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

Chapter 46

He awoke abruptly, fearful. The sun was up and it was light even underneath the prince’s carriage. Had his cloaking spell still worked while he had been asleep?

Looking sideways, he saw several pairs of feet; ill-clad, hurrying. So he rolled out. A servant stopped to look at him.

Leor stood up with dignity and wrapped his spell around him.

“Go to your business,” he commanded, and the servant bowed and answered, “Sir.” Next second he looked confused; then shrugged. As he turned away Leor sensed his presence was already fading from the man’s awareness.

A narrow miss. It was lucky he had woken. Soon the nobles would be emerging from their carts. Before that happened, he had better cross the Red Roads to rejoin the Vonn. There was nothing more to do here, for with Faldron’s patronage, Tamu was as safe as he could be.

So Leor left the royal carriages, sniffing: he could smell campfires. Not far away, somebody had burnt the flatbread. They might throw it away, and he wouldn’t say no to charred flatbread right now.

So he strolled amongst the hurrying serving-men towards the odour. Hearing a beat of wings overhead, he glanced up: nothing. Even so, another rustle of wings followed, so that people raised their eyes in puzzlement.

Then Leor frowned, and shook his arms, for small black specks had appeared upon his sleeves. And more were falling on his arms and shoulders: grains and flakes, like soot. They left smears on his clothing when he brushed them off – and they felt warm.

Not just warm. They were hot.

Around him men cried out with sharp, quickly muted cries, as if they were afraid of disturbing their sleeping masters. Black dots were falling from the sky, some drifting, some heavier and plummeting straight down, like a mixture of dark snow and hail.

Did I do this? Leor thought in sudden consternation. Has my wizardry somehow pulled down soot and ashes from the clouds?

He felt faintly sick with the possibility. But he had commanded nothing. He had intended nothing. Surely he would know if this was him? No, this was something else.

He stared upwards and a flake hit him just below the eye. He yelped and wiped it hurriedly: that was definitely hot. The smell of burning had grown strong.

But what was burning? Flatbread was not cooked up in the sky. What were these sooty flakes? Fear ran through him, liquid, oily… a familiar dread.

His heart thudded as he recognised it. This was not just apprehension at the falling flakes. It was the darkburn fear, the darkburn aura; and he looked around him frantically, seeking the blurred rushing shape, the whirl of smoke and darkness that must be somewhere close, about to leap on him.

He saw none. But now the Kelvhan nobles had begun to stir, throwing back awnings and jumping down from carriages. Some grasped swords, their faces taut with alarm as they looked into the sky, which was a changeful, speckled sheet of grey. Nothing could be seen against it but the dark flakes falling, falling.

Burning. A large one landed on his shoulder and he heard and smelt the snake’s hiss of singeing cloth before he flapped at it and put it out. One caught in his hair: he shook his head frantically, raking his hands through it. Then the nearest cart began to smoke, its canvas roof sending up a thin white plume that turned with frightening rapidity to a flickering yellow flame.

“Fire!” yelled Leor – along with several others. Someone ran over with a sloshing bucket, and threw its contents over the cart’s roof. The flames fizzed down to nothing.

But more and more shards of soot were falling, sizzling as they landed on the wet grass; there were more shouts, more loudly clanking buckets, which summoned the remaining lords from sleep; more men running to the nearest streams to fetch water. At least here, at the edge of the Red Roads, there was no lack of it. He saw several soldiers threw themselves down and roll in the slow current, before leaping up again, dripping and immune to falling embers and looking for an enemy: but there was nobody to fight, just the ashen rain.

Leor saw the sense in what they did. Despite having so carefully kept himself dry all night, he now ran to the nearest pool and knelt down while he splashed the water over head and shoulders. The sense of dread was so strong that it made him lurch back to his feet in a hurry, thinking surely a darkburn must be on him! He swirled around in panic.

Nothing. No smoking, rushing shapes. The only smoke came from scattered tents and the roofs of a few carts, and was rapidly extinguished. The falling flakes of soot hissed all around him as they landed on the twining waters. Those streams had lost their languid smoothness; a thousand tiny ripples hunted over them.

Leor watched a larger flake drift down past him, rocking as it fell. Strange... Though charred, it was undoubtedly a feather.

Then something else, much bigger than a feather, followed it. Black, still flapping, shedding pieces.

He jumped back in horror and alarm. What was it? A rook, caught by the sparks and burning?

It fell into the stream’s edge with an almighty sizzle. He saw a hooked beak like a falcon’s. No legs. A black bundle of burnt feathers.

His mind was filled with a panicky dread as thick and vague as smoke. He stared down at the small, burnt corpse, which now lay twitching until the gently nudging water pushed it downstream.

Another flapping body landed on his other side, with a second fierce hiss. Again, a bird – this time with a long tail, which disintegrated as it landed. Yet the thing kept flapping even as it was carried away by the water.

An object hit him in the back, and with a cry, he spun around. A blackened, crow-like shape had just bounced off him and was floundering in the stream, until it too was cradled and borne off by the Red Roads’ gently inexorable flow. Leor felt warmth in his submerged feet as it swept past him. He put down his hand: even underwater the corpse was hot to touch.

As he stared at the charred corpses in the streams they were joined by more and more. He looked up to see the air thick with them, fluttering and wind-tossed or simply hurtling down: a pelting rain of dead and dying birds.

They filled him with a terrible sense of fear; of loss and sorrow. He did not know what to do. One flapped frantically on a level with his face, spraying him with smuts, before it too descended with a splash.

And they smelt. He became aware of the stink now, the odour of decay. That darkburn stink combined with the sense of dread and horror convinced him that these falling things were truly darkburns.

