWN FROM the ridge, Reny felt the breath catch in his throat. Wavy, sinuous lines of trampled whetta ran between the forest and the farmhouse. A lot of people had passed this way. The sort of people who did not care if they ruined a crop. This could be evidence of their arriving or leaving. They could be gone or still in the farmhouse. Reny’s anger at this careless destruction was overtaken by dread.

Then he was at the house. He tried to shout but could not make a sound. I don’t need to see this again. Though he knew what he would find, he started searching. I’m dreaming; I must wake myself up. There was nobody in the kitchen where he knew he should find his wife… doomed to die after agonising days of pain and fever from infection within.

Better they had killed her than left her like this. The rooms upstairs were also empty. He ought to be grateful to not see, yet again, what they had done to his daughter and youngest son, but instead their absence left him fraught and hollow.

They’re gone. Where have they gone?

In the distance he heard the sound of horns—

He jolted awake.

And remembered.

His homeland had been invaded by the Henelan. The Laxen, his own people, had offered their empty throne to a sorcerer mercenary, Dael, if he would defeat their enemy. Within a year the Henelan, to the last child, no longer existed. A secret agreement was discovered between other neighbouring lands, who had planned to carve up Laxen among themselves once they defeated the Henelan. So a greater war started, until someone came up with the idea that lands united were lands free of warfare. And so, the Conquest began.

A retired soldier and former strategy adviser to the King of Laxen, Reny had offered his services to Dael at the beginning. When he had told Kala this, she had asked how long ago it had been, and he could not tell her the exact number of years with confidence. More than ten. Not as many as twenty.

The horns in his dreams rang out again, but his time he knew them to be real: the signal that the army was to pack up and be ready to march. Reny cursed and got to his feet. The woman looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“Packing time,” he told her.

She got up and started moving about, opening the trunks that held his belongings and putting what had been removed back inside them. He moved to the tent opening and looked out, then sighed heavily and turned back to see her watching him, her smooth brow wrinkling in mute enquiry.

“I should have been told about this,” he answered. “Vorl is still punishing me for disobeying him.”

She nodded and started folding the bedding, but her frown did not fade.

“It was something that happened before we… before I invited you to my tent,” he explained.

The look she gave him was accepting, as if she didn’t expect him to tell her anything more, but he thought he saw a glint of curiosity in her eyes.

He took a deep breath. “Vorl had just been promoted to General. He wanted to test his authority. In the wrong situation, that can make a man do needlessly cruel things. Or order others to do so. I refused.”

She grimaced in sympathy and understanding. “Do you regret it?” she asked in her lilting voice. Her strange accent had been annoying at first, but now that he’d grown familiar enough to understand her he found it appealing.

He considered her question, looking away as he remembered the incident. “No. Besides, I don’t think I could have managed it anyway. Perhaps Vorl guessed that and wanted me humiliated.” He turned back to find her looking bemused, and smiled grimly in apology. “Sorry, that won’t make much sense to you. Dael sent Vorl to attack a place in the mountains. Though it was not directly in the path of the army, there was a risk people there could attack our rear if we didn’t deal with them first. It turned out to be a temple run by women. Priestesses. No threat at all.”

Kala went still, her face hardening as she comprehended the fate of the priestesses.

“And you refused to take part?”

Her voice was deeper and stronger than he had heard it before. It also had a tone of demand. Another man in his position might have punished her for that, he realised.

“Yes.” He shuddered. To watch what had been done to his wife and daughter being done to others… He pushed the memory away and set his mind on packing. Kala, accepting his silence, said nothing more for some time; then, as the last tent rope loosened and the oilcloth collapsed on the ground, she glanced sideways at him.

“Dael hasn’t got rid of you yet. You must still be valuable to him,” she said quietly.

He shrugged, too astonished by her insight to be angry at her presumption. “Until Vorl convinces him otherwise.”

