The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (29 page)

“You offer hope where I have none, Passerina,” she said eventually. “I will take your bargain, but I will not move until you bring me word of the king.”

“Then I must hurry. I do not think that you have much time.”

She dropped the servant, moved out of his mind and back into the waiting flock of sparrows. She saw him fall, saw the confusion in his eyes, the fear, and saw Hestia put an arm about the man’s shoulder and help him to sit on the bed. It was a peculiar feeling to see an enemy show kindness where kindness was neither required nor expected.

She turned away from the fallen queen of Telas and spread herself about the city. She looked in a thousand windows, listened at a thousand doors, read the whole city like a book, and at the end of four hours she was no nearer to finding Terresh. It seemed that the king had simply vanished, his name was no longer spoken. It was as though he had never been here at all.

She gathered herself on top of the highest tower of castle and looked down over the city. She had been looking for a place that was guarded. If they held Terresh it would be in a place that was controlled by Seth Yarra. There would be Seth Yarra men at the gates, inside, in the surrounding streets. But there would be no need to guard a corpse.

Dead then? Pascha sat and looked, letting her many eyes consume the city as a single image, an awareness of every direction at the same time.

No, there was one more place to look, she realised. There was one building that was guarded, just one in which she had not thought to look: the castle itself. It was obvious, now that she thought about it. Why guard two buildings when you could guard one? The great fortress of Telas Alt was certainly large enough to keep both Hestia and the king imprisoned and each unaware of the other.

It was the work of a few minutes to search the windows, to peer in past every sill. She was getting quite comfortable with the many-ness of the flock, and she found it easy to assess and eliminate all he hundreds of images that the sparrows eyes fed her. She did not find the king, nor any sign of a place that was guarded and secure. What she did see were empty rooms, dust on furniture that should have been used, empty closets with doors that stood open and waved farewell to their purpose.

Apart from Hestia and her small retinue the castle was all but abandoned.

If not above, then below. There were dungeons below the castle, she knew, but in those dark and confined spaces the sparrows would be of no use to her. She took them down to the courtyard, the great space just within the gates, and sure enough there were men there; Seth Yarra guards. These men had no use for the castle. They did not want to live in it, to sit on its chairs or stand on its stone floors. Each and every one of them slept in their tent city beyond the walls of Telas Alt. She knew it with certainty. There was some purpose in Narak’s reading after all. These buildings, rooms, beds and chairs were
taint
to Seth Yarra. They were wrong and blasphemous. Yet here the soldiers stood. Doors were guarded. Locks were locked.

Pascha released the flock and fell back into the Sirash. Now was the time to use her new skills. She searched for minds, the red, warm, clouded minds of men. They were here in abundance. In the Sirash she could not see the door, but she knew direction, and knowing that she eased within the stone, past the door until she found a mind and dropped in behind its eyes. She did not wish to control, just to see.

There was a dark corridor, a lamp, and beyond that a door. The man sat in a chair in the dim light, humming to himself. She wondered at the chair, that he sat in it. Was it something they had brought with them? She could not see it, though.

Her bearings secured, she left the sitting man and moved through the next door. There were three minds here, and she chose one at random and borrowed his eyes.

The men sat around a table, and now she could see that the table and the chairs on which they sat were indeed of foreign manufacture. They had a blocky, rounded quality, all well braced and solid, well built but unexciting. The men were playing a card game, but she did not know the symbols on the cards, and when they spoke she did not understand their words. She sat behind the eyes for some time, and noted that there were six further doors, cells she imagined, that gave off this guards’ chamber. Of the six there was one in particular that the eyes flicked to quite regularly. She wished that the man, or at least one of the men, would stand and go to the door so that she might see what was within.

Time passed and they still played.

Perhaps a bit of mayhem was called for. After all, these were her enemies. They would gladly kill her if they could. She left the man playing cards and found the man in the passageway beyond the door again. She slipped behind his eyes. This was going to hurt, she expected, if she got the timing wrong.

She seized him; overpowered his mind and took control. It was easier this time. This man’s mind seemed more submissive, and she was quickly able to contain it. She stood and walked to the door. There was no grille or slot to look through. It was a plain, oak door, and she knew from what she had seen on the other side that it was bolted.

There was no point knocking. They would simply ask what she wanted, and she would not understand the words. She took ten steps back down the passage, braced herself, and ran as fast as she could at the door, head down. Just before she struck it she tore free of the man’s mind and quickly passed through and picked another of the men as a seat to watch the fun.

She did not hear the impact. She was between pairs of ears, but by the time she could hear and see again the room was in uproar. The card table had been kicked over and all three men were on their feet with swords drawn.

One of them, shorter than the other two with a clean shaven chin and small features, seemed to be in charge. He banged on the door and shouted. There was no answer. One of the other men said something, a suggestion perhaps, but the small man silenced him with a gesture. He shouted again. Still no answer. He turned and spoke to the others. Orders, she assumed. They stood back from the door and the ranking soldier carefully drew the two bolts that held it shut.

