XVI. Pre-dawn
WORD OF TASKIN’S ARRIVAL AT THE LOWERGATE DRAWBRIDGE REACHED VENSIC AT THE GARRISON WARDROOM. CAUGHT WITH CHALK SLATE in hand, upbraiding a laggard, the breveted officer stared at the man sent in with the news from the watch.
‘The king’s first commander? Here!’ he exclaimed, disbelieving.
‘Himself,’ the messenger affirmed, winded yet from the sprint that had brought him ahead of the cavalcade. ‘He’s got ten outriders with lances behind. To judge by their mounts, they mean business.’
The demands of meeting Captain Mykkael’s stringent discipline taught a man to respond to the unexpected. Vensic cast down the slate where he stood, and sprinted flat out for the bailey.
He burst out of the keep just as the task squad from the palace drew rein inside the archway. Mist hung, blanket-thick. The hour preceded the change in the watch, when the yard stood all but deserted. Men out on patrol had not yet returned, with their relief, soon to arm, not quite due to call in for duty. The stone enclosure as yet held no bustle of industry, no drills or sparring recruits, no cook’s boys or washing women, and no busy clamour of armourers. Against early silence, the crack of shod hooves on the cobbles raised deafening thunder.
All Highgate guard veterans, the riders pulled up in formation, then held there in ominous quiet. Vensic peered through the fog, attentive to the man at the head of the column who dismounted and tossed the reins of his grey charger to the first groom who rushed from the stable.
Taskin strode over directly, the gleam of his helm marked by hellish reflections thrown off the coals in the fire pans. His blue eyes raked over Vensic just once: a scouring assessment that mapped the young sergeant’s neat surcoat and immaculate weapons, and no doubt discerned the farm mud on the boots of his origins.
Still, the crisp challenge would have done Mykkael proud. ‘I’m acting officer of the keep, Lord Commander.’
Taskin returned a clipped nod, his glance showing tacit approval. He would have already noted the keen stance of the sentries minding the walls. Now, his scrutiny swept over the bailey, noting the rigorous tidiness, the cord of piled wood, the ready response of the grooms and the vigilance instilled in the gate watch. ‘I’ve come for your captain. Is Mykkael asleep?’
Struck to unease by the precise choice of accent, Vensic breathed easier, that this summons at least would catch no one in bed. ‘Captain’s up and gone out, lordship. Sergeant Stennis has the Falls Gate patrol. Sergeant Cade reports with the relief in an hour. Meantime, what can I do for you?’
The guard’s first commander gave no inch of slack. ‘Tell me where Captain Mykkael has gone.’
Vensic’s crown oath foreclosed the evasion that even Mykkael’s imposed standard of conduct would have expressly forbidden. ‘He dreamed badly, he said. Something he wished to investigate took him out to the tourney field beyond the walls.’
Taskin fielded this news in his stride. ‘Stay here. Mind the garrison. When Cade comes on duty, as there’s news, I will send.’
Footsteps approached; someone’s hasty arrival tossed a restive disturbance through the closed ranks of the horsemen.
Vensic noted the upset without time to react. As foreboding broke into a clear jab of warning, he had eyes for nothing except the commander before him. ‘Bright powers, what’s happened, to bring such as you down from Highgate?’
‘I’ll tell you what!’ Sergeant Jedrey burst in, just returned with his arm bound in splints, and his temper combative with malice. ‘Mykkael’s now under the king’s writ for arrest. He’s being charged with treason.’
‘You’ve been relieved,’ Vensic said without heat, his attentive inquiry still fixed on the crown’s first commander. ‘Go home, Jedrey’
‘Oh, I’ll stay,’ the outraged sergeant said, self-righteously indignant. ‘The council will shortly hand me the garrison. Trust me, farm boy, when that happens, I’ll burn the letter that gave your promotion, and you’ll be the one cut from rank.’
Taskin never deigned to glance sideways. ‘You’re breveted?’
Vensic took heart from the commander’s steel nerve. ‘Yes. Last week. Under Mykkael’s signature, on grounds of merit. The note was to go before his Majesty along with the bursar’s monthly lists for requisition.’
