The Covenant Rising

12

Kutch’s night visitor must have left the hut’s door ajar, because a gust of wind made it creak open a fraction. A sliver of light entered, dispelling the shadows concealing the intruder’s face.

Caldason, wild-eyed, dishevelled.

He took his hand away from Kutch’s mouth. The boy relaxed a little, though his friend’s crazed appearance still made him nervous.

‘What is it?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

Reeth put a finger to his lips in a hushing gesture. His movements were uncertain, like a drunk’s. But he hadn’t been drinking.

Kutch dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘What’s the matter? Are you ill?’

The last of the sleep ebbed away and he guessed what was happening. ‘Is it another of your -?’

Caldason nodded.

‘What can I do?’

‘I need your help… like before. ‘ His voice wavered. He looked around the sparse room. ‘This isn’t a good place. Come with me.’

Head spinning, Kutch scrambled from the bed. He saw that Reeth was carrying a coil of thick rope, and that there was sweat on his brow.

‘Quickly,’ Reeth hissed. He made to leave.

‘One second.’ Stooping, Kutch rolled up some bedclothes, then covered them with a blanket. Someone taking a cursory look might be fooled into thinking the cot was occupied.

‘Hurry.’

‘All

right

.’

They left the shack, Kutch quietly closing the door behind them.

It was the middle of the night, and the moon was full and fat. They couldn’t see anyone about, but crept stealthily, keeping to the pools of denser gloom where buildings overhung.

Caldason walked like a man who’d just run a hard race, breathless and slightly clumsy. Kutch followed, afraid they’d meet somebody and of what Caldason might do if they did.

As they came to the corner of a barn, Caldason motioned Kutch to stop. They peered round at the nearest thing the co-operative had to a town square. It was the confluence of four serpentine lines of buildings, with an open space where their dirt roads met. A gathering area for the communards when group decisions had to be made or a newborn’s head wetted. The space was big enough to think twice about crossing if you didn’t want to be seen, and some of the buildings around were still burning lights.

‘What now?’ Kutch mouthed.

Caldason pointed. Just beyond the edge of the settlement was the small copse he’d chosen earlier as a place to sleep. To get to it they had to break cover and cross the square.

‘Me first,’ he whispered, hoisting the rope over his shoulder. ‘I’ll signal if it’s clear.’

Kutch nodded and watched him go.

Caldason moved in an ungainly way, half doubled over, as though an ache troubled his guts. His progress was sluggish, but he cleared the common without incident. Reaching the far side, he put his hands against a wall and leaned there, head down. That gave Kutch a queasy moment.

Then Caldason raised his head and turned to face him. Looking to the left and right, he waved Kutch across. The boy dashed over to him.

Keeping low, they crept from the settlement. Impacted earth gave way to dried mud and clumps of spongy grass. Now they were in open ground, and twenty paces later waist-high bushes. Then the stand of trees loomed over them, their branches cobwebbing the moon.

Caldason tossed the coil of rope to Kutch. Its weight had the boy staggering back a step, knees bent.

‘Tie me,’ Reeth ordered, panting. ‘To that tree.’ He nodded at the biggest. ‘And take this.’ He bent and fished out the knife hidden in his boot. Kutch slipped it into his belt.

Caldason sat with his back against the trunk. As Kutch began winding the rope around him he said, ‘What did you do before you met me?’ It was gallows humour, but Caldason took it seriously.

‘If I was near the innocent I got as far away as I could. If I was facing an enemy, I didn’t bother.’

‘What

is

wrong with you, Reeth?’

‘Just hurry! And make that

tighter

!’

Kutch finished the knots, with some instruction, and stood gaping at what he’d done.

‘Now get away from here,’ Reeth said. ‘No, wait! We have to stifle any noises I might make. I need something to bite on.’

‘Like what?’

‘It’ll have to be rope. Use the knife to cut a length.’

Taking an arm’s length from the coil’s end, Kutch severed it with the razor-keen blade. He fixed it around the tree so that it ran across Caldason’s mouth, like a horse’s bridle.

‘Good,’ Reeth said. ‘When you’ve done this, get out of here.’ His eyes were starting to roll and he was breathing harder. He bit down on the rope and Kutch pulled it tight, knotting it at the back of the tree. Then he did as he was told and withdrew.

