The Seventh Friend (Book 1) (30 page)

And Narak? Narak had known.

She punished herself, allowed her mind to dwell on each of the people she had come to know over the last four centuries. She remembered faces, occasions, conversations, intimacies, but there was no grief. People no longer died in her world. She moved away, cut them off like worn out rope, and started a new life. Like a snake shedding its skin she lost all the little scars each time she moved on. It was only the deep ones, the old ones, which stayed with her time after time: Alaran, Narak, her mother and father. She had stopped living.

Was there a way back? She drifted on and on. Perhaps the Sirash was what she really was; a disembodied presence, passing over life, aware of it, able to reach out and touch it, but separate. No, she could not accept that. Narak managed to care, and Beloff in his way; some of the others, too. She needed to find a new balance, a new way to be part of the world. For the moment she was a cut flower, a rootless decoration that would shrivel and die.

Something in the Sirash caught her attention and held it. Sparrows. A flock of sparrows in a field of corn. Her own creatures. She allowed them to distract her for a moment, but watched with growing fascination. She had never watched sparrows before. The corn was gone, harvested days ago, but the sparrows were among the broken straw, chaff and spilled grain. They boiled, swirled and swept around each other like a living cloud. In the Sirash they seemed a constellation of brightness, almost like a single living thing.

She watched, fascinated by the patterns, amazed by the unity of the movement. If she concentrated on a single bird the movement was erratic. It hopped, it pecked, it flew, it was startled, it was hungry; it was a collection of simple desires and actions. Yet if she drew back and watched the flock, hundreds of birds seemed to move as one, with the intelligence of a larger creature.

Could it really be so simple?

Pascha was driven by her revelation. She was filled with a reckless despair, and so she did what she would not have done a mere hour previously. She descended upon the flock of sparrows and merged with them. She became the flock.

At first it was more frightening than being in a single bird. The tiny idiot brightness of one sparrow was simpler than having a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, being in the midst of a cloud of wings. She struggled to focus, but the harder she tried, the more difficult it became. A single person was just not meant to see with so many eyes. There was nothing in her mind that could cope with the clutter of images. She let go and allowed the images to bombard her. Like a pile of leaves picked up in an autumn breeze, the images spun around her.

Just for a moment it happened. She was not trying at all, and suddenly she was the flock, all of it at the same moment, aware of everything around her, seeing in every direction at once, hearing everything. Each piece of the shattered image fell into place and she saw with something better than eyes.

As soon as she had it, she lost it again. The unity shattered, and again there was only confusion, fragments of sight and sound swirling about her.

But she could do it! The flock was complex enough to hold her mind. There was enough space that she was not diminished within it, and yet there was a way to see, to hear, to be the flock.

How many years had she wasted not knowing this simple thing? If Pelion had said to her, those long centuries past, just three words:
be the multitude
, everything would have been different. But he had not. She had put herself into one sparrow, a tiny creature with mind no bigger than a single candle flame to illuminate the library of her consciousness, and she had been terrified by it, as though a puff of wind would blow that candle out and she would simply cease to be.

Now she was indeed the lady of the sparrows, the god of a thousand eyes, or she would be when practice yielded the skill that she had touched upon. She withdrew from the Sirash feeling renewed.

She would return to them, to Narak and Beloff and all the others, but not yet. First she must prove herself somehow. She would become what she was meant to be, and they would see it, and they would ask her to rejoin the society of the Benetheon once more.

Pascha rose, stretching the stiffness out of her limbs. It felt as though she had been still for hours, and perhaps she had. She went out of the small room and locked the door again behind her. She called for her maid to attend her, but there was no answer. She went to the kitchens where the girl was usually to be found, but there was no sign of her there, either.

She went up stairs to her sitting room, and heard voices drifting in through the open window. Curious, she stepped to the window, keeping to one side so that she would not be seen. This house was not a particularly grand building, and stood no more than twenty yards back from the street. A semi-circular driveway swept round beneath a roofed space, a space where one could step down from a carriage out of the rain, and back to the road again.

Her maid was standing close to the road, talking to a man. It was not an intimate conversation. She stood a respectful distance from him, head tilted forwards in an attentive pose. Pascha could not hear what passed between them, but she could hear the tone of his voice, of her voice, and see the gestures that he made. The man was giving her commands.

She studied him carefully. He was well dressed, a gentlemen to all appearances, but his face was hard and cold. There was no asking in his stance, no cajoling, no kindness. He wore a short sword of a functional kind, unornamented and well worn from what she could see. He was a man who used his sword, a dangerous man, and she could see that Teean knew it.

He glanced up at the house and she pulled back a little. She did not quite know why, but she did not want that man to know that she had seen him. She did not think him well disposed to her. His presence gave her an uneasy feeling.

So she could no longer trust Teean. She rang the bell, and saw the maid say a last few words to the man, nod, and then run inside.

Duke Elyas wished for the hundredth time that he had listened to his physics’ advice. He rode beside Aidon, and did his best to put the pain out of his mind, but it was increasingly difficult to stay upright in the saddle, and he feared that if he slumped over the saddle, or even fell, it would take some of the heart from his men, and he thought that they needed it all.

Behind him rode and walked the army of Avilian. Thousands of horses and men on foot, hundreds of wagons loaded with supplies. They followed him.