‘I see,’ Taskin said. His chilly regard swept the keep officer again, measuring with a depth that raised dread, though the bailey, the gates, and the garrison grounds were all well in hand, each detail kept in sharp order. Decision followed, as surgically swift. ‘Then under my auspices, you’ll swear your officer’s oath to your king. Today. Have your letter on hand at the change of the watch. You’ll go with my riders through Highgate.’
Courage spoke, then, despite that hard gaze. ‘I stand behind Mykkael.’ Vensic lifted his chin. ‘My captain has not betrayed Sessalie.’
For one brief instant, amid rag-thick mist, Taskin’s features seemed something less than frost over chiselled granite. ‘The accusation of treason is specious, I do realize. King Isendon’s faith in the captain is not compromised. Yet to dismantle the council’s distrust fully, Mykkael has facts he must verify in front of a Highgate magistrate.’
‘Let them wait,’ Vensic pleaded. ‘His mood’s worse than brittle. There’s something uncanny abroad in this kingdom. Mykkael’s in pursuit with an unswerving focus that’s frankly been frightening.’
‘A mad dog that wants chaining,’ Jedrey interjected. ‘Broke my damned arm in a crazed fit of temper. If your lancers are here to drag that one in, I suggest you arm them with boar spears.’
Yet again, Lord Taskin refused the distraction. To Vensic, in closing, he said, ‘Have your letter in hand at the gatehouse when my riders return. We act on parchment law, without shackles. Once Mykkael agrees to submit to my custody, I’ll see you through to stand for your captain as witness.’
Vensic nodded, not relieved, but at least reassured that Taskin’s handling of crown justice would be fair. ‘Expect me. The discipline problem in this garrison, meanwhile, I claim as wholly mine.’
Taskin’s sudden, spontaneous laughter cracked through the oppressive darkness. ‘By all means, soldier. For myself, I’d have tested the suggestion of boar spears on the whiner, were your insubordinate something more than a weakling, and not tasked with a broken arm.’
The crown’s first commander snapped his fingers to signal the waiting groom. He remounted his gelding forthwith. In stark disregard for the outflanked dismay of the garrison’s disgraced sergeant, he wheeled his outriders through the main gate, and vanished into the mist.
The fading grip of night still cloaked the valley outside the citadel. The misted tree limbs shed their burden of dew in a whispering patter of droplets. Sound carried. The snorts of the horses and the jingle of harness would have warned any war-wary man of the company now clustered at the verge of the tourney field. The smells of skinned grass and oiled steel struck through the tang of hot horseflesh.
‘I am not stalking quarry!’ Commander Taskin snapped, irritable as his hovering officer attempted one last round of protest. ‘I go forward alone. If I fail, if the man under writ has sworn a false oath to the kingdom, or if he refuses to bend for lawful—’
‘You’ll be down, likely injured,’ the lance captain argued in sharp misery. ‘All for the sake of a ditch-bred mongrel outcast from his tribal background. Why in the nine names of hell should you shoulder such risk in your king’s gravest hour of need?’
Taskin forced a deep breath. ‘Stand fast, by my order! If I’m wrong, if that desert-bred kills me, you may all hunt him down at will. Yet until the unlucky hour I fall, remember that I’m in command here!’
‘Your lordship, don’t go!’ The lance captain swallowed, glanced aside, and with wretched reluctance, backed down.
Taskin passed the soaked reins of his horse to the rider who normally bore the king’s banner. ‘If I need you, if backing is wanted, I’ll shout. Damned well hold your line unless you receive my clear summons.’
Straight back turned, the commander strode off through the dew-sodden grass of the tourney field. He knew what he risked in the darkness ahead. At the crux, he understood well enough that he might face worse than a wounding. Resolve firmed his step. He would not yield for politics. The killer he had disarmed in the belltower had been anything else but a madman.
Overhead, the mist showed the first murk of grey dawn. Still mantled in gloom, the ground stretched ahead, the greensward gouged here and there by the hooves of the horse wicket teams brought out for gallops and practice. The tang of manure was not out of place, except for the fact it was fresh. Taskin heard the creak of saddle leather first, then the whisper of equine breathing. His cautious sally soon encountered the horse, no less than the war-trained chestnut sent on loan from the palace stables.
