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CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

The high seer from Lynesreach precinct was a portly man whose substantial belly and air of self-consequence invariably preceded him into the room. His flesh brimmed up around the ostentatious signet ring he wore on the middle finger of his left hand, suggesting he hadn’t always been that way. Vasic had no real wish to speak to the man, but he was clutching at straws. And the High Seer Yurgen of Lynesreach was a very substantial straw indeed. If Vasic should make it through this mysterious illness, he intended to inspect the precinct at Lynesreach. If the rest of the brethren had grown even half as hefty as Yurgen, he would raise their taxes.

Yurgen was surprisingly supple for his build and he bowed in creditable style, his nose almost scraping the floor. The haughty note from his letter to Vasic before the wedding was absent today – instead his manner was all appeasement. The week he’d spent kicking his heels in the guest lodgings since the wedding might have sweetened him somewhat.

“Highness, I am your most loyal servant, humble and eager to do your bidding.” He straightened up, folding his hands in pious manner, keeping his eyes lowered in a gratifying display of humility.

Could Vasic even rely on the man to tell him the truth, should he know it? The seer had all the appearance of one who was determined to please, whatever the cost. Vasic stroked his chin. His beard was growing apace. He loathed the feel of it, but it served to hide the worst ravages of his mysterious illness.

As ever Vasic was tempted to say nothing. The sight would tell the seer what he wanted from him, would it not? Yurgen waited in silence, an ingratiating smile plastered on his face while he kept his eyes deferentially lowered. Really, the man was an intolerable sycophant once he was within range of immediate consequences for his actions.

Vasic sighed. “You must be frank with me, high seer. I know you are well able to cast aside concerns of precedence and status where matters of the sight are concerned – I have your reply concerning the Lady Alwenna as proof of that.”

The man paled visibly and lowered his head further. “Your highness, the sight is impartial. It grieved me greatly to write such–”

Vasic raised one hand in the air and the man fell silent. With his face directed at the floor his peripheral vision had to be remarkable indeed. Vasic lowered his hand again, resting it on the arm on his chair before the tremors could be seen.

“I make no recrimination for that letter. It is over and done.” He drew in a breath, looking for the words to phrase his query in as roundabout a way as possible. “Today I would have you tell me what visions the sight has brought you since then.”

“Your highness, the sight is a fickle thing, it ebbs and flows like the tide. It is ever secretive and the glimpses it grants us are often obscure.”

“Yes, yes. I know that. Just tell me what you have seen.”

The man licked his lips nervously. “Highness, I hardly know where to begin…”

He was indeed pale. Paler than Vasic could ever recall seeing him before. Something about his manner reminded Vasic of… himself. His own haunted sleep and feverish night-fears. “Tell me, Yurgen, do you have visions that recur, night after night?”

Yurgen’s eyes widened and for a moment, in his surprise, he looked straight at Vasic. “Highness, I do.” He seemed at a loss as to what to say next.

“Then perhaps you might begin with those, before we both die of old age.”

Yurgen shuffled his feet. “You must understand, highness, that the sight is often imprecise, and can defy rational explanation.” He hesitated, looking up at Vasic with apprehension.

“Yes, yes, of course.” Was the old fraud about to reveal something he needed to hear for once? Vasic snapped his fingers. The guards at the door stood to attention. “Leave us. You will remain outside and ensure we are not disturbed until I give you further orders.” He waited until the door had closed behind them before turning his attention back to the high seer.

“Very well, Yurgen. Tell me what the sight has revealed to you.”

Yurgen bowed again, nose almost to the ground once more. He shook as he straightened up again, clasping and reclasping his hands in the time-honoured pose of the overly pious. “This week, night after night, your highness, I have seen… death. And with it darkness, such a darkness as I have never seen before. It corrupts all it touches. It is tainted, it runs against all natural order, an abomination.” He shivered, the knuckles of his clasped hands whitening. “This much I can sense, but where the darkness is situated I cannot tell, or what form it takes. Its origin is… hidden from me. Unknowable.”

