The Assassin's Edge

A riposte to Gamar Tilot and his Thoughts on the Ancient Races

Presented to the Dialectic Association of Wrede

By Pirip Marne, Scholar of the University of Vanam

Scholar Tilot makes a worthwhile contribution to the debates among the learned and leisured with his reminder that many with Forest and Mountain blood live among us. I allow we strive too hard on occasion to find arcane explanations for the mysteries of the past, when the fears and desires that drive us all might prove a wiser guide. The ancient races doubtless wished to eat, thrive and procreate just as we do today.

Nevertheless I take issue with Scholar Tilot. True, a proportion of our populace share a heritage with the Forest and the Mountain, but in no sense has either race vanished beneath a tide of common blood. I suspect Tilot’s travels have been extensive within the libraries but seldom beyond them. I have journeyed widely, to meet Forest kinships where children stood amazed to see my brown eyes, when all they had ever known were green or blue. Such families live a comfortable life in the trackless depths of the greenwood, supported by knowledge of their world that town dwellers cannot hope to appreciate. I have scaled the passes of the mountains dividing Solura from Mandarkin and similarly found Mountain clans with scant knowledge of lowland tongues and less interest in our lifestyle, content as they are with their own customs and comforts.

As a young student, I even hoped I might travel to some remote reach of the Dalasor grasslands and find the stocky lineaments and swarthy skin of Plains blood in some isolated nomadic clan. Alas, I now chide myself for such fancies, not because I believe legends of the Plains People fleeing beyond their rainbows but rather because I learn the brutal cohorts of the Old Tormalin Empire did their work all too well. Tilot’s progress through his libraries has unaccountably failed to bring him to the innumerable records of the strife that marked the Old Empire’s conquest of unwilling lands. This is no tale of peaceable union. Nowhere was this fighting more fierce than in the grasslands of Dalasor. Time and again, the archives of Tormalin Houses speak of the unfamiliar race already dwelling beyond the Ast marches. Those tied to vills and burgages in Caladhria and Lescar may well have yielded to the invaders rather than see homes and livelihoods burned over their heads but the herders between the Dalas and the Drax could vanish into the distance whenever the cohorts advanced, returning under the cover of night to strike at their tormentors.

We have copious journals and letters written by the young esquires leading those cohorts. All see the Plains People as entirely different from themselves. They speak of them wrapping themselves in shadow to pass unseen. We read of plans thwarted when news known only to a captive is communicated to his fellows beyond, enabling them to evade pursuit or launch some preemptive attack. In contrast, acts of mercy and kindness are rewarded with gifts brought by unseen hands, found by men who had told no one where they intended to hunt or bathe. These real and doubtless unnerving experiences have been handed down to us by way of children’s tales of the Eldritch Kin. Even the most inventive fancy could not build such chilling notions without some foundation.

A few years since, I could not have explained that foundation but let us not join Tilot in ignoring the issue of Artifice. The comprehensive studies of our estimable Mentor Keran Tonin offer the best guide to any curious on this subject but, suffice it to say, I am convinced by his argument that this ancient magic was known to all three of the earliest races and inextricably woven into their religions. It was from them that the emerging powers of Tormalin learned their lore and turned it to their advantage. Now we see that power ultimately proved a double-edged sword, as its loss brought disaster to Toremal’s Emperors at the height of their powers. For the Plains People, it proved no salvation but it unquestionably provides the origin for the Eldritch Kin’s mystical talents.

What has this to do with Tilot’s arguments? Consider this: prompted to look outwards and beyond our easy assumptions by the events of the past few years, scholars of Vanam have discovered aetheric magic hidden among the Mountain Men and Forest Folk both, well hidden from prying eyes. If we of Ensaimm and the other erstwhile western provinces of the Old Empire are indeed descended from the Plains People, how is it that we have no recollection of such lore? Alas, I fear the secrets of the Plains magic were scattered on the wind as the nomads fell beneath Tormalin blades. As the re-emergence of Artifice holds out its intriguing promise, I am surely not the only one to mourn such a loss.

Rettasekke, Islands of the Elietimm, 7th of For-Summer

You’re either bored or plotting something.” Sorgrad studied me after looking round my door to find me sitting cross-legged on my bed.

“Bored,” I said with a rueful grin. I was playing an idle game of runes, one hand throwing against the other. “No one’s overly inclined to gossip with me.” I’d done my best to be helpful and friendly after another strangely assorted breakfast but none of the women about the keep would give me more than a couple of words.

I threw a cast of runes on the bed and totted up the score out of old habit. With the Sun dominant, dagger hand had the Reed, the Pine and the Chime beating the off-hand’s Horn, Drum and Sea.

“They’re just jealous.” ’Gren peered past his brother’s shoulder. “With you so devastatingly beautiful and this shocking shortage of men.” He sighed in mock regret.

“Where did you sleep last night?” I asked as I put away my rune sticks.

“Next to me and snoring fit to shake the bones that guard our homeland,” Sorgrad replied with faint malice.

“I could have tucked up a pretty girl five times over.” ’Gren shook his head. ”But my so-chaste brother here thinks it better we keep ourselves to ourselves.”

“Five would be a record, even for you.” We were walking down the corridor now. “Why does a runt like you get welcomed like Halcarion’s best idea since sex itself?”

’Gren stuck his tongue out at me. ”Because they’ve lost four ships since Equinox, all hands drowned, all thanks to Ilkehan according to the word at the wellhead.”

I winced. “That’s a lot of widows and orphans.”

“A drain on Olret’s resources just when he lacks strong arms and backs to get the hay cut and the harvest in.” Sorgrad shrugged. “Ilkehan’s not stupid.”

“He will be when he’s dead. Do we have a plan yet?” ’Gren looked eager.

“There’s a chunk of rock towards the northern end of the strait between here and Ilkehan’s territory.” Sorgrad smiled. “It used to be part of Rettasekke and Olret’s been wanting it back for some while. He’ll attack while we take a boat to the northern end of Kehannasekke.”

I frowned. “Which leaves us with a cursed long walk, if I’m remembering the map right, over barren land at that.”

“The central uplands are passable in summer, according to Olret.” Sorgrad was unconcerned. “Anyway, we want to give Ilkehan a few days to send all his muster off to fight and leave his keep unguarded.”

“But how do we get to kill Ilkehan?” demanded ’Gren.

“There’ll be time enough to work that out as we travel.” Sorgrad shot his brother a piercing blue look. “Your feet are always running faster than your boots.”

And if we made our plans as we went, I thought, no one here could betray them, by accident or design.

“You don’t plough a field by turning it over in your mind,” ’Gren retorted. But he dropped the subject as we found Olret in the main hall with Ryshad and Shiv poring over a map on the long table.

“I’ll gather men and boats here and here.” Olret stabbed a finger at the parchment. “We can attack tomorrow.”

“Then we leave today.” Sorgrad looked at Ryshad.

I ducked under Ryshad’s arm, sliding a hand around his waist as he nodded to Sorgrad. “Well soaped is half shaved.”

Olret frowned with what could be suspicion or just bemusement at that particular piece of homely wisdom. “So soon?”

Ryshad hugged me before leaning forward to trace a finger down the broken mountains that formed Kehannasekke’s spine. “That’ll be hard going. The more time we have in hand the better.”

“How long will you be fighting Ilkehan?” demanded Sorgrad. “If you’ve driven him off those rocks before we’re barely halfway there, we’re all but lost.”

“Or if he drives your lot into the quicksands,” added ’Gren, all polite helpfulness.

Olret scowled at him. “We will not be driven back.”

“All the more reason for us to be ready to strike as soon as possible,” Ryshad said firmly.

Shiv was still studying the map. “Could you send some other boats fishing or something, at the same time as we set out? They’ll draw any curious eyes away from us.”

“Maedror can arrange that while he finds you a boat and crew,” Olret grudgingly conceded.

Sorgrad shook his head. “We’ll row ourselves. If we’re caught, we’ll take our chances. If your people are taken, that tells Ilkehan you’re helping us.”

“We don’t want to bring any more trouble down on your people,” said Shiv earnestly.

Olret’s face twisted with resentment. “Ilkehan thinks himself so powerful, so untouchable.”

“We’ll show him different,” ’Gren assured him blithely.

“We’ll get our gear, while Maedror arranges a boat.” Ryshad’s respectful courtesy left Olret with no option but to summon the guard waiting warily by the far door. By the time we’d packed up our few possessions and returned to the great hall, Maedror was waiting.

“The master will meet us at the water’s edge,” he said shortly as he handed us each an oilskin-covered bundle. I found mine contained bread and dried meat as he led us out to the stone jetties where an anonymous hide-covered boat bobbed gently at a tether.

Instead of his earlier ill temper, Olret greeted us with a smile. I wondered if it was as false as my own. “You have been my guests for so short a time but know that I value the friendship you offer.” He spoke loudly enough for the curious, pausing in their incessant fish gutting, to hear. “As you depart, I offer gifts in earnest of our future hopes.”

Ryshad and Shiv each got a braided wristlet of pale leather, threaded through beads of dark red stone.

“We call it Maewelin’s blood.” Olret offered similar wristlets to ’Gren and Sorgrad. “The tale has it that the Mother cut herself shaping such sharp mountains.” He chuckled and we laughed dutifully at the pleasantry.

“Does it hold any virtue?” I nearly said Artifice but caught myself just in time.

“Not beyond its beauty.” Olret looked puzzled. “But it loses its lustre unless it sees the sunlight, which we take as token of the Mother’s blessing within it.” He had a pendant on a single thong for me but I stopped him putting it over my head with a deprecating smile. “May I look?” No one puts something that might strangle me around my neck. I studied the red stone glowing in the bright sun, veins of green and yellow teasing the eye as they disappeared into the piece skilfully shaped to resemble the closed bud of a flower. “It’s beautiful.” I put the thong around my neck with a suitably grateful beam.

“We should leave before those boats get too far away to give us cover.” Ryshad pointed to others already cutting through the water, most with oars, one larger with a single square-rigged sail of ruddy leather. They were heading southwards down the strait towards the dark line scored by a broken row of sandbanks and rocky outcrops rising barely higher than the water. With a final bow to Olret we took up the places we’d become used to in the boat that had brought us here.

“Keep close in to shore,” Shiv ordered as Ryshad pushed us away from the jetty. Sorgrad gritted his teeth and hauled in his oar, ’Gren doing the same beside him.

“Don’t blame me if we get covered in bird shit.” Ryshad steered a careful course towards the piled stacks of black rock with their bickering roosts.

I waved a farewell at Olret who was watching us with a peculiar hunger on his face. “Goodbye,” I muttered. “Goodbye warm baths, clean beds and food someone else has cooked, even if it is the strangest I’ve ever tasted.”

’Gren laughed.

“Mind the outflow from the sluices,” Shiv warned as we passed the mill atop the causeway, water foaming from gates beneath it.