But not very far.

All he knew was pain.

Acrid odours prickled his nostrils. The air stank of charred wood and burnt flesh. A blaze crackled somewhere nearby. Further away, there were screams and shouts.

He must have been on his back, because he could see the sky. It was on fire. Flaming crimson overlaid with streamers of oily black smoke. Ashes spinning in the heat.

Then something obscured his view. A figure, bending over him, blurred, indefinite. Laying hands on him. He glimpsed those hands as they came away and they were bloody.

He tried to speak but couldn’t. It was as though he’d forgotten how.

A cup was held to his lips, but he seemed to have forgotten how to swallow, too. The liquid was poured into his mouth. Whatever it was it scorched his throat like molten lead, and when it arrived in his stomach it caused an incendiary spasm.

Pain increased to agony.

The hands were there again. He fancied they made certain gestures over him, complicated arcane movements whose significance he couldn’t grasp. His discomfort was alleviated a little. He thought the person tending him might have been an old man, but he couldn’t trust his eyes.

Time passed. It was filled with the blushing sky and the burning flesh and the far off screams.

Then he was aware that whatever he was resting on was being lifted. They were moving him, whoever they might be, and the deed brought his body fresh agitation. It made him ache anew, every jolt and bump a thrust from a white-hot dagger. Once more he tried speaking, or to be accurate crying out, but no sound came.

He saw, thought he saw, the tops of burning buildings, and trees alight. And always that sky, churning with flame.

At last he was taken into a sheltered place, exchanging the angry sky for a cross-beamed wooden ceiling. To his relief, the movement stopped.

Those veined and bloodied hands ministered to him. Unable to utter a sound, he could do no more than stare at the buttressed ceiling. Tormented, helpless, misery held sway for an indeterminate period.

Then there was a sudden shift in reality.

What he could see of his surroundings – the wooden ceiling, the hazy figures attending him – was wiped away. Or rather, another scene imposed itself. A dream within a dream.

He stood on the edge of an unimaginably steep cliff.

Below, a vast plain stretched out. Cities blossomed there, as though sown. Fabulous crystalline edifices, shimmering spires, arching bridges no more palpable than moonbeams. Clusters of towers fashioned from solidified light, framed with steel rainbows. Gigantic floating structures, bubble-like, anchored by palpitating tendrils. Municipalities where ice and fire conspired in breathtakingly graceful lines and impossible, vertiginous angles.

All in flux.

Everything was constantly changing, evolving, mutating and reforming. Constructs expanded, compressed or dissolved. New shapes emerged; jagged, forked, rectangular, spiked, pyramidal. Their essences rippled, their surface textures continually altered. The colours attending them danced back and forth across the visible spectrum and beyond.

Nearly level with his cliff-top, but far away, mountains slumbered uneasily. They slowly undulated. Peaks flattened, fresh ones arose. Fissures opened and dribbled lava.

Above, the sky changed colour randomly. From green to grey to orange. Purple transformed to yellow, yellow to red, red was flooded with gold.

Hosts of entities were in the air. Metamorphs, resembling beasts one moment, something like men the next; often corresponding to no known being, or taking on complex abstract forms. All inspired wonder. Many, revulsion.

He knew that everything he saw was animated by energies coursing through the earth. A grid of power, sensed rather than seen, permeating the whole of this world and saturating it with vigour. Power that flowed through him too, throbbing in rhythm with the beating of his heart and the pumping of his blood.

His emotions were contrary. He felt a stranger, an outsider in this place, and was fearful of it, but also that he somehow belonged here.

As he watched the cycle of destruction and creation going on all around, he became aware of a presence. A consciousness, near to hand, seeping depravity and malevolence. The impression was of pure mind. Not singular but many; a vast coupling of intelligences that formed a miasma of spite. He couldn’t see it, it seemed to have no substance, but he knew it could snuff him out.

It approached.

A shadow fell over him, though it had no visible source. Its cold touch relayed terror.

He turned and ran.

The black, malignant force pursued him.