Once Vasic would have scorned the man’s words, sneered at his lack of solid information. Once. But the high seer’s palpable fear convinced him. The man had always been holier-than-thou and arrogant with it. But now his composure had quite deserted him as he spoke of this mysterious darkness. Vasic fingered his beard. Darkness. The seer’s words resonated with his own sense of foreboding.

“What else, Yurgen, besides this darkness?”

“Your highness, the darkness runs through everything, it reaches out across the kingdom. It… I think… it would engulf you if it had its way.”

This was not the complacent litany he was used to hearing from seers. This was something raw, elemental. The man’s fear was so heavy he could almost taste it on the air. This time, the seer believed. For once he would hear the truth, insofar as the man understood it. “If it had its way? It has a will, then?”

“Nothing is certain, your highness. I… I cannot examine it, every instinct forces me to turn away.”

“And do you believe this is some elemental thing the Lady Alwenna’s curse has conjured into being?” This was the question that most concerned Vasic. He expected the old man to crow over him, and upbraid him for not heeding his oft-repeated warnings by keeping Alwenna at Highkell.

The seer shifted uncomfortably. “No, your highness. It is an ancient thing, as old as death itself. And it reaches out for her, too. It hungers…”

“She fell to her death. None could have survived.” He spoke the words almost without realising.

“Highness, it still hungers for her. For all who are of Gabrennir’s royal line.”

A cloud moved across the sun at that moment and Vasic shivered despite himself. A darkness that hungered for royal blood? Even beyond death? The whole thing was preposterous, yet… it had a ring of truth he could not easily dismiss, without knowing why it was so. “Pour us both drinks, Yurgen.” He indicated a decanter of wine on the side table. “I must know everything you can tell me.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

It was only when Alwenna walked into the dining room and saw Weaver, freshly shaven and cleaned of the grime of several days’ travel, sitting there with the others that it finally hit her: she’d survived. Whatever had happened to Vasic, he wasn’t sending soldiers after her or they’d have overtaken them long before now. And those archers had fired on them, so they had to know someone had been retrieved from the rubble. Then again, all the archers had fallen with the section of curtain wall that collapsed. The Goddess had been watching over her, it seemed. Her next religious observance would be very different from the ritual she had always performed out of duty. She still had no reason to believe the Goddess had truly spoken, and it was probably just coincidence. But… belief… As a child her prayers hadn’t been answered. It was fair to say her non-belief had been shaken.

She realised Weaver was holding a chair ready for her to sit. She sat. “Thank you. There’s no need to do that – I’m just another traveller on this road.” In a plain kirtle she was once more anonymous, but not if Weaver insisted on treating her as a grand lady.

Weaver raised his eyebrows, but he didn’t argue. “We’ve been hearing more about Vasic. Rumour has it he’s not just ill, but gravely ill.”

Was that to be laid at her door too? “What would they know in an out-of-the-way place like this?”

“The freemerchants say rumours travel fastest along good roads. Roads meet here from all four corners of The Marches – it’s hardly out of the way. “

“Well, if the freemerchants say it is so…” That reminded her of the letter from the freemerchant, Marten. What was it that other freemerchant had said on the road to Vorrahan? He’d claimed her as sister. There they were, scurrying about the kingdom, passing on their nuggets of news. It was a strange kind of freedom to be always on the move like that.

The food arrived while she was lost in thought. She felt strangely lightheaded. She’d been keeping the voices at bay since her vision in the bath, but she could sense them now, growing more determined, nibbling at the edges of her resolve. Perhaps food would help.

Conversation ebbed and flowed around her, yet she felt unable to contribute to it. She picked at the stew, aware she needed to eat but she had little appetite. When she pushed her unfinished portion aside she still felt oddly detached from her surroundings. She was missing something of import – something crucial. When the menfolk started delving into the ale she decided to withdraw to her room. Weaver looked up questioningly as she stood. He glanced to where Erin was engrossed in conversation with Curtis. Alwenna shook her head. She could manage perfectly well without assistance. Erin and Curtis may make an odd couple, the one skinny as the other was solid, but let them seize a rare moment of happiness.

