Taste of Lightning (29 page)

In the soft candlelight, she looked magnificent. Golden threads gleamed in her clothes; her shrivelled fingers were heavy with gems. She watched him through half-closed eyes; she looked almost asleep, but Skir sensed the sharp, glittering intelligence masked by her fleshy face.

‘I wanted to see you,' he said.

A low rumble rolled around the room; Skir thought it was far-off thunder, but it was the sound of Wanion chuckling. Her head thrust forward. ‘And I wanted to see you. I have wanted to see you for a long, long time. All the while you were in Arvestel, yes. How strange it is that we two, so close by in all those years, have never come together until now. And yet how fitting that we should meet here, in your own land.'

‘You sent Tansy to steal from me.'

‘Tansy? Ah, the laundry-maid, yes. You are an important person, My Lord Eskirenwey. Do you wonder that I sought influence with you?'

Bitter laughter welled in Skir's throat. ‘I am not important, Lady Wanion.'

‘You are too modest, My Lord,' said Wanion softly. She watched his face carefully. ‘Or is it possible that you do not know how important you are?'

She must have seen some change in his expression, because she rapped out a command to Elvie. ‘Fetch a seat for the Priest-King.'

Silently, without hesitation, Elvie crossed the room, and carried a light chair back to Skir. As she set it down, Skir smelled her scent of herbs and wood-smoke. Her blind eyes gazed past him as she murmured, ‘You burned her token. But she wouldn't – she wouldn't let me go.'

Skir did not sit down. He took hold of the back of the chair and gripped it hard. Elvie retreated to her stool; Wanion shifted her withered, jewel-laden hand to rest on Elvie's head, and Skir saw Elvie wince under its weight.

Wanion said, ‘Please sit, My Lord. What an honour it is, to enjoy a private audience with the ruler of Cragonlands, the heir to the Circle of Attar.'

‘You mock me. You must know I have no power. The Priest-King is a figurehead. The Colonial Administration rules Cragonlands, and the High Priest rules the Temple.'

The thunder growled nearby, rolling around three sides of the Pavilion.

‘Yes,' said Wanion in her low, rich voice. ‘And you are not even the true Priest-King, are you, no? You do not sing the songs to shake the mountains. You have not the gift of ironcraft.'

Skir jumped as if he'd been bitten. How could she know that? He said nothing, but he gripped the chair even harder.

‘Your importance, My Lord, does not depend upon your position.' Wanion's eyes were fixed greedily on his.

Skir shook his head impatiently. ‘What do you mean?'

Wanion let out a long breath, half-sigh and half-laugh. ‘You do not know. You truly do not know who you are.' Her fingers tightened on Elvie's head, and Elvie whimpered as the rings cut into her scalp. Skir stared at Wanion, bewildered and angry.

‘Let us make a bargain, yes?' Wanion's voice was deep and cunning. ‘I will tell you who you are. Are you not hungry to know it? And in return, you will help me.'

The room tilted and spun around Skir; he clutched the chair so hard he felt splinters in his palms. ‘How can I help you? I have no power.'

‘Then there is no harm in the promise.'

‘What do you want from me?'

Wanion flickered the tips of her fingers. ‘Only to be my ears and eyes in certain places, at certain times. That is all, nothing more. You would hurt no one. I know you do not wish to hurt anyone.' Her voice lowered. ‘I ask of each person only what they are willing to give. It is a question of finding the right price, that is all. You give to me, and I will give to you. You want to know what I know, yes?'

Skir closed his eyes. The sickly smell of incense and the stink of decay swirled around him; thunder rumbled overhead. It was true, he was desperate to know whatever Wanion could tell him. She said he was important, special; it was what he longed to hear. ‘Yes,' he said recklessly. ‘I agree to your terms.'

Wanion smiled. ‘Good. Your name is not Eskirenwey.'

‘I know
that
!' cried Skir in disappointment. The priests had given him that name. Was that all she had to tell him, the name his parents had chosen in that obscure village, sixteen years ago? He remembered what they'd called him. It was Tamm.

But Wanion said, ‘Your name is Arraxan. You are the firstborn son of Calwyn, the Singer of All Songs, also called the Witch-Singer of the Westlands, leader of the Chanters' Rising.'

Skir stared at her. Whatever else he might have expected, it was not this.

