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

Chapter 33

There was no time for him to challenge her just now. Edrik and Narduk had already closed the outer grid in the wall and were turning the keys in the locks. Despite the noise of the sword-strokes that seemed still to ring and clang in Rothir’s ears, no guards came charging down the tunnel on the other side.

Why not? Where were the guards? Rothir thought that the destruction of the darkburn had probably been achieved in a much briefer time than it had felt like – no more than two or three minutes in all; yet that was surely long enough to have brought the Kelvhan soldiers running.

He turned from Yaret to address Veron. “How long would the changing of the guards take?”

“Longer than usual. They will have had distractions,” the hunter answered calmly. Too calmly.

“What distractions? We need to leave,” said Rothir.

“In a minute,” said Veron. And now Martun strode over in his leather apron, carrying a shovel. With it he began to scoop up the smoking pieces of the darkburn and drop them in a metal pail. Rothir wanted to laugh. Such a potent, terrifying enemy, and the smith was treating it like bits of clinker to be tidily swept up.

As soon as Martun had gathered all the larger pieces, Veron said, “That’ll do. Leave the rest; they’re too small for anyone to notice.” Even so Yaret bent down to pick up more fragments in her gloved hand and drop them in the bucket. In the increasing shadows Rothir could not see her face.

Then they left, hurrying back to the smithy along the dark bulk of the wall; Rothir trying to move as silently as the hunters, pulling off his gauntlets and the over-heated helmet as he ran. Martun came last, carrying the bucket into the smithy. It did not seem to be too heavy considering the horror of its load.

“Uncover the fire,” said Martun. When Rothir obeyed, the smith up-ended the pail into the glowing embers. The flames leapt up around the charred remains, and the forge’s heat was abruptly doubled: trebled.

Rothir clenched his fist upon his sword hilt, watching the grasping flames. But there was no revival of the darkburn. It was truly destroyed. After a moment, the fire settled, and he relaxed his grip. Walking to the bench, he began to unstrap the leather armour, inspecting the burns on his upper arms and lower legs.

“That looks bad,” said Yaret.

“It’s not too bad. No blistering,” he said. “I’ll live.”

“A messy job,” said Veron, “but good enough.”

“It’s always messy,” he replied.

With a sigh Yaret turned round to gaze at the flames which flickered silver-gold, like praying hands, around the remnants of the darkburn. She murmured something in her own language; and he recalled a rabbit tumbling on the high breezy Darkburn Loft with her arrow in its chest. Some words had been spoken for that too.

The two hunters were also watching Yaret. When Narduk put a question to her in the Ioben tongue, she did not answer until she had finished her incantation.

Then she said in Standard, “Yes, of course it deserves it. Like every living thing you kill.”

“But a darkburn is not living,” said Narduk, almost cautiously.

“Then how can it have died?” she countered.

“Well, anyway,” said Narduk, “it does not deserve a prayer, because it wishes only harm on us. I felt it telling me to plunge a knife into my heart.” He thumped a fist into his chest to illustrate his words.

Yaret shook her head. “The darkburn didn’t want you to kill yourself,” she said firmly. “It wanted you to destroy it.” Determined and defiant, she looked over at Rothir. “That’s why the darkburns rush on people, full of such dreadful feelings, urging death. The feelings we experience are theirs. They do want death – but their own. They want to be destroyed.”

Rothir frowned, unwilling to accept such a complete reversion of his view, but unable to refute it either. Although he thought that she was wrong he could not prove it either way. It was Veron who answered.

“No creature seeks its own death.”

“These do.”

“Why would they?” Veron demanded.

“Because they are suffering,” said Yaret emphatically. Rothir realised that she really believed this although he did not see how she could be so sure. “The grief and horror that we feel – it’s the darkburns’ grief and horror at their own plight. The urge to die is not a command to us to kill ourselves: it’s actually their own despair.”

Veron looked at her searchingly. “Why would you say that? These things burn us up! If they wished to die they could find better ways of doing it than by leaping on men and reducing them to ashes.”

