Darkburn Book 3: The Gates of Kelvha by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 20

Yaret awoke to the faint sound of snoring.

That was Durba, lying on the bunk below. But as she listened carefully to the breathing of the other women, the soft, slow hushings rippling through the cool air of the attic, she was convinced that they too were asleep. Like an animals’ den, she thought. It is the comfort of family; even for Maeneb.

Now it was time for her to leave the den. Yaret had set herself to sleep for four hours, and from the position of the moon glimpsed through the window she thought she had got it about right. So she gathered up her clothes and wooden foot, and as before crept out of the dormitory into the corridor before she donned them.

Again she listened before proceeding. Nobody else was stirring when she tiptoed down the narrow stairs. As quietly as possible, she let herself out of the lodging house and into the cold and dark.

This was deeper night than last time she’d crept out into the city: no glimmer of dawn yet sang in the sky, no early workers trudged the gloomy streets. It would have been difficult to get through the West Gate unchallenged if that were what she wanted.

But although her destination was the same as last time – the bath-house by the northern wall – Yaret was not planning to go out through the gate. Instead she walked, or rather, sidled, drifted, slid along the dark and almost silent streets of Kelvha City, avoiding the flickering lamps and wandering revellers, and instead picking narrower, winding alleyways wherever she could. She checked her direction by the moon every few minutes: and more often than that, she checked behind her.

Needlessly. For once she had left the main road to the gate, there was nobody else afoot. These streets were almost silent; though not quite. She heard the distant intermittent rumble of some cart, and drunken shouts, the words all lost. Closer to her, after she had walked a little way, the quiet was punctuated by odd snores and groans. These became more frequent the further north she got: she saw the huddled shapes of outdoor sleepers bunched against the walls and in the doorways.

And suddenly there were more shouts, close by this time, and the sounds of running feet. Yaret drew back into the shadows of a rickety wooden tenement, and crouched against its wall, copying the indistinct bundle that was snoring loudly a few yards away. Be a beggar, she adjured herself, a mere sleeping shape, a nobody, a nothing in the shadows...

She was reminded of the Darkburn. Both the forest, and its namesake creature, first seen crawling through the trees, burning, hating, hunting, seeking to bring death. That terrible encounter had felt like the end of everything – and yet in some ways it had been the start of everything. The start of this new life, at least; and she ought to be grateful to have gained it. To own any life at all.

Perhaps she was a fool to use it in this way. Seeking out another darkburn. But the one here in the city was smaller and would be captive, harmless; it wasn’t prowling through the streets. As she pretended to curl up in sleep three figures sped past her down the road, their feet pounding. Soon she heard more shouts, though thankfully they seemed to be a street or two away. But they acted as reminders that caution was necessary even when her path seemed empty.

After a moment she stood up and looked behind her, for the hundredth time, before resuming walking. But unlike on her previous walk around the wall, she had no inner sense of being followed.

On reaching the deserted market, she threaded cautiously between the stalls. Some had sleeping men and dogs lying underneath them and she moved away quickly from the threatening snarls that came from one dark trestle.

Continuing north, she avoided Beery Row – that seemed to be the source of the distant drunken shouting; and now there was a lot of singing, voices echoing brokenly and unintelligibly between the ramshackle buildings. Yaret took the same route that Tiburé had chosen, heading towards where she hoped the northern wall would be. Just as she was beginning to wonder if she had lost her bearings, she recognised the junction where the crossing-sweeper had sworn at her. The wall loomed high above, a bank of shadow.

So over to her right was the top end of Old Tanneries Street, and the Temple of Borgun. From that direction came a small but vigorous amount of rowdiness: there was an echoing crash, expostulations, some aggrieved slurred argument. Yaret steered away and with another glance around – not a soul in sight – she followed the heavy outline of the wall, its bulk sharply visible against the moonlit clouds.

And here was the bridge. As she crossed it she was able to follow her other senses. Not only her nose told her she was getting close – the stink of darkburn mingling with the sewers – but so did her feeling of increasing apprehension. Fear. Dread. Horror. Blackness everlasting…

Yaret stopped for several seconds, leaning on the wall, gathering her mental strength. This ought to be getting easier by now. But for some reason it felt worse than last time. Maybe it was because she was alone and in the dark.

Eventually she made herself move on, fighting the increasing urge to run back and throw herself off the bridge into oblivion or hurl herself against the unforgiving wall. Death. Find me death. Knowing that it was the darkburn creating all these feelings did not help in any great degree. She felt the horror and the will to die as if they were her own.

But it meant that she was very close. That must be the bath-house just ahead, its entrance lit by a single lamp, a pale glow like a flower blooming in a field of blackness. The bath-house doors were closed; and before them, one on either side, their helmets gleaming in the lamplight, there stood a pair of guards.

Staying in the deep shadow on the far side of the road, she silently skirted past the pool of light. One of the guards yawned, and muttered something to the other: he sounded half-asleep.

“Wake up,” said the second sharply. “You never know when they’ll arrive. I wish they would: I need a break. This place gets me down something dreadful.”