“Vorl is a weapon, to be used and discarded when blunted. Advisers are like scrolls or books, to be consulted over and over. You don’t hit your enemy with a book, then go consult your sword, do you?”

He stared at her in amazement, but she was walking away, stooping to take up one side of the tent and start folding it ready for travel.

THE STINK OF sweat, blood and gut juices permeated Reny’s skin and clothing. These last were of an enemy soldier who had managed to dash through the front line of soldiers and Dael’s guards only to impale himself on the captain’s sword. Reny suspected he’d never forget the expression of surprise and dismay on the young man’s face.

He reached the tent, staggered inside and stood there, swaying in the lamplight.

I’m still alive. Another battle survived.

Two buckets of water waited next to a neatly folded pile of clothing, ready for his return, but something was missing. He frowned and cast his eyes about the tent. Kala was absent.

Probably getting more water. Or food. Or something. He shrugged and started cleaning himself up. Long experience had taught him to start from the top of his head and work his way down, so that gore that might be trapped within his armour, clothing or hair would not drip onto parts already cleaned. Each piece of armour was removed separately; the soiled clothing stripped off and set aside. It was not easy this time, without Kala’s help, but he felt a perverse determination to do it himself. Do I think that if I show her I can manage this myself, she’ll make sure she’s here next time in case I decide I don’t need her anymore?

Once he was clean, he donned fresh undergarments, then set about putting much of the armour back on. Fortunately the protective shell was not heavy. Most of it was hardened leather and when camped on the battlefield he avoided removing it as much as possible. The enemy might launch a stealthy night attack. It had happened in the past. The King’s army had lost many good leaders.

Even though exhaustion usually overrode discomfort, it was torture to sleep in full armour, so Reny compromised by leaving off the back piece. When he was ready for sleep and found Kala still hadn’t returned, something made him turn from the bed and replace the missing piece. He paced around the confines of the tent slowly, then went looking for her outside.

He trudged around the camp twice in the deepening night, even checking Vorl’s tent. In the end, he found her, but only because he had overheard a watcher chatting to the man sent to replace him.

“…one with the yellow hair again.”

“Same as last night. I searched her when she came back, but she wasn’t carrying anything. She still out there?”

Reny had stopped to listen, his heart skipping at the mention of yellow hair. The two men were squinting out over the battlefield. His eyes followed their gaze. A thin sliver of moon lit a landscape that was far lumpier than it had appeared when the army had arrived a few days before. Figures moved about carrying lamps, bending and stooping over the dark mounds.

Reny had seen and watched this post-battle ritual many times before. Long after battle had ceased, the field remained a scene of activity. The wounded deemed to have a chance at recovery were carried from the field, but those considered unlikely to survive were given a quick and merciful death. Despite rules against the practice, whores also slipped out after darkness to take trinkets and small weapons from the bodies of the dead, though if they were spotted returning to the camp they risked losing the most part of their takings to the watchmen as bribes. Soldiers did not look favourably on those who stole from the dead—unless they benefited from it themselves.

Surely Kala was not partaking in this shameful trade? Reny had taken care of her as best he could, though admittedly hers was hardly a life of comfort and riches. Was she greedy for more? As Reny stared out into the darkness his eyes were drawn to a figure, familiar in the way it moved. Suddenly he did not want to know. But if it is her and the soldiers hear I’m keeping a scavenger in my tent…

Sighing, he set out onto the battlefield. As he approached the figure he felt his heart sink. It was Kala.

She hadn’t seen him yet. He stopped, suddenly reluctant to approach. Perhaps he could try to pretend he didn’t know what she had done. The thought of throwing her out and returning to an empty tent each night was surprisingly painful.

While he watched, she squatted beside one of the dark shapes. He heard a groan, and then a voice.

“Please. End it for me,” the voice begged. “I can’t… stand it anymore. Please.”

Kala reached out and touched the soldier’s face gently. “I will give you peace,” she said.

