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

Chapter 22

Leor was feeling queasy. The odours of the fish market didn’t help; but they weren’t the cause of the problem. Its underlying reason was the shielding spell. It was very different to the little melding and concealing charms which he allowed himself occasionally to indulge in.

It was so long since he’d performed such powerful magic for more than a few moments that he wasn’t used to its effects. Raising the darkburn from the pit on the battlefield up north had reminded him of just how strong his powers were.

But Leor was out of practice. His blurring of his identity in the tavern had been a shallow spell, with little effort required. Now, after just one morning of more complete concealment, he felt like an athlete who had returned to running after a year spent lying on a couch. He hadn’t expected this constant strain and tension, which resulted in an anxious nausea. He felt sea-sick, as if the crowds around the market were swarming shoals of fish and he was in some uncontrolled fast-bobbing boat amidst them.

“You’re sure you can’t feel my presence?” he muttered to Maeneb. He had to repeat himself before she gave a small start and replied.

“Yes, I’m quite sure. I’m not conscious of your mind at all. It’s very effective. I almost forgot that you were there until you spoke.”

“Good. But I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up for.”

“I expect you’ll get used to it,” said Maeneb.

“And when you look at me, what do you see?”

But Maeneb had already turned away as if she didn’t hear the question. It was Yaret who answered.

“Just a man not worth looking twice at. Nothing remarkable about you: no red hair, no white streaks, no outlandish clothes.”

“I wasn’t aware my clothes were outlandish,” said Leor, a little startled.

“All of our clothes are, to the Kelvhans. But you just seem… Inconspicuous isn’t quite the right word. Hard to see. My gaze seems to skate off you. It’s difficult to remember that you’re there. I have to keep reminding myself.”

“Mmm,” said Durba, in what was apparently agreement.

“Well, that’s something,” said Leor glumly, as he walked on through the fish-market. People didn’t look up at him as they normally would. Usually his height ensured attention; yet on this occasion nobody gave him a glance or stepped out of his way. “But you can see me all right?” he said.

“What?” said Maeneb. “Oh, yes. There you are. Sort of.”

“There’s almost a shimmer about you,” Yaret added, “like a mirage.”

That wasn’t so good. Leor tried to steady himself, to hold the shield in place, but another wave of sickness threw itself at him and sent him lurching into a shellfish stall.

“Watch where you’re going!” said the stall-owner. His indignant look shifted off Leor to rest on Maeneb.

“Sorry,” she said to him, and then to Leor, “See? It works.”

“I need to sit down,” said Leor. “But not next to fish.”

Yaret – who seemed to know her way around – led them out of the market and up a narrow street. It opened out into a wider cobbled square where a rare stand of trees provided shade over a bench. There were few trees in Kelvha city, and he sat down gratefully beneath the rustling branches and tried to recover. Taking deep breaths, he watched the passers-by, who were mainly children. They were streaming into a long low building with their bags and other gear. It was a school, then.

“Excuse me,” said Yaret, stepping over to greet one of the oldest children, a boy of about twelve, “could you help me, if you please? I see you carry a lutine. Can you tell me where you buy the strings?”

When the boy paused, looking at her in some surprise, she explained. “We’re strangers here. I’ve recently acquired a lutine but I don’t know where to get it strung.”

“Oh! Are you the Vonn?” The boy stared at them with interest mingled with some doubt. While Maeneb and Durba were unmistakeably Vonnish in both their looks and clothing, Yaret might have been some country youth. And as for Leor himself, he saw the boy’s gaze slide off him just as Yaret had described.

“Some of us are Vonn,” she said.

“Do you know the man who killed the tiger?” the boy asked eagerly.

“We do.”

“I wish I’d seen that! I bet it was amazing. There’s a music shop in the Turners’ Square, West Quarter.”

“Thank you. One other thing may I ask, if you might be so kind,” said Yaret in her slightly erratic Kelvhan. “In your school, do you have a hob?”

“A hob?” The boy looked blank.

“In my country we would also call it a lin,” she said, smiling. “A small creature that is hard to see, that some would say is not there at all, but that may be sometimes noticed for a moment around the door or stove–”

“Oh! You mean a bunno?” the boy said, and laughed. “Yes, we have one of those. The little ones swear it’s there, anyway. But it hides whenever you look at it. I used to believe in it myself, when I was young. Do you have those stories in your country too?”

“Our bunno turned itself into a lump of wood,” said Yaret. “What about yours?”

“I used to think it was a chair,” the boy said readily enough.

“That’s interesting. Thank you. Don’t let us make you late.”

But he lingered a moment longer. “Will there be any more tiger fights, do you think?”

“I doubt it.”

“That’s a shame,” he said, saluted them and left, swinging his lutine case.

