Trial of Fire (6 page)

‘But?’

‘But if the incarnation of Mineah who then rose and fought with the Empire was none other than a sorcerer from that group, then that same splinter group betrayed the Cabal and brought them down.’

A cold hand gripped John’s innards. ‘And you think … Joshi could be one of these?’

‘It’s entirely possible. And though he’s made no threatening move since he’s been here, his bond to Patric is all too obvious. There is no way we can be sure of where his loyalty lies except with Patric, and we have no understanding of that. Since you are the only other sorcerer we have at hand, I would appreciate it if you could do all you can to ensure that—’

‘Of course, Father.’ John nodded vigorously. ‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Hopefully, I am alarming us both for no reason. Still, I wanted you to be prepared. Come, let’s feed them and see if we can learn something for our troubles.’ With that, he handed John his tray and picked up the cups and pot and the two men continued on their way.

*

Aiden kept to his comfortable chair by the fire and watched. Though John was supposed to be feeding Patric, Joshi didn’t leave him alone long enough. He never said a single word, but it seemed as though he didn’t need to: more times than he could count, Aiden saw a faint smile pass between them, and occasionally a frown of concentration on Patric’s face. All very odd indeed.

Once the meal was done, John cleared away the scraps and refreshed the fire, while Joshi got Patric settled once more. The fever was clearly visible through Patric’s tan and his breathing was laboured. Aiden needed to be careful not to tire him.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Awful. Comfortable bed, though.’

‘What happened?’ Aiden asked. He’d put off the question long enough.

‘When?’ Patric frowned, then waved his hand in the air. ‘Oh, you mean with my eyes? Well, that’s a long story and all very boring, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, it’s all right. It happened five years ago, old news to me. If it hadn’t been for Joshi, I wouldn’t have survived. I was forced to spend some time in a salt mine. I thought I wrote to you and said … oh well, never mind. There were things there, dark crystals in the soil, acids I couldn’t avoid. Half of all the slaves who work in those salt mines go blind. I was lucky; I escaped. Most of them die.’

‘How did you escape?’

Patric gave a short laugh. ‘I pretended I was dead.’ He paused to cough, starting lightly, and ending up having to sit to breathe. The moment he began, Joshi was there, holding him steady, a cup of water ready for him to sip. It was amazing, as though Joshi knew what Patric needed before he did himself. Aiden hadn’t seen anything like this before, except—

‘You’re mindspeaking with Joshi, aren’t you?’

Patric froze and John sprang to his feet from his corner seat, out of the way.

Aiden continued, determined to learn what he needed to know. ‘Well? Is that something else that happened on your journey? You recall Robert and Jenn headed into Budlandi, to find out more about the Prophecy, but as they left the Palace of Bu, they encountered a group of people called the Generet. Jenn said they were all mindspeaking. Joshi is of the Generet, is he not? And somehow, you have become …’

Patric sipped the water Joshi gave him, then lay back once more. Joshi returned to his seat by the door, as relaxed as ever, as though he hadn’t understood a word that had been said.

‘You’re suspicious. I understand that. And with good reason. Joshi is Generet. His truename is Jo’shiminal’ya Borai. It means “eyes of shimmering light”. He has saved my life countless times and I would have died in the shipwreck if it hadn’t been for him. He has … left his people to’ – Patric coughed, carefully – ‘stay with me, to help me return here. I promise you, he would never harm you or anyone else. His people are lovers of peace and abhor violence of any kind.’

‘Yet he carries a sword.’

‘He is trained to protect, like all his people. Like people anywhere would protect what they are, what they have. Trust me, Aiden; he could have killed you all a dozen times over if he’d wanted to.’

Aiden didn’t doubt that. ‘And yet, Robert and Jenn were in danger from the Generet.’

‘No, only Robert. They all make a vow upon attaining adulthood that they will seek to kill the Angel of Darkness wherever they might find him. Jenn was perfectly safe, and they would have—’

‘What?’

Patric paused, tilting his head a little. Joshi watched him with a frown. Patric shook his head, as though to clear it. ‘John?’

