Darkburn Book 4: The Haunt of Ternss by Tayin Machrie - HTML preview

Chapter 24

“Have you never been this way before, Novesnu?” asked Rothir.

The Riders and the Kelvhan company had left behind the great stone structures, which had diminished to mere pebbles far behind them. They continued to march or rather amble along the Red Roads, their horses plodding peaceably, sometimes in and sometimes out of the gentle waters.

Those waters’ redness was less obvious now, diluted by numerous new springs and streams; the slow meanders across the flat lands appeared more silver, gleaming like wet fish-scales, with an occasional ruddy swirl as if a giant paintbrush had been dipped into them. The streams were never deeper than Narba’s hocks.

The wiry Kelvhan who rode his grey horse alongside Narba shook his head.

“There was never any need for us to come this way. It’s too peaceful: nothing happens here. I’ve spent most of the last decade on the western borders, fighting tribesmen. The Hallots were in a permanent state of revolt a few years ago.”

“In the western hills? Difficult terrain,” said Rothir nodding. “I remember it: full of caves and thornbushes. We took part in a skirmish there ourselves against the Hallots and their princeling. That must be going back six years. Which was your regiment?”

He had set out deliberately to cultivate the captain, aiming to pick his brains about the Kelvhan army. But Rothir found that he liked Novesnu for his own sake. On their first encounter, back in Kelvha City’s tilting-ground, he had much admired the manner in which Novesnu had won his combat against Aretor. It had been a swift and skilful victory, but Novesnu had not made too much of it: no swagger or triumphal flourishes. Rothir thought the captain was less haughty than his Kelvhan colleagues – less full of himself, as Parthenal peevishly put it.

And Parthenal was very peevish at the moment. He was not good company. Even now that they were on the move again, Parthenal remained short-tempered. Rothir had tried to talk to him, first lightly, then more seriously – although he had, naturally, stopped short of interrogating him – but Parthenal had shrugged off all good-natured comments with a grunt and scowl.

Rothir would almost have imagined that his friend was languishing in love, or desire rather, were that not so unlike him. But Parthenal did not languish in love. He just beckoned, and then he took. Rothir guessed that frequently he didn’t even need to beckon.

But he could not probe beyond a brotherly enquiry; and though he’d always loved him, he found that Parthenal’s unusual moodiness did not fit well just now with his own equally unusual optimism. Rothir knew that such contentedness was abnormal for him; but since it was welcome, he did not question himself as to its cause in case it went away again. Some of it, doubtless, was relief at Veron’s recovery: they’d just received that news. Rothir was determined to enjoy this sense of a light heart while it lasted.

So Novesnu’s companionship was welcome. As they rode past the dwindling lines of stones the two of them exchanged reminiscences: from battles fought on horseback, to rivers crossed and the methods of those crossings, and then to boats and carriages and horse-breeds, and so back to cavalry again. Rothir was careful about what he gave away. Despite his liking for the weather-beaten Kelvhan, he was always conscious of the need to be discreet. So he spoke only briefly of his long allegiance to Huldarion, and was surprised and a little moved when Novesnu said,

“You esteem the Lord Huldarion greatly, I can tell: your manner says what your words skim over. Yet he is young, as leaders go.”

“Not so very young,” said Rothir. “He’s over thirty-five – and older still in the trials that he has undergone. You do not know the pain that he has suffered, both in his loss of Caervonn, and in his body: which was ravaged by the darkburn that set fire to that city.”

The other man nodded.

“Having seen the darkburns at their work,” he said, “I do not underestimate Huldarion’s courage. Yet he has still largely been untried in battle. Yes, I know about the many smaller battles he has fought and won. But now he’ll have the force of Kelvha on his side: instead of two thousand men, there will be over twenty thousand to command. Such a great army is unwieldy. It takes experience as well as skill to properly direct such numbers.”