“What was all that about hobs and bunnos?” asked Leor.

“I’m interested in them, that’s all.” Yaret eyed him curiously. “I should really pick your brains about them, Leor. You ought to know all about hobs and lins, if anybody does.”

“Not really. I only know what people say about them.” Leor took a deep breath, trying to quell the rising tide of sickness. How did Adon cope with this nausea, if he shielded himself all the time? Maybe Adon didn’t feel it. Or was used to it. Or took a drug for it…

He pulled his attention back to lins. Strange things. Always on the edge of consciousness, as if they were dreamt.

“I tried to make a lin appear once,” he remembered. “That was years ago. I thought I’d seen something turn into a stone, so I commanded it to turn itself back.”

Yaret had started slightly at the sound of his voice. She narrowed her eyes as if trying to bring him into focus.“And what happened?” she asked.

“Nothing happened.” He shrugged. “Whatever lins are – if they exist – they weren’t subject to my magic. Or not to that particular spell, and I don’t know what other sort would work. They’re probably not subject to the natural laws of earth at all.”

“But you are?” asked Yaret. “Your magic is subject to the natural laws?”

“After a fashion.” Leor rubbed his forehead. “Can we stop talking, please? I just want to sit quietly for a while.”

“Then I’ll go off and buy my strings,” said Yaret. “Durba? Would you like to come with me?”

The younger girl nodded. Reaching forward, she patted Leor on the arm. “B… b… b…”

“You’ll be better in a while,” said Yaret. Durba nodded.

Leor supposed he would be. He could always drop the shielding spell if it got too bad; but he felt an almost superstitious fear of doing that.

Adon, he thought, I am frightened of Adon. I know he is somewhere in this city because who else could have taken on Huldarion’s guise? And if Adon were near he could probably find me in a moment. So I dare not drop the shield. But I have to get rid of the shimmer. It’s a giveaway.

“How do I look to you now?” he asked Maeneb once they were alone on the bench.

“What? Oh… the same as ever. Sorry, I forgot you were there.”

“And you can’t feel my mind?”

“I told you,” she said, a touch impatiently. “No, I can’t. But I can feel everybody else and it’s driving me mad. That school is far too loud. I think I’m going home.”

The school was all but silent now that the children were inside. Nevertheless he nodded, and watched Maeneb leave. She didn’t turn to wave.

Leor began to feel a little better now that he didn’t have to talk. After a while, as the nausea receded, he decided to continue walking through the city to see how people responded to him. Or, with any luck, failed to respond.

So he set off walking slowly, carefully, as if he were balancing on some invisible tightrope. As he re-entered the busier streets he found that most people moved aside for him, yet didn’t seem to be aware that they were doing so. No-one met his eye; there was no muttered “sorry” or “excuse me”; no acknowledgment at all that he was there. It was an odd feeling. He had become, not invisible, just totally insignificant: less important than that one-eyed beggar there, rattling his cup. Ever the beggar didn’t bother to rattle it at him.

He kept walking without really caring where he was going. Probably north, certainly into the less salubrious parts of Kelvha city. Although the streets through which he threaded grew gradually narrower and less well-kept, and the shops dingier and less prosperous, it did not matter to him. He had a feeling he could walk right through a band of robbers and be perfectly safe.

What a city, though! He had not been inside Kelvha City for many years before this visit – not since the old king had been alive – and he didn’t remember it being as busy then as it was now. He felt almost dazzled by the shifting quantities of people all trying to scratch a living, in these crowded lanes overhung by lopsided houses: the sellers not just of food but, in the increasingly tiny stalls, of ribbons, hats, knives, bottles, staves, rags, scraps of paper, song-birds, buckets… Who could live by selling buckets? That boy, evidently, with his thin body and thinner clothes, calling out his wares in a thin, tired voice. No school for him.

Leor stood and watched, wondering about all these lives that he did not know and could never know. Centuries had brought him only limited wisdom, he reflected. The longer he lived, the less he understood. Perhaps he could never understand these poor vulnerable humans, afflicted by bodily ills that he was immune too. Or at least could not succumb to. For he was permanently different; perhaps even immortal. He did not know quite how that made him feel.

And then, as if the street had turned into a mirror, he saw himself.

Some twenty yards away. Tall and swiftly striding: passing a sad girl selling combs, turning to look at her tray of wares. There was no mistaking that it was himself – that long red hair, the two white streaks in it, the shaggy beard against the dark surcoat. Had his beard really grown that long?

What was this? Was it some dreadful dream? Had he managed to part his soul from his body and send it walking through the streets of Kelvha? In a huge wave of renewed nausea Leor saw the other self exchange a word with the comb-seller, pick out a comb, and toss a coin onto the ground so that she had to grovel for it.

