The Complete Twilight Reign Ebook Collection (169 page)

‘What do you mean?’ Yeren said in surprise. He crossed his legs, revealing for a moment the leather breeches he wore before tugging his penitent’s robe straight to cover them.

Certinse smiled inwardly. Lucky for them it’s winter and an extra layer is welcome. In summer they actually might have to forego their fighting clothes. ‘I mean: our goal is not civil war; we don’t need evidence that this was a set-up to provoke a conflict. But that doesn’t need to be the only result.’

‘Why not? You’ve got ‘em runnin’ scared,’ Yeren said, gesticulating as he spoke. ‘They agreed wholesale to the High Cardinal’s reforms. If you ask me, whatever happened in Scree broke Lord Isak’s spirit - ‘

‘I do not pay you to think,’ Certinse snapped, ‘and of that I am glad when your skills at it are so poor. Do you think we would be in such a secure position if Lord Isak was so easily swayed, considering it is the Chief Steward whispering in his ear?’

He reached for the bell-pull and gave it a tug to summon his secretary, a weak-chinned little man whose father had named him Kerek, clearly hoping he’d sired a great warrior rather than the cautious cleric he’d grown into.

The secretary hurried in and, blinking first at Yeren, bowed to Certinse. ‘Yes, your Eminence?’

‘Prepare a letter to High Cardinal Echer. I advise we distance ourselves from the unfortunate late High Priest Bern, and that we should encourage the investigation be concluded swiftly and quietly. I want it to imply we know more than we’re going to tell on the subject.’

‘Won’t that make him suspicious?’ Yeren interjected, failing to pay attention to Certinse’s hard look. ‘They’ll be looking to see who else might have been in league with daemons. You Farlan find conspiracies far more entertaining than the truth.’

‘Firstly,’ Certinse replied with exaggerated patience, ‘they will be looking for conspirators within the cult of Death, not outside it. Bern would be unlikely to take his heresy out of his domain. Secondly, Echer is so far gone he’s barely even aware when it’s Prayerday. Now that his proposals have been accepted the man’s as happy as… well, as happy as an utterly deranged man can be. Kerek, do you think there’s an appropriate term?’

‘Ecstatic, perhaps, sir?’

Certinse nodded. ‘The right hint of fervour, certainly. Anyway, Echer is content to occupy his time devising more strictures to impose on the Farlan people. Fortunately for the Farlan people, he sends them to me for my contribution now that he sees me as his champion, and I have in my employ several talented, albeit argumentative, theologians to help refine the text.’

‘Meaning you let him argue with them all day, leaving you to run the cult?’

Certinse inclined his head. ‘For a soldier you’re not so great a fool.’

Yeren managed to not allow himself to be baited. ‘That won’t work forever.’

‘I know. Kerek, have you seen your friend Ardela recently?’

‘I have, your Eminence,’ Kerek replied with a bow that wasn’t fast enough to hide his smile.

‘You should write to her, ask her to put her debating skills to use. Perhaps afterwards you could go and see her, just to ensure she is well. It must be a trying time for her; I hear shocking news about her mistress. Invite Yeren along too, perhaps?’

‘Mistress?’ Yeren said sharply as Kerek bowed again and retreated out of the room. ‘That wouldn’t be the Lady, would it? Rumour has it that she’s dead, murdered in one of her own temples.’

‘I wouldn’t know the details, I’m afraid, but I too hear she is dead.’ Certinse watched Yeren’s face as the soldier fitted the pieces together. A devotee of the Lady. The irritant that was High Chaplain Echer. Honestly Yeren, it’s not that difficult, is it? Or are you just trying to believe better of a man of the cloth?

‘Piss and daemons!’

Certinse smiled. ‘Not quite.’

‘Your secretary didn’t even bat an eyelid,’ Yeren protested. ‘What sort of bloody life do you clerics lead?’ The man actually looked outraged, as though he had been a paradigm of goodness throughout years of bloody civil war in Tor Milist.

Bat an eyelid? The man barely did that when I told him to renounce his God and worship a daemon-prince; I doubt he’s going to care about murder. It hardly interests him unless he gets to participate.

‘The cut and thrust of clerical debate can be most wounding,’ Certinse agreed. ‘He will set up a meeting with Ardela after she has presented her argument to the High Cardinal. Perhaps you should take a squad with you to meet her. As with many of those with copper hair she can be somewhat fiery; perhaps it is something in the dye?’