As they all concentrated on oars, tiller and the rush of water beneath the thin hull, we all fell silent, the only sound the rhythmic plash of the oars.

I twisted to check that we were out of sight of Olret and promptly took his pendant off.

“Don’t,” said Sorgrad sharply, seeing I was about to toss it into the sea.

“It’s the only thing we’ve seen there worth stealing,” ’Gren agreed. “Trust me, I looked.”

“I don’t trust Olret and so I don’t trust his gifts.” I hoped no one asked me to elaborate. I’d still rather not complicate matters by explaining about those Shernasekke women.

“Have you any sense that they’re enchanted?” Ryshad looked past me. “Shiv?”

“I’m the wrong mage again.” Shiv looked chagrined. “But I can’t feel anything awry and I always did handling Kellarin artefacts.”

“It could carry some charm to help him keep track of us,” I warned. “Or hear what we’re saying?”

“If there is some trick, getting rid of the things will just let him know we suspect him.” Sorgrad shipped his oar for a moment.

“He could just have been giving us a gift,” ’Gren mused as he took a rest as well.

I looked quizzically at him. “And you tell me to live my life trusting nothing and no one until Saedrin tells me different at the end of it.”

“I don’t have to trust someone to take their valuables.” ’Gren was unconcerned. “Anyway, we might want to bribe someone to look the other way before we’re done with Ilkehan. Better to use Olret’s wealth than our own.”

“We wrap them up at the bottom of someone’s pack,” Sorgrad said firmly. “Then any kind of magic will show him piss all but he won’t think we’re scorning or deceiving him by getting rid of them. I’ll take them.”

I turned to Ryshad who was leaning on the tiller with unseeing eyes. “Ryshad?”

He smiled at me. “I just remembered where I’ve seen this stone before. One of Messire D’Olbriot’s sisters has some pieces, passed to her by an aunt from one of the House’s cadet lines. She got them from some ancestor who married into a family trading out of Blacklith.”

“When we get back, you might like to ask your D’Olbriot just where his kin by marriage were trading in the Dalasor grassland clans,” Sorgrad remarked as he leant into his oar. “Now, where are we’re heading?”

“Just out of sight of Rettasekke and across the strait,” Ryshad told him. “I’ll be cursed before I flog you all the way up to where Olret suggested.”

“Cursed by me, that’s for sure.” ’Gren looked at Ryshad. “You don’t trust him?”

It’s always reassuring to have people thinking the same way as me.

“I don’t trust his reasoning.” Ryshad checked wind and wave before leaning on the tiller. “His route would take far too long. I want to be ready to hit Ilkehan as soon as we can.”

“If his attack goes badly, Olret might just give us up to save his own skin,” I pointed out. “He was discussing some kind of a truce when Ilkehan mutilated his son.”

“That lad’ll likely lose the other eye, even if he lives,” grimaced Sorgrad. “I’ve seen it before with a blinding.”

The memory of the tortured boy prompted another long silence as we toiled up the Rettasekke coast.

“This is our closest approach,” Ryshad announced some while later. “Shiv, you and Livak take the second set of oars and for all our sakes, match your stroke to hers.”

Rettasekke reached out into the sea, rising up to a headland faced with sheer cliffs. Distant Kehannasekke lurked just visible, a long sweep of low land among the ever-present mists across the open water. I made my way gingerly up the boat to join Shiv on the forward thwart.

“I’ll keep us balanced,” Shiv assured me.

“What do you think we’ll find when we land?” asked ’Gren. “Do you think Ilkehan truly has Eldritch Kin to call up and do his will?”

I was regretting telling him what the children had said. “Let’s just get safely ashore, shall we?”

“As long as the mist hobs don’t get us first,” chuckled ’Gren.

“What’s one of those, when it’s at home?” I demanded.

“They blow in with the fogs and tempt away children and goatlings and foolish hounds,” said ’Gren with relish. “They carry them off on the back of the north wind.”

“Do you suppose these people share many myths with yours?” Shiv asked ’Gren thoughtfully. “Childhood nightmares would make useful illusions to clear our path out of there.”

“That’s a sound notion,” Ryshad approved.

“What would scare you, ’Gren?” I corrected myself. “What would scare normal people?”

He laughed. “There’s wraiths. They’ll suck the light out of your eyes, given half a chance.”

“Wraiths live in dark holes and you can generally avoid those,” countered Sorgrad. “Gwelgar always worried me more. They make themselves out of mud and grass and that’s everywhere.”

“They rip evildoers limb from limb,” said ’Gren gleefully.

“If the bones of a soke’s ancestors feel someone guilty of a mortal crime passing their cave, they summon up a gwelgar,” Sorgrad explained. “It follows the guilt in their footsteps and nothing stops it, nothing kills it, nothing throws it off the scent.”

“According to our Aunt Mourve,” ’Gren continued sourly, “after it’s killed whoever it’s hunting, it goes looking for naughty children to give them a good spanking.”

“I never liked her,” remarked Sorgrad.

I wouldn’t exactly call it entertainment but, between them, Sorgrad and ’Gren had enough fables of disconcerting horrors lurking in mountain crevices to take our minds off the backbreaking work of rowing. Even so, by the time we reached Kehannasekke’s sprawling maze of salt marsh and treacherous sands, my shoulders were burning and my arms trembled between every time I hauled on the oar.

Ryshad was scanning the shore for somewhere solid enough to set foot. “Over there.”

As soon as we were all on the dubious safety of a stone-spotted bank of dour grey sand, Sorgrad pulled out a dagger and ripped a rent in the hide hull. “Cast it adrift,” he ordered. “We don’t want anyone thinking Rettasekke men have landed.”

Ryshad shoved it off into the retreating ripples with one booted foot. He smiled reassurance at me. “We’ll be leaving by magic or not at all.”

“Let’s get on.” ’Gren was already heading for the grass-tufted dunes inland, bag slung over his back.

No one wasted breath on idle chatter as we hurried into the shelter of the dunes. The sands gave way to a narrow expanse of close-cropped turf but thankfully any goats were off being coiffed for the summer. I murmured the Forest charm for concealment as we darted across, feeling as vulnerable as any hare started from its form until we reached the broken, hostile land beyond. Stark grey hills rose all around us. Not the raw peaks of Rettasekke, these mountains had been worn to low nubs by countless generations of cold and storm. Screes striped the steeply sloping sides of a cleft that offered our only path.

“Where do we run if we meet trouble?” Sceptical, I looked at treacherous slopes offering scant safe footing.

“We don’t,” Ryshad said, drawing his sword.

“We kill it.” ’Gren was scouting eagerly ahead.

Thankfully we didn’t meet anyone, just spent an interminable day negotiating ankle-wrenching rock fields, skirting bogs that could swallow a horse and cart and skulking along the edges of the few patches of land that showed any sign of tillage or grazing. We ate as we walked until finally the curious, endless dusk of these northern lands began shrinking the world around us. Shadows gathered in hollows and dells, gloom thickening beneath the few spindly trees. Beneath the translucent lavender sky, darkness shifting and deceiving the eye, I could see how people might believe in Otherworldly creatures using such half-light as a path between their realm and ours. I rather wished ’Gren had kept some of his more bloodcurdling myths to himself.

“This looks a good place for the night.” Shiv pointed to a tangle of stunted birch trees, dry earth bare beneath them.

Sorgrad dumped his satchel and rummaged in it for some food. “Let’s have a plan before the morning,” he suggested. “Something a bit more definite than ‘just kill Ilkehan’. Surprise will be everything, if we’re to get in and out alive, so we need to know exactly what we’re doing and not waste a breath as we do it.”

Ryshad lay down on the dry ground and stretched his hands over his head. “How do we get inside the keep for a start?”

“How do we find out where he is inside it?” added Sorgrad. “We don’t want to be wandering round, knocking on doors.”

I patted the pouch where my parchment crackled. “I can use one of the Forest charms for finding prey to seek out Ilkehan.”

“You’re sure?” Ryshad couldn’t help himself.

“Of course she is, and so are we.” ’Gren winked at me. ”Belief’s everything with Artifice, isn’t it?”

“Remember what Guinalle said about Artifice and Ilkehan?” Shiv was kneeling by a paltry spring whose flow was soon sucked back into the thirsty land. “The more shameful we can make his death, the more effectively we destroy the power those enchanters in Suthyfer rely on.”

“You can leave humiliating the corpse to me.” ’Gren looked disconcertingly eager.

“Is this safe to drink?” At Shiv’s nod, I dipped a handful from the little pool and drank gratefully. “Lore and Artifice seem centred on these hargeards, these stone circles. Could we destroy Kehannasekke’s?”

“It’s an obvious thing to do,” Sorgrad agreed.

Ryshad sat up and found himself some food. “Shiv?”

“If we find the hargeard, I can destroy it.” The mage waved a hand containing a hunk of bread. “As long as I don’t have some Elietimm clawing the wits out of my head.”

“So we need to find the hargeard circle before we move on Ilkehan.” Ryshad pursed his lips. “As soon as he’s dead, we break his stones, so to speak.”

’Gren chuckled at the jest.

“We’re sure to be seen, doing all this.” I rubbed wet hands over my face to shed some of the day’s grime. “Let’s make that work for us, if we can. You recall the children said Ukehan’s in league with these gebaedim, Eldritch Kin, whatever they are. Is there any way we can go in disguised as vengeful spirits? If we frighten people thoroughly enough, they won’t stop to look too closely.”

“More to the point, they won’t have the first clue where we came from.” Ryshad nodded.

“If they think we’re immortal, maybe they won’t bother trying to kill us.”

’Gren liked that idea.

“I’ll settle for not missing a sword at my back because I’ve got this cursed hood up,” I said with feeling.

“The problem is, we can’t have Shiv working illusions until Ukehan’s dead.” Ryshad knitted concerned brows.

“If we can find the right plants, I can turn us black haired and blue skinned with no need for magecraft.” The wizard chuckled. “Living with Pered, I’ve learned more about dyes and colourings than any sane man could ever need to know.”

Sorgrad laughed. “That’ll be worth doing just to see Halice’s face when we get back.”

“What are we looking for?” ’Gren went to root among the plants crouching along the line of the inadequate stream like some oversized truffle hound.

“Flagflowers, if you can find them.” Shiv stood up. He went foraging and soon returned with his hands full of pale, knobbly roots with dark earth and a few sprigs of spite nettle still clinging to them. “Mind those leaves, they sting.” He dumped the lot into my startled hands.

“Good thing we’re here in the growing season,” I remarked.

Ryshad scratched his head. “Can I see the map, Shiv, before you start painting us like marionettes?”

Shiv dropped more roots on the grass, and wiped his hands on his breeches before getting out the much-creased parchment. “We’re two, three days’ hard march from Ilkehan.” His finger wavered over our general location then touched lightly on a spot just beyond the little castle symbol Pered had used for Kehannasekke’s keep. “That’s where we were captured last time.”