That wasn’t him. He would never do that. He had not stepped out of his own body. Someone was impersonating him.

And someone was proceeding through the streets, stopping here and there at various stalls to pick over the wares, attracting glances. Almost ostentatious in his fastidious inspection of the goods on sale. Is that what I look like? thought Leor through his sickness; so long, so lean, so finicky and careful?

So conspicuous. Unlike this other self, my true self, my unobtrusive self – I believe and hope – that is now sliding past the stalls and down the street unnoticed, in pursuit.

The duplicate Leor quickened his pace. Leor saw him leave the shopping area by a short passage between damp brick walls, and on the other side pause in the sunlight, standing with arms folded as he looked around.

Leor shuffled down the passage too. The old woman he brushed past did not appear to notice him.

But everyone noticed the other Leor. Now he was loudly asking directions to Old Tanneries Street, in deep and resonant Kelvhan, not unlike Leor’s own voice; another dreb was tossed to the ground in the direction of a man who answered. The red hair moved like a flame atop a tall thin candle, as the second Leor strode down the middle of the street without regard for any oncomers. People walking the other way had to jump aside.

I would not do that either, thought Leor, his alarm merging with indignation. What must everybody think of me – of him? That rude, peremptory wizard…

...Who was now approaching a thin stone building held upright, it appeared, only by the wider wooden buildings on either side that seemed to prop it up. In its doorway stood a blue-robed man. He looked like some sort of priest. If this was Old Tanneries Street, thought Leor, it must be the Temple of Borgun.

The false Leor paused. Then he stepped back behind a pillar, out of the blue-robed man’s line of sight; yet still easily within the vision of three elderly women who sat knitting and chatting on the nearby doorsteps. Leor too could see him clearly but the red head did not turn his way. He was fairly sure that his presence had not been registered. He was a nobody, a beggar, a dreb on the dusty ground, just another unremarkable denizen of this seething city.

The other Leor dropped his head. When he raised it again and shook it, the red mane with its white streaks seemed to shake itself away. It was completely gone, replaced by a close-cropped scalp. The garments still looked similar, but the shape within had changed: it was not so lanky now, but was strong and well-knit. A good body, thought Leor, until the face half-turned and he saw the scars.

The old women had stopped chatting. Their hands stilled on their knitting as they stared up at the transformed man in shock and fear. They seemed paralysed; but as soon as the duplicate Leor – now the duplicate Huldarion – walked away, they at once began to talk again in high-pitched quick alarm.

The false Huldarion walked over to the doorway where the man in blue robes stood. The robed man regarded him with calm surprise. Then he bowed low and invited him respectfully in through the door.

Like the old women, Leor too felt paralysed for an instant. What should he do? Should he follow and unshield himself, denounce the imposter? For it must surely be Adon.

But if it was Adon, he must not unshield himself. If Adon knew he was detected, the danger would be so much greater.

But the danger was great now. What was he doing in there? What did he want?

Standing in bewildered dismay, Leor noticed to his added bewilderment one of Veron’s huntsman emerge from a nearby building to also stare, frowning, at the door through which the men had gone.

The huntsman turned to speak to the old women. He was trying to ask them what they had seen, but his Kelvhan was bad; they did not understand him. Leor hastened over.

“I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he said in Standard. “But somewhere else.”

The huntsman blinked at him as if he couldn’t hear. He turned away, apparently unable to see Leor, and was beginning to address the women again when Leor yanked at his elbow.

“It’s me! I’m Leor!” he insisted. “Take me to Veron.”

“Veron?” That name got through to the huntsman, at least. He blinked again, uncertainly, before he turned and looked at the building he had emerged from: a wholesaler of packing-cases, casks and rope, according to the shabby sign outside.

Leor strode over to it and entered without knocking. Veron was inside. In fact Veron must have seen him coming, because he met him with an outstretched knife.

“Who are you?” he snapped.

Leor looked down at the knife pointing at his chest. “Put that thing down, Veron. It’s me, Leor.”

“Leor?” He sounded disbelieving.

“I’m shielded so that Adon cannot see or sense me. Because I think that it’s Adon who just went into that thin stone building opposite.”

“The temple of Borgun? I saw Leor go in there.”

“No, that wasn’t me, I’m here. We have to tell Huldarion. Adon’s inside the temple pretending to be him. We need to warn him…” Leor was overcome by another surge of nausea and had to sit down on a box, trying not to be sick. “It’s the shield,” he said weakly. “Hard to get used to.”

Veron screwed up his eyes, scrutinising him as if he were a stag hidden deep inside a thicket. Then he slowly nodded.

“Camouflage,” he said. “I like it. Could you teach me that?”