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

Chapter 25

Leor frowned uncertainly in one direction, and then the other. The tracks of rope-soled feet and wheels led off on either side, both east and west, parallel to the shore. The seabirds’ cries were pulling him straight on, towards the white blur of the waves; but that was not an option. He had to choose east or west, without knowledge, without confidence, without any clear memory of this place.

“I vote for east,” he said at last. “The tracks are heavier that way. They’ve beaten out a lane. So that’s the way most of the traffic has come and gone.”

Huldarion looked as if he did not like this answer.

“Uld? What is your opinion?”

“East is certainly the busier route. Yet I’m intrigued to know what can lie westward that the stonemen think worth visiting,” the dry, grey-haired man said. “The Kelvhan maps, I know, label the area west of here the Place of Terns. So it must have had historical importance.”

“I believe there used to be a stoneman centre there,” Huldarion said. “These recent tracks imply that it’s still active. Our scouts have reported a large construction on the cliff top only a few miles away.”

Solon said, “Then seeing we have come this far, we may as well continue a little further west. It won’t take too much time.”

“I agree,” said Uld.

“I would go east,” said Crade. “Follow the road to find the enemy’s main stronghold: that is what we came for, is it not?”

“In part,” Huldarion said.

“We can send a detachment to check what lies to the west. It doesn’t need our whole army to do that.”

Huldarion nodded, slowly. Then, turning to Meya who stood beside him, looking grave, he asked, “What do you think, my dear?”

“You know what I think.” Her voice was low.

“She’s quite safe,” Huldarion said, putting his undamaged hand on Meya’s arm. “Be reassured by the message, not alarmed. It means that all possible precautions are being taken.”

Leor was not quite sure what this meant; but then he had not been present when the messenger – one of the Ioben hunters – had come galloping down the Red Roads to find them, his spare horse as weary and foam-flecked as the one he rode.

Of the message he carried, Leor had been told only that Veron was fully recovered. That news had been a great relief, for he’d felt a nagging, anxious guilt at his inability to cure Veron. But evidently some other piece of news had been brought from Olbeth’s farm as well.

Meya made no response to Huldarion’s touch. She said distinctly, “I would prefer to see her sooner rather than later. Therefore I would prefer to travel east, as was your plan.”

“Bruilde will look after her,” said Thoronal, in his rather patronising manner. It was a small shock to Leor to hear the name of Bruilde. What had she to do with anything?

“That still is my plan,” said Huldarion, with a frown at Thoronal – so perhaps Bruilde ought not to have been mentioned – “but it was always my desire to explore this region first. And that is what I wish to do.”

“Then I must fall in with your wish, it seems,” said Meya coldly.

“Afterwards, we’ll meet up with the body of the Kelvhan army before marching on. You’ll be reunited with her soon enough. But first I wish to see what place lies west of here.”

“I thought you always voted on such matters,” Meya said, still cool.

“So we do. Uld and Solon vote for west; Leor and Crade for east. You, Thoronal?”

“East. Why waste time here?” Leor thought Thoronal’s tone was singularly undiplomatic. However, Huldarion merely nodded and then looked at the three women present.

“Delgeb? Hilbré?”

Delgeb voted east. Hilbré declined to choose.

“Tiburé?”

“West,” she said, “if that is what you want.”

“I do. That makes four votes each way. We shall go west,” Huldarion said. “Solon, will you inform the Kelvhans of our route?”

As the Riders dispersed, Meya said quietly to Huldarion, “So, you have the casting vote, while I have none.”

Huldarion looked at her in some surprise. “My dear, you are not of the Vonn.”

“Neither is this wizard,” said Meya. Some emotion seemed to risk choking her. “And please do not my dear me.”

“If it is any help,” offered Leor, “I can change my vote to west, because I really have no strong opinion on the matter.”

“It is not of any help,” said Meya, and she stalked away and climbed into her carriage.

Huldarion looked at Leor; an inscrutable look, but then all his looks were. “If you can find Tamu,” he said, “please ask him to bring his documents with any maps to me.”

“I expect he’ll be with the priest,” said Leor, but Huldarion too had turned away.

So Leor set off to hunt down Tamu, aware that the word Women! although unspoken, resonated in his mind, and probably in Huldarion’s. He knew it was unfair. No doubt Meya had good reason for her annoyance; certainly she might have expected her preference to be taken into account, and not summarily dismissed.