The rank creature had been hobbled, steppeland fashion, in ties of leather and felt. Its bit rings and stirrups were muffled in rag, with the knotted reins run under the leathers, and the empty saddle left girthed. The rider was nowhere in evidence. Taskin avoided the beast’s surly kick, well warned in advance. Whatever activity Mykkael pursued, he had taken pains to ensure his mount would not wander.
Taskin pressed onwards, constrained to caution. Because he moved slowly, he did not entangle himself when he encountered the first line of staked string.
The twine was strung on thin wooden palings driven into the ground just under waist height. An exploratory touch established another, set at an angle to the first. The intersection where the two lines crossed had been tied with a white twist of rag. Utterly mystified, Taskin took pause; and so heard the nearly soundless footfalls approach his position from the left.
‘I am mapping the contours of pattern and flow,’ Mykkael explained, conversational. ‘You can help.’
‘How?’ Taskin raised his eyebrows, amazed by the note of restrained calm from a man who would not be unaware of the nervous lancers grouped at the edge of the field.
‘Hold this.’ Mykkael approached, a wraith disgorged from the gauze layer of mist. If dark hair and features kept his expression invisible, his spare form was clad in the spotless, crisp cloth of Sessalie’s falcon surcoat.
Taskin suffered a pang of regret, to see an order delivered as punishment observed to the letter of obedience.
‘The sword is sharp, too,’ Mykkael assured him, his humour shaved thin by dry irony. ‘I give you my word I cleaned off the rust. Shall we not set the proof to the test?’ He knew of the lancers; yet his touch was quite firm as he passed over the rough ball of twine. ‘Draw the slack taut, will you?’
Taskin grasped the string, equable enough to let matters unfold in due course. The string, he noticed, held the pungence of fish; had in fact been soaked in cheap lamp oil. Curiosity piqued, he followed Mykkael’s lead, watched as the clever fingers tied off a fresh streamer to mark the site of another junction. He forbore to question. The desertman forged onwards, his carriage suggesting the listening intensity of senses trained into stripped focus.
Mykkael hailed him, next stride. ‘Come ahead. Can you feel this?’
Still bearing the twine ball, Taskin approached. A dark hand grasped his wrist, gently guided until he felt a ranging chill pour down his skin. ‘That’s no breeze,’ the commander admitted, uneasy enough to pull back as the captain released him.
The answer came quiet, out of the murk. ‘No wind, truly. Such energies flow through the ground and the air when a sorcerer works. The closer the spacing, the more powerful the lines of his casting. Yet after sunrise, through the day when the wind moves, the disturbance we feel now will become almost too subtle to measure.’ A rustle of cloth, as Mykkael set another stake into the turf. Then he reached out, accepted the twine, and deftly tied off a half hitch. ‘This way, most likely’ He bent his lame step leftwards, and added, ‘Though, truth be told, I’d prefer if my hunches proved wrong.’
Guided past a drain swale by a hand on his arm, Taskin shivered as another chill ruffled his skin.
‘Bright blazing hell!’ Mykkael stopped, crouched down. He ran questing fingers over the earth, then rammed in another wooden marker. ‘That’s close, too damned close. Tie the string,’ he instructed. ‘Then, if you pray, appeal to your trinity the pattern we’re mapping ends here.’
In fact, it did not. More stakes were set. Soon a webwork of string fluttered with cloth knots at the multiplicity of revealed junctions. While the clinging mist slowly dampened his surcoat, Taskin realized he sensed the nexus points most clearly when the desert-bred happened to touch him.
‘Shared resonance,’ Mykkael explained. ‘Probably the effect of Perincar’s mark, though I can’t say for sure, not knowing what untamed gifts ride my fate by way of my bloodline.’ His sudden grim bitterness could not be mistaken as he fixed the last stake, then tied and cut off the oiled string. ‘We don’t have much time. Since you didn’t come down here just to talk, we’d better hold serious conversation.’
Overhead, the sky showed the first gleam of pearl, too ephemeral to read the stance or expression of the dark-skinned man close beside him. Taskin fought back his pervasive dread, and forced his speech to stay mild. ‘You have a report to make, soldier?’