“Which would be a good place to find somewhere to hide up,” Ryshad mused. “In those hillocks just inshore.”

Sorgrad came to look. “We want a vantage point, so we can keep a good watch for at least a full cycle of the guard.”

’Gren appeared, hands full of dripping roots and Shiv hastily whipped the map out of danger. ”I’m ready to fight anyone, any time of day.”

“We know,” I told him repressively. “Try for a little patience. Shiv’s got to paint us up like Eldritch Kin for a start.”

Sorgrad looked curiously at Shiv. “Just how are you going to do that?”

“Who’s carrying a candle?” Shiv squatted down and began shaving spite nettle roots into fine strips with his belt knife. “And I need something to hold water.”

Sorgrad sighed as he produced a small silver cup from his belt pouch. “I generally use this for wine.”

“Don’t see a lot of that around here.” ’Gren dug in his pockets and produced a candle end. I found two short stubs in my pack.

Ryshad offered a plain horn cup to Shiv. The wizard took it. “Thanks. I reckon using magic for this is safer than lighting a fire. Smoke and light will carry and it’ll take ten times as long.”

Ryshad nodded reluctantly. “I suppose Ilkehan would have to suspect someone was using magic to come looking for it, but the faster the better, Shiv. We’ll keep watch all the same.”

Apprehension prickled between my shoulder blades as I matched Ryshad walking around the isolated dell, looking up and down the narrow winding valley, straining to hear any hint of booted feet or stifled whispers in the darkening shadows. I sternly curbed my fancy when I found I was dwelling on all the things that could go wrong with this madcap scheme. All right, it was a high stakes game, the highest in fact, but the trick to any hand is playing each throw of runes as they fall. I had plenty of advantages on my side as well; Ryshad’s intelligence, Shiv’s magic and the brothers’ capacity for unflinching mayhem. And it was Sorgrad who’d taught me you win even the most trivial of games by playing as if you were gambling with Poldrion for his ferry fee to the Otherworld.

“Ready.” Shiv called in a low voice. The sight of ’Gren rubbing blue candle grease into his face gave me the first good laugh of this day and a good few since.

“Do you think we’ll set a new fashion?” Sorgrad was kneeling with his head bent as Shiv carefully slopped black liquid into his hair.

“How easily will this wash off?” I dipped a suspicious finger into the smoky blue tallow.

“I’m not sure,” Shiv answered frankly. “Don’t put it on too thickly. A little will go a long way and we don’t have any to waste.”

“I’ll do you, if you’ll do me,” invited Ryshad, scooping some into his palm.

“That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.” I fluttered flirtatious eyelashes at him.

Ryshad’s hands were gentle on my face as I relished in my turn the feel of bristles roughening his strong jaw and the smoother skin around his hairline. He brushed his lips against the inside of my wrist and we shared a private smile. If this was all the intimacy we could get before we risked our lives, we’d make the most of it.

“So, we watch the keep and work out where Ilkehan will be.” Sorgrad returned to planning the detail of our attack as he lifted his chin to colour his neck. “What’s our actual path in?”

“Through the drains and cellars?” I suggested. “That’s the way we got out last time.”

“We go straight for Ilkehan, hit him as hard as we can, all of us at once,” said Ryshad.

Sorgrad nodded. “Kill him before he can decide which of us to attack first.”

I couldn’t restrain a shiver. “It’s not going to be like last time,” Ryshad promised, holding my gaze.

“We should use some black in the last of the skin paint,” ’Gren said suddenly. ”Fill in the hollows of our eyes, like Sheltya do.” His hair was black as midnight now and his teeth were startling white against a face almost the hue of the dusk sky above.

“That’s a sound idea.” I’d forgotten how unearthly that made the Mountain practitioners of Artifice look.

“I wonder what the Sheltya know of the Plains People and the Eldritch Kin,” mused Ryshad.

“We’ll ask Aritane when we get back, shall we?” I smiled at him.

“When we get back,” he echoed.

“Who’ll be buying the drinks?” demanded ’Gren. It plainly didn’t occur to him that there was any doubt we would be getting out of this. I decided to adopt his certainty. Belief was everything in these islands, wasn’t it?

Suthyfer, Sentry Island, 7th of For-Summer

I do not see that you have the authority to tell me I cannot come.” Temar silently cursed whatever god had made Halice taller than him.

“We’ve made our plan and you agreed it.” Sat on a crude bench outside the cabin, the level strokes of her whetstone didn’t vary as the mercenary sharpened her sword. “Changing horses midstream is a quick and stupid way to drown. Yes, Pered?”

“Sketches of the enchanters.” The artist waved a sheaf of parchment scraps. “I’ve done my best from Guinalle’s descriptions.”

Halice nodded. “Given them to Minare and Rosarn. Tell Vaspret I want to see him, if you get a chance.”

Pered swept a mock salute and sauntered off.

“If I come with you, I can lead another assault.” Temar wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“Leading assaults isn’t your job,” said Halice bluntly. “You’re not leading a cohort any more, you’re leading a colony.”

“With every man we can muster, we could finish this tonight,” cried Temar. “Kill Muredarch and have done.”

“You’re forgetting those enchanters,” Halice chided. “We’re hitting the stockade, that’s all.” She tilted the blade to catch the firelight and studied the edge. “I’d like to string Muredarch up by his pizzle for what he did to Naldeth, but all in good time, my lad. Tonight we free as many prisoners as we can and then we run before those enchanters have their hands off their tools long enough to wonder where their boots are.” Halice held the heavy sword’s hilt easily in her broad hand and very carefully shaved a little swathe through the dark hairs on her forearm. “As soon as Livak tells us Ilkehan’s dead, we’ll make Elietimm and pirates both sorry they ever set eyes on each other.”

What if Ilkehan couldn’t be killed? Temar was trying to find the words to ask this without risking rebuke when Usara came out of the cabin.

“Could you keep the noise down?” the wizard asked with terse politeness. “Guinalle’s overtired and overwrought. You two bickering out here is the last thing she needs.”

“How’s Naldeth?” asked Halice.

“Asleep.” The wizard looked weary to the bone. “If you can get anything more out of Guinalle than ‘he’s as well as can be expected’ let me know.”

“Are the pirates still convinced there’s no way we can reach them at night?” Halice demanded.

Usara nodded. “Them and the enchanters as well, apparently.”

“Then she should sleep while we go and prove them wrong.” Halice slid her sword into its sheath. “Temar, tell Guinalle we’ll need her rested if we bring back wounded. She might take heed of that. Darni!”

The burly warrior was a little way down the beach, mercenaries and sailors gathered round him.

“She says she can’t rest in case Naldeth suffers some crisis.” Usara’s thoughts were still inside the hut with Guinalle. “He’s lost so much blood, she’s worried she’ll have to strengthen his heart again. I could do that much with wizardry but she won’t even let me try.”

Temar’s mind was on his own grievances. “I don’t see why Darni is the only choice to lead the other half of this assault.”

Usara wasn’t listening, seeing Allin come to join Darni and Halice. Darni laughed abruptly and Halice scrubbed a hand through her short hair, face intrigued. “What are they up to?”

“Let’s find out.” Temar rose and Usara followed as they hurried to catch Halice and the big warrior disappearing into the shadows behind the cabin.

“Curse it.” Temar stumbled awkwardly on a treacherous tree root. With clouds covering the lesser moon barely at her half and her greater sister waning from her own, the night was a confusion of half-light and shadow.

“I appreciate you want to attack on the darkest night we’ll have before Solstice but that hampers your troops just as much as the enemy.” Larissa’s cool voice only served to warm Temar’s resentment at being excluded.

“I don’t have time for admiring clever mages,” Halice warned bluntly. “Shit!”

Temar felt Usara freeze, as startled as him.

“How did you do that?” Halice asked cautiously after a moment.

“Do what?” demanded Usara with frustration equal to Temar’s own.

“Light is made up of varying degrees of heat.” Pride bubbled irrepressibly in Larissa’s voice. “If you see the warmth—”

“I can see in the dark.” Halice’s wonder finished the sentence for the mage-girl. “How long does it last and how many of us can you bespell?”

“Barely half a chime.” Larissa sounded annoyed with herself.

“We can bespell two or three of you,” Allin offered meekly.

“Each of us,” clarified Larissa quickly. “Call it a handful between us.”

“Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.” Laughter rumbled deep in Darni’s chest. “Kalion had better look to his conjuring when you get back to Hadrumal, ladies, or one of you’ll be nominated Hearth Mistress inside the year.”

“It was mostly Allin’s idea.” Larissa didn’t sound displeased with the praise though. “Once we decided not to provoke Muredarch by drying up his wells.”

“Larissa saw how to make it work,” insisted Allin.

“We need to refine it before it’s a truly effective spell.” The clouds cleared a little and Temar saw Larissa raise a hand. “Usara? Can you help?”

“How do we make this work for us?” mused Halice. “How much can I see where there is some light?” She headed back for the beach, the mages close around her, watching alertly.

Temar hurried after them. “You’d need a second in command whose vision isn’t altered.”

“You’re not coming.” Darni stretched out an arm like a fence rail to hold him back. “We can’t chance your loss or capture.”

“I can hold my own in a fight,” Temar said stiffly.

“Emperors fall face down in the shit, just the same as peasants.” Darni gave the young nobleman a hard look. “The rest of us are expendable. You’re not.”

“How long would Guinalle hold out if she saw you being dipped for the sharks?” Halice turned the corner of the hut and swore. “Shit, I can’t look anywhere close to a fire. It hurts worse than taking it up the back alley.” She mopped her streaming eyes.

“Stand still.” Larissa passed her hands across the mercenary’s face.

“That’s better.” Halice grunted with satisfaction “Mind you, in the right place this could weight the runes for us. Can all three of you do this?”

“It’ll be easy enough to show Usara the trick of it,” said Larissa confidently.

“You can’t all be going?” Temar stepped around Darni’s arm. “I shall need a mage here, surely. Allin can stay.” Larissa could risk her neck with her ill-concealed ambitions, but Allin was far too precious to him. That abrupt realisation blinded Temar as effectively as the firelight in Halice’s bespelled eyes.

“We need all the mages this time,” said Halice with perfunctory apology.

“What if you need to bespeak me?” Temar objected. Was there any way he could insist Allin stayed aboard ship rather than join the actual assault?

“You’ll just have to keep a good watch out,” Darni told him. “We need the wizards to get us all ashore without lights.”

“There is one thing you can do for us, Messire D’Alsennin.” Halice snapped her fingers at the young man. “Tell them why we’re going. That’s a Sieur’s job.”