But; women! He would not want to marry Meya. Indeed, he felt that every relationship that he had had with women had ended because of their dissatisfaction with him; which it seemed had never been properly expressed until the final moments, when some feature of his behaviour became suddenly wholly intolerable. That also was unfair. If they had dropped him hints, how was he supposed to notice? Why was he supposed to change?

No, not every relationship. But Bruilde.

“You make too much of being a wizard,” she had said. “You never let it be forgotten.” Yet how could he have denied what he was? It was not as if he boasted of it. Rather, he had a tendency to chew over his many failures, to fret over where he had gone wrong. Maybe that was the problem. Too much fretting and not enough confidence. Women liked confident men. Or did they?

“Tamu,” he called, on seeing the archivist outside the stone circle, by the priest’s cart. Hokiro, the young priest, hardly ever left the cart’s vicinity. He might have been padlocked to it. He stood beside it now, staring at the stones.

“What do the stones say to you?” Leor asked him, curious to know how he would reconcile such ancient monuments with his avid worship of Borgun.

“Their purpose must have been of huge significance,” the priest said meditatively. “Yet the setting of them here surely involved the hard labour of many hundred men. I expect some died in their transport and raising. So to me the stones speak chiefly of exploitation and enslavement.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” said Leor, unreasonably annoyed, for he had expected a more mystical answer.

The priest gave him a look that might have been pitying. “You think they volunteered for such work?”

“They might have,” said Leor, although he instantly knew that he himself would run a mile before expending weeks or even months on such exhausting toil. And exhausting it must have been, he realised now. He felt depressed. Had he in truth been hoping for some revelation, some exposition of the divine?

“Of course it’s possible that magic may have played a part in the creation of the circle,” said Tamu thoughtfully. “Would you be able to detect that, Leor?”

“I don’t know,” he said. That too was depressing; that he had so little understanding of his own magic. Which was not even his own magic, which was the result of no special virtue, but which was entirely accidental.

I do not want it, he thought, this unwelcome gift. Yet at the very idea of giving it up his soul rebelled in terror. What, to have no special quality at all? To succumb to the indignity of age and death? To have no distinction from the common herd? No, no, he was no common man; he was a wizard, and would behave as one.

“Huldarion summons you, Tamu,” he said loftily. “Take your maps.”

Tamu dived into the cart and emerged with a bundle of documents under his arm, to hurry away, avoiding the crowd of Riders that milled within the circle.

His special quality is knowledge, thought Leor, watching him; despite his shyness, his dedication to learning is impressive. And this priest: what is his special quality? Compassion, I would guess. It should be, for a priest. I have that too, I hope. Yet I would not devote my life to it.

I have devoted my whole life to magic. But not successfully. I have not been an effective wizard. To a large extent, the gift of wizardry was wasted on me.

This was the most depressing thought of all. He sighed and looked around, to see the sympathetic brown eyes of the priest fixed on him.

“To admit the limits of your knowledge is knowledge in itself,” Hokiro said.

“I daresay.” But Leor did not believe that. Ignorance was simply ignorance.

And after so many hundred years, I ought not to be ignorant, he chided himself. Tamu asked if magic might have been employed in building this stone circle. Why do I assume that I cannot find out?

He nodded curtly to the priest and strode away, towards a stone where no Riders lingered. Not until he’d walked around it did he see the thin Kelvhan maid Piril facing it, one hand pressed to the stone. So many hands had been pressed to so many stones these last few days, as if the things attracted human flesh. Why did people feel compelled to touch them?

He heard Piril whisper.

“Protect the innocent, O Arac Semmuru. Protect the children as I was not protected. As I tried and failed to protect my brother.”

The murmurs were quiet but heartfelt. Leor wondered if he should offer her some comfort; but what could he say?

If I have compassion, he thought, I don’t know what to do with it. I am less use than this old lump of rock.

Walking further round the monolith he paused and gave in to the universal urge, and laid his hand upon the stone. The surface felt rough and gritty, slightly sun-warmed.