Wanion smiled her wide, thin-lipped smile, relishing his surprise. ‘No. I see you did not know. Even your priests do not know this secret.'

‘But then h-how –' Skir stammered.

‘You were sent to the Threelands as an infant, to keep you safe. You were to be hidden in the mountains of Cragonlands, fostered in a village.' Wanion gave her throaty chuckle. ‘No one could imagine you would be chosen by the priests to be the next Priest-King. And yet so it was.'

Skir struggled to understand. ‘But if I was supposed to be hidden . . . why didn't they fetch me back, when the priests chose me?'

‘You were born there, but you know nothing of the Westlands, and nothing of the arrogance of chanters,' said Wanion harshly. ‘To them, even the Palace of Arvestel is no more than the hut of a village chieftain. The Temple at Gleve is a roadside shrine. Your mother thought you would be as safe there, as hidden in shadows, as in your foster-parents' village. She was wrong. But by the time she knew, it was too late. All they could do was send a guardian to watch over you. And even he could not be trusted.' Wanion smiled in self-satisfaction.

‘Beeman? What do you mean, he couldn't be trusted?'

‘Your tutor was persuaded to work for me.'

‘No!' cried Skir. ‘Not Beeman!'

Wanion's eyebrow lifted. ‘Why do you not believe it? Have you not consented to do the same yourself, just this moment ago?'

Skir felt a wash of shame. He was more certain of Beeman than he was of himself.
Beeman might have pretended to work
for her
, he told himself fiercely,
but he would never have hurt me
. And suddenly he knew that Wanion must have known that too, or else why would she have ordered Tansy to steal from Skir? She could have ordered Beeman. But she hadn't. Skir hugged that knowledge to himself.

‘So, Arraxan,' purred Wanion. ‘Now you know who you are. But do you know
what
you are?'

‘No more riddles!' cried Skir. He summoned up his earliest memories, trying to make them fit with what he'd just been told. The memories of the village were real enough, the smell of rust, the crowded cottage. His father, the man with dark curling hair on the backs of his hands – was that his foster-father, or the man who'd sired him? And his mother, that blurred figure, the one who'd sung to him in the thunderstorm – was that in Cragonlands, or before? Was that the woman who had fostered him, or his birth mother, the Witch-Singer?

Thunder cracked overhead, and Skir jumped and swayed. The taste of metal leaped into his mouth; only the chair-back held him upright. Wanion had begun to speak again. Skir wanted to scream at her to shut up, to let him think, but her voice filled his head like the thunder and drowned out everything else.

‘You are no singer of ironcraft, Arraxan. You have always known this. Yet the priests who selected you made no mistake.'

Skir jumped again. ‘What?'

‘You are a chanter of fire, Arraxan. The first to be born in ten generations, excepting the Witch-Singer, who sings all songs.' Wanion's voice held a trace of scorn, as if it were somehow vulgar to be able to sing all the forms of chantment.
She's jealous
, thought Skir with a flash of insight.
She wishes she
was a chanter herself. But she's not. That's why she had to invent
her own magic –

And then his mind got to work on what Wanion had just said. ‘I'm not a chanter,' he said. ‘I sing the chantments, but nothing happens.'

‘But it will if you sing the songs of fire.'

This was absurd. ‘But I don't know the songs of fire!'

‘Oh, I think you do, My Lord.' Suddenly Wanion's musical voice was full of menace. Her fingers clamped Elvie's skull, tighter, tighter, until Elvie shrieked, and a trickle of blood ran down her face.

‘Stop!' shouted Skir, but his voice was drowned by thunder. Suddenly he was drenched in sweat, his hands slippery on the chair. His terror of storms mingled with his fear of Wanion, and the huge, formless anger that swirled inside him. Elvie's face twisted with pain. Thunder cracked, so loud it seemed it would split the Pavilion in two.

Skir covered his eyes. Sobs of rage and grief and terror shook him. He was a little boy again, hardly more than a baby, and his mother was singing, and the storm whirled and flashed around them. He was in her arms, he was safe; he laughed and clapped his hands with delight and sang with her . . .

But as he sang, the lightning struck. White light cracked him like a whip from his mother's arms. He was hurled away, limp and helpless, smashed on the ground, and there were screams in his ears, and the metal taste of the lightning on his tongue.