Temar gathered his wits as he saw the array of expectant faces among the campfires on the beach. Catching sight of Allin’s hopeful face, radiant with trust, he realised he had to find the words to make these people fight fiercely enough to bring her back safe. He bowed to the waiting men and women, mercenaries, sailors and Kellarin folk, the golden firelight making equals of them all against the velvet blackness of sea and sky. All of them bowed back and Temar cleared his throat.

“I know some of you and you know me, after these last seasons working for Kellarin’s benefit. I don’t suppose Sieur D’Alsennin means a lot to the rest of you; I’m sorry I’ve had so little chance to introduce myself as yet. Forgive me; we’ll do something about that on your return. You might pick up a few barrels of Kellarin’s wine that those thieves have stolen. It’s always easier to make new friends over a drink.”

A ripple of appreciative laughter encouraged him. Temar waved a negligent hand.

“You’ll be well paid, that goes without saying, but all the gold ever minted can’t buy a life and it’s the lives of those innocents in that foul stockade you must fight for tonight. You’ve all heard what was done to Naldeth. You’ll not stand to see that done to anyone else, will you?”

A dour chorus of agreement ran around the sands and Temar saw righteous anger on most faces, coloured here and there with ferocious anticipation.

“This isn’t the night for making those scum pay for their crimes, mind you. That’ll come soon enough, never fear. Tonight you take away the stick they think they can beat us with. Then we wait for friends elsewhere to cut away the prop of their treacherous magic. Once that’s gone we’ll send them all so fast to the shades there’ll be standing room only in Poldrion’s ferry. Saedrin himself will have them drawing lots to see who steps up first.”

That didn’t get much of a laugh so Temar stopped straining his eloquence.

“Go in, get the prisoners, get back here with your skins whole.” He shrugged. “It’s simple enough. You know what you’re doing.”

That won him a rousing cheer and a slap on the shoulder from Halice. “We’ll make a leader of you yet, my lad.”

“Not if you keep calling me that,” he retorted.

“We’ll keep it between you and me, then.” She grinned, unapologetic. “Come on, Allin, Usara.”

Halice didn’t look back as she strode down the beach, her handpicked troop gathering around her. She’d stop calling Temar ‘lad’ when he’d earned the respect to go with the title birth and chance had conferred upon him. Not that he was doing so badly, she allowed, though that romantic streak would have had him long dead in the viciousness of the Lescari wars.

“What’s the joke, boss?” Minare was at her elbow, the rest following on behind.

“Nothing.” Halice’s smile vanished. “We’re ready for dealing out blood and filth and death and pain?”

“All single minds and no hearts,” Minare confirmed. “I should have known there’d be a price due for a peaceful life in Kellarin.”

“Make sure anyone within reach of your blade dies there and we can all go back to it.” That’s what Halice’s mind was set upon. “Come on, get a move on!” She waved the fighting force towards the waiting boats.

The captain of the Dulse was waiting on the main deck when she climbed aboard. “How close do you want me inshore?”

“We’ll tell you when we get there.” Halice looked to check the longboats were being securely lashed to the Dulse’s stern. “Wait for our signal and then come in to get us.”

“It’s poor light and worse water,” Master Jevon warned her.

“The wizards have that in hand,” Halice reassured him. “Usara? This way.”

The mage followed her to the shallow deck of the forecastle where Halice found a dark-haired man with a coil of thin rope in his hands, leather and bone tags marking its length.

“Jil, this is Usara. Right, Master Mage, prove this idea of yours works before I risk all our necks trusting you.” She nodded to Jil who deftly cast the lead weight he held over the prow, fingers noting the thin rope’s progress without conscious thought. “We’ve got—”

Halice hushed him with a curt hand. “Usara?”

Usara frowned. “There’s five spans of water beneath the keel. The bottom’s sandy here but there are rocks about a plough length that way.” He pointed into the darkness. “And over there.”

“Jil?”

“That’s what the charts say,” admitted the sounding man.

“We’ll make a pilot of him yet, won’t we?” Halice grinned.

“Good enough to put me out of work.” Jil didn’t sound too thrilled.

Halice left the mage to placate the sailor and went down into the waist of the ship, balancing herself as the ship got underway. Her troop was gathered on one side of the deck, Darni’s on the other. Halice listened with half an ear as Darni spoke to those under his command. She’d been relieved to see he treated his men well as they’d drilled their motley band into some semblance of a corps. He was appropriately courteous to the few women under his command as well, but cut them no slack that might trip the entire troop. Halice had no quarrel with that.

The Dulse’s crew moved round and above them, alert to every peril of night sailing. Master Jevon stood, arms akimbo, on the aftdeck. The helmsman didn’t take his eyes off his captain as he felt every movement of sea and ship through the whipstaff.

“Will this be like taking that watchpost?” Halice saw the lad Glane was looking apprehensive.

“Easier, if we all keep our heads,” she told him unemotionally. “Keep one eye on the enemy, one eye on your mates and one on Vaspret.”

Glane managed a hesitant laugh. “I’ll try.”

“You know where that third eye comes from, lad?” Peyt was sharpening a sword that gleamed brilliantly clean in contrast to his unshaven dishevelment.

Glane shook his head, mystified.

Peyt clutched his groin with a suggestive grin. “What’s got one eye in here?”

“Think with what’s between your ears, not between your legs,” Halice interrupted him. “Chance your arm like you did in Sharlac and I’ll leave you behind.”

“Peyt’ll just walk back across the open water,” Deglain laughed from his seat in the shadow of the mainsail.

Peyt sneered at him but, before he could reply, Halice bent close to whisper in his ear. “Don’t think you’ll get a chance to stay and turn pirate. I’ve someone ready to put a bolt through your head if I give the nod, you and all your cronies.” She watched him with a dangerous smile as he realised the men he’d relied on to back him in Kellarin were scattered between the two troops. The arrogance faded from his face.

Halice stood in the centre of the deck. “Tonight, we put a scare into them. Do that well enough and they’ll break like reeds when we make our main attack. Check your weapons and be sure you’re ready to go as soon as we get there.”

She moved on to the sheltered stretch of deck just below the aftcastle. Rosarn looked up from bundling sheaves of arrows into oiled skins to save them from salt and damp. “We’ve less than five quivers a bow,” she warned. “And fewer spare strings than I’d like.”

“It’s a raid, Ros,” Halice reminded her. “We’re not taking the field against the Duke of Parnilesse again.”

Rosarn smiled. “He’s too much sense to fight in the dark.”

“Nobles are supposed to be wise. It’s mercenaries are madder than rabid dogs.” Halice watched the crossbowmen checking ratchets, windlasses and quarrels. “Did you get those pictures from Pered?”

Rosarn patted the breast of her jerkin. “We’ll know them better than their own mothers.”

“If you get a shot, take it but we’re not out to kill them at any cost.” Halice raised her voice so all the archers heard her. “Just keep them scared and ducking their heads as we break the prisoners out.”

“All set?” Darni came up to join them.

“Well enough,” Halice confirmed. “Yours?”

Darni nodded. “The experienced lads know we’re saving some pottage for another day. They won’t let the green ones start a fight to the death.”

“As long as they’re blooded before we take them into a real fight.” Halice looked the length of the ship, her gaze halting on Usara still high in the forecastle. “Fighting was so much simpler without magic to complicate it.”

“Don’t blame the mages,” Darni grinned. “Planir’s all for a simple life.”

“Let me know if he manages one,” Halice said drily. “I’ll bottle the secret and hawk it round the fairs. Where’s his favourite complication?”

Darni nodded towards the aft cabin. “Taking a rest, along with little Allin.” The Hadrumal warrior’s square face was unreadable in the gloom.

Halice beckoned and he followed her up to the aftdeck. The helmsman and Master Jevon ignored them, intent on guiding the ship safely through the dark waters.

“How is your troop?” Halice asked Darni quietly. “Who would you send them up against? Who would you run from?”

Darni considered her question before answering. “They’d hold their own in a skirmish with the Brewer’s Boys, as long as we got the drop on them, that is. I wouldn’t want to face them in line of battle. I’d be the first one running if we fell foul of Arkady or Wynald.”

“Fair enough.” That Darni had fought in Lescar at the Archmage’s behest was a secondary consideration for Halice, as long as his judgement agreed with hers.

Darni studied the men down on the main deck. “We can still use all the time we can get to drill them but I don’t suppose Sorgrad will dally just to suit our convenience.” There was respect for the Mountain Man in the warrior’s voice.

“No, I don’t suppose he will.” Halice wrinkled her nose in a private grimace. She’d rather have Sorgrad as her co-commander on this raid but better a bony fish than an empty dish. Besides, Darni had won Sorgrad’s esteem when they’d fought together in the Mountains last summer. That made Darni one of a very select company.

Still, Halice acknowledged, if the big dog’s loyalty to his master’s quail got him killed, she wouldn’t weep for Darni. If he got any of hers killed for the mage-girl’s sake, she’d claim a slice of his hide for each and every one of them. She’d try, anyway. Could she take him? She mentally measured his reach and stride. She hadn’t gone up against another corps commander in a long while. Not since before she’d had her leg smashed.

Halice rubbed absently at her thigh, feeling as always the slight thickening of the mended bone. She’d been crippled as surely as Naldeth until Artifice had reshaped the twisted and shortened limb. Magic certainly complicated the fighting life but there was no denying the value of skills like Guinalle’s, and the mages’ come to that. If she had to take up her sword again, better for a cause like this than some mere coffer of gold.

“Are your banner sergeants clear on their tasks?”

Darni was unscrewing the pommel of his sword. “Absolutely.” He took a coin out of the hollow in the hilt and polished it against his jerkin before putting it back. He grinned at Halice. “A luck piece from Strell, my wife. What do you carry?”

Halice smiled briefly. “A good whetstone.” She looked over her troop again, satisfying herself that Minare and Vaspret were best placed to strengthen the less experienced lads like Glane.

The ship ran on through the silent seas, everyone deep in their own thoughts. As the darkness of Suthyfer carved an outline against the stars, every head turned towards the crouching islands and the rushing of the surf. Sailors rushed aloft to furl sails and the ship slowed.

“How close do we go?” Master Jevon asked Halice.

“Watch the wizard.” She pointed to Usara standing shoulder to shoulder in the prow with Jil. The mage was intent on the black sea beneath the bowsprit and the entire ship fell silent, watching him. The helmsman moved the whipstaff with agonising delicacy at every shift of Jil’s hand. The ship crept closer and closer to the mouth of the strait where the pirates lurked. Ominous, the islands closed on either side of the Dulse, blotting out the few stars breaking through the rents in the cloud above.

“Stir the girls,” Halice said quietly.

Darni slid silently down the ladder to summon Larissa and Allin. They joined him on the deck, faces pale in a passing gleam of the scant moonlight.