Immediately he thought of that chilly day, a few months previously, when he had met Bruilde at her burnt-out farm. She’d been annoyed with him for trespassing although he’d only come to bring her some news or other. He remembered how he’d made an ostentatious effort to repair her charred and shattered wall, breaking the skin of his knuckles on the stones as he picked them up to clunk them heavily into place. When he’d stopped the bleeding, out of habit, he’d sensed that that annoyed Bruilde even more – quite unreasonably. Surely there could no more innocent employment of his magic than to heal his hurts? He could not heal anyone else’s, but why deprive himself of the small relief of allaying his own?

Yet some hurts would not be healed. Forget Bruilde, he told himself. Impossible, once. But it should be easy now she’s old and wrinkled… And there, there is my failure of compassion. I admit it. Admitting it is not a virtue.

He was angry with himself, with the stones, with Bruilde for dismissing him – for all the world as if he were the one who had grown old, and not her – and with Piril for her faith that something in this ancient clump of stones would hear her.

He marched around the stone to Piril. “It doesn’t live here, you know,” he said.

“What doesn’t?”

“The Arac Semmuru.”

“Maybe not. But something does.”

“Really? Spirits may have been gathered here, supposedly. But I don’t see any now.”

“I have, if you mean those things that Yaret calls the lin, and that I call the bodno. I thought I saw one further back. But then it turned into a rock. Yaret believes the lin have been collected here, and caught, and taken far away,” said Piril.

Leor wondered if this might be true – if stonemen could have used this ancient spirit road to catch the lin, and had then carted them away to… somewhere. For some reason. Perhaps for no more than a religious quirk.

Only stonemen did not have quirks. There was no subtlety in them these days; any more than there was in this huge stone. He raised his eyes up its stained and pitted length.

“Oh, look,” he said. “There’s writing.”

“Where?”

“High up. Those marks carved in the surface. Hard to make out under all the lichen.”

“Wait a minute,” said Piril, and she ran over to one of the carriages that stood outside the circle. A minute later she came back with a long-handled broom. Wetting the bristles in the nearest waters, she raised it to the stone.

“Let me,” said Leor. “I have a longer reach.” He took the broom from her and scrubbed. With arms extended he could just stretch to the marks. It became apparent that they were letters.

But even once cleaned, he could not read them. Although the angular shapes looked runic, they were not a type of rune he knew. Different scripts for different times, he thought, as he squinted, stretched, and scrubbed some more.

By now his movements were attracting the attention of others, who left their own huge stones to gather around his.

“Didn’t know you were so handy with a broom, Leor,” remarked Parthenal. He peered up at the stone. “Is that writing? How old is it, do you think?”

“As old as the stones themselves,” said Theol.

“Not quite,” said Piril. “The letters look too clean and sharp. They’re old enough to have grown lichen, but if they were the same age as the stones then surely they would have worn away a lot more than they have.”

Leor scrubbed again and stared up at the inscription.

“Oldish,” he said. “A century or two. Or three. Or maybe four.”

“That’s it, is it?” inquired Parthenal. “That’s the culmination of your own centuries spent acquiring wisdom? Impressive.”

“Well, can you read it?” demanded Leor tetchily. He felt annoyed at Parthenal, but even more annoyed at himself.

“You need Tamu,” said Yaret. “He’s the one for ancient scripts. Where will he be?”

“Huldarion wanted him,” said Leor.

“Really? He’s more in demand than the rest of us,” said Parthenal gloomily.

Leor did not answer. He felt too gloomy himself. It’s true, he thought: the archivist is more valuable to Huldarion than I am, for all my magic. There is Tamu consulting with the rightful ruler of Caervonn, and here I am scrubbing an old stone with a broom. And then failing to decipher it.

He put the broom down. “Better call Tamu, then,” he said, but there was no need; for Huldarion and his retinue along with Tamu were already walking over to the crowd that had gathered by the stone. The other Riders parted to let them through. Leor did not want this sort of audience.

“What’s going on?” asked Solon.

Leor gestured. “There’s a carved inscription up there,” he said grumpily. “Written on the stone. Runic. Unfamiliar. I can’t read it.”

Thoronal took a sharp inward breath. “Written on the stone,” he repeated. “Do you remember, Huldarion, the stoneman that we captured at the farm? He talked of the old stones. He said, Our victory is told by the stones.”

“And then you killed him before he could explain,” Huldarion said.