She moved her hand down and spread her fingers out over his chest. Reny could see that the man was shaking convulsively. The air between her hand and the soldier rippled, then her fingers slowly curled into a fist. The man gasped, let out a long breath and went limp.

Reny’s skin pricked with cold. He felt the world shift around him like a wheel on a carriage slipping into a rut. He knew nothing would be the same again.

Kala got to her feet. She looked down at the soldier, then sighed and shook her head. Stepping away, she began walking among the bodies with slow and unhurried steps.

She is no thief, Reny realised. She took nothing. But he knew that wasn’t true.

She had taken the man’s life. Something within him knew this. He considered the shimmering air he’d seen between her hand and the dying soldier. It would be so easy to dismiss it as a bit of air heated by a campfire behind her, shimmering around her arm as she made a gesture of sympathy toward the man. But there was no campfire nearby.

Clearly she was not just a whore.

He had seen Dael perform magic, both subtle and dazzling. To deny the possibility that she was a sorcerer would be foolish and dangerous.Kala was walking away from him now. She hadn’t noticed him standing there. He waited until she was too far away to hear or see him, then he made his way back to the camp. As he reached the watchmen, two soldiers overtook him, carrying a wounded man between them.

“We found him!” they called out to two other soldiers, who hurried to join them. “He’d been knocked out.” They set the wounded man they had rescued down beside a campfire. Reny paused to watch as the man sat up and groggily accepted some water.

“I’ve seen Lady Death,” the man said, his eyes wide. “And she’s beautiful.”

The four soldiers laughed.

“Must have been a good knock to the head.”

“Just like you to have visions of pretty women.”

“Well, if you’re going to have visions, why not ones of pretty women?”

“I saw her,” the wounded man said. “She saw me. But she let me live. She said I would live.”

They laughed again.

Reny shook his head and continued on to his tent. From such talk, superstitions and legends might spring. He hoped Kala knew what she was doing.

If she returned tonight, he wasn’t going to ask what it was.

IT MUST HAVE been torment enough to be dragged, defeated and in chains, to face one’s enemy. But to have been given the freedom to walk to meet his conqueror, and then waste that small gift of dignity by stumbling and falling onto his face in the mud, was too much humiliation for the prince. There were smothered sniggers among the audience of army captains, though not from the captive locals brought to witness the surrender of their leader. He struggled to rise, but could not get his legs under him on the steep embankment. A low sob escaped him, then two guards came forward, hauled him back to his feet and half-carried him forward, forcing him to his knees before Dael. He sagged, all pride and fight gone, his head bowed.

Reny was surprised to find that, after the countless defeated men and women he’d seen brought before the sorcerer King, he still felt a stirring of pity for this particular man. Even in the fading light he could see that the prince was young, barely old enough to claim the princedom from his father, who had been killed in this nation’s first battle against Dael.

“Your army is defeated, your cities have fallen,” Dael told him. “Do you surrender your land and people to me? Do you give your remaining army into my hands, to fight in the glorious Conquest to unite the lands?”

The prince remained silent. He was still so long that Reny began to worry that the youth would not respond. Then suddenly the prince straightened his body and lifted his head. He glared at Dael with intense hatred.

“I do not.”

Reny looked at Dael. The sorcerer’s eyebrows had risen slightly. There was a strange, avid light in his eyes.

“You know that the penalty for refusing is death, for you and everyone in your land?”

“Yes.” The hatred in the young man’s face vanished and was replaced by a blissful, wide-eyed stare as he tilted his head to the sky. “The Goddess of Death will take us. She will bring us peace.” His gaze dropped to Dael and his eyes narrowed again. “And she will avenge our deaths.”

The Goddess of Death? For a moment Reny could not breathe or move, then his heart began hammering in his chest and his knees felt weak. Was this a deity these people worshipped? Or was it, as he suddenly feared, the whore in his tent? The woman who had returned to his bed and fallen asleep at his side, then prepared his morning meal as if nothing had changed? In the morning light, it was too easy to dismiss what he’d seen last night as an illusion, or a dream. He forced himself to stand still and breathe normally, not wanting to give any hint of the shock that the prince’s declaration had given him.