“Call up the boats.” At her order, Master Jevon snapped his fingers at the boatswain and the Dulse’s crew began hauling up the longboats that had followed her like so many ducklings. The stealthy flap and rustle of canvas overhead was overtaken by the noise of cautious boots on the deck as both troops began climbing down the ladders and netting that the sailors draped over the rails on either side. Only a few whispered oaths broke the hush as somebody was jostled, and then stealthy oars slid into the water.

“See you later, Commander,” said Rosarn. Burdened with arrows and bows, the archers climbed carefully down to a boat crewed by men from the Dulse.

Halice went down to the main deck where Allin waited for her, bundled up in a dark cloak. “Let’s go.”

She went down the ladder first, ready to catch the mage-girl if she slipped. The last thing they needed was that kind of commotion. Once they were aboard without mishap, Halice looked across the inky water to find the longboat where Darni hulked massive in the prow, Larissa hooded beside him. She nodded to Minare who silently signalled the men to start rowing. The boats crept forward, silence more precious than speed, sliding into line, each behind the other. Darni led the rest on the other side of the strait.

Halice saw a coppery thread curling through the blackness of the night sea, a sheen like firelight glittering in the very water that should kill it dead, just far enough ahead so the tiller man could see it. Allin sat beside her, round face grave with concentration as the guiding light led them through the rock-strewn shadows of the ever-narrowing strait. Halice rubbed absently at her thigh.

An oar scraped against a hidden rock and a banner sergeant’s rebuke was hastily stifled. A scatter of huge stones tumbled down from the cliffs appeared in the water, shadows coming and going beneath the fitful light of the greater moon. Halice scowled upwards. It was a shame these wizards couldn’t concoct some means of summoning back the clouds.

The breeze brought the acrid scent of damp, charred wood and Halice dismissed every thought beyond the task ahead of her. She could just make out the stark wrecks of the burnt ships some way down the strait as the thread of magelight coiled in a faint pool of radiance at the very end of the shingle beach. Halice patted Allin’s cloaked arm in mute approval before climbing carefully out of the boat. She slid her boots noiselessly through the water, careful of her footing on treacherous stones.

Glancing back, she saw the newer recruits intent on her, anticipation in their shining eyes. Those already blooded under her command were keeping watch for the enemy. Halice studied the sprawling encampment on the far side of the landing. Some of the crooked cabins had spread to two and three rooms and moonlight glinted on windows plundered from the stern cabins of the Tang and Den Harkeil’s ship. One even boasted a precarious, stubby chimney but most were relying on cook fires scorching the turf or dug into stone-lined pits. Dying back in this stillest watch of the night, they threw up little more than a reddish glow.

There was one fire burning bright, a figure momentarily silhouetted as he threw a log from a handy pile into the flames. Halice watched that single fire as she led her troop ashore. It was a good way off and while it was on higher ground, the indisciplined huts and canvas-covered stores of loot obscured what should have been a clear view of the water. The other side of that coin was Halice couldn’t make out just how many raiders were awake and supposedly on watch. A handful? A double handful?

Her foremost men were at the very end of the shingle reach now, creeping closer and closer to the stockade. Minare’s men were the first to leave the treacherous stones and move more quickly over the muffling grass. As soon as the timber-walled prison was between her force and the sleeping pirates, Halice divided them with silent hand signals. Minare led his lads up around the stockade to keep watch on the landward side while Halice sent her men the other way, their path curling round close beneath the base of the wall. She fell back behind them, Vaspret at her side, the two of them low to the ground and moving out into the darkness until she could see the whole arc of the beach and the ground rising up to the pirate encampment beyond. She drew her sword.

“Go.”

Her soft command sent Vaspret running low and silent like a coursing hound. The sentry sat idly dozing against the gate of the stockade died before waking without a sound. Vaspret jerked his knife out of the pirate’s ribs, keeping one hand still clamped over the corpse’s mouth and nose as he wiped the blade clean.

As the rest of the troop waited, Deglain was already moving. With Vaspret keeping watch for him, he brought a formidable pair of blacksmith’s pincers to bear on the chain threaded through the gate. He leant all his strength to the task and the link he’d chosen gave way with a sharp crack. Everyone froze but no alarm roused among the oblivious huts.

Vaspret signalled and the rest of the men ran up to vanish inside the gates. Halice watched the distant fire, noting a sharp cry within the stockade followed by sudden hysterical weeping, both sounds silenced moments later. The first of Vaspret’s men reappeared, encouraging the more able prisoners, no need to impress upon them the necessity of speed and stealth. They vanished into the black night before the first cries came from a sentry, the startled man silhouetted by the fire at his back. As Vaspret’s men dragged and carried more of the prisoners away, commotion boiled up among the pirates’ shelters and tents. Vaspret was the last out, an unconscious woman slung over one shoulder.

Halice made a silent bet that she had been the one threatening hysterics. She took a few paces forward, drawing herself to her full height, sword catching the light as she lofted it for all the world like some hero from a ballad penned by a minstrel who’d never so much as lifted a dagger. The pirates were coming on now, some hesitating as to whether they should head for her or the stockade. Minare made that debate irrelevant as the mercenaries lying in wait unseen crashed into the raiders, taking full murderous advantage of their surprise.

“How are we doing?” Halice shouted to Vaspret as he passed her. The time for silence was emphatically past as the clash of steel and cries of pain roused Muredarch’s entire contingent.

“Just hold them off till we can get to the boats.” Vaspret halted as he heard battle cries more suited to the Lescari wars.

“If we can.” Halice watched as pirates by the huts and tents began massing for a more coherent attack. They hastily abandoned that ambition as a new attack came howling in to scatter them.

Vaspret chuckled. “A good man, that Darni.”

“Too good to leave out of this fun.” Halice slapped Vaspret’s unburdened shoulder. “Get those boats loaded.”

Vaspret vanished into the darkness and Halice heard a resounding voice bellowing, the mighty figure of Muredarch appearing for an instant in the light of the watch fire. With him to rally them, the raiders regrouped with more speed and efficiency than she’d have liked.

She looked to see how heavily Minare’s men were engaged and tried to judge how Darni’s troop was faring from the familiar noises of battle raging on the far side of the encampment. It was time to spite Muredarch before he got his men rallied for a counter attack.

“Withdraw!” Halice bellowed. Minare’s men and women kicked and hacked with redoubled ferocity to free themselves. Mercenaries ran past her, taking the most direct line to the unseen boats. Pirates cheered and jeered, some running ahead of the rest, naked swords silver slashes in the darkness as a few of Kellarin’s men lagged behind, their lack of experience telling.

“To me!” Halice yelled and a handful of mercenaries instinctively swerved to join their commander, racing back to fall upon the foremost pirates.

The first lost his head entirely to a sideways sweep of Deglain’s broadsword, his blood showering the startled Glane. The boy let his sword point drop and was nearly run through by a second raider who’d seen enough death not to mourn his erstwhile comrade. Peyt’s thrust pierced the pirate’s shoulder and sent the man stumbling backwards. Glane slashed with an edge of panic and the man dropped screaming and pawing at his shattered jaw and a gaping gash in his neck. Peyt finished the man with a thrust through one eye, standing on the corpse’s chest to pull his sword free and leaving a bloody footprint clearly visible on the dead pirate’s pale shirt.

“Come on!” roared Halice as Glane stumbled towards her, eyes rimmed with white, blood soaking all down one side, shaken beyond reason by the claustrophobic mayhem of battle. She ran to grab him by the arm, dragging him along. “Are you hurt?”

“They killed Reddig,” the boy gasped. “Cut him open like a hog.”

“Move before they do the same to you.” Halice shoved him towards the shore, turning back to see more pirates charging across the open ground, Muredarch’s shouts driving them on.

A deadly hail rained down. Some died before they hit the ground, shafts clean through heads and bodies. Others collapsed with shrieks of pain, clutching legs or arms torn by razor sharp arrowheads. A second volley came hissing out of the darkness of the far side of the strait as Rosarn and her archers drew down a storm of arrows between the raiders and their unexpected foes. Here and there, crossbow bolts knocked those unlucky enough to present tempting targets clean off their feet.

“Vas!” Halice yelled. “Are we done?” Rosarn wouldn’t have too many arrows left by now.

Vaspret’s reply was lost as a new commotion erupted on the far side of the landing. Halice couldn’t make out what was happening. “Allin!” She backed towards the longboats, balancing speed with the need to not fall on her own arse.

“Yes?” Allin appeared at her side, her voice quavering.

“Time to try that new trick of yours,” said Halice, voice calm and reassuring as she held out her hand.

Allin drew a deep breath. She gripped the mercenary commander’s fingers with surprising strength and that same obscure sensation crawled over Halice’s palm before sinking deep into her bones.

“Thanks.” Halice raised a hand to block the glow of the watch fire and stared into the darkness on the far side of the landing. “Oh, piss on that!”

“What is it?” Allin’s voice was tight with fear.

“Men were sleeping on Den Harkeil’s hulk and the Tang. They’ve cut Darni off from his boats.” Halice broke off to knuckle her eyes as fire arrows arched across the strait.

Vaspret came running up. “That’s Ros done, Commander and we’re ready to go.”

Halice nodded. “Back to the boat, lass.”

“What’s happening to Darni’s troop?” The mage-girl didn’t move.

“Get behind me.” Halice held her sword ready as her troop retreated to their boats. Pirates moved closer, wary now. Caution would hold these ones for a few moments longer, Halice judged. All the foolishly bold were dead or bleeding on the scarred and stained turf.

“He’s retreating into the woods and we’re leaving.” All colour was leached out of the curious half vision the magic bestowed but Halice had watched enough skirmishes to understand what she saw. It was the obvious thing to do and Darni had the sense to see it. What Halice couldn’t see was the uneven ground at her feet with the magic enhancing her sight and she nearly fell. “Undo this spell,” she barked.

The startled wizard slapped Halice’s face. Ignoring the sting, the mercenary grabbed Allin and ran with her for the boats, the little mage taking two or three paces to every one of Halice’s. They scrambled into the last boat still on the shore, the others already out in the strait. Sobs and heartfelt, exhausted gratitude mingled with the brisk shouts of the mercenaries organising themselves.

“Is everyone accounted for?” yelled Halice as their boat pushed off. A chorus of confirmation from banner sergeants answered her.

“They’re coming.” Rosarn’s archers stood in their boat to loose a final volley of arrows as pirates came running down to the waterline. Yelps and curses were lost beneath the splash of oars biting deep into the water.

“Get your stroke even!” shouted the banner sergeant furiously. “Where’s that wizard?”

“Here!” Allin scrambled through the boat, hands on all sides urging her forward, to the prow.

“Back to the Dulse!” Halice bellowed. The longboats surged forward as Allin’s magic outlined their path through the rocks and shoals.

Halice looked back, eyes narrowed, but all she could see was confusion around the pirate settlement, fresh wood thrown to rouse slumbering fires, sporadic cries of anger and rebuke ringing out across the waters of the strait. Beyond, she could just make out the crashing of bushes being hacked down.