“It was Solon who killed him,” objected Thoronal.

“Yes; and you who caused it. Never mind that. It would be useful to find out what this writing says.” Huldarion, Leor sensed with some surprise, was anxious. Yet he was not a superstitious man. “Before Kelvha gets here,” Huldarion added; for the Kelvhan troop, a few hundred yards away, were making their way over.

“Why? If we can’t read it, they can’t either,” said Thoronal, stiff and sulky.

“We can’t be sure of that.” Huldarion frowned up at the inscription. “That first word is repeated further on. Tamu? Can you help? Is it familiar to you?”

Tamu frowned up at the stone. “It appears to be a variety of north-eastern Runic, a script long out of use. I can read the words phonetically; but whether I can translate them is a different matter… Give it another scrub, Leor.”

Like a dutiful footman, Leor raised the brush and scrubbed diligently at the etched surface. I could use my magic to do this, he thought; or no, perhaps not. For my magic might decide to uproot the whole stone and fling it in the sea to be washed clean.

Tamu stared upwards. Then he began to read.

A breathy tongue, that pulled at a memory deep within Leor, as if these were words he once had known… but no, the memory was gone, like so many others, too distant, too insubstantial: as light as thistledown, soft hushing words carried on the breeze. From the blank faces around him, he guessed that none of the Riders understood it either. Tamu stopped. Nobody spoke.

Then Yaret said, “Could you read it out again, please,” and Tamu complied. More thistledown; this time it almost lodged, clinging to Leor’s thoughts. And then it was blown away down to the sea and took all sense of meaning with it.

“Can you translate, Tamu?” Huldarion asked. The Kelvhan commander Rhadlun was very close.

Tamu stared upwards, his lips moving, but gave no audible answer.

“Now would be good,” said Solon after a few more seconds; but it was too late, for the Kelvhans were walking up to join then.

“Ah! an inscription,” said Rhadlun with interest. “Primitive lettering, I see. Is it of consequence?”

“It could be,” said Thoronal, “since the stonemen think their victory is written on the stones.”

Leor could almost feel the crackle in the air, although Huldarion’s face barely changed. Solon raised an eyebrow, while Uld was visibly appalled.

“Written on the stones!” said Rhadlun. “Do they indeed?”

Thoronal seemed to be about to say more. But Uld, next to him, must have kicked his ankle, because he suddenly clamped his mouth closed and stared into the distance.

“Runes, I see,” said Rhadlun, all easy arrogance. “Can you read them, master archivist?”

“One moment,” said Tamu. “This is an old tongue, little known. I am just working it out.”

Rhadlun laughed. “The Lord Huldarion enlisted you in his service for your learning, I assume? Do not fail him now.”

Leor’s faint jealousy of Tamu’s expertise dissolved, to be replaced by profound relief that he himself was not the one on test.

“Well?” said Rhadlun, looking amused. “Whose victory is it to be?”

Tamu licked his lips, and announced in a clear if hesitating voice:

“Triumph comes to the just and righteous; triumph is won... by those... who... who... honour that which they... both rule and serve. I think. There are a couple of words that I am not sure of, but that is certainly the gist of it.”

“Triumph to the righteous! No doubt the stonemen interpret that to suit themselves,” declared Huldarion. “Doubtless they see their cause as just and righteous.”

“Those of them that can read,” said Uld.

“I think we need not fear this stony oracle,” said Huldarion. “Thank you, Tamu. My lord Rhadlun, will you join us in refreshment? I would like to discuss my plans with you. Uld, Solon; accompany us, if you will.” As he moved away he did not look at Thoronal. Much of the crowd dispersed too, their curiosity fading.

“Phew,” said Delgeb. “A nice meaningless inscription. I think we dodged an arrow there.”

“We did,” said Rothir. “Thanks, Tamu. Is that really what those runes say?”

“To the best of my knowledge,” Tamu answered.

“Well done, Tamu,” said Parthenal; and he smiled down at the little archivist.

“My broom,” said Piril curtly to Leor. He handed it over, receiving not a word of thanks.

No word of thanks from anyone. But then why would there be? He had done nothing. He felt as low, as pointless, as superfluous as he ever had in his long life.

Without my magic, I am worthless, Leor thought. Without my magic, I am nothing.