Tribute (13 page)

Two days later my head no longer seems about to explode like an over-ripe pumpkin, but I still don't understand why Otter was in the catacombs, or why Floster is so certain she can trust him. So I wait for something to happen and do my best not to go mad.

I read Philip's small collection of books, trying not to think about Aidan, who fills my thoughts more and more each day. He must believe I'm dead. Does he care? Does he think of me at all? Has he given up hope of escape? Is he even alive?

I lurch out of bed, then wince as my head reminds me that sudden movements aren't a good idea. At least I am standing up when the door to the chamber opens without warning and the Hound enters.

I haven't seen him since the night I lost myself in the catacombs. And I didn't really see him then. His left eye is bruised a rich purple and yellow beneath his brown skin, and his expression as he looks at me is sour. I guess that a black eye is the least of it, and his head is probably even sorer than mine.

‘I  …  I'm sorry  …  I didn't know it was you.'

His face remains carved from wood, the expression unchanging. I push aside a flare of irritation. ‘I panicked!' I say. ‘I behaved like a fool. There. I've said it.'

The Hound smiles  …  I think he smiled. It's gone too quickly to be sure. But the wood seems to soften to clay.

‘You're wanted.'

‘That makes a change!' I snap before I can stop myself.

The Hound's eyes narrow in warning. ‘Mind your tongue, Zara.'

I'm briefly, irrationally pleased that he never calls me ‘mage'. I'm a person to him, even if not one he likes. Then all thoughts fly like swooping bats out my head when he says: ‘The Mistress don't have a sense of humour where you're concerned, so keep a civil tongue in your head. I'm to take you to her now. She's gonna give you your orders. You and I have work to do.'

The brazen disc of the sun hangs in a white sky. Grey-green cedar trees crawl up the slopes of the nearby mountains. I stagger out of the darkness of the cave that serves as a back door to the catacombs, and raise my face like a blind kitten, basking in the warmth, thinking of nothing but the touch of the sun on my skin. The wind carries the scent of warm cedar. Of thyme and wild rosemary. Of growth. Of life. After an eightweek in the house of the dead.

‘So beautiful.' I haven't seen the face of the earth for a lifetime. I'd forgotten.

‘Yes.' The Hound stands beside me at the lip of the cave. He's staring down at the valley spread before us, waiting, I realise, for me to recover. Now he places the cage on the ground in front of us. The sparrowhawk inside shifts from foot to foot, shaking its hooded head irritably. ‘Life ought to be enough, I always think.' He opens the cage, lifts out the bird on a gauntlet-clad hand and stands with a thief's uncanny stillness, stroking the bird's chest with a finger. ‘But it ain't. You can ask your daddy why, sometime. Then you can kill him.'

Our eyes meet.

‘You don't think we'll win.'

‘We might.' His voice holds no belief. Before I can protest, the Hound speaks again: ‘What matters is fighting.' He jerks his head towards the cave. ‘I like living with the bones back there. Reminds me dead is dead. It's how you live that's important. Fear has kept us slaves for longer than the oldest of them bones can remember. But we're fighting now. Fight and win or fight and die. Either way, it's better.'

He points across the valley towards the largest of the foothills on the city's edge. ‘Reports say they're gathering at the mages' temple.'

‘The Temple of Time.'

He shrugs indifference. ‘Must be important if Benedict is worried about spies in the city. The Council of Mages.' A hungry tone in his voice. His eyes fasten on mine. ‘You go and listen, little bird. And come back and tell us what you hear.' He's holding the hawk tightly under one arm. ‘Ready? Got your bearings?'

I nod. Every summer solstice I can remember, I have attended the sacrifice to Time's grace. Already, in my mind's eye, I see the place. The wide path leading to the round white temple waiting on the summit of the hill. The dust of the marble paving where I stood on aching legs as a small child. The sound of crickets. The grove of gnarled olive trees encircling the hilltop like sentinels. That is where I'll go. The olive trees.

I gaze across the valley. ‘Ready,' I say. And sit cross-legged on the ground. I separate out a narrow thread of consciousness and wait, heart thudding in anticipation.

Marcus lifts the hood from the sparrowhawk. In that moment, I enter the hawk's mind.