Fortunately Dael was not looking at Reny. His gaze was fixed on the youth as he rose.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I wouldn’t want it to be known that I didn’t offer you a choice.”

The young man’s eyes filled with fear as the sorcerer approached, but his voice was steady. “I am sure. As are my people.”

Dael paused. “How disappointing,” he said quietly. He nodded to the guards, who hauled the prince to his feet. Then he drew a long knife and plunged it into the young man’s chest.

As always, Reny made his eyes stay focused on the scene, but not his attention. He’d grown adept at not seeing in these moments, and thinking of something else. Usually the whore. But this time, something caught his eye. Something strange and yet familiar. Something he might not have noticed if he hadn’t slid down the ranks of Dael’s favour in recent weeks, and been standing further down the slope, rather than in his usual place nearer to the King.

For the first time, he could see the knife protruding from the prince’s chest, and the hand holding it… and more importantly, the air surrounding both.

It was shimmering.

The movement was barely noticeable, and he might have again dismissed it as an effect of the twilight descending upon the battlefields, or the heat from a fire or torch beyond the sorcerer and the prince. Now he knew better, and he wished he didn’t.

But I do know, and it is dangerous to pretend otherwise. I must do what I would recommend to another man in this situation: consider every possibility, no matter how strange—because it is better to be over-prepared than be caught out by the unexpected—then deal with the problem.

He wished he could do his thinking alone and in peace, but, as ever, he didn’t have that luxury. Now, after the prince’s corpse had been removed, the sorcerer King and his captains retreated to the big tent where battle strategy was discussed and decisions made. Several hours had passed before all were sent to their beds. But as Reny reached the entrance of the tent he heard Dael call his name.

“Stay a moment, Captain Reny. I wish to talk to you.”

As the tent emptied, the sorcerer King regarded Reny from the battered throne that was always dragged from battle to battle.

“Vorl doesn’t like you,” he said when they were finally alone. One thing Reny liked about the leader was how he always got to the point.

“I know,” Reny replied, shrugging. “I don’t like him.”

“Why not?

“He is needlessly cruel.”

“He is ruthless.” Dael nodded. “Killing is what he does, and he does it well.”

“Women and children?”

Dael’s gaze became hard. “This is war. Nobody should pretend that it is merciful to the weak.”

Reny opened his mouth to protest, thought better of it and nodded.

“He wants me to get rid of you,” Dael told him. “He says you have rebellion in you, and your scruples will lose us battles one day. What do you say to that?”

Reny felt as if someone had dropped ice down the back of his armour, and it was sliding slowly down his spine. I have a sorceress masquerading as a whore in my tent; a woman who both this army—and the enemy—think is some sort of goddess of death. The last thing I need is Vorl putting further ideas of betrayal in Dael’s head.

“I’d rather you got rid of Vorl,” he replied, frankly.

Dael smiled. “Why should I do that?”

“Soldiers are like weapons,” Reny found himself replying, “more useful in battle than hung on a wall. Advisers are like scrolls. You keep them so you can use their knowledge again and again.” Somehow it had sounded more eloquent when Kala had said it.

Dael grinned, his eyes bright with amusement.

“I like you, Captain Reny. And that’s most important. You may go.”

Reny bowed, and hurried from the tent.

RENY WOULD HAVE liked more time to think, but he suspected that time was something he didn’t have much of now. When he entered his tent and saw Kala waiting for him he felt a wave of relief, but it was followed by one of dread. And, unexpectedly, one of lust. She was regarding him with relaxed expectation from the end of the bed, with a small welcoming smile, and he was reminded once again that it was after strategy meetings that he most often used her services.