“He will, I hope, have the aid of your commanders,” said Rothir, although he wasn’t sure whether the Kelvhan command would be a help or hindrance. If the Arch-Lord Marshal Shargun were in charge, definitely the latter.

But Novesnu said, with surprising bluntness, “Our troops hope that the Lord Shargun will be left out of this affair. He’s currently not in the highest favour with our Post-Regent, Lord Nerogun, so he may not be present on the battlefield. Or if he is, Nerogun will not be. But Nerogun generally has the upper hand.”

“Shargun’s out of favour? How is that?” asked Rothir, intrigued that Novesnu would mention such a matter to him, and so openly. Presumably the matter was no secret.

Novesnu shook his head. “I’m not sure. Some minor disagreement, I expect; they’re both proud men, and I have learned that Kelvhans do not forgive slights easily.” This confirmed Rothir’s impression that Novesnu himself was not of Kelvhan origin. His name indicated southern roots. Although that did not make him a mercenary, it might set limits on his loyalty to Kelvha. “But Shargun inherited his military post,” continued the captain, “and he has not lived up to expectations. I hope for better things from Jeveran, although he too stands low in Nerogun’s favour. However, that’s purely through his lack of birth, not lack of talent.”

“Then let us hope that Jeveran will have command.”

“I do hope it. He’s a careful man, but not a timid one. It’s a pity that the greatest general I ever fought for is now dead.” Novesnu sighed. “In any case he’d be an old man now. Borovin was his name: far-thinking, decisive, he could perform miracles of organisation. No detail was too small for his attention: no soldier too lowly to catch his eye. Yet he had a wide grasp of the whole.”

“Those are indeed great qualities in a general.”

“He was the Lady Meya’s father,” said Novesnu. “Her late husband too, Inigun, was a notable soldier. Taciturn, but a fine strategist and the most upright of men.”

“I am sorry not to have met him,” said Rothir courteously, before reflecting on the idiocy of his words. If Inigun were alive Meya would not be here; Huldarion would have needed to find some other woman with whom to forge his alliance with Kelvha. Suppose he had chosen that pretty young Janeya, only to have her throw herself off the castle’s highest tower to her death… What a disaster that would have been.

“Inigun was a man of high intelligence,” Novesnu said. “I expect their daughter is the same. You have seen the Lady Meya’s child?”

“I have not,” said Rothir, immediately on his guard.

“Nor I,” said the Kelvhan. “On the occasion when we met recently, while you were escorting Lady Meya from the Hapligan estate, I thought the missing child must easily be found. But when I caught up with Lord Hapligan two or three days later, he swore he had no knowledge of her whereabouts.”

Rothir began to wonder if all Novesnu’s friendliness had this as its basis: that the man was only riding alongside him to try and tease out information. Even though he himself was in part doing the same thing, it seemed a shame.

“Where was Lord Hapligan when you found him?” he asked.

“Northern Kelvha. I expect he’s now confined to some country manor. I don’t know what happened to the Lady Hapligan. The last I heard, she had still not been traced.”

“Then presumably the child is with her.”

“Presumably. I find it strange that the Lady Meya has not gone in search of her.”

“I am not in the Lady Meya’s confidence,” said Rothir cautiously, “but perhaps someone else has undertaken that search on her behalf.” He was conscious of throwing this out as a hunter might cast a scrap of meat upon the ground, to see if a predator would head that way.

“I would gladly have undertaken it myself,” said Novesnu sombrely. “I owe both my life and my position to the General, the child’s grandfather. I would do anything within my power to protect the child from harm. You understand me?”

“I understand you,” said Rothir, although he did not. Was this Novesnu’s own casting out of bait? Was he hoping Rothir would spill out everything he knew about the child’s location?

But even if he’d felt inclined, there would have been no chance of saying more, because Sashel pulled up his horse to wait for them. He and Novesnu saluted each other with grave respect; a combat between those two would be worth watching, thought Rothir, before withdrawing from the idea in self-disgust. Even a mock combat had no charms for him at present.