That taste was in his mouth now. The thunder rolled and rumbled all around; the windows rattled, the tiles on the roof of the White Pavilion shook loose. Almost without knowing it, Skir began to sing his mother's song.

He sang louder as the chantment surged through him. It was a song with words that didn't make sense, nonsense words, a child's song. But the tune was strange and forceful; it belonged to the storm. The growl of thunder was in it, and the dazzle of lightning. He felt his mother's arms wrapped tightly around him, her warm voice close to his ear, the smell of her dark hair. He was no one then: not the Priest-King Eskirenwey, no one's pawn, no one's hostage, not a figurehead or a weapon or a great sorcerer, just a child too young to pronounce his own name. It didn't matter what anyone thought of him, or what they expected. He was simply his own self, safe and beloved in his mother's arms: the last moment that he'd ever felt truly safe. He called the lightning closer and closer, brighter and brighter, like fireworks.

A cold shiver ran over his skin, and his hair stood on end.

The lightning was in the room.

He knew it before he opened his eyes. Globes of cold blue fire danced across the threadbare carpet, lighting the room with a flickering glow. They dipped and weaved and spun slowly through the air.

Wanion's lizard-eyes followed them. Her mouth hung open, and there was a fleck of foam at the corner of her lips. Her breath came in heavy gasps, greedy and triumphant.

But Skir saw that she was afraid. She had created him, she had made a chanter of fire, and too late she realised she couldn't control him. Skir saw it. And he saw that even now her ringed hand pressed down on Elvie's head, and Elvie squirmed with pain, her mouth open in a scream of soundless agony, and Wanion did not let her go.

Anger surged through Skir, anger for Elvie's pain, not for himself. He was still singing. The chantment strengthened around him and through him until he was lost in the magic. Skir didn't exist any more: only the chantment of fire that streamed through him.

The windows shattered. Glass showered like exploding diamonds, and the room erupted into fireworks.

A dozen balls of lightning – yellow, orange, blue, white-hot – shot in through the windows and the smashed dome above. Lightning crackled from floor to ceiling; fiery spheres hurtled round the room, fizzing with sparks. Flames licked up the curtains.

Wanion cried out. Her wasted arms lifted uselessly, flapping against her litter. Elvie sprang up and raked the air with her fingertips, her scarred face contorted with panic.

Skir turned his face upward, and sang his mother's song. There was so much noise; the song reverberated in his mouth and throat, alive. So this was chantment, this was how it felt to sing up magic! His hair stood on end, his hands and feet tingled as if they'd burst. He raised his hands to summon the lightning, and the lightning came.

With a roar that echoed the cracking of thunder all around, the roof of the White Pavilion lifted off, clean as a cork from a bottle. For a heartbeat it hung in the air, then dissolved into a rain of fragmented tiles and rotten timbers. Skir stood with his arms outstretched, his red hair powdered with dust and plaster, and he sang. The lightning rose around him, enclosing him in a shaft of blue-white fire that crackled between the storm clouds and the Pavilion below.

‘Ren? Ren – Skir! Oh, stop it, please, stop!'

Elvie screamed to him, but Skir could not hear.

Beeman, Tansy, Perrin and Penthesi walked, slowly and carefully, so as not to jog the Broken Fire, back down the road into the valley. Beeman gave his dagger to Perrin, in case they encountered Bettenwey's servants. There was a faint growl of thunder overhead.

‘By the bones,' said Perrin. ‘The storm's right on top of the city.'

They all looked down into the valley at the faint yellow lights of Gleve. The clouds were clotted, a thick, stormy mass above the city.

‘Never seen clouds pile themselves up like that before,' said Tansy.

Penthesi whinnied and pawed the ground; the whites of his eyes showed. Suddenly he reared, black against the sky, and trampled his hoofs down like the clash of thunder. That instant, a silent blue-white explosion of light shot up from the heart of the city, flickering between the rooftops and the clouds.

‘What in the name of all the gods –' cried Perrin.

‘Sorcery!' Tansy's hand went to her throat.

Beeman swore. ‘No! Skir! Oh gods. Let us be in time –' He began to run, heedless of the rucksack that bumped on his back.

Penthesi bolted. He snatched his bridle from Tansy's hand and careered down the track past Beeman, vanishing into the darkness.