Airborne. We scream in defiance as we unfurl our wings, slash the air and soar up to greet the sky. Higher and higher, until the sky grows brittle and we can see the earth curve to meet the distant sea. We stretch our wings flat, and circle. Seeking. There. That place. Fold the wings, swoop. Feet tucked, head swivelling, eyes scanning. And there: prey! A rabbit scuttles and the hawk folds its wings to dive.

Ruthlessly, I wrench the creature's mind away; our flight stumbles. For a moment, the air refuses us and we fall. I stretch our wings. Two strong beats and we are once more flying towards the olive trees.

I see them coming as we approach the hill. Seven archmages approach the hill from seven directions, on horseback. Following each is a small phalanx of Tribute guards, bronze helmets shining in the glare of the midday sun. They have been height-matched, like carriage horses. Male and female, they march in perfect step, shouldered pikes rising and falling rhythmically. I hear the sound of their sandals slapping the earth like the beating of a drum.

I must make haste. Our wings beat ever faster; we whip through the air, circle the hilltop once, spying out the temple. It sits in solitude on a circle of marble paving broken by Time and colonised by basking lizards. They scuttle to safety as the flying arrowhead of our shadow touches them. I keep the hawk's mind and choose the tree. That one. Its arthritic limbs sprawl towards the temple, offering shade. Flap, glide. Alight. Grasp the branch with strong talons, balance, edge close beneath sheltering silver leaves. And wait  … 

The sound of marching ceases. The guards have been left halfway up the hill. Kine are not allowed in the temple precincts. Our sharp hawk's ears listen as one by one, the archmages mount the path to the temple.

My father comes first. And I am grateful for the alien nature of the hawk's mind. Even so, the rage of the child Zara flares and runs through us like wildfire. It takes all my control to keep our body silent and still. Our talons ache to tear. To pierce his cold lizard's eyes and tear the heart from his body. We shiver and settle, ruffling our feathers, our hawk's eyes staring, watching. And thankful that even an adept cannot sense another mage in the body of an animal. I am free from threat of discovery. As long as none of the mages attempt to use the hawk themselves. So best if they do not know we are here. I tighten my control on the hawk.

My father occupies the tallest bit of ground, directly beneath my tree. He places a wicker basket beside him and stands silently watching his fellow archmages approach.

I recognise them all. Merze, the youngest. A tall, intense-looking woman from the north, her hair the flaxen colour common in that region. She nods at my father, a slight smile passing over her face as she notices how he has positioned himself. She turns and watches as Goddart and Tressam appear, heads bent in animated discussion. Gossipy, plump Goddart used to be one of my favourite visitors to the palazzo. He always had a sweetmeat for me, and a kind word. Tressam, in contrast, is narrow and hatchet-faced. A thin, dour man.

The last three stroll up the path. Wonset, the oldest archmage and my father's predecessor as leader of the alliance. A frightening woman with the hunched back of age, her hair white as bleached linen and eyes the eerie blue-green of glacial ice. She always looked at me with ill-disguised loathing and I knew, without having ever been told, that she hated my mother.

Falu, on the other hand, is straight as a willow tree. Tall and dark-haired still, though older than my father. With a quiet strength of will like a deep drowning well. Lastly, thin-lipped and silent, Aris.

Aris the Blood-Drinker, the kine call him. I believe him to be mad. Notorious even among mages as a killer of kine, a rapist and torturer. Evil rises from him like the stink of decaying corpses. As the mages gather in a circle, facing my father, I notice those nearest move away from Aris, as though from a corpse suspected of harbouring plague.

‘We shall make offering before we begin, to ask Time's grace to aid our aims and confound our enemies.'

My father lifts the wicker basket from the ground beside him and the hawk hears the fluttering of a bird within. It will be a white dove. At the thought of the blood about to be spilled, we pant in hunger and lust. Nearly, the beast slips from me. I wrest control of the bird's instincts with a cruelty I've never used before. I'm sorry for it, but too much is at stake here.

The mages filter into the darkness of the temple and I take the opportunity to shrug the ache from our wing muscles, to shift our feet and settle our feathers. Then the scent of blood enters our nose, carried on a stray breeze, and once more I'm battling the hawk. Forcing it into stillness. I succeed just in time as my father reappears, cleansing the blood from his hands with an elegant blast of magic. I taste his strength. Watch his every movement. Hating. Fearing. A sudden flicker in my thoughts, a mental hiccup, warns that my struggles to control the hawk are draining me. I'm tiring.