The priest was already halfway across the room. ‘Yes. I feel it, too. A tremor, but not in the ground. I thought I was imagining it. It’s odd. Like thunder, only—’

‘What?’ Aiden asked again, this time for a different reason. The other three were moving as though they could hear sounds he was deaf to. John stopped by the bed, his eyes closed, head turned towards the window where the new morning was spread out across the hills of southern Flan’har. ‘Patric? John? What’s going on?’

He got to his feet when neither answered, but it was Joshi who was giving him greatest concern. The young man had drawn his sword, his eyes fixed on something Aiden couldn’t see. Then he let out a high-pitched keen,
dropping his sword and pressing his hands to his ears. Before Aiden could move to him, both Patric and John doubled up, as though listening to something deafening.

The door banged open and the guard rushed in. Calling for help, Aiden moved first to Patric, then to John, who had fallen to the floor. The noise continued; none of the men moved, but just as Payne and the others reached the room, Joshi’s keening stopped. Almost immediately, John and Patric relaxed, Patric letting out a groan of pain.

‘What in the name of the gods has happened?’ Payne knelt down by John, Aiden stayed with Patric, trying to get some water into him.

‘This is madness. Patric, can you hear me? What has happened? What is this about?’

‘Madness … yes …’ Patric whispered, tears now flowing down his cheeks. ‘I know where Robert is … The Enclave! By the blood, no, no—’

‘John?’

The priest, a little younger and not handicapped with a fever, was quicker to recover. He sat up with help from Payne, but a mouthful of strong wine did nothing to return his colour. He just sat there shaking his head. ‘We are lost. Robert has—’

‘What?’ Aiden demanded, now terrified to his core. ‘What’s happened to him?’

‘He has …’ John swallowed hard, his voice shaking, ‘You know our people, sorcerers, the Salti, live safely in the Enclave. They … can’t be Sensed there, because there is a barrier protecting them … Oh, sweet Mineah—’

‘Go on,’ Aiden urged.

‘Robert has … has … broken the Enclave! He has destroyed the barrier and now the Enclave is no more. Our people are unprotected – and Nash … sweet Mineah,
Nash has found him!
Nash knows where the Enclave is! He will go there and …’

As the priest fell silent, only Patric’s hoarse whisper could be heard in the stunned room.

‘Oh, Robert, no
 …’

Robert!

Silence surrounded him; stillness filled him.

A gale of emptiness swept across his icy flesh. His body had no substance, no life of its own, no space it could occupy. He was here and somewhere else and nowhere at all; even so, he felt solid, like stone, like time, as though he would never move again.

Where had this peace come from; where, in the midst of battle, had he found such contentment?

A trickle of breeze drifted downwards, fluttering over his face, making his lips quiver, his eyelids tremble. A sweet breeze, lacking in menace, wholly without substance or force.

This space went on for ever. Endless white, placid and inconceivably infinite. Smooth, blank, entirely without expectation and failure.

Where was he?

Robert?

If he tried, if he pushed hard against the overwhelming lethargy, he could open up his Sight. It yielded pictures he could barely analyse: the great cavern of the Enclave, a huge natural hole in the mountain from which ran dozens of man-made tunnels, connecting smaller caves, home to the Salti Pazar, both sorcerers born and those with no power. This was their sanctuary, sitting beneath the peak of the Goleth Mountain, buried beneath rock and centuries of ignorance and blessed apathy.

Robert!

It was all so plain, soft and peaceful. So near, so intimate.

The cavern was full of people, their faces screwed up in anguish, something he couldn’t touch, or be touched by. The whiteness protected him, cushioned him, let him feel nothing.

There were others closer to him, people he knew. His brother, Finnlay, face ashen, kneeling beside him. Andrew, the boy he would make into a king. Friends: Arlie and Martha, Finn’s wife, Fiona. His mother, Margaret, and the old librarian, Acelin. So many more now, crowding around, pressing closer, looking down at him, even as he looked down at them from some height he couldn’t measure.

Was he dead?

Robert!

This was the place to be, where the softness was endless and no time burned his edges; everything was wrapped up in the same whiteness, the same veil. His eyes saw better now than ever before.