“Did he get them away?” Vaspret was using a bundle of soiled linen to wipe blood and hair matted with greyish smears from his sword blade.

“I don’t hear anyone cheering.” Halice slid her own unsullied weapon back into its sheath. “I’d say so.”

“When did you last get that dirty?” grinned Minare.

“That’s what you scum are paid for,” Halice retorted with pretended outrage. “I earn my gold with my brains.”

“Your beauty wouldn’t earn you a lead Lescari Mark,” agreed Minare. “So, is it a price per head or one fee for the lot?” He gestured at the prisoners huddled in the bottom of the boat.

“Did we get them all?” asked Halice.

Minare shrugged. “All but a handful. A couple were too far gone to bother with and a few just lost their heads and ran away from everyone, friend or foe.”

“Any idea about hurts or losses?” With the elation of the escapade fading, Halice’s immediate concern was now her troop.

“Reddig was gutted. Other than that, it’s just the usual scars and breaks.” Minare threw the stained rag over the side where it floated for a moment, white on the blackness of the water. “Reddig was a good man even if he was only a weaver. D’Alsennin better pay us full blood price for him.”

“Halice!” Rosarn stood in the prow as the archer’s boat drew alongside. “Get young Allin to spread her spell around so we can see it. We’ve not got Larissa.”

“What?” Minare looked up from picking gore out of the binding of his sword hilt. “She was supposed to stay with you.”

“Where in curses is she?” cried Halice.

“She went ashore with Darni.” Rosarn spread her hands. “What was I supposed to do? Try to stop her and get fried for my trouble?”

“D’Alsennin’s going to be none too pleased about that.” Halice heaved a sigh. “Usara neither.”

“When was the last time any assault went precisely to plan?” Minare was unconcerned. “We just have to make it work for us.”

“True enough, as long as Darni got his men and that fool girl of a wizard clear away into the woods.” Halice caught sight of Allin’s beseeching, horrified face at the other end of the longboat. She ignored it as she applied herself to the question. As long as she had the answers before Temar, she could keep the upper hand, always an advantage for a mercenary.

Kehannasekke, Islands of the Elietimm, 10th of For-Summer

I hope Olret’s holding his own,” Ryshad muttered.

“He’s certainly giving Ilkehan something to worry about, by the looks of it,” I commented.

We lay side by side, peering through the grass topping the dune closest to the sprawling village below Ilkehan’s stronghold. The keep itself stood aloof on a rise in the ground, highest point for some distance in any direction, every approach cleared of cover for an advancing army. That didn’t matter, I told myself firmly; we weren’t an army.

“As long as those are reinforcements because it’s going badly for Ilkehan, not additional troops to help him carry his victory on into Rettasekke.” Ryshad kept his spyglass steady.

A metal-barred, solid wooden double gate was opening and a column of black-liveried men marched out with the mindless discipline that Ilkehan terrified into his people. All were armed to the teeth and beyond. The pervasive lack of wood and metals in these islands wasn’t inconveniencing Ilkehan to any noticeable degree. “How many’s that gone today?”

“Close on a cohort.” Ryshad’s satisfaction reassured me. “All the fewer for us to trip over.”

I dug myself lower into the sand. The coolness below the top layer was welcome after a long hot day crouched beneath the merciless sun now finally sinking to the horizon. “Still, at least we weren’t hiking through the desolate heart of the interminable island any more, walking from first light and all through the uncanny dusk, slipping past isolated settlements dotted among the barren hills, taking infuriating detours to avoid the desperate-looking bands that gave the lie to Ilkehan’s boast that his lands gave no exiles a refuge. I licked dry lips and wished for some water but we’d emptied our bottles a while back. ”How much longer do we wait?”

“We’ll let that lot get clear first, shall we?” Ryshad’s eyes shone dark in his blue-tinted face, bristles adding their own shadow to the overall Eldritch effect.

The column marched down to the harbour, cowed villagers ducking their heads before those most thickly studded with signs of rank. I wondered idly what earned these bullies their studs. One for each killing? One for every innocent tortured? “Can you see any gorgets?”

Ryshad brought his spyglass to bear. “One at the front, silver. Another at the back, silver.”

“Two less enchanters to worry about.” That was something at least.

“As long as Ilkehan doesn’t decide to lead his men into battle for a change.” Ryshad watched through the spyglass as the column waited for boats to ferry them out to larger ships anchored in the deep water of the inlet that bit into the coast just here. “I wouldn’t fancy trying get to him through that lot. How many adepts you think he had to start with? How long does it take to train them?”

“He can’t have had that many, surely?” I was looking for reassurance. “And it’s not the number that counts, it’s their strength with Artifice.”

“We haven’t seen any golden gorgets.” Ryshad took the glass from his eye to smile encouragement at me. “Guinalle seemed to think he’d sent his best to Suthyfer.”

“Let’s hope she’s right.” I stifled a groan of frustration. “I wish we could just get on with it.”

“You sound like ’Gren.” Ryshad returned to looking through his spyglass. “Why don’t you go and keep watch with Shiv?”

“You’re trying to get rid of me,” I accused.

“That’s right.” A fond smile took the edge off his words but he didn’t take his eye off the distant keep. “You’re distracting me. Go and talk to Shiv.”

I scurried backwards down the dune. We’d found this hollow with considerable relief after a tense night of sneaking along this shoreline but I’d be very glad to leave it just as soon as Ryshad and Sorgrad decided we’d learned all we could by watching and agreed it was time to act. All this waiting just gave me time to consider all the things that could go wrong with this plan and wound ’Gren up to an ever more dangerous pitch of frustration.

I crept carefully up the banked sand to where Shiv lay, chin on hands, eyes alert.

Inland, the shifting dunes yielded to more solid land where dark green spiny bushes dotted with yellow flowers clumped together. Dry and gritty with windblown sand, the land rose and fell in shallow swells, mimicking the ocean. A few spotted brown birds foraged for whatever might come wriggling up now that evening was drawing near.

“Any sign of them?” I whispered.

“No.” Shiv was as relaxed as if he lay by his own fireside.

“We’d have heard something, if they’d been taken.” I was starting to tire of hearing my own doubts.

“Screaming, at very least.” A smile quirked at the corner of Shiv’s mouth. ’Gren’s spoiling for a fight.”

“The trick is making sure he takes on the one you want.” I frowned. “Is that them?”

Shiv raised himself on his elbows. “I think so.” Tense, we watched the brothers dart between the spiny green bushes. It was a long run to our hidden hollow from the rise they’d just scrambled over.

“I could cloak them with invisibility,” muttered Shiv, less a suggestion than a comment on the powers we dare not let him use.

I tried to work out if the brothers could see the boat sheds along the shore where the dunes gave way to a stream and hillocks beyond it. If they could, they could be seen in turn.

“Here they come.” Shiv stiffened like a cat undecided whether to pounce or to run. Sorgrad and ’Gren ran across the hostile expanse, scattering the brown birds. I cringed at the thought that someone might hear the squawks of indignation. Sorgrad and ’Gren ran on, barely slowing even in the softer sands of the dunes, throwing themselves past us into hiding.

I spat sand out of my mouth. “Were you seen?”

“We’ll know soon enough.”

’Gren had his hand on his sword hilt, eager face turned towards the unseen boat sheds.

Sorgrad tossed me a few damp and grubby roots. “There’s something to chew on if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks,” I said without enthusiasm.

Ryshad turned to see what Sorgrad had brought. “Burdock?”

He nodded. “Some sedge as well.”

Between them, Ryshad and Sorgrad had kept our bellies full on the journey through the inhospitable island. With each showing increasing appreciation of the other’s foraging skills, I kept my own counsel when faced with food only the truly starving could fully appreciate. I just hoped we got home to some real meals before I wore my teeth down to the gums.

Sorgrad was already lying next to Ryshad. “Any sign of our friend?”

“Nothing so far,” Ryshad said in a low tone.

’Gren blinked and I shivered involuntarily. He looked curiously at me. ”Maewelin’s touch got you?”

“It’s your eyes.” I shivered again, icy fingers still stroking my neck. “Aiten’s eyes turned to black pits when Ilkehan’s Artifice enslaved him.” That was why I’d had to kill Aiten, Ryshad’s long-time friend. Drianon save me from having to make that choice for any of these four.

“Let’s not go borrowing trouble.” Sorgrad looked severely at us both. “Concentrate on the task in hand and worry about other things when they happen.”

“If they happen,” added Ryshad with emphasis. “Did you find the hargeard?”

Sorgrad nodded. “It’s a fair hike, over beyond that second rise with all the berry bushes.”

“It’s enormous,” chuckled ’Gren.

“Folk seeing we’re destroying it won’t be a problem,” frowned Sorgrad. “Getting away will be the difficult trick. There’s—”

Ryshad tensed. “The sentries are changing.”

“That’s the way in?” Sorgrad brushed sand from his breeches, nodding at a lesser gate cut in the wall.

“What’s on the other side?”

’Gren slid his sword a little way out of its sheath, face eager. A wise woman once told him he was born to be hanged, so he always reckoned to come unscathed through any situation not actively involving rope.

“A garden. We’ll be going in to the actual keep through a drain.” I swallowed hard on a sudden worry that the cover might be hidden, that I might not be able to find it again, that we might end up trapped like rats in Ilkehan’s sewer.

“There’s our friend,” Ryshad said slowly. “That’s right, pal, find your nice warm nook.” Keeping ceaseless watch, he’d identified this particular sentry as a lazy bastard who always sheltered from the incessant wind behind the tall crenellations at the corner of the keep. “Come on!” He shoved the spyglass into his jerkin and slid down the open face of the dune.

“Where’s Ilkehan?” ’Gren chewed his lip eagerly as we hurried across the open ground. We had the time it took for six verses of the song Ryshad’s mother used to measure the set of her jam before a more dutiful sentry on his rounds would reach this side of the keep.

I drew a deep breath and summoned up the memory of that hated face, dark, pitiless eyes, dead white hair and skin pale and creased with age. “Tedri nafaralir, asmen ek layeran.” The ancient words might be meaningless in a Forest ballad about Uriol’s endless quest for the stag with the silver antlers but here, quick as a blink, Artifice showed me Ilkehan poring over a book taken from packed shelves around him. I’d sneaked around in that keep before and knew for a certainty where he was. ”Still in his study.”

Ryshad picked up the pace. “We go in, we hit him hard, we leave.”

“Simple,” said ’Gren with happy satisfaction.

Aetheric charms ran through my mind; one to hide us, one just to keep people disinterested, one to make someone worry they’d left an empty pot over a fire. Guinalle had identified a handful of ways for me to distract people but I didn’t dare use them so close to Ilkehan. The last thing we needed was Artifice so close alerting him.