Alwenna had reached her room door before she knew what she was about to do. She paused, hand on the latch, checking back along the dim corridor. The corridor was empty. There were no locks on the room doors here – they could be bolted from the inside, and each room contained a strong chest that was secured to the floor, where valuables might be locked away. She turned and walked the few paces back to Weaver’s room. Even though there was no one nearby to hear, she thumbed the latch cautiously so it would make no noise and slipped inside. The room was identical to hers, with shabby furnishings and a chipped and battered bed frame that had clearly seen better days. The fire in the grate still gave out warmth, banked up with ashes to keep it smouldering slowly.

A faint odour of horse wafted from the corner where his travelling clothes had been draped over a chair. That was the surcoat he’d been wearing when they arrived. She hunted through the pockets, outside and in. There were more than she’d expected – she could see how it had been possible for him to conjure up so many small necessities on their journey. She found his flint and some dry tinder stowed deep in one of the inside pockets. Elsewhere she found string, spare leather laces, crumbs in the pocket where he must have kept the oatcakes, but no sign of the letter, beyond a fragment of the wax seal that must have broken off when he pocketed it earlier that evening. Had he kept the letter with him when he’d changed clothes? Or even destroyed it so it wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands? Wrong hands like hers, perhaps. He’d told her often enough he trusted no one.

In which case it was high time she earned his distrust. She hunted through the rest of his clothing but found nothing beyond a deal of horse hair. The lovers had begun their nightly tryst, discarding their clothing as she searched through Weaver’s. She pushed their voices away as she tackled the noisome saddlebags. They only contained a tangle of spare clothing and other odds and ends. Buried underneath them, her fingertips met a cloth-wrapped bundle. A shiver of recognition told her straight away it was the dagger Drew had given her; she didn’t need to unwrap it. She snatched her hand away and dropped the saddlebags hastily in the corner before turning to the merchant chest. It was the only place left. He might have locked the letter away in there. She dropped to her knees beside it. The key was right there, in the lock.

She twisted the key and lifted the lid, then peered inside. Empty. If he still had the letter, he carried it with him. She lowered the lid shut, sinking back on her heels. The lovers’ hunger flooded her mind, as if they’d been waiting for her guard to drop. Who were they? There must have been some reason they lurked there at the edge of her awareness, night after night. But maybe that was her mistake – trying to apply reason to anything that had happened since she left Highkell. They might not even be real, just some shameful fantasy conjured up by her own madness. She would end her days as crazy as old Gwydion. Or even crazier.

Behind Alwenna the door latch clicked and someone stepped into the room. She froze, the tiny hairs on the back of her neck standing on end as she realised she was being observed. Too late to snuff out the candle on the mantelpiece. Too late to hide.

There was a hushing sound as the door swung shut and a soft clunk as it closed.

“My lady.”

It was Weaver. The tension slid from her shoulders and she could breathe again. She twisted round to see him standing in the doorway, looking down at her where she sat on the floor next to the chest. It had to be crystal clear what she’d been about.

“My lady.” He repeated the words with the deliberation of a man who’d drunk well that evening, but not so much he slurred. “This is unexpected.”

“Yes, it is.” Too late to dissemble. Far, far too late. Better to brazen it out. “I never imagined you’d be back so soon. Not with so much drink at the table.”

“No. Sometimes I surprise myself.” He stepped around the end of the bed so he could see her fully. “But not as much as you surprise me, my lady.” He took up the poker and stirred the fire into life, added a log, then turned back to where she sat on the floor, watching him.

“It appears for all the world as if you’ve been searching my room. Might I have the temerity to ask why?”

“That’s a fair question.” Still she sat. She had no idea how best to deal with the situation. At the back of her mind the two lovers communed eagerly. Her skin prickled with awareness of their passion.

“Are you likely to answer it?” Weaver took a step closer, watching her as if he expected her to sprout wings and fly away.

“I daresay.” She began to get to her feet but a stab of pain shot through her ankle when she tried to put weight on it. “Perhaps you could help me up?”