Darkburn Book 2: Winter by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 48

As they rode into Inner Kelvha, he felt the very air seem to change.

What caused that? How could it be? It was just his own sense of occasion, thought Parthenal, the feeling of a step taken irrevocably. He had spent time within the Kelvhan kingdom before, without having any such sensation.

But those trips had been as a journeyman, anonymous, selling his skills in horsemanship and falconry. Even the Kelvhan nobles who approved his way with a hawk had hardly ever thought to ask his name and heritage. He had seldom been within the city, and had never stepped inside the castle.

Now he was to enter it as part of the retinue – if the stars were willing – of a future king. He glanced over at Huldarion, riding at the head of the line. He looked the part in manner if not yet in trappings. Severe, austere. Beloved.

Parthenal sighed and gazed back at the train of Riders, trying to assess them through Kelvhan eyes. Well, not too bad, although there was a little too much laughter, maybe, while the sight of Kelvha ought to fill them with respectful awe. No doubt it would, later on and further down the road, when the barley fields and scattered villages gave way to the bigger, stone-built settlements.

Then would come the high wall with its four gates: inside, the many-storeyed buildings of the city streets, each storey built leaning further out until the edifices seemed about to topple; and at the city’s heart – huge, sprawling, many-towered – the castle. The fortress palace of another future king.

He nodded to Sashel, who looked a little more comfortable than he had of late. Theol had taken him under his wing today. And Maeneb and Leor were arguing – amicably enough – about something or other over the head of Durba, who switched her gaze from one to another like a spectator watching a game of rackets.

Earlier on, Yaret had been called to the front, to ride alongside Huldarion; apparently to tell him about those children of Obandiro. Huldarion was storing not merely knowledge, he sensed, but alliances. Though of what use a tiny burnt-out northern town could be, Parthenal did not know.

And Yaret too was building her alliances, he thought; which she certainly had much more need of. She had returned to the centre of the line of Vonn and now was practising her Kelvhan verbs with Rothir. Her attitude was casually friendly. If there had been any mention of numbers of arms and legs since last night, it had been outside his hearing. Right now she was struggling to comprehend the Kelvhan tenses.

“If we will have would have went,” she said in laborious Kelvhan.

“Gone. But close,” said Rothir.

“If we will have would have gone, we will have would have see – no, seen – oh, this is ridiculous. Why do you need a future indefinite tense in any case?”

“For those moments when you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Rothir answered.

“Well, that applies to the whole future. You never know what’s going to happen.”

“Sometimes you do. In a few minutes we will reach that tree.”

“Probably,” said Yaret. “But we don’t know for sure until we actually get there.”

“I think some things are so close to certain that it doesn’t matter.”

“It always matters. If we will not would not have gone to Kelvha, perhaps we will not would not have regretted it.”

“Good,” said Rothir. “But I don’t think we’ll regret it.” He smiled at her; and she smiled back.

Ah, thought Parthenal, there’s your kind smile, Rothir. Forget the arms and legs.

He looked back over the Riders’ heads to where the Kelvhan army were slowly following them at a distance. Where was his soldier of last night? That encounter had been almost wordless: abrupt and strenuous, even fierce; and then the man had left the room without a backward look. Parthenal was not averse to fierceness, but he did expect a backward look. Ah well. Look forward now, towards the glory of the castle.

But he himself cast one more look towards the north. A mile away a small contingent of Kelvhan men and horses was taking its own unobtrusive route along a less-used road. Those distant soldiers marched to the same final destination as the Riders of the Vonn, and kept pace with them, despite their weighty, shadowed load.

A haze of heat, or steam, or smoke, wrapped the soldiers in a dusky shroud. For there travelled in their midst a square of night: the iron cage that held the darkburn.

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End of Book 2

The tale continues in

Darkburn Book 3:

The Gates of Kelvha

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