He knew that he never would again. That filled him with regret, but also determination. He drew in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and then sat down on one of the chests.

“What are you?” he asked. “Are you really a goddess?”

She showed no surprise, but her expression became serious, almost sad, and then the smile returned. “I am no goddess. What do you think I am?”

Reny met her gaze. “What he is. What Dael is. A sorcerer and… something else.”

Her eyebrows rose and she regarded him appraisingly. “You’ve worked out more than I expected—or hoped.”

“I’ve worked out nothing,” he disagreed. “I have no idea what is going on. Am I keeping an enemy in my tent? Am I following someone … something more than an ambitious and clever sorcerer mercenary-turned-King, with a love for war and a desire to unite the lands?”

Suddenly all trace of her smile was gone. She had that knowing, worldly look again, but this time there was anger burning in her eyes.

“I am from the temple,” she said. “The temple Vorl attacked.”

His stomach plunged to the floor. He stared at her and felt guilt and pity fill him all over again.

“I’m sorry—” he began.

“I lived there for over a thousand years,” she continued.

Disbelief overtook guilt. He remembered the shimmering air between her hand and the dying soldier, and knew that he had to consider that something so incredible might be possible. If this was true… he felt the first spark of awe. I bedded this woman…

“But I am several thousands of years older than that,” she added. She looked away, beyond the tent walls, and sighed. “When I was the age of the body you see before you, I developed more than womanly traits. I aged the same as other people, but then within a day or night I’d grow young again.

“Whenever I returned to youth, I found that I could heal from an injury in an instant, and I could use magic. But in time, I’d lose those abilities and start to age again. How could this be? I only worked out why when a sickness came and many of the local people died. It took many, many more years before I started to age again.” She paused and looked at Reny meaningfully.

He frowned. “You… you can take magic from people who are dying?”

“I don’t take it. It comes to me. When someone dies, magic is released and if I am nearby it flows to me. Or if there is someone else with the trait nearby, it flows to whichever of us is closest.”

“So you are immortal.”

She shook her head. “I am sure that, if I stayed away from death long enough, I would age and die like everyone else.”

He thought about the temple, so isolated and only attended by a handful of young women. Healthy young attendees were less likely than older ones to die while serving the old woman they believed was a goddess.

“That’s why you were there,” he said.

She nodded solemnly. “I have lived too long. I am tired of it.”

His mind took a leap of comprehension. “But if death gives you magic, why didn’t you save the women in the temple?”

She blinked at the sudden shift in his questioning, then scowled. “It was their death that gave me magic. Once dead…” She sighed. “I cannot bring the dead back to life. I might have been able to heal one or two of them, if any had been alive after the soldiers left.” There was bitterness in her voice.

“So you joined the camp followers of an army, which would surround you with a never-ending source of death and allow you to grow strong.” He took a deep breath. “Is revenge worth delaying your release from this life?”

She smiled. “I am not seeking revenge. If I was, Vorl would have stopped being a problem for you months ago.”

“Why are you here, then?”

She looked at him with an expression he could not name, and it sent a shiver down his spine. “All those years in the temple, waiting for death. I felt boredom beyond what you can ever experience. One thought kept me there, and kept me from giving up and leaving. One question that I will never know the answer to myself.” She paused, and then smoothly rose to her feet. “Where does the death magic go, if sorcerers like me don’t take and use it? What do you think, Reny?”

He stared at her as she walked out of the tent, and disappeared into the night, her words repeating themselves unceasingly in his mind, and rousing a deep, undeniable horror.

Soldiers believed in souls. They believed there was a life after death. They might not agree about the form that soul took, how it was judged, or who ruled the place souls went to, but they all held onto the same basic hope.

If they knew what she did, nobody would worship the Goddess of Death. They would fear her.

And Dael. Reny shuddered. Now that he knew the truth, some of the sorcerer King’s more destructive decisions made sense. Dael was not trying to unify the lands in order to bring peace to them. He was harvesting fallen soldiers, his own and his enemy’s, and keeping the lands in a perpetual state of war so that he might have eternal life and unending power over the living.