He took to the air, lifting as easily and lightly as a bird. It was wholly instinctive. He had no wings; belief elevated him and thought directed his flight. The talent came naturally, and of all the wonders this world had to offer it seemed the least remarkable.

Now he was among the myriad other airborne things, twisting and dodging to avoid them. The dark intelligence was at his back, ready to pounce. He dived, spun, soared, trying to shake it off. His course took him through clouds of the flying grotesques. As he passed, they were drawn into the inky embrace of the multi-mind, swelling its might and rancour.

It brought lightning bolts into existence and hurled them at him. He swerved and spiralled to escape the crackling, dazzling strokes of energy.

Then one struck him. Every particle of his being was ravaged by its intensity. He plummeted down to the ever-shifting, fickle earth, and was seized by a power greater than mere gravity.

Trapped, defenceless, he could only watch as the manifold blackness descended inexorably to engulf him. And he knew that death was the least it could inflict.

He screamed.

Instantly, the fiery sky reasserted itself. Then that was blocked from view as the wooden ceiling reformed.

He was prostrate, staring up at joists and rafters, as the pain flooded back.

Again he screamed, until the dark swallowed him.

Late afternoon saw the trio back on the road to Valdarr.

Karr took his turn as wagon driver, with Kutch at his side. Caldason travelled behind under canvas.

It had been an awkward day. Caldason was taciturn and troubled looking, only speaking when he was spoken to and not always then. There had been no time for Kutch to discuss the night’s events with him. Not that the Qalochian seemed very inclined to do so.

Kutch had watched what happened to Reeth during the night in horrified fascination. When it was finally over, in the small hours, he found that the rope gag was almost chewed through. He got him back to the shack somehow, only avoiding being seen by sheer luck, and bedded him down on the cot. For himself, Kutch took the floor, and they slept erratically for a couple of hours. Naturally they said nothing to Karr the next morning. And once the communards had been thanked and their weapons retrieved they made an early start.

Now Caldason slumped in the back of the wagon looking exhausted. Kutch, confused as ever about what ailed him, was lost in thought. Karr seemed his usual self. But Kutch was coming to realise that in his way the patrician was as hard to read as Caldason. The difference was that where Reeth retreated into sullen silence, Karr covered his true intentions with verbosity. Kutch half suspected the patrician had some idea of their nocturnal adventure, though he made no mention of it.

Following some small talk about the commune and its fortunes, Karr said, ‘I wish we’d known this horse’s shoe needed attention before we left there. Still, we’ll be at Saddlebow soon.’

Caldason made one of his rare contributions. ‘Can’t we go round it?’

‘I don’t know where else we can have a horse shod. Anyway, skirting Saddlebow adds another day to the journey. But I don’t want to linger there any longer than you do. We’ll rest, see to the horses, stretch our legs. No more.’ He turned to Kutch. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask: have you ever been to Valdarr before?’

‘No, nor even Saddlebow. I travelled a bit with my master, but always to other hamlets and villages. I suppose that makes me a country boy.’

‘Then it’s probably good that we’re starting at Saddlebow and working our way up. You could find town and city life a bit overwhelming at first.’ He gave the boy a smile. ‘But don’t worry, you have guardians.’

‘One of whom’s a wanted outlaw,’ Caldason said, ‘and the other a target for assassins.’

That put a bit of a damper on things and they rode in silence until Saddlebow came into view.

It was a sizeable town, full of activity, and when they found a blacksmith he told them he needed a couple of hours to attend to the shoe.

‘You won’t find another smith less busy,’ he promised.

‘All right,’ Karr replied, handing him some coins.

The man spat on them and dropped them into his apron pouch. ‘I’ll see to it your team’s fed and watered.’

‘We could do with that ourselves,’ Karr decided. ‘Come on,’ he told his companions.

They began to walk, looking for a tavern. The streets bustled.

‘Is it normally this full?’ Kutch asked.

Karr shook his head. ‘This is unusual.’

There were watchmen in the crowd, and a few paladins. They steered well clear of them. As they got nearer to the town’s centre there were more and more people.

‘Maybe we’ve come on a festival day or something,’ Kutch suggested.

‘They don’t seem in a particularly festive mood,’ Caldason pointed out.