Sashel said, “Huldarion says we’ll stop soon. The stones are coming to an end at last.”

The stones, indeed, were ending – those parts of them that were still visible. Many lay half underwater, for ahead the Red Roads broadened to create a maze of curving, shining, wide wet ribbons. Only one group of taller stones stood sternly silhouetted on the pale horizon.

“Still no sign of any inhabitants. Yaret was telling me earlier about the stonewomen at the last settlement,” he said.

“A strange place,” said Novesnu.

“Uninviting, to be sure,” said Sashel. “And those women sounded an embittered lot.”

“Yaret told you too, then?” asked Rothir. A needless question, he immediately thought. What did it matter who Yaret talked to? Of course she spoke to Sashel. She’d dined with him in Kelvha city, maybe more than once. No reason why she shouldn’t.

But Sashel shook his head. “Hilbré. She said the women were determined to resent their situation, yet equally determined to do nothing about it. What did Yaret say?”

“She talked of their beliefs. Apparently the women think the lines of stones create some sort of guide, or channel: almost like a fish-trap, I imagine, but for spirits, not for fish, carrying them down towards the sea.”

Sashel laughed. Novesnu did not.

“What kind of spirits?” he asked. “The dead?”

“No. Well, in truth I’m not quite sure, but I think they meant those unseen birds we felt passing overhead a little while ago. If they were spirits.” The memory of that bright pulse of unseen wings still puzzled him. So he added, “To be honest I don’t understand it. Maybe at the end of the Red Roads we shall be provided with some revelation.”

“That would be nice,” said Sashel.

Novesnu, gazing out to the stones poised on the horizon, did not speak for a moment. Then he said, quietly, “I’ve seen the dead at times here. Men that I have killed. I see them fleetingly, in passing, here then gone; but despite the swiftness of the vision I know who they are.”

“I have never had that experience,” said Rothir, “fortunately for me.”

“Oh, there is no terror in it. Their faces just appear, as if to say, this is what was done. I expect it’s my own conscience coming to the fore in this empty place, reminding me of what my life is. Of what it is to be a soldier. Yet I have killed no man without a cause… The cause generally being that they have wanted to kill me.”

“Well, that is good enough cause,” said Rothir.

“I think it is the only cause. It’s strange, though, to see those visions in this peaceful haven, which ought to lay all fears to rest,” Novesnu murmured. “I never saw them on the battlefield. Did you?”

Rothir thought about this, then shook his head. “No. Though I remember once being made aware of the Riders I had lost. It was in the infirmary just after battle. They seemed to stand around me. I was not involved directly in their deaths, and yet I felt responsible.” Then he wondered if he should be talking of such things in front of Sashel, who had lost his twin around that time: an appalling death by darkburn.

“Your dead ride with you still,” Novesnu said.

“I have not seen my brother,” said Sashel, his voice low. “I do wish, sometimes, that I could. I do wonder where he is.”

Rothir had no response for this. He grasped with some relief at a distraction.

“Ah, look up there! Not spirits this time, just ordinary birds.”

A huge, high flock was scudding from the north: long-winged, pale and graceful – too lithe and elegant for geese. Some sea-bird presumably. Although Rothir could neither feel nor hear the wingbeats, their brief, high, stuttering calls seemed to spill towards him in a rain of sound.

“Travelling south,” he said, watching the flock overtake them; hundreds knifing through the heavens, almost languid in their effortless speed.

“Terns,” Novesnu said.

As the cloud of birds receded, the Vonnish train began to move a little faster, following a gently-winding path that seemed to have been laid across the silver waters. It was a causeway, evidently made by human hands; for soon cobbles were clunking under Narba’s hooves. Wide enough for five or six to ride abreast, it led towards the final standing stones.

They caught up with Parthenal once more, but did not speak. This felt like a ritual, almost religious progress.