We reached the wall and the others flattened themselves on either side of the sally gate as I probed the lock with that fine balance between speed and accuracy that I’d learned over the years. “Shiv.”

The mage laid a hand on the metal and I pushed the final tumbler over. Since we lacked the Shernasekke women’s secrets, we had to risk his magic to supplement my housebreaking skills. There was a faint murmur as the bolts on the far side slid out of their sockets. This was the point of no return. No, I thought furiously, we would be going back. It was Ilkehan who’d be going nowhere once we’d done with him. He owed us and we were here to collect the debt and leave.

Swords drawn, Sorgrad and ’Gren were through in an instant. I followed, Ryshad next, Shiv at his shoulder. A woman screamed, dropping the basket of beans she’d been picking. Sorgrad hissed at her with archaic venom. “Is it thou hast profaned the unseen world?”

“Will the Mother hide thee from our vengeance or the Maker defend thee?” ’Gren took a pace forward, black haired, blue skinned, eyes piercing.

The woman stumbled backwards, crushing plants heedless underfoot. She screamed as ’Gren menaced her with his sword, tripping, scrambling to her feet and running for a door on the far side of the garden.

“Forget the drains,” ordered Ryshad.

Sorgrad didn’t needed telling. He was right behind the hysterical woman fumbling with the latch. She slid through the narrowest of gaps, catching her sleeve and tearing it free in her panic. Sorgrad shoved a boot in the door to stop her slamming it, whatever he was saying sending her fleeing too fast to wonder why an Eldritch man couldn’t just walk through any wall he pleased.

’Gren went through the door like a winter storm off the mountains. I followed to find a corridor, the brothers each covering one approach.

Ryshad slammed the door behind Shiv. “Which way?”

“Up there.” I’d taken the back stairs when I’d crept up and down this keep before but in my new guise of Eldritch Kin, I felt entitled to the main stairs. We ran as if we had vengeful shades at our heels ourselves. Shiv saw the rest of us making ready to drop our bags for a fight and did the same.

“As soon as he’s dead, cut off the stairs,” Ryshad told Shiv. We ignored the floor we knew belonged to whatever family Ilkehan had left. As we raced up the next flight, consternation from the kitchen levels floated up after us. A door opened somewhere below and a puzzled voice called out.

This was the floor where Ilkehan had his apartments. Every detail of this place was burned into my memory like the anguish we’d suffered in the stark white dungeons below. Ilkehan knew no such privation, with his polished chests of dark wood lining the corridor, choice pieces of ceramic and bronze displayed on shelves.

“Which door?” ’Gren dropped his pack.

I pointed. “That one.”

Sorgrad charged through it, veering to one side. ’Gren was a breath behind him, taking the other hand. Ryshad followed, straight as an arrow.

Ilkehan was behind a broad desk, already reaching for a dagger. ’Gren and Sorgrad came at him from either side. Magelight flashed all around, striking reflections from our blades as startling blue as anything the Eldritch Kin might favour. The knives of radiance stabbed the enchanter, piercing him clean through to emerge and careen off the walls, magic dripping like condensation down the pale plaster. The bastard opened his mouth but no sound emerged. Rage twisted his face and his hands clawed towards me and Shiv.

My darts ready, I snapped them off quick as thought. The first bit into Ilkehan’s cheek and he recoiled, shoving his chair backwards, dagger now raised. That wasn’t about to save him. Ryshad braced a sturdily booted foot against the desk, all his height and strength tipping it up and over to crash down on the enchanter’s legs. Ilkehan was trapped, falling as Ryshad sprang over the toppled desk. He brought his sword down into the angle of the enchanter’s neck and shoulder, the stroke so hard his blade bit into the boards as Ilkehan hit the floor. As Ryshad wrenched his sword free, I saw the white of shattered bone in the massive wound.

“That’s for Aiten.” He had no words foul enough to convey his hatred.

It wasn’t a fatal blow, not immediately, the awkward angle had seen to that, but ’Gren and Sorgrad dropped their pennyweight in Raeponin’s scales. A sideways slash from ’Gren all but eviscerated the enchanter, entrails spilling out of a bloody gash ripped through his fine woollen tunic and soft shirt. Ilkehan clutched at his stomach, frantic hands already coated with the dark blood pooling around him, oozing beneath the desk that held him down. A man with such a wound should be screaming like a pig at slaughter but even without Shiv’s magic to mute him, Ilkehan had no breath for his cries. Scarlet bubbles clustered around his mouth, blood rising in his throat to choke him, more gushing from ribs splintered and broken by Sorgrad’s merciless thrust. The man was dead or he would be inside a few moments. I had made certain of that, even without the others’ contributions.

“That’s silk.” Sorgrad fingered Ilkehan’s shirt as he kicked the enchanter’s dagger out of reach.

“Nice to see he got something out of the Aldabreshin. Where do you suppose he got this?” ’Gren snatched up the ivory-hilted blade before stepping back with an exclamation of annoyance.

Ilkehan was convulsing, fresh torrents of blood spurting as the uncontrollable spasms tore apart the wounds inside him. His head whipped from side to side, teeth bared in a snarl like a feral beast’s, his hands writhing on the floor, smearing blood ever wider. A faint keening escaped his clenched teeth, blood-flecked foam around his taut lips.

Sorgrad watched the enchanter’s final torments with a judicious eye. “I’ll grant you poison’s effective but there’s always the chance you’ll get stabbed while you’re waiting for it to take effect.”

“Not if you stay out of stabbing distance.” I coughed and moved away as the stench of voided bowels and bladder joined the acrid reek of blood.

“Shat himself just like that poor little dog,” remarked ’Gren with satisfaction. “So, what now?”

Shiv was still watching Ilkehan, shaking his head as the enchanter’s struggles died away. “That was quicker than I imagined.”

I saw Ryshad looking down on the body, stony faced. “Is that recompense for Aiten?” I slipped my arm around his waist.

“No.” He hugged me close. “Nothing would be. That’s the problem with revenge.” Hard satisfaction warmed his expression. “Which is why I’ll settle for justice.”

“Justice, vengeance.” I met his gaze on level terms. “The important thing is he’s dead.”

“How long have we got to dishonour this body?” Sorgrad held out a hand to ’Gren. “Let’s use his own knife.”

“However long it takes that kitchen maid to convince someone she saw Eldritch Kin in the garden?” I hazarded.

Ryshad shook his head. “You don’t have to believe someone to go and see what they’re scared of.”

“Then we leave.” I’d have preferred to see Ilkehan suffer longer, just to balance the scales for the torments he’d inflicted on Geris but, vengeance or justice, I was finally ahead of the game. The man whose malice had haunted my nightmares and blighted my hopes with fear was dead at our feet and I was still alive. I intended to keep it that way. “Come on, let’s go.”

“What about all these books?” Shiv was looking at the closely packed ranks of shelves. “This is a priceless archive. There must be the answers to all Planir’s questions and ten times more.”

“Knowledge is power.” I stared round the room. “Power we don’t want to leave for whoever ends up top dog around here.”

Squatting next to Ilkehan’s corpse, ’Gren looked up. “Books burn.”

“I can do that.” Sorgrad snapped his fingers and flame played between them.

“Fire’s always a nice distraction for anyone thinking of chasing you.” It wouldn’t be the first time the three of us had fled under the cover of a hearty blaze. I opened a coffer beside the desk that proved to be full of parchments.“Talmia megrala eldrin fres.” Flames sprang up to dance across the written surfaces, blurring the words. Maybe I would learn a little more Artifice now that Ilkehan was too dead to come picking through my brain.

“Here.” Sorgrad had ripped down a tapestry and tucked it around the coffer. As soon as the wood caught, the tapestry would carry the fire to the carpet.

“Can’t we take a few books?” pleaded Shiv.

“Which ones?” I demanded.

“Better hurry”

’Gren was ripping the binding from a slender tome as we spoke, piling the leaves around the coffer where the parchments now blazed nicely. Sorgrad was breaking open another chest to find three silver gorgets and a golden one along with a considerable spill of coin. He scooped it up, heedless of Ilkehan’s blood on the floor.

“We’ll share it out later,” ’Gren assured me before belatedly including Ryshad and Shiv in his glance.

Not that my score with the Elietimm could be settled with gold. I added a handful of reed pens to my little fire and ’Gren pocketed the silver cup they’d stood in.

“If Kellarin’s to restore the study of Artifice, we need to know so much.” Shiv was looking desperately round the book-lined walls.

“Knowledge can’t ever truly be destroyed, Shiv,” Ryshad said impatiently. “Just lost. Someone, sometime will rediscover it.” He stopped abruptly. “What we must find are any artefacts Ilkehan’s holding.”

“The sleepers in Kellarin!” Saedrin forgive me but I’d clean forgotten. “Come on Shiv, people are more important than aetheric abstractions.” I left ’Gren happily tending the burning coffer.

“Help me here.” Sorgrad was already trying to lift the toppled desk. Ryshad helped him, both of them levering open the drawers with daggers.

“Let’s have anything that’ll burn.” ’Gren held out a hand.

A door slamming below us struck us all silent for a moment. The sound of running feet and cries of distress fading into the distance.

“I think there’s blood coming through their ceiling,” Sorgrad said thoughtfully.

“Let me bespeak Planir,” begged Shiv. “If he can raise a nexus, they might save some of the books before they burn.”

Ryshad coughed. The air was thickening. “We don’t want Ilkehan roasted if we’re aiming to shock people with Eldritch vengeance on his body. Get him into the corridor and do your worst while we look for any artefacts.”

’Gren and Sorgrad immediately took an arm each and dragged the bloody corpse out of the room.

“Shiv, the plan was your illusions would keep Ilkehan’s men scared as we fight our way out.” Ryshad hesitated. “All right, try reaching Planir as you keep watch but don’t get us all killed for a few worm-eaten books.”

“I want my hide whole as much as anyone else,” Shiv assured him. The wizard snatched up a polished silver salver and went into the corridor, green magelight swirling around him.

Ryshad coughed again. “If there are artefacts here, we need to find them quickly.” The coffer was blazing like a watchman’s brazier, scorch marks darkening the plaster above our heads.

Closing my eyes, I pictured the vast irregular cavern of Edisgesset, empty but for those few still bound beneath ancient enchantment. I heard the soft steps of those that kept vigil in the hollow silence. A single shaft of light would be coming down the steps, soft breeze fragrant with the summer’s growth outside. I remembered the subtle chill as I passed between that dissolving sunlight and the all-encompassing darkness.

“Thervir emanet vis alad egadir.”