“We’ll hear them coming,” said the first, and yawned again.

Hear who coming? wondered Yaret. Did he mean more carts containing mutilated stonemen, arriving on the far side of the wall? If so, she thought, the guards might have to enter the bath-house to supervise the entrance on the outer side. That would give her a chance to move towards the door.

She had no intention of trying to go in. She simply wanted to get as close to the darkburn as she could without being seen. But she did not know exactly where within this place it was. So once she was beyond the guards and their lamplight, she crossed the street and approached the wall of the bath-house, a black shadow, feeling its smooth brick with her hands. Surely it was warmer than it ought to be… How close was the darkburn that was imprisoned behind it?

Close, judging by the undiminished sense of dread. Despair, such despair… Spreading her fingers against the wall, Yaret concentrated her thoughts on the interior. Although she could not sing aloud to the darkburn here, as she had when it was first dragged to Kelvha in its iron cart, she could attempt to think a song at it. It might be a stupid idea; but if the darkburn could emanate feelings through brick walls, why should it not receive them too?

She visualised the lutine, back in the attic, nestling at the end of her bunk. Bought for two drebs from a junk-shop, it was her new most precious possession – if she could only get it strung. But now she played it in her head for accompaniment as she thought about a song of Madeo’s, and then began to sing it silently, letting the notes and words weave together. The tune the warp, the words the weft. She drew the cloth of song out in her mind.

At the same time she tried to register the feelings that came through the wall, to see if they would change their tone or colour. No: there was still just dread, flooding through everything, a dark tide lapping at the street. No detail to distinguish. She wished that she was Maeneb… But Maeneb had said she could not read the darkburn’s mind.

I’m a fool to imagine that I can, thought Yaret. None the less, I need to try.

Her silent song came to its silent end. There was the faint echo of voices somewhere behind her, but it was at least two streets away. Another distant rattle of some horses or a cart; another yawning grumble, as the two guards murmured to each other. Yaret stayed where she was, pressing herself more closely to the brick – yes, it was definitely warm. After thinking of a different song, she began to try again. Was that some change in the despair that she detected? Was it a response?

And then without warning, without sound, a hand was clamped hard across her mouth as if to silence the unspoken words, and an iron arm was round her body, pulling her inexorably away from the wall.

She struggled to escape but both arm and hand were too strong for her. Whoever had hold of her did not seem to be a great deal taller than she was herself, but had a grip like steel. When she tried to tug away the hand that sealed her mouth she could not. When she tried to kick, her foot met someone’s leg without effect. Although she feared making any noise lest it attract the guards, she found there was little noise that she could make in any case.

With no more than the merest scuffle she was being dragged – almost carried – away from the bath-house, back across the street and down some hidden alleyway. A footpad, she thought, a robber, rapist; and when she heard the growing clatter of hooves approaching down the road she struggled again to get free so that she could run out to the horsemen for help.

“Be quiet,” hissed a low voice in her ear. “You know me.”

It was Veron.

Yaret stopped struggling. Instead she stood tense and motionless in his unyielding grip as three horses rode past the entrance to their alley. A torch was held aloft: she glimpsed the riders’ heads – two helmeted Kelvhan soldiers and one middle-aged man with a heavy, suspicious face.

If she had still been out there by the bath-house wall the soldiers would have seen her. She would have been trapped in the torch-light with nowhere to run.

“Stay here,” said Veron. When he released her she did not move, but watched him slide like a shadow through the alley’s entrance. She heard the horses’ hooves move on and stop. A command was given, its words inaudible but their imperious nature clear. There was the muffled clang of a gate unlocking: the shuffle of men dismounting: footsteps: and the glow of torchlight disappeared. Again, silence.

Veron was at her side once more. “This way.” He held her arm, not quite so hard this time, but hard enough, and led her further down the alley. After emerging at its far end they crossed the next street – lightless, with uneven cobbles – and dived into another, more tortuous ginnel that wound between damp-smelling, crumbly walls. Towards the end of this passage he pushed her through a doorway.

The door closed behind him. It was cold and faintly echoey. She heard a flint being struck and a few seconds later the space around her flickered into view.

Planks were stacked against one wall, bales of canvas against another; in between them, heavy spirals of coarse rope were piled up. A storeroom. Veron steered Yaret with a push so that she sat down abruptly on a heap of fat rope coils.

She gathered that Veron was not impressed. He stood over her and stared down with coldly narrowed eyes. No trace of a smile.

“Well?” he said.

No point saying, well, what? So she replied, “I just wanted to work out where it was.” It sounded lame. But there was no point in mentioning the silent singing either. That was a ridiculous enough thing to do, let alone to try and explain to anybody else.

“You already knew where it was.”

“I wanted to see what the situation was at the bath-house.”

“You saw it. Two guards at all times: regular visitors at night. That was Nerogun, the Post-Regent, who turned up just now and nearly caught you.”

“That’s Nerogun? The man in charge of Kelvha? What was he doing there?” she asked, startled.

“Overseeing the torture of the prisoners, I expect.”