“A pilgrim path,” said Rothir at last.

“I wonder who might walk it with us,” said Novesnu.

“Perhaps our wizard could tell us,” said Rothir.

“I doubt it,” grumbled Parthenal, “given his ignorance about everything else.”

Rothir looked over at Leor, who was riding with a strange expression on his face, wary and baffled; but then Leor had looked that way since the encounter with the Arac Semmuru. It was true that the wizard’s knowledge seemed often accidental. Why, even those lin in Kelvha City had been revealed by chance...

As he thought of lin he saw a flicker in his vision, a quick flash, in and out. He turned his head: no, just a clump of grass.

But Leor’s head turned too. So, he thought, I was not the only one to notice it. No doubt Yaret will be murmuring those words she says on seeing lins. Not a prayer exactly. More a greeting. How are you today, you lin.

Then he ceased thinking, and merely rode, experiencing the heavy lift and sway of Narba’s gait, the gentle splashing of his hooves; the familiar warm smell of his horse mingled with the sweetness of the air, the luminous reflections from the water shifting all around him. He heard the high song of the breeze, and watched the slowly sailing clouds match his own pace while arrowing strings of birds outstripped them. The stones grew ever closer.

A set of eight, these stones stood in a circle barely higher than the surrounding waters. Further on, the streams merged into a shimmering surface dotted by flocks of wading birds. Their piping calls were like an orchestra of small flutes tuning up. Some miles away to either side the land rose gradually again to form long cliffs; but straight ahead, beyond the stones, a shifting line of white showed where the Red Roads finally became the sea.

Rothir’s heart seemed almost to stop. Why did the sea produce such yearning, such a sense of need?

It is the endlessness, he thought, it is the endless beat and sway that carries us in imagination to unseen horizons. It is a thing of eternal movement and yet a promise of boundless peace. Of the forgetting of our weary selves. It is a symbol of our lives, of time and change; though timeless, changeless. We shall all be changed by time. Hopefully not for the worse.

Huldarion and the foremost Riders were already entering the stone circle. As he rode up to its border Rothir saw another flicker before it resolved itself into an inconspicuous brown rock. He smiled as he rode on.

They stood within the grassy, sandy space: the mild wind blew between the stones, and seabirds called. Did these stones draw the sky down to the land, pinning them together against the tapestry of light and wind? But the sky was as it always was.

“I feel no spirits here,” he commented to Novesnu. “Nothing but the salty air.” Novesnu did not answer: he looked deep in thought.

So Rothir followed Parthenal across the circle to its sole inhabitants – not living beings, but artefacts, although they might, he thought, be called long dead. Certainly it must be a long time since they had last been used. They were the remains of a pair of wooden two-wheeled carts, that now, like shipwrecks, leaned askew on rotten shafts.

As he came closer he saw that each cart bore – or once had borne – a cage. Around the carts the sand was trodden by a host of footprints. He knew those footprints, with their curious rope soles. A multitude of stripes had bitten deep into the earth: wheeltracks, which led out of the circle on both sides.

“Stonemen,” he said. It was a grim reminder of reality.

Parthenal said quietly, “But that’s not a darkburn cage.”

Rothir studied the cages more intently. One was in ruins, the other almost so. Both were stained and lichen-dappled. But for all their decaying state he saw immediately that Parthenal was right. A wooden cage could never hold a darkburn – it would be burnt to ash in moments. The cages on these carts were made of withies, or some other slender tree stems, woven close upon a wooden frame. The nearer one had almost disintegrated whilst the second was a mess of rotten stalks around a gaping hole.

“So what were these made to carry?” asked Rothir.

Parthenal shook his head.

A strange idea came into Rothir’s mind, as if blown there by the breeze amongst the birdcalls and the ocean’s aromatic heady tang. It was the thought that, however spirits might have travelled down the Red Roads to this final harbour, they had found themselves being carried out again by quite another means: within a woven cage.