Appetites that need paying for. Certinse recalled Lord Isak’s words all too clearly. Damn you, Ardela.’ Your sloppiness has put me in the Chief Steward’s pocket for the rest of my life, and that’s the sort of mistake you don’t get away with. I almost wish the daemon-prince had not been killed by whatever it was that managed the feat. I would be pleased to send your soul to him, but I’ll have to settle with just killing you.

‘Somewhat fiery?’ Yeren echoed, I doubt she’ll be comin’ along quietly, either.’

‘The sad realities of life,’ Certinse agreed as he returned to his report.

A cold wind whipped across his body, slapping his cheek with fingers of ice. He kept his head low and watched his feet rise and fall to the tune of tortured muscle. His feet were bare, always bare, his clothes ragged and torn. Eolis in his hand tugged him forward, dragging him towards the broken-tooth mountain that filled the horizon. He could smell the mud and burning on the wind, so unlike the furnace of Scree, yet similar for the upwelling of horror it provoked within him.

He stopped and looked at the shadows lying thick on the ground. The sun was absent from a grim grey sky yet the shadows were tangible for their blackness. They began to shift and writhe under his gaze and he staggered a few steps back, seeing sudden movement everywhere he looked. The shadows thrashed and kicked, rising a little then falling back to earth. He felt eyes on him and realised the shadows were not monsters or daemons coming to life. They were much worse.

Faces from all parts of his life, blood-splattered and screaming, enemies he’d barely seen before he’d killed them, butchered friends: they all stared at him from every direction. It was a field of the dead; those slain by his own hand lying in great heaps alongside those who had died because of his order.

He turned to run, unable to face their eyes and their cries any longer, but there were more behind him, and standing over those, five figures watching him from his shadow.

‘What do you want?’ he moaned, sinking to his knees. He felt the cold in his numb hands and feet, draining what little life remained.

‘We wait,’ was the only reply he received.

One of the figures stepped closer and bent down so it could look him in the face. The pitiless grey ice of her eyes made him cry out with pain, but the sound was dulled and muled in her presence. Her dress was once of a rich pale blue cloth, now torn and ragged like his own. A small, withered bunch of flowers hung loose from her fingers.

‘We wait for release,’ she whispered in his ear, each syllable like the last breath of a dying man. ‘We wait for our lord to claim you. Can you hear his footsteps yet? Can you feel his hounds draw closer?’

‘Isak,’ the voice called as a hand nudged his shoulder.

He flinched. The hand was as hot as a furnace on his skin after the pervading chill of the dream. He squinted up at the figure standing over him, his head feeling muzzy and heavy. Xeliath held out her wasted hand towards him. She looked far stronger now than when she’d arrived. Being a stranger in a strange land had forced her to become stronger, and even crippled she was a white-eye, with more than enough stubborn resilience to rise to the challenge. Invited guest or not, many Farlan would simply see a Yeetatchen, an enemy - but after her weeks of recuperation Isak guessed Xeliath would relish the coming fight.

‘Careful where you point that thing,’ he growled, scowling at the Crystal Skull fused to her palm. Their relationship was still a little strange, neither one really sure what it was, despite the occasional visits Xeliath still made to his dreams, which were sufficiently unreal to allow an easy veneer of closeness.

She didn’t reply other than to hook over a chair with her crutch and sit down with a contented sigh. Isak took a moment to look at the fierce brown-skinned girl he’d stolen away from her people. Her figure was hardly visible under the layers of thick woollen dress she wore, but her hair - longer now than when she’d first arrived - fell loose about her ears. It had been threaded with ribbons, brown, purple and yellow, while a golden charm of Amavoq, patron of her tribe, was at her throat.

‘It is a feast day for my people,’ she explained, seeing his gaze, ‘so we all wear the colours of Jerequan, the Lady at Rest and - Well, we eat like a bear does for winter!’

‘Jerequan is a bear?’

‘An Aspect of Vrest, yes.’ She stopped and looked closer at his face. ‘Are you hungover, or are your dreams still bad?’

Isak attempted a smile. ‘How do you feel about a bit of both?’

‘Typical man! Drink away your problems and forget the rest of the Land.’ She leaned back, her chestnut-coloured nose wrinkling in distaste.

Isak looked puzzled until he noticed his mouth tasted like a mouse had crawled in and died while he was asleep. He was pushing himself upright when he suddenly remembered where he was.