There was his country, his Lusara, bleeding to death. There were his people, Lusarans and Salti alike, gasping for life. There was the face of evil, laughing within the deep caverns of his mind, as though the Angel of Darkness were here, inside the Enclave.

And … there was—

Robert, please, I beg you, let it go!

And there was … his—

His Sight flickered. He’d missed someone, a shape in his field of vision, a face beloved.

There was his hope: Jenn, with tears in her eyes, holding his hand, her lips moving, making no sound.

He must be dead, or he would hear her. Only death would keep them apart now. He’d promised her so. After so many years, he’d finally made that promise.

Robert, you’re running out of time! Please, you have to let it go! Do it!

Jenn wasn’t alone. The others crowded in around her, faces darker, more fearful, more angry, urgent. They were shouting in his silence, breaking it up, making him think he could hear when he was deaf, making him think he could see when his eyes were closed, making him think he could feel when he floated on whiteness.

Making him think he was alive when he was surely dead—

*

Noise shattered the silence in Jenn’s head, but she couldn’t pay any attention to it, not yet, not until she got that monstrosity away from Robert, until he started to breathe again, until she could be sure Nash couldn’t find them any more.

She turned her head, not taking her eyes from Robert, nor her hand from his, and shouted over the noise, ‘Finn, help me!’

She barely saw him lurch to his feet, shocked: he’d been expecting a miracle, a gift from their ancestors. Instead, they’d been cursed again, this time, devastatingly.

Jenn squeezed Robert’s hand once more, urging him to let go the Key/Calyx. He held it clasped to his chest, the shape as it had just formed: the Key, an orb of matter she couldn’t define, the Calyx moulded around one half of it, gold and silver, unreadable glyphs moving across the surface so fast the shapes were dizzying. They were one now, and she couldn’t begin
to understand what that meant. It was inconceivable that it would kill him, but he was not breathing, and he would end up so weakened he would be unable to travel, and they had to get out of here fast.

Nash was on his way. Nash. The Angel of Darkness. He who would destroy them all.

Finnlay’s voice rose above the deafening cacophony bouncing off the cavern walls. Gradually the noise abated a little as Finnlay tried to make sense of what had happened: that the one thing they’d always trusted had just betrayed them in the worst possible way.

She shut her eyes, wishing she could shut out the noise with it, shut out the reality and concentrate on Robert alone. But their words darted into her like arrows, and the horror drove her to her feet to face them.

‘You have to listen!’ Her voice stunned them – and shocked her as well. The resonance was deep, multiple, so like the Key it was frightening. She sounded as though she were speaking through the Key itself, though the words were her own. But she had no time to think about this: they had to move, now, and they wouldn’t without her orders.

With Finnlay’s wide eyes on her, she continued in the uncomfortable silence, ‘We don’t have time for this! The Enclave is no longer protected and invisible. Nash knows exactly where we are, and staying and fighting him would be suicidal.’

A rumble of noise rose at that, but she spoke over it, relentlessly driving them to silence once more. ‘He’s no more than a week away, possibly less. We have an evacuation plan already set up. Now we need to put it into motion. Please, go now!’

With that, she turned and knelt down beside Robert once more, taking his hand, touching his motionless face, feeling the cold flesh beneath her fingers. She closed her eyes, reaching out, whispering mindspeech to him, but it was like talking into nothing. He couldn’t hear her, couldn’t feel her, couldn’t be touched by her. The Key had him at last, and it wasn’t letting go. She could only pray that he would prove to be the stronger.

*

Finnlay raised his hands to still the noise after Jenn’s short speech. She’d already turned back to help Robert, leaving him to deal with the chaos and terror of a people suddenly bereft of their security. He knew he had to say something. They needed more from Jenn, but until Robert was safe, she was unable to give it. He could see the other Councillors trying to get to him, so there would be some order, some framework to this escape, but he was trapped on the dais, shock still rattling through him.

How could he tell these people what to do when he didn’t know himself?

But the decision was taken from him: a voice spoke up, young and a little
shaky, but very brave, a boy he had thought unfit to rule. ‘Please, you need to start moving now. If Nash is only a week away, that means those headed east need to be gone by tomorrow in order to be clear of the mountains in time. We can’t afford to leave anything here he can use against us.’