RENY DID NOT see Kala again that night or the next morning. He did not expect her to return. If her absence was noted, he planned to shrug and say he had grown tired of her, and sent her away. He considered finding himself a new whore to make this lie more convincing, but didn’t.

He pretended to have an injury—a strain in his back—to avoid having to fight. It wasn’t that he was afraid he would die and lose his soul to Kala or Dael. He simply didn’t want to miss seeing whatever all this was leading to.

He pondered Kala’s motives and her possible strategy to carry them out. She had all but told him she wanted to stop Dael, but was she strong enough to face him and win? He considered that perhaps she intended to lose, and achieve the death she longed for, but he doubted it. She would not have been gathering strength by walking the battlefield at night. Instead, she would have confronted Dael in a deliberately weakened state, ensuring her defeat.

AT MIDDAY DAEL led the army into the city to carry out his punishment for their defiance. To Reny’s surprise, the King placed him among his personal companions, and sent Vorl ahead to rouse the citizens, who had not emerged to face the invaders.

Soldiers beat down a few doors before they realised all were unlocked. They emerged from the buildings, confused and pale, each group hurrying to report to Vorl, whose face grew darker and darker.

“What is wrong?” Dael called.

Vorl hurried over and knelt before his leader. “They’re dead,” he said. “All of them. Poisoned themselves, by the look of it.”

Dael looked up, his eyes scanning the buildings lining both sides of the main city road. “Surely not all of them. I’d have… Keep searching.”

Though soldiers roamed further and further afield, they found only corpses. Old men, women and children tucked in their beds or slumped in chairs. From the expressions on their faces, whatever poison they had taken had seemingly sent them to a blissful end.

It was then, in the silence of realisation, that a woman dressed in white stepped out onto the main road. Reny heard all the men around him draw in a sharp breath. She glowed faintly as she walked toward them. Her feet were bare. Her pale hair was long and unbound and much too familiar.

Reny could not believe this was the whore he had kept in his tent. She had been attractive, but not this vision of beauty. She certainly never glowed like that when she was mine. She must have gathered up the death magic of all the city’s remaining citizens as they expired from the poison they’d taken. Or did she poison them? Is this a part of her plan? Is she that ruthless?

Unexpectedly, he saw through the glamour around her to a woman who must have suffered much in her long life, despite the magic that kept her alive and healed every wound. She was a woman who had not been able to escape the evils of the world, even when she had isolated herself in search of the peace of death. A woman who had no choice but to question if her own powers, over which she had no control, were evil. She must have cared deeply about the answer, he thought. Perhaps this was the true reason she sought her own death. No, she did not kill these people.

The soldiers shifted fearfully, muttering to themselves. Reny guessed they saw something else: the Goddess of Death. But Kala’s eyes were fixed only on Dael. The sorcerer King was watching her, his eyes bright and smiling indulgently, as if watching children performing.

“Greetings, King Dael,” she said, her voice echoing between the buildings.

“Greetings… whom do I have the honour of meeting?” he asked in reply.

“I have had many names. You may call me Saeyl.”

He gestured to the buildings on either side. “Well, Saeyl. Did you do this?”

“Poison all these people?” She shook her head. “No. They arranged that all on their own. I don’t know if they guessed what your abilities are and decided to deny you the magic you gain from the moment of their deaths,” she shrugged, “or if they hoped their souls would go to me instead.”

Dael’s smile faded. She slowed to a stop a few paces away.

“I have not met anyone with my particular skills before now,” he told her.

Her lips twisted with distaste. “I have met plenty.”

“Where are they?”

“Gone. Dead.”

“So we can die.”

Her eyes brightened at his ignorance. “Yes, but only at the hands of another of our kind.”

“So… you killed the others?”