He was right. With few exceptions the crowd was sombre and uncommonly quiet for such a mass.

Everybody seemed to be going the same way. Reeth, Karr and Kutch went along with them, partly out of curiosity, partly because they didn’t want to draw attention to themselves.

Eventually they came to the town’s main square. It was packed with hundreds of people. Peddlers and jugglers worked the throng, but they plied their trade with scant enthusiasm. The tunes the itinerant musicians played were mournful.

Kutch spotted food sellers, carrying their wares on large trays balanced on their heads. ‘I’m starving,’ he announced. ‘Shall we eat?’

‘Wait.’ Caldason put a hand on the apprentice’s shoulder and pointed towards the centre of the square. Kutch and the patrician craned their necks to see.

The crowd lapped up against a long wooden platform which rose above the heads of the onlookers. It could have been a stage, except for several thick projecting posts, about the height of a man.

Kutch looked puzzled. ‘What is it?’

‘An execution platform,’ Caldason explained.

The blood drained out of Kutch’s face. ‘Oh,’ he whispered.

To one side of the platform a small spectators’ stand had been erected. It was covered by an awning and held three or four rows of tiered seats. They were filling up with the expensively attired and well fed, presumably local dignitaries. Among them were individuals whose splendid clothing and showy glamoured accessories marked them out as citizens of Gath Tampoor.

A blast of trumpets silenced the murmuring crowd. Then a procession climbed to the platform, led by an official with the self-important look of an over-promoted clerk. He was followed by several other functionaries, and behind them two bedraggled men who were obviously the accused, escorted by militia. Already manacled, the prisoners were chained to two of the posts.

The retinue included a state sorcerer. Swiftly, he cast a spell that conjured an orating glamour. This took the form of a giant mouth that floated high above the dais and acted as an amplifier for the crowd.

Stepping forward, the lead official unrolled a sheet of parchment. As he read from it the hovering mouth aped his lip movements.

‘Let it be known,’

the mouth boomed,

‘that these men stand accused of disturbing the peace of the realm as legally constituted and guaranteed by His Sovereign Highness Prince Melyobar, and that through their actions they sought to endanger, subvert and betray the citizens of Bhealfa. Be it recorded, moreover, that they are further charged to be members of proscribed organisations engaged in criminal deeds to the peril of the realm.’

‘In plain language, the Resistance,’ Karr whispered.

‘All here are called upon to witness the indictment of the malefactors in accordance with the demands of law,

’ the mouth continued, approximating the real speaker but different enough to be unmistakably non-human.

‘The degree of their guilt shall be determined, and if their probity be found wanting, let their fate serve as an example. The accused are to be put to the test. Gods save the Prince!’

The crowd responded half-heartedly, and one or two voices were raised in protest. Mounted paladins and the militia on the platform scanned the gathering, ready for troublemakers.

‘What does being put to the test mean?’ Kutch asked.

‘They’ll undergo ordeal by magic,’ Caldason said. ‘If they pass, they get prison or exile. If they fail, it’s death.’

‘What does that have to do with proving their guilt or innocence?’

‘They’re already guilty in the state’s eyes. This is by way of public entertainment. Or a warning, depending on the crowd’s sympathies.’

‘It’s a misuse of the Craft,’ Kutch seethed. ‘Why can’t they be allowed a proper trial?’

‘Such niceties are available only to our rulers,’ Karr told him. ‘Though it’ll be a chilly day in hell before any of

them

appears in a court. For the rest of us, justice is summary.’

On the platform, the presiding official signalled that the test was to proceed. The sorcerer began a ritual, reciting from a heavy tome held open by an acolyte. Whatever he said was a mystery to the crowd as it wasn’t relayed by the levitating mouth.

There was a series of blinding flashes, a fraction of a second apart, and a trio of swirling green clouds appeared on the platform. A collective gasp rose from the onlookers. Rotation slowing, the clouds took on a tangible appearance.

The glamours that formed were identical. Three women, tall, marble-skinned, dressed in silken white gowns that reached the floor. Their hair was spun gold and they wore laurel crowns. Black blindfolds covered their eyes.

They stood in a line before the first accused.

Via the orating glamour, the official declared portentously,

‘Behold, the personification of Justice! One holds the key to mercy. The others, annihilation.’