‘How did you get in here?’ he demanded. He was sleeping in the room where he’d spent his first night in Tirah Palace, halfway up the Tower of Semar, and it was unique, as far as he knew, in that it had no staircase. Instead there was a well or chimney running through the centre of the tower, and a spell engraved onto the wall at its base to lift people up on a flurry of spectral wings.

Xeliath grinned, suddenly looking like the girl she was rather than the time-ravaged crone her stroke often made her seem. She gestured towards the circular hole in the floor on her left. ‘Lady Tila was helping me with my hair when she mentioned that the tower had obeyed your command your first night here.’

‘But I’m Chosen of Nartis,’ Isak protested, ‘it’s supposed to accept me.’

‘Hah! Anything some fool Farlan can do, I do better,’ she declared, raising her twisted left arm. ‘The tower knew what was good for it and obeyed me.’

‘Betrayed by my own tower?’ Isak muttered. ‘Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’

‘That often happens after much wine. Were you hiding here to drink, or just to sleep?’

He shrugged. ‘Didn’t feel much like getting a lecture on drink from anyone, least of all you.’

‘I never get like this when I drink,’ she replied scornfully.

‘I know,’ Isak said with a smirk. ‘I’ve seen how you get! Makes me nervous to go to sleep when you’re like that.’

She looked him up and down critically, and Isak tried to pull his clothes to order, his shirt having somehow twisted around his body while he slept. ‘It is better that I’m drunk. Anyway, most men would be happy to be allowed to sleep at the same time.’

Isak gave up. ‘Not complaining, just saying I should be allowed to drink in peace if I want. Makes me feel better - and it doesn’t kill anyone, which, frankly, is better than anything else I’ve done as Lord of the Farlan.’

He looked around for the wine jar he’d been drinking from and found it on its side by the bed. There was enough left to swill around his mouth to get rid of the worst of the sour taste his dreams had left there. ‘If you want to know what happened to the Land that makes a devotee of the Lady go mad and kill the High Cardinal - well, I’ll tell you: it was me. I’m what happened; I’m the stone in the path of history, the start of all the shit that’s happening around here.’

Xeliath shook her head, the ribbons dancing like butterfly tails. ‘The death of the Lady wasn’t your fault, nor the rage of the Gods. Whatever you did to the Reapers, you couldn’t have predicted it -I doubt even Azaer’s disciples did, and they planned most of it.’

Isak looked down. ‘Then why do I still feel guilty?’

To his surprise, the fierce-eyed Yeetatchen white-eye laughed, not mockingly, but affectionately.

‘Because you are human, you fool! Whatever the Gods - or anyone - asks of you, they cannot take away your humanity. The Gods made you that way, and anyone who argues otherwise will have to explain themselves to me.

‘It doesn’t matter that your purpose might be impossible,’ she added fiercely, her Yeetatchen accent growing more noticeable with her vehemence, ‘or already fulfilled. That is the fault of others, not you. They filled your dreams with prophecy and destiny. They gave you power, and forgot a white-eye is still human, no matter how great a weapon.’

‘So here I am - a saviour without a cause who can’t even use drink to hide from his dreams of death?’ Isak hadn’t meant that to sound as abjectly pathetic as it came out, but Xeliath’s face fell all the same.

‘How often?’

‘The dreams?’ he sighed and shook his head. ‘Not often. Rare enough to be a shock when they do come; not so rare that I look forward to going to sleep.’

‘Have you seen the hound again?’

‘No, and for that at least I’m glad.’ He grimaced again and rubbed his palms over his face. There was a tingle in his cheek where the single ring he wore - a tube of silver bearing his dragon crest, a replacement for the one he’d given to Commander Brandt’s son back in Narkang - had caught it. ‘What bell is it?’ he asked as he began to tug on his boots.

‘Past the fifth,’ Xeliath replied, waiting until he had finished before reaching out her good arm to him. When he took it she hauled herself upright and together they entered the dark circle in the centre of the room. ‘I prefer to walk the palace at night when there are not so many faces to stare.’

‘You walk the palace alone?’

‘When I wish. I am always pleased to have Mihn’s company, and sometimes Lady Tila or Count Vesna accompany me, but I will not have a nurse.’

‘Are you sure? I’d be happier with someone watching your back.’

‘I am not so slow - it would take more than a soldier with a grudge,’ she said, adding with a grin, ‘and unlike you, I have no dreams of death!’