Mykkael chafed his hands, as though easing an ache touched through the live flesh of his fingers. ‘This much. You have a powerful sorcerer at work, definitely. His spellcraft grows bolder. I found a watch vortex set at the Cockatrice Tavern, where Prince Kailen drinks. Didn’t dispel it. The taproom was too crowded not to cause widespread panic. Just realize: whoever speaks in that place, your sorcerer’s going to be party to every whisper.’
Then, too acutely aware that the silence had acquired a cut-glass intensity, Mykkael pressed the question. ‘What’s wrong? Commander?’
‘Such watch marks,’ Taskin said, gruff. ‘Can they be seen?’
‘In low lighting. Sometimes. Better say why you’re asking.’ Mykkael listened with an unsettling, stilled patience, while Taskin explained King Isendon’s queerly insistent behaviour, then the fountainhead of pent energy released when the cedar had been burned and the fumes swept through the royal chamber.
‘Watcher’s mark,’ Mykkael affirmed, ‘which you unstrung with a banishing. That means your sorcerer’s now warned your king’s guarded. He’ll move openly, very soon.’ Then the bitterness resurged, starkly caustic. ‘Perhaps already has. You’re here, after all, with your troop of armed lancers. Which faction at court wants me captive?’
‘Political formality,’ Taskin reassured him quickly. ‘You’ll be granted a royal hearing the moment the king’s lucid, with my earnest expectation you’ll be discharged.’
Mykkael’s interruption sheared across his next line. ‘No. Don’t speak. Hold the wretched details for later. You’ve said things that raise questions which have to be answered.’ Without waiting, he plunged on. ‘Does your king seem to see things that others do not?’
Discomfited, Taskin braced his trim shoulders, scattering droplets off his sodden surcoat. ‘His Majesty used to make light of what he called his “cold starts”. Now, since the onset of his affliction, the courtiers attribute his maundering to spells of blank wits.’
‘He sees things,’ Mykkael stated in stripped apprehension. ‘Powers, of course! It makes sense that his daughter has likely inherited that attribute. That’s why she ran! Her Grace would have sensed the invasion of Sessalie’s court. She certainly realized her life was in danger.’
‘But you can’t show me proof,’ Taskin snapped, immovably cornered by the frustration served up by the high council’s writ.
‘I can try.’ Aware of the challenge pending against him, Mykkael fought to contain ebbing calm. He assessed the brightening sky overhead, the last shadow fading moment by moment as sunrise broached the east rim of the peaks. ‘Within a few minutes, we’ll have enough light.’
‘To discern the pattern?’ The crown’s first commander folded his arms against the encroaching chill. ‘Yet I’ll scarcely know what I’m seeing, will I?’
Mykkael dug into his scrip, used his flint to strike sparks and ignite the cut length of oiled string he planned to use as a touch match. ‘I may not know, either, except that by complexity and close spacing alone, I already sense something shaping that runs outside the concept of frightening.’ Here, he paused, string cupped in dark palms as he blew to make the spark catch. Then he held, his stance coiled, as though measuring the air for the slightest suggestion of movement. ‘The greater flow of a sorcerer’s energies is reflected in mirror image, at nexus points. Without wind as influence, when we set the string alight from its easternmost point of alignment, we’ll see which direction the flow of the energy draws the flame. You’ll know which junctions are crossings, and which are divisions. A sorcerer’s lines always stream towards his origins, and run to ground through the site of his primary bonding with power. As the string burns, you will clearly discern where Sessalie’s enemy has come from.’
The sky overhead turned from pewter to silver. The tips of the near stakes were now visible in hazed outline against the grey scrim of the ground. The white cloths tied at the junctions hung limp, already burdened with moisture.
‘Now,’ Mykkael murmured. He bent, set the flame to the string, then stepped back as the oiled fibres caught.
The fire raced down the twine, consuming fuel at a pace that outstripped any natural combustion. Spitting into the first junction, the damp rag burst into an explosion of sparks. Split runners of the flame rushed down the string on both sides, and also carried on down the centreline. Dew-dampened cloth posed the conflagration no impediment. Taskin, as onlooker, felt an ugly prickle of dread raise the hair at his nape. No word need convince him that he stood witness to the play of demonic powers.