If he had stayed in Bas Erinor they would have wondered why he did not lead them, but they would have followed Aidon just the same. Now he had no choice. The riding had made his illness worse. What had been an irritation and a mild weakness back in the castle had become a severe pain and a tiredness that filled his body with a desire to stop, to fall to the ground, to sleep away the rest of his life. He badly needed to rest.

Riders approached, and Elyas welcomed the distraction. They were his own men, scouts sent ahead to ensure the safety of the trail. Their officer pulled his mount up just a few yards from the duke and his retinue. He was smiling.

“My Lord Duke,” he said. “Good news.”

“Report,” Elyas commanded.

“The Afaeli camp is no more than a mile distant, my lord. They have not been attacked, and their forces are intact. The King extends his invitation to you to join him and relax after your long journey.”

Did the Afaeli know of his illness? He looked back at the army for a moment, plodding slowly onwards. By nightfall they would be encamped with their allies, and only the Berashi were to come. He looked across at Jiddian, the only member of the Benetheon to ride with them.

“Deus, I am inclined to take up that invitation. I confess I am tired. Will you ride with me?”

Jiddian smiled. “I will, Lord Duke,” he said. Jiddian cut an imposing figure. He wore no armour, but carried a bow slung across his back and a long sword at his hip. He was a tall man, powerfully built, and after so many days in the saddle he looked as fresh as he had at the start. He was clothed all in silks and satins, apart from the fine brown leather boots that covered his feet.

“Aidon, you will take the army to the end. See them properly camped. I want no slackness because we are among friends.”

Aidon nodded and turned to one of the other officers. Elyas spurred his horse forwards. Just a few more minutes and the torture of perpetual movement would cease. He could sit, take a glass of something to ease his gut, and perhaps recover some of his comfort. He rode away from the noise and the dust of his army and quickly gained the ridge that lay before them. He reined in at the highest point and looked at the spectacle before him.

To his right and left, ahead and on every side there were guards set about the valley, camped on the hill tops and ridges, guarding every point of the compass. Down below a river flowed through a flat area many hundreds of acres in size, and on the western side of the river lay the encampment of the Afaeli army. Six thousand men looked a great deal in such a space, but he knew that nearly twice that number marched behind him.

It was an army to write the words of legends, but Elyas didn’t feel like a legend. He felt like an old man, a sick man. He spurred his horse on, down the long slope that led to the tents and campfires of the Afaeli. The King’s tent was not difficult to see. They had erected a small palisade around it, and guards patrolled the fence, stood at the gate. He swung down carefully from the saddle, and approached the gate. Men sprang forward to take their mounts, and the guard officer at the gate bowed.

“My Lord Duke,” he said. “The King awaits.” He cast an uncertain glance at Jiddian.

“Be at ease,” Elyas said. “This is Jiddian, God of Eagles and lord of the air.”

The guard officer bowed again.

“Honoured, Deus,” he said.

They passed through the gate and were conducted within the tent. Elyas had to admit that the Afaeli King had not stinted on
his comfort. It was a canvas and silk palace. The man had even brought comfortable chairs with him, six of them. Those alone must have filled a wagon.

“I am most glad to see you, Lord Duke,” the king said as they entered. They had never met, but Elyas recognised the Casraes features, the long lobed ears, the broad nose, and the pale blue eyes. The Afaeli king was a descendant of the man who had offered the crown of his country to Narak.

“King Pridan, I am most glad to be here,” he replied. It was no lie. He slumped into a chair with a sigh of relief.

“It has been a difficult journey?” Pridan asked.

“Not so much, but I have had a touch of indigestion for the last entire day. Could I trouble you for a glass of milk, if you have such a thing?”

“Of course.” A servant was dispatched to fetch it. Who would have thought, Elyas wondered, that the king of Afael would bring milk with him? But then it was he who had asked for it. He smiled at the sight of the white liquid, poured from an earthenware jug into a fat glass and handed to him. He sipped and felt the pain in his gut retreat a step. Milk was no cure, but it seemed to buy him a small respite.

Jiddian accepted a glass of wine, and leaned forward in his chair.

“Have you seen anything?” he asked. “Any Seth Yarra scouts? Have there been any skirmishes?”

“Nothing,” the king replied. “We have not seen as much as a Seth Yarra rabbit and my riders have been a full day to the east.”

“So far? We have been watching them, of course, and they have not moved from their camp, but we thought there would be scouts, men testing the land around them for our presence.”

“It is odd that they have not moved,” Elyas commented. “They have had an age to come out and engage Afael. It can only be to our advantage that they have not. In a week the Berashi will be here, and they will have lost what advantage they had.”

“They seek to draw us in,” Jiddian said. “I do not see the advantage in it for them unless they grow their force, but no ships have come for a month. The Seth Yarra army remains the same size.”

“They will be harder to beat within their wall, but I do not see the point. Will they sit there for ever?”

“Harder?” Pridan raised an eyebrow. “We will suffer greatly if we try to winkle them out. My scouts have looked upon their walls, and it is quite a fortress they have built. We cannot starve them out if their ships supply them, and even if we do break their ring, they can simply fall back to the island beyond. They have positions there, too.”

Elyas smiled. “So we wait for Prince Havil,” he said. “And When Havil comes, Narak will come, and then we shall have a plan.”

Pridan nodded, his faith in Narak was absolute, it seemed, but Jiddian frowned, trying his best, Elyas surmised, to look as though he himself would not need the Wolf God’s strategy. Elyas was unconvinced.