It wasn’t much of a charm, just a jaunty snatch from a ridiculous tale about a lackwit called Nigadin. He went looking for his knife and, finding it, recalled he’d left his belt somewhere. Finding that reminded him he’d mislaid his boots. Tracking them down, he realised he was without his breeches and so it went on. But I’d used the charm when young Tedin has lost himself and it had led me to the lad. I held those whose bodies rested in that cave in my mind. The old man Gense, sallow face sunk away from his beak of a nose, wisps of hair still surprisingly dark across his bald pate. A boy whose name escaped me, skin pale as milk, tousled hair touched with red that hinted at Forest blood, his head looking too big for the frail body beneath it. Velawe, long a friend of Zigrida’s, work-roughed hands with swollen knuckles clasped beneath her sagging breasts, even this enchantment unable to smooth the lines of worry and toil graven between her brows. Porsa, her daughter, beside her, silly, pretty face swathed in a frivolous lace wrap, the curls in her hair still as crisp as the day the tongs had made them.

“Thervir emanet vis alad egadir.” Belligerent shouts from the stairs opened my eyes.

“Well?” Ryshad watched me intently.

“Next door.”

The corridor was a scene from an addled drunk’s nightmare. Shadows played on the walls like black flames, licking along the floor and up to the ceiling. Shapes came and went on the edge of seeing, distorted heads and bent bodies scampering on unnaturally elongated limbs. One capered in the stairwell, darkness incarnate, eyes of starshine, teeth and nails the pale silver of a mist-shrouded moon. A valiant arrow shot through it, clattering against the wall behind. The figure ducked, huddling in on itself, shadows folding and moulding anew. We heard determined boots thudding on the stairs, shouts urging them upwards.

The darkness reared up with a new mask, a wolf’s head snarling and weaving, twice life size and topping a man-shaped body with clawed hands tipped with ice-white talons. The beast snatched up the fallen arrow and threw its head back to howl like a gale from frozen -heights. Breath steamed icy from its maw and rolled bodily down the stairs. We heard frantic feet taking flight even before the arrow tumbled down after them.

“Nice to see Shiv paid attention to ’Gren’s yarns,” muttered Ryshad.

I was too busy gaping for comment. Startling illusion overlaid Shiv’s crude disguise with a vision of Eldritch Kin seen in fever dreams. Too tall and too thin for ease of mind, a shaft of moonlight in one bony hand, his skin was the bottomless blue of a still pool caught beneath twilight. His hair was shadow darker than those rarest of nights when lesser and greater moons both quit the sky for mysteries of their own. His eyes were black hollows seeing into the very shades, threatening to suck the life from any who caught their gaze.

Sorgrad and ’Gren crouched by his side, visions to terrify Poldrion’s own demons. A head appeared in the stairwell and the Elietimm man’s jaw dropped as he saw his dread master being butchered by the two eerie apparitions.

“He cut out that lad’s stones and eyes. Why don’t we swap his round?” ’Gren suggested in a low voice.

Ryshad looked at me and I wondered if I looked as unearthly to him as he did to me.

“You said do your worst.” I spoke before he could. “We don’t look, then we don’t have to know. Don’t worry. ’Gren’s on our side.”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Ryshad’s tone suggested we’d debate this further when people weren’t trying to kill us.

The awesome Eldritch Kin that was Shiv stepped forward, levelling its cold, gold spear. The Elietimm man froze on the stair, white faced and trembling in the darkness.

“Bless the ancestors who chose you to witness our retribution.” ’Gren looked up and hissed with silken spite.

“We curse Ilkehan to the ninth generation. Cursed be all who pervert the sacred lore.” Sorgrad rose, a figure born of nightmares, blood dripping from the ivory-handled knife to be greedily sucked up by scurrying rat-like shadows. “Thus to all who profane the compact between dead, living and yet unborn.” His words echoed around the stone walls so uncannily Shiv had to be working some magic on them. The reverberations followed the fleeing soldier down the stairs.

Then Shiv winked at me and I could see through the delusion of light and magic to the reality beneath. “Hurry up.”

We skirted round ’Gren and Sorgrad now chuckling evilly. Ryshad kicked in the door and we found a room dominated by a large table strewn with maps and parchments. A window embrasure held a sturdy chest of unmistakably Tormalin origin.

“In there.” It was locked. I reached for my picks.

“No time.” Ryshad grabbed a handle. “Dast’s teeth!” he rasped as he lifted it on to one shoulder.

Sorgrad appeared in the doorway. “We need to go now or there’ll be too many for us to break through.”

“We’re coming,” I assured him.

Scarlet flame danced on his outstretched palm. “Get clear.”

Sorgrad’s handful of fire skidded the length of the table, igniting everything in its path. The wall hangings blazed around us and I swear I felt the hair on my neck crisp as we raced through the doorway. “Curse it, ’Grad, you nearly fried us!”

“Main stairs or back?”

’Gren was standing by Ilkehan’s body, gory to his elbows. I tried not to see what had been done to the body and just about succeeded; apart from realising it wasn’t the enchanter’s tongue poking from his mouth.

Ryshad glanced down and swallowed hard. Even painted blue, I swear he blenched.

Shiv held the silver salver before him, magical fire from a scrap of burning cloth reflecting oddly on to his painted face. “I don’t have time for this, Planir. Just do what you can.” He shoved the metal inside his jerkin and threw the cloth away.

“Back stairs.” Ryshad jerked his head.

“Sorgrad,” I urged. “We’re leaving.”

“Just a moment.” He was crouched over Ilkehan, his back to me.

I moved to get a clearer look and then thought better of it. “You’ve done enough!”

“I promised I’d carve the boy’s name in this bastard’s forehead.” Sorgrad spoke with slow concentration.

“That won’t lead them straight to Olret?” snapped Ryshad.

“Not unless someone hereabouts can read Mandarkin script.” Sorgrad finished with a flourish of his blade sending drops of blood spattering the wall.

“Let’s go,” I begged.

“Stay close,” warned Shiv, raising his hands. Drawing them close, he flung another sweep of glittering magic ahead. The shadows took on a mossy hue, shifting into spectres of trees. We moved and they moved with us, dappled darkness shifting and changing, Eldritch shapes on the edge of sight passing all around us.

“Here.” Sorgrad reached for the other handle of the chest and Ryshad let it slide from his shoulder so they could carry it between them.

We reached the back stairwell, narrower and more steeply pitched than the one we’d come up. Shiv and I took the lead as we descended as fast as was still safely cautious, shadows alternately deepening and fading around us. The formless blackness shaped itself into foxes, rats and ravens that ran on ahead. The rushing sound that presages the most violent storms in the wildwood surged around our heads before scouring down the stairs.

“Pered’s not the only artist in your household, is he?” At the turn of the stair, I looked back to see Sorgrad and Ryshad balancing the chest between them, each with a blade in their free hand. Rearguard, ’Gren was coming backwards down the stairs, sword and dagger ready. I knew he’d done that often enough not to worry about falling.

As we reached the floor below, a handful of men braver than the rest charged us with viciously flanged maces. Shiv sent them reeling back with a brutal storm of hail crystallising out of the very air. The ice was sharp enough to draw blood from faces and hands before falling to the floor and flowing together to coat the flagstone with lethal slipperiness. The soldiers fell heavily as they struggled to stand, more interested in retreating than pursuit. We ran on down the stairs and along the one corridor we found not peopled with panicked Elietimm. New screams of anguish and horror echoed from the floor where we’d left Ilkehan.

“Over there.” Ryshad nodded to a sturdy double door as we found ourselves in a lofty entrance hall.

Shiv raised a hand and the wood darkened, swelled and ruptured. The metal bands and hasps rusted before our very eyes.

“Come on.”

’Gren brought up his distinctly non-magical boot to kick at it. The rotten wood sagged from splitting hinges now just metal flakes held together by corrosion. I ripped at the wood and we hammered out a hole big enough for Ryshad and Shiv.

“What’s out there?” Sorgrad was barely visible as Shiv filled the entrance hall with roiling shadows to baffle our pursuers hesitant on the fringes of the unknown darkness.

I squinted cautiously through the splintered gap. “Courtyard and the main gate which looks very much locked. Some troops and it’s a safe bet more are on their way”

“How much more have you got in you?” Ryshad looked sharply at the mage.

“Enough,” the wizard assured us. The illusions concealed him as thoroughly as ever but we all heard the weary note in Shiv’s voice. “Sorgrad can try a few of the tricks Larissa taught him, if he likes.”

“No holds barred?” I’ve never seen Sorgrad at a loss in all the years I’d known him and I was relieved beyond measure to see this was no exception.

“That’s battlefield rules, according to Halice.” I glanced at Ryshad.

“It may not be a usual kind of war but they started it.” He shrugged. “ ’Gren, help me with this.”

The brothers swapped places by the chest and Sorgrad stepped up to the breach in the door. He clapped his hands together and a sheet of flame sprang up, spreading to encircle us all. The damp chunks of broken wood hissed and steamed and the firelight played eerily among the shadows that Shiv was still keeping as black and impenetrable as ever.

“Let’s get out of here while they’re all still gawping,” I suggested. If Ilkehan’s people could barely see us, we could barely see them and that made me nervous.

“Slowly, concentrate.” Shiv’s calm voice encouraged Sorgrad and we began walking towards the main gate. Slingshot whizzed into the flames where the stones shattered into razor-sharp, red-hot fragments. I swallowed an un-Eldritch yelp as one stung me on the face.

“What about the gate?” asked Ryshad tightly.

“Just get ready to run,” Sorgrad replied through clenched teeth.

The flames disappeared and the shadows shrivelled. All that protected us were our tawdry disguises and the terrified imaginations of the onlookers. The gate exploded into a ball of fire before anyone could see through our masquerade, shards of burning wood and blistering metal shooting in all directions. People ran for cover, screams from the slowest. The fell rain would have seared us too but for a sandstorm that reared up from the dusty earth to envelop us, sucking the lethal fragments into the maelstrom. We stood in the calm centre of the silently howling winds, a wall of dust and debris concealing us from all the hostile eyes.

I’d kept my bearings, thanks to so many years making my way without benefit of a light to alert a nosy watchman or some indignant householder. “Forward.” I pointed and we moved, the storm cloaking us.

“Faster,” Sorgrad hissed.

We ran, Ryshad and ’Gren grunting as they lugged the weighty chest between them. Shiv was puffing like a man who’d been on the battlefield all day and even Sorgrad’s steps looked leaden as I watched for the changes underfoot that would mean we were through the gate.

“Where do we hide up?” I demanded as soon as we were beyond the wall.

“The hargeard.” Sorgrad looked around, frowning at the constantly shifting veil of wind and dust.

“That way.” I pointed.

“Is there anywhere to hide there?” Ryshad looked at Shiv with concern. “We can’t rely on Gebaedim superstitions to stop them stringing us up if they get their hands on us.”

I shivered. A quick hanging would be the most merciful fate we could hope for.

“Trust me.” Sorgrad’s eyes were bright blue against the black that rimmed them.

My fears receded to a manageable level; after all, he’d never let me down before.