“But men can kill darkburns. I think they must know that. Where there are no men, they have tried other ways,” she said. “Some have tried to drown themselves.”

“Where?”

“In the marshes north of the Darkburn forest.”

“That sounds unlikely,” commented Veron.

“Yet I have seen that too,” said Rothir slowly. “I saw the darkburns in the pools, though I assumed that they had fallen in. If it was deliberate – a kind of suicide – it did not work. Or only very slowly.” He remembered the sodden object that he had presumed was a twisted log when he pulled it from the water: until it had begun to steam and writhe beneath his hand. Yaret had almost wept at the sight and he had been exasperated. So why was he not exasperated now?

Because he had known Yaret a great deal longer now, he thought: she did not weep without good reason. Again, he remembered her tears in the infirmary fort, up in the bleak northern wastes. Such grief had seemed unwise to him; yet it had been justified.

All the same, her judgement might at present be at fault. She might allow her pity to delude her.

Now she turned to him in appeal. “Rothir, up by the Thore, do you remember the darkburn there? When the stonemen attacked us on the cliffs, the darkburn threw itself straight over the edge.”

Remember? How could he forget? That sheer, appalling drop: the roaring of the river far below. They were always lurking somewhere in his mind. “Because we dodged out of the way,” he said. “It ran at us and missed, and fell to its death.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “It threw itself over.”

Rothir was about to argue that that wasn’t how his memory of that moment went. But what exactly was his memory? He retrieved it now, unwillingly – for it was a most unwelcome memory – and looked at it.

He saw the indistinct shape spin towards him: recalled the sudden wave of heat as the darkburn hurled itself across the stone platform. He had held his sword out ready, but had he stepped aside? He did not know. The moment had been blurred out by the far greater horror, seconds later, of seeing Yaret being kicked over the cliff edge and disappearing…

That memory caught in his throat. He heard the rush of waters: nothing else. He turned his head away for a moment, studying the spear-heads on the wall, telling himself it didn’t matter now, because Yaret was fine. She was here and almost whole.

So turning back to her he said harshly, “It makes no difference, does it? Whether the darkburn wants to destroy us or wants to die, the result is the same. We have to kill it or be killed.”

“We do,” said Veron.

“Kill them all,” said Narduk. “That’s what I say. Kill all the stonemen too.”

Veron eyed Yaret with his narrow gaze. “I presume you have no similar theories about the stonemen and their intentions?”

“I know nothing about the stonemen,” said Yaret. “I wish I did.”

“Why?” Veron, too, spoke harshly. “We don’t need to know any more about them except that they are our enemies. They have waged war on the Vonn, quite unprovoked.”

“Oh, I expect somebody provoked them,” Yaret said.

“Are we finished here now?” demanded Rothir. “Can we go? We’ve got rid of the evidence.”

“All is clear,” reported Edrik, who had been keeping watch at the door.

Veron walked over to join him. “What about that sentry on the wall?”

“He’s only just appeared.”

“Then we’ll wait until he disappears,” said Veron scathingly.

Edrik looked shame-faced. Perhaps it was to draw attention away from him that Yaret walked over to fingered the swords hanging on one side of the forge.

“Martun,” she said, “do you have any cheap swords for sale?”

“I have plenty of swords, as you can see. None are cheap,” Martun replied with the glimmer of a smile.

“I’ve got a spare sword,” Rothir said, but Yaret shook her head.

“Yours will be too long. I need them smaller.”

“I have these.” Martun opened an oak chest and from it produced a pair of short, plain swords. “They’re really for boys in training. Lightweight, blunt. But I can sharpen them up.”

Yaret took one and weighed it in her hand. “How much?”

“Fifteen drebs.”

“Each? Including scabbards? All right, I’ll take them.” She pulled a handful of coins from her pocket, counted them and turned to Rothir. “Can you lend me twenty drebs?”

He winced but fished in his own pocket for the money. “Who are they for?”

“Two of the women,” she said. “Oh, and Rothir, is there by any chance a spare horse in the stables?”

“I thought you already owned two horses.”

“I do.”