He turned to the first condemned man.

‘You have a span of twenty beats in which to make your choice.’

Pointing to each of the statuesque glamours in turn, he counted them off.

‘One, two or three. Prisoner, you hold your destiny in your own hands. Let the test commence!’

An unseen drum began to pound, steady as a heartbeat. Nervously, the accused man’s gaze flicked from one motionless glamour to the next. The deathly hush that had blanketed the crowd was broken as people started to call out their favoured numbers.

Karr noticed the anger on Caldason’s face, and that he was clutching the hilt of his sheathed sword, white-knuckled. He reached out and stayed his hand. ‘No, my friend,’ he whispered. ‘The odds are too great, even for you.’ Caldason glared at him, eyes blazing. ‘Think of the boy,’ Karr added.

Reeth sobered. He shook free of Karr’s grasp and looked to Kutch.

The boy was staring intently at the platform and the unfolding drama. Under his breath he mumbled, ‘Two… number two… pick

two

.’

Abruptly, the drumming stopped. Once more, the crowd fell silent.

‘How do you choose?’

the official demanded, echoed by the resonant mouth.

The prisoner’s hesitant reply couldn’t be heard far beyond the platform. The mouth glamour broadcast it.

‘He chooses… three!’

Those in the crowd who agreed with the choice shouted approval. There were some cheers and boos, but mostly the response was mute.

‘

No

,’ Kutch groaned, ‘it’s two.

Two.

’

‘Let the named one be revealed.’

The third glamour drifted forward. At a command gesture from the sorcerer it underwent a transformation. Its features blurred and melted, and in seconds it returned to an eddying green cloud. That held for a few seconds. Then the wisps of emerald haze dispersed, showing the glamour reconstituted. But differently.

A roar went up from the crowd, a mixture of disappointment, rage, and a little glee.

The glamour was draped in rags. Her hair was stringy and grey, and the laurel headdress had rotted. The hands and arms were stripped to bone. Where there had been a noble, comely face now there was a bleached skull, a grinning death’s head, jaw agape.

‘The accused stands condemned! In accordance with the authority vested in this tribunal, the penalty shall be exacted.’

What happened next was at least mercifully swift, if shocking. A brawny militiaman approached the prisoner. As he moved he swung a two-hand broadsword in a high arc. Its blade glinted briefly in the sun, then severed the man’s neck. His head sprang from his shoulders, bounced across the platform and came to rest near the edge. The body, hanging by chains, pumped copious blood. It splashed the other, horrified prisoner shackled alongside.

There was uproar in the crowd. A patter of refined applause came from the spectators’ stand.

Kutch turned away from the sight, stunned, and in reflex buried his face in Reeth’s side, suddenly more child than man. Taken aback, Caldason gingerly encircled him with a comforting arm.

Matters stood for a moment. Then Karr asked gently, ‘How did you know, Kutch? That he’d got the wrong glamour, I mean. You seemed very certain if it was a guess.’

Kutch disentangled himself from Caldason, looking bashful. ‘It wasn’t a guess,’ he sniffed despondently. ‘They’re using quality magic, expensive stuff, which makes it hard to tell. But not impossible.’ He shrugged. ‘I recognised it from experience, I suppose.’

‘Come on,’ Caldason said, ‘let’s go.’

Before they could push their way out of the mob, the official’s surrogate mouth announced the next test. The crowd pressed forward again.

There were three new glamours on the platform. These were male, clothed in white togas and sporting long black hair. They weren’t wearing blindfolds; they simply had no eyes, just smooth skin where they should have been.

The second ordeal commenced, the drum began its doleful pounding.

But the accused wasn’t going to co-operate. He started to shout, loud enough for some of his words to carry. They were parts of slogans or a speech and the only string they heard was,

‘…freedom! Long live the -’

‘Forfeit!’

the mouth bellowed.

The militiaman came again and finished his work with the sword. It took two swings this time.

‘We should leave,’ Karr suggested softly.

The crowd began to disperse, quietly shuffling.

Reeth and Karr each took one of the boy’s arms to guide him through.

‘It would have been number three that time,’ Kutch told them, blinking back the tears.