She shook her head. “Not all of them. Most fought and killed each other. The last one I met wanted to go. He was very old, and tired of living.” She lifted her chin. “How old are you?”

“Two hundred and forty nine.”

Reny’s skin prickled with cold. I have been fighting for, and been loyal to, a man who is more than five times my age!

Kala’s eyes never left Dael. “So young. And with such skill in sorcery. When I discovered my power, few could or would teach me. Now there are mortals who know more than I did at your age.”

“How old are you?” Dael asked.

“More than four thousand years,” she said. “Less than five. It is hard to keep an exact tally, when counting systems keep coming and going with the civilisations that invent them.”

“What do you want?”

Her eyebrows rose at his bluntness, then her expression became serious. “I want you to abandon this conquest of yours.”

“Why?” Dael asked, his voice low and dark with defiance and anger.

“You don’t need it.” She took a step closer. “Look at me: I am proof that you do not need to wage war in order to live forever.”

“Do you think that is my sole mission? What of power? What of peace? If I unite the lands there will be no more wars. We can do good things with our magic. And there will be no risk that you or I will be killed in some petty squabble between kingdoms.”

She took another step, reaching out but not quite touching him. “How will you gather the power you need? Will you resort to slaughtering more innocent people? Will you breed people like livestock, to be a steady supply of sacrifices?”

“There are always criminals to be executed. And those who die of natural causes. If that’s not enough… I’ll think of something. You could help me,” he said, reaching out toward her. His other hand shifted to his waist.

The movement was familiar, and even as Reny choked back a shout of warning Dael’s dagger plunged into her chest under the ribs.

Trust that she knows what she is doing, he told himself. His heart raced. He stared at her face, seeing the pain and shock there, holding his breath and daring to hope. She was staring at Dael, her eyes dark with hatred.

“You said ‘only at the hands of another of our kind’,” Dael reminded her smugly.

She shook her head. “I did. But you are far too simple in your thinking.”

Taking another step forward, she plunged her hand through his armour and into his chest, as if metal and bone and skin were the thinnest of paper. Dael’s eyes went round; then, as she pulled her arm back, he looked down in disbelief at the bloody, pulsing mess of organs trailing from her hands back to his body.

Her hand held his heart, twitching and wobbling. Dael opened his mouth, made a faint, whimpering noise, then crumpled at her feet.

Kala waited until the first sounds escaped the watching soldiers. As the realisation that she had killed their leader sank into the minds of those watching, she raised her eyes and surveyed those standing closest. She gestured with the bloodied heart, beckoning them closer. Instead, all turned and ran, yelling and screaming their terror.

All except Reny. A movement in the air had drawn his eyes. The shimmer between Dael’s body and Kala was so intense it was almost a sound.

Is it only her magic or does it come from all the souls he has taken?

He looked up and met Kala’s eyes. Weariness and resignation had replaced her fierce grin of triumph. She grimaced as she let the heart drop to the ground.

“I can’t stop myself taking it,” she said sadly. “But I can do this…”

Then she turned and strode away, the rippling air stretching and slowly thinning between herself and the dead sorcerer until the effect was no longer visible.

WHEN HE LEFT, Reny took nothing with him but a large pack and his sword. While he would rather have left the weapon behind, he wasn’t stupid. The road home would not be free of trouble. It would be full of ex-soldiers like him, and some would resort to theft and murder to get food, shelter and other essentials. He’d pass through lands that the sorcerer King had conquered, who would not welcome the men who had followed him, bringing so much suffering and loss.

At the end of the long journey was his home—and the ghosts of his family. If he made it, he would live the remaining years left to him there, and concern himself only with the strategies of crops and animal breeding cycles and bartering in the markets. He resolved to forget the war, and let all tales of his part in it fade from the memories of others, even if they would never leave his own.

Every day Kala was in his thoughts, and every night she appeared in his dreams, and he never stopped wondering where she was, and if she still sought her own death.