Rothir waited, but no more explanation was forthcoming. “The stable-master should be able to find you a pack-horse at least,” he said, “so long as you’re not fussy. Give him my name. Tell him I’m your captain.”

“I’m not fussy. Thank you, captain.”

Rothir nodded. He found it pleased him strangely to be called Captain by Yaret although there was no reason why it should. But it seemed she held no grudge despite their disagreement about darkburns.

Martun set to work sharpening the blades. As the slow rasps ground through the smithy, Veron grew impatient.

“Leave that. The sentry’s gone. It’s time for us to go as well.”

They trooped cautiously out of the smithy into the cold night air. There were smells of woodsmoke and the lowing of distant cattle in the dusk. Yaret lingered at the smith’s door to thank Martun, while Veron watch her with brows knit.

“What does she want two swords for?” he muttered to Rothir. “I’m making sure she’s not about to head off on some other expedition. Always up to something” Then he shook his head. “How did I not see her following us?”

“You weren’t expecting to be followed.”

“True. I wasn’t concentrating. That is how men die.”

Veron said it matter-of-factly: but a shiver ran down Rothir’s back. As they began the walk back he was very aware of the long impervious wall that marched alongside them, carrying its shadows of striped black and silver… For an unhinged moment he felt as if that wall held in a city filled not just with people, but with swirling plots and passions and ambitions: a smouldering mix of ten thousand fervent wills that could set the place alight.

What nonsense, he thought. It was the smell of woodsmoke that was putting fantasies into his brain. He shook his head to dispel them. Then he dropped back to keep company with Yaret, who was limping slightly.

“Let me carry those swords,” he said. “Is your foot troubling you?” He made himself ask this, for in fact, the foot troubled him; but it would not be fair to let Yaret know it.

She handed him the two sheathed swords. “A little.”

“Get Shebel to look at it.”

“She already has.”

“But it still fits?”

“The wooden foot? Yes. It seems indestructible – unlike the rest of me.”

“If it truly is root-wood from the Farwth, it could last seven hundred years.”

“Is that how old the Farwth is?”

“I don’t know,” said Rothir. “That’s a guess.” And to move the subject away from missing feet, and darkburns, and the night, he began to talk about the ancient forest of Farwithiel, recalling the previous times that he’d been there.

Even to speak of Farwithiel seemed to surround him with its deep, dripping peace. Now the heavy wall alongside him lost its stoniness and was transformed for the moment into the vast living wall of the Farwth, the interwoven stems and trunks and leaves that made a barrier even more resilient than stone. And just as impenetrable. He shook his head again. Gold and brown, those stripes were now. And a tiger stalking through them… But there were no tigers in Farwithiel.

“You have seen so many places,” said Yaret wistfully. “And you have also visited the sea?”

“I have, many times.”

“What is it like?”

“Beneath the surface it can be as green and deep as Farwithiel,” he said. “On the top: ah, restless, ever-changing. But it has its own peace too – and its own rhythms.”

“Rhythms?”

“Tides and waves.” He tried to describe their workings, drawn by the pull of the moon; and felt the slow tides pulling through his mind.

He looked up. No moon there. Perhaps he was not quite back to normal yet.

But he had managed to fulfil his task. He had not let Veron down. Together they had saved the city from the darkburn.

And Yaret’s voice when next she spoke was not so sombre as before; so that was good.

“Shall we march anywhere near the coast when the army finally rides out?” she asked.

“I don’t know all Huldarion’s plans. Perhaps,” he said. “I hope so.” Through both his mind and body surged the sea’s hypnotic pulse: the flinging hiss of waves on unseen shores.

We carry tides within our heads, he thought, as he walked through flowing, ebbing shadows. We all recognise the sea. I shall like to see her face when she beholds it. That unfathomable mystery.

And there behind these massive walls are pent back other mysteries: such smouldering plots; such secrets burning everywhere – not least our own. For we have deceived Huldarion this very night in the killing of the darkburn. Up to something? We are all up to something.

And yet, for this brief moment in the smoky dusk outside those walls, I am content. It’s very strange. I wish that it could last. But here’s the gate.