But they were not attacking the camp, or not intentionally, at least. Even those that started fires did little damage. All around him, Kelvhan men were quenching small, temporary blazes, and swiping at the falling creatures with their swords. As he watched, one, struck by such a blow, shattered into half a dozen pieces. The worst effect was on the horses, which were whinnying in fright, and a few were running wild.

What was the point of such an onslaught? No other enemy rushed out to assail them. Indeed, there was no hiding-place for any enemy to rush from. The air was warm with small, dark, smoking bodies; but no worse.

Meanwhile a nearby group of Kelvhan soldiers, as bewildered as he was, looked round in fear and wonder. And then they looked at Leor.

“What are you doing here?” said one.

In all the shocked confusion, he had neglected his disguise. Now, flustered, he drew the spell back into place, and said commandingly,

“Get after those horses!”

One set off, but still the others stared for endless, painful seconds until their gazes drifted, recaptured by the falling birds. His presence was forgotten.

Another narrow escape… His heart thudding, he hurried away from the soldiers in his wetly clinging robes before realising he was hurrying the wrong way, back into the camp instead of out of it. Here were the lords’ carriages again, amidst a sea of agitated servants and lordlings flinging on their armour and panicky horses and lost boots and abandoned breakfasts. All around him birds kept falling, like mad crows down a chimney. Frantically he smacked away one that landed on his arm. It tumbled to the grass and crept, flapping, underneath the nearest cart. The wet grass steamed but did not burn.

What was this he felt? Grief, it is grief, thought Leor, but that is just the darkburn aura. There is no cause for grief, for these are only birds. Cause for pity but no more.

He was back by the royal carriages now, and saw Prince Faldron standing with three of his courtiers, arguing. He held a sword and was calling for his horse, while his equerry tried to persuade him to take refuge.

“Withdraw, while we are being attacked?” the prince cried angrily. “My place is here. Where are my horses?”

“Your Highness, this is hardly an attack,” an older lord assured him in a soothing tone guaranteed to aggravate the prince, to Leor’s mind. “It is a minor nuisance, with which you need not concern yourself. These little fires are easily put out.” Indeed, Faldron’s own groom stood on the carriage shafts with a bucket, and his carriage roof was dripping.

“Please, my lord,” urged the equerry, and he threw open the side door. A cloud of grey smoke billowed out. The equerry leapt back in alarm.

“What sorcery is this?” Faldron exclaimed. And then Leor saw flames beneath the carriage, licking round its edges.

As more servants rushed past him to quench the fire, Leor pulled his cloaking spell more tightly round him. But they were all busy with a flurry of buckets and sloshing water.

“I think, sire, that a burning bird crept beneath the carriage,” observed the older lord.

“But how could the ground burn? It’s sodden!” argued Faldron. “This is sorcery, indeed!”

Leor froze in case he could be spotted and accused. But the nobleman said wearily,

“Indeed, sire. If you will just step within your second carriage while we put this one to rights.” He led the disgruntled prince towards the gear-wagon. As Faldron climbed up and disappeared inside, Leor glimpsed a tall footman, and, behind him, Tamu’s face staring wide-eyed at the disorder.

Still safe, then. Leor thought it high time to disappear himself before there were any more cries of Sorcery!

It was not until he was squelching away that a sudden idea made him stumble. That fire beneath the prince’s carriage – no, surely not? It had only been a very minor spell that he had cast, to dry the grass and make his night more comfortable. A very little, harmless spell.

“Consequences,” he muttered as he strode off again, trying to dodge the falling birds, and began to splash across the Red Roads. For a disconcerting moment he saw himself not as a sorcerer, but as a lanky, overgrown, red-tufted squirrel – a ridiculous creature, all activity with no useful result.

But there was a result, he thought. I’ve made sure my friend is safe. What else could I do anyway?

The rain of soot and feathers was still falling, to be extinguished in the water with a hundred tiny sighs. Together with the gurgling streams they made a softly sibilant choir. He looked along the Red Roads at a procession of black corpses being carried on the current, a thousand leisurely funerals.

On the far side of the streams the Vonn were running to and fro as busily as the Kelvhans, passing buckets along efficient human chains. Some of the archers had formed ranks, but with no enemy in sight they did not know which way to aim their bows.

A bird’s wing fell beside him and was swept away, the stream holding it reverently. What was Adon trying to do?

These things are toys, he thought, toys tossed at us. I wonder why. He caught a feather as it drifted past: warm, dissolving into charcoal powder. He brushed it from his fingers, and glanced up at a strange shimmer in the air – a wave of heat, perhaps. He looked downstream again, looked back upstream: and saw as if pulled out of empty space a crowd of stonemen, silent, running, charging at him down the Red Roads, running in silence, faster than the flow of water.

“What?” said Leor. He took a step back. Where was his sword? Strapped to Bryddesda’s saddle. Where was Bryddesda? Stars only knew.

Where did these stonemen come from? Where had they been hiding? They’ve come running out of nowhere, thought Leor in amazement. Such a long column, a full twenty men in width!

Yet no sound. No thudding feet, no shout although their mouths all opened in unheard yelling. Were they real? An illusion, surely...

The charging stonemen arrived at an unlucky Kelvhan who had fallen in the stream. While he struggled to get up they mowed him down and scythed his head off. They were real.

This is Adon, thought Leor, as he staggered back. This is Adon’s work. He hid them from our sight and hearing while we were all distracted with his toys.

I could not even cloak Tamu, he thought, in a passion of dismayed self-hate. I couldn’t even hide one man; and yet Adon could shield this whole vast stoneman army, and plunge us without warning into battle. Here it comes.