‘A report, Benedict.' Wonset rests her hands, twisted with arthritis inside fingerless lace mittens, upon the silver head of her cane. Her voice is querulous. ‘Have you rooted out the last of the vermin? Have you traced the source of it? It must come from the Makers! We must stamp it out. I'll not have these, these “Seekers” spreading their poison in my city. I hold you responsible! Eleanor's legacy! If you had –'

‘Enough.' My father barely raises his voice, but the old woman falls silent. No one mentions my mother. Even I am shocked that Wonset has broken the tradition of silence. ‘The Makers are not involved. This rebellion is home-brewed. There are no Seekers left alive in Asphodel. And soon I will exterminate the last of the verminous animals, the thieves.'

‘Others have made that claim before you,' Tressam snaps, with an irritated wave of his hand. ‘Thieves breed and spread like rats. Kill one and two spring up in its place. Control is all we can ever hope to achieve. But thieves do not threaten our existence. The Makers –'

‘Don't believe it, Tressam! I've told you before that the thieves are organised and in league with the Seekers.'

‘You give them too much credit, Benedict.' Aris's voice slithers into the air. ‘Thieves cannot
think
.' His laugh is chilling. ‘Set traps and snap their heads off! But worry about them? I think not. Sport, dear fellow. That's all they are.'

My father makes a gesture of impatience. ‘I haven't called you here to argue about the intellectual abilities of kine. The Seekers are finished. I'll gather in the last of them soon enough  …  when I'm ready.'

I remember Otter. Does Benedict know about the catacombs after all? Has he been waiting for the right moment to come in and wipe us out?

My father's voice breaks through my thoughts: ‘I have been playing with the rebels for some time now, but I have decided it is best to cleanse Asphodel of the infestation once and for all before I destroy the Makers.'

‘Very grand, Benedict. The blonde Merze laughs. ‘You've never lacked ambition.' She has been his lover, I realise with a shock. And resents him.

But now Falu speaks, and the dark woman's intense voice commands attention. ‘The Maker whom you hold hostage. He is the key? You're a clever man, Benedict. But I fail to see how one boy can destroy an entire city.'

‘The key. An appropriate analogy, Falu.' My father's voice takes on a respect I've not heard him use with any of the others. ‘After generations of war we are no closer to destroying the Maker cities. The Maker kine breed like rats while our numbers decline with each generation. So I have fashioned a key which will open a door in the Wall. Once their defences are breeched we can take their cities one by one. Final victory awaits! We merely need reach out and take it. Think, friends, of the immortality that will be ours when we rid the world of the Makers and their infernal machines forever!'

‘So.' Tressam's voice is sour. ‘You want us to commit to all-out war. To offer up our warrior mages and Tributes to your will. I warn you, Benedict. I will need to hear much, much more before I agree to any such thing.'

‘You will have to explain, Benedict,' Falu agrees in a quiet voice.

‘Blood sport, Benedict.' Aris laughs, steps towards my father. ‘I can hardly wai—'

As he speaks, my hawk's ears hear a distant twang, and Aris chokes on his words. A slender, flint-tipped arrow shaft protrudes from his throat. I hear a horrible gurgling and the man totters and falls face down on the stones. A feathered shaft sticks up from the back of his neck, the feathers swaying in the breeze.

Silence.

And then, in a swirl of black, my father is airborne. One by one, the mages fly up, robes flapping black, crimson, blue, gold. Circling the hilltop. Human eagles, hunting. I shiver and hunch deep in our feathers. The hawk is disturbed by the scent of human blood. It longs to escape. But I dare not fly now. I should break the connection and return to my body  …  but I must know what happens. It should have been my father lying there dead. If only Aris had not stepped forward  …  Please Time, let the assassin escape! Is it the Hound? Surely not. He is with my body. He promised  … 

And then, before I can decide to go or stay, I see the mages circle low and descend in a flock. They disappear into the olive trees on the far side of the hill. And a human cry: a roar of frustration and rage. My father's voice.