“Oh. Those stonemen.”

“So you know that too.” Veron still fixed her with a piercing gaze as if he would look right through her.

She thought, with an odd thump of her heart, Veron is the only Rider of whom I am actually afraid. I ought not to be; but I am. He would kill me now if he decided it was necessary. Cut my throat without a qualm. Regardless of my petitioning the huntress: she would not save me. If I were to petition her now, it’s not my side that she’d be on.

Although she felt a shiver trace its way along her spine, she kept her eyes steadily on Veron. “Yes, I know that too. Are you surprised?”

“On the contrary.” Taking something from beneath his cloak, he tossed it to the floor in front of her. She saw that it was in fact two objects: a pair of spoons, each with a lump of gum attached.

“Where did you expect to get keys made?” he demanded.

“I... don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

He waited. Then, when she said no more, he went on roughly, “Maybe just as well. If you’d tried to think that far ahead, you could be in the bath-house now, undergoing death by darkburn. Break those up.”

“What?”

“Break the moulds up.”

“But they–”

“Do it.”

She picked up a spoon and prised off the gum. It had set hard and had an unpleasantly greasy feeling. After managing to break each mould in half, she dropped the pieces on the floor – the second spoon too – and Veron walked over and put his heel on them, grinding them into shapeless lumps.

“You can go home as soon as it starts to get light,” he said. “Take the spoons.”

She put them in her pocket. “Well, what were you doing here, if it comes to that?” she countered, her courage returning a little now that she judged he wasn’t going to kill her. Yet for a moment it had seemed entirely possible.

“I was following you.”

“But how did you know I was out?”

“I watched you leave the lodging house,” he said.

“What – and you followed me all the way here? But I kept checking,” said Yaret in disbelief. “I didn’t see you.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

Some light dawned. “That other morning; you followed me around the outer wall then, too, didn’t you? And you saw me hide the spoons.”

“That was Edrik,” said Veron.

She decided to feel indignant. It was better than feeling afraid and ashamed of her own incompetence. “So who else are you following around?”

“Everybody. Everyone who leaves the castle late at night. Everyone who creeps around the Riders’ lodgings, or goes off to dubious places. Everyone who isn’t where we expect them to be.”

“Who is We?”

“Me and my hunters.”

She reflected on this. “Zan needs more practice,” she said after a while.

“So do you. You wander round these streets like a bewildered cow in a field.”

Yaret began to relax a little. “What are you going to do about the darkburn?” she asked.

“Watch,” he said, “and wait.”

“If the Kelvhans are using it for torture–”

“We can’t stop them. It would only anger them. What were you doing by the wall just now? Looking for another way in? There is none.”

“I was trying to speak to it,” she said.

Veron sat down on another pile of rope opposite her. Although his face was still keen, it was more interested than fierce.

“How?”

“By singing at it. In my head. I know it sounds stupid, but when the darkburn was being transported here from the battlefield I rode behind the cart and sang to it, and I think it heard me.” She tried to describe the strange shift in feeling that had emanated from the captive darkburn.

“You think that it responds to music, or to words?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe just to the feeling behind them. So I thought that if I sang to it inside my head, it might detect that, even through a wall…”

“Why?”

“I want to try and understand it,” said Yaret.

He shook his head. “I doubt if the darkburn can be understood. It’s not a living creature. It exists by different rules to us, and we don’t know what they are.”

“Then we should be trying to find out.”

“And getting burnt alive in the process.”

“Would the huntress understand it better?”

“No.” His reply was immediate and firm. “Don’t speak of her.”

“I will not say her name,” she promised. “But, Veron... I felt her presence, not far from here. It was on the day of the tournament, fleetingly. She – she passed over me. It was…” How to describe that sudden shattering weakness? That overwhelming sense of a power so much greater than her own?

But there was no need to describe that to Veron. She found herself wondering how much it took out of him to be the partner of the huntress.

“She was called.” Was that a hint of longing in his voice?

“Not by me,” said Yaret.

“No. Nor me. She was called to the jousting field by her kin. Where were you when you felt her?”

“I was in the temple of Borgun.”

At that Veron drew a long breath. “I heard about your visit there, although not from her. Come,” he said, and standing up he beckoned to Yaret to follow him across the storeroom and out through a far door. There was a passage – also stacked with planks and wooden canes – and at its end, a window, shuttered. A man knelt there: when he turned, she recognised one of the hunters, a taciturn man called Garnuk. In the centre of each shutter was a triangular hole; he had had his eye to one.

“Anything?” asked Veron. Garnuk shook his head.

Veron turned to Yaret. “Look through,” he said.

When she obeyed she saw a street draped in the blue-grey beginnings of daylight. A shabby street, one or two men just appearing from doorways. Workmen. One of the buildings was familiar. It was the Temple of Borgun.

“The priest there was sent word,” said Veron, “a second, false, code-word, as well as the one you gave him. If any visitor gives him the wrong word, he will tell me.”

“But in any case, you have set your spies here.”

For the first time, Veron smiled. He looked like a wolf.

“Everywhere,” he said.