He flung the door open, and knelt at once to examine the man who lay there. Pascha could not tell if he was dead or unconscious, but there was a good deal of blood. He called his companions over, and they stood over their fallen comrade while the short one went up the passageway and examined the door at the other end. She heard the bolts rattle as he tested them.

Pascha took control of the man whose eyes she shared, and that was easy, too. He didn’t even stumble. There was just a slight bounce as his head slumped forwards and she lifted it again. She stabbed the man standing next to her, a quick thrust into his unprotected, unsuspecting side. She saw the look of surprise in his eyes as he died. Now she lunged forwards at the smaller man, deliberately clumsy, swinging her sword at his head. He ducked the blow easily and backed away, shouting words that she didn’t understand. So he was reluctant to kill the man. Well, that would be understandable if they knew each other.

She attacked again. She didn’t try too hard because the last thing she wanted was both men dead. It would pose a nice mystery for the Seth Yarra guards who came to relieve them, but it wouldn’t tell her who was imprisoned here, or help them to escape.

The smaller man backed away again, trying to move around the room so that he could get back to the door, thinking perhaps that he might run up the corridor and escape into the courtyard. That was one thing that she could not allow. She stepped to intercept him and cut hard at his neck.

That was enough. The small man was no longer playing games. He parried the blow and turned his body to push Pascha’s blade to one side, then thrust his own into her body. She abandoned it at the first white heat of pain. She had no desire to feel the full agony of the man’s death. In the Sirash she saw his life go out like a smothered candle. There was no dulling of his presence, no fading. He was there one moment, and gone the next. She seized upon the one remaining light. The last man, the sergeant or whoever he was, seemed a little more difficult to control, much as Hestia’s servant had been, but she overcame his resistance and found herself standing alone amid the carnage she had caused. Mayhem indeed.

She picked up the lamp and moved to the nearest cell door and slid back the small hatchway that allowed inspection. There was no light within.

“Who is within?” she asked. She spoke Telan.

There was movement in the dark.

“Soldiers of Telas, loyal to the king,” a voice replied. “Who is that?”

“I come from the queen. Is the king here?”

“The King? Not with us.”

She moved to the next door and asked the same question. There was no answer, no movement. She tried to hold the lamp so that she could see inside, but it was difficult and she could make nothing out in the poor light.

The next two doors yielded soldiers, or at least men who said that they were. It was the fifth door that gave her what she wanted.

“Who is within?” she asked.

“If you hold the key you know the answer,” a voice replied.

“There are dead men here who might have known,” she said. “But I forgot to ask them. Who is there?” She held up the light and squinted through the window. She could make out a man seated with his back propped against the side wall. There was a glint of something on his sleeve. “Terresh?”

“What’s left of him.”

“Your queen asked that I seek you out,” she said.

“Hestia? She is alive?”

“And well. She is not imprisoned as you are. I am to retrieve you. She will raise her banner against Seth Yarra, but not without you.”

“And you? You show no deference. You are not Telan?”

Pascha was about to announce herself, but thought better of it. These other men could hear what she said. She was certain that they listened.

“I serve the Wolf,” she said.

There was a long silence within the cell. It was probably not what the king had hoped to hear. “I see,” he said.

“I am not here to punish you, Terresh. The war outweighs your misdeeds. If you join with Hestia in raising Telas against Seth Yarra it will not be forgotten.”

“And who are you to make such promises?” Terresh sounded tired.

“I am one who offers hope, Terresh. You may sit in your cell and wait for the time when they no longer need you, or you can come with me now.”

“Escape? There is no escape from here. You forget that I know this castle well. I put many men in these dungeons, and none escaped.”

“None had my help. Now, will you come with me or shall I tell Hestia that her king is dead?”

“Better to die on my feet with a blade in my hand,” the king said. “I will come with you.”

Pascha plucked the keys from the belt of the man she had possessed. She tried two before the third one turned the lock and the door swung open. She stepped back, remembering that she had dropped the sword, or at least this body had, when she had taken control.

Terresh stepped out into the dim lamplight as though it were sunshine, blinking and squinting. He looked badly used. There was a bruise on one side of his face and his fine clothes were grimed and stank.

“You are one of the guards,” he said.

“I appear to be,” she replied. “But it is not so.”

“Magic, then. You are a Durander.”

“I am not. As it happens I was born in Telas Alt, but that is unimportant. I am here to free you. That is all that you need to know.”

Pascha turned her back on the king. She was already thinking how they might escape. There were two ways of doing it, she thought: either by stealth, or by force. If she chose force she could free the soldiers from their cells and make a break for the gate, hoping that they could fight off the Seth Yarra in the courtyard and outdistance them enough to lose themselves in the city. It was not an attractive option. Some of the guards had bows, and even if there were enough men in the cells to make it seem practical there were only four swords.