The next junction passed, a division, and the third proved the very same. When the fourth and the fifth split the energy further, with no doubled-back loop for renewal, Mykkael began swearing in tongues; as the sixth, then the seventh rag raged into fountained sparks, and the energy paths only widened, he lapsed into a more ominous silence.
‘Have you seen a pattern like this one before?’ Taskin asked, all but desperate to crack the unbearable tension.
The captain returned a stressed whisper. ‘Never. Merciful powers, nothing determined as this. There are no crossings, only branches. We are looking at conquest on a scale unimagined.’
‘Beyond Sessalie?’ Taskin demanded.
Mykkael regarded the remnants of his laid strings, the rushed lines of fire a reflection imprinted in his eyes as the last junctions flared, the revealed branches fast flying towards immolation. ‘Mehigrannia show us the will to preserve, your Sessalie’s no more than the stepping stone to launch an invasion across the barrier of the Great Divide!’ His stunned horror lingered, pervasive as the stink of plumed smoke, while the last span of twine fizzled into wisped ash, with one stake left burning like a torch.
‘There,’ Mykkael pointed. ‘Sight a line from where we stand through that post and extrapolate, and there lies your sorcerer’s origin.’
‘Lowcountry,’ Taskin affirmed. ‘Devall, most likely. The high prince came clean, damn his pride and his reticence. He finally admitted his kingdom has earned a savage array of strong enemies. Still, how do you know the sorcerer’s origin is not on the same line, but behind us?’
‘Because the east stake’s gone cold.’ Mykkael stowed his twine, then plucked a twist of grass and wiped the residual oil from his fingers. His features remained in cut silhouette as he took fate in hand and tested the current of Highgate’s prevailing politics. ‘Was his Highness of Devall behind the outcry that’s called you out with your lancers?’
Taskin sighed. ‘From the start, each of you has entreated me not to trust the other party to act in Sessalie’s best interests.’
Mykkael stepped back. He replaced his flint, then refastened his scrip with controlled deliberation. ‘Then you’ll have to decide on our merits, Commander.’
‘Captain, I already have.’ Against brightening day, the commander confronted him, his unwavering stance that of an icon wrought out of antique silver. ‘My lancers are here bearing arms, but they don’t carry prisoner’s shackles.’
The dark captain weighed this. ‘You’re asking me to come in, voluntarily?’
‘Not asking.’ The steel in that tone was not malleable. ‘The seneschal, Lord Shaillon, is an inflexible man. His sway leads the voice of detraction. The lure of Devall’s sea trade has won the high council’s backing, and cited proof off the assassin you just foiled has framed a writ demanding your arrest. King Isendon can overturn the document through a hearing.’ Pressured by Mykkael’s undivided attention, Taskin finished his case with crisp delicacy. ‘I know first-hand that his Majesty trusts you. On my assurance, you must stand down. Come back through Highgate under the protection of my lancers, and bide under guard until the king’s lucid word sets you free. You have my fair backing. Stand firm on your sworn oath to Sessalie, and Devall’s case fails. You can be restored to your post in the garrison with no loss beyond a few hours.’
Mykkael turned his head, regarded the forlorn array of his stakes, and the last, sullen glow of the burned one, as the flames subsided to embers against the lead backdrop of mist. ‘Tell me, Commander, has the High Prince of Devall ever once tried to touch you since you accepted my talisman? And if he has, did his Highness draw back from the contact as though he was burned?’ Aware of the answer before Taskin spoke, the desert-bred hurled down his conclusion. ‘Your enemy is flushed, Taskin. Whether the creature has cast his influence through Devall’s heir apparent as a catspaw, or whether his Highness has become a bound minion pulled on puppet strings, the attack upon Isendon’s crown is going to move into the open. Go back to the Highgate! Protect your king. As you love Sessalie, leave me at large to safeguard the life of your princess.’
‘Your case cannot be made to stand in absentia,’ Taskin was swift to point out.
Mykkael stepped back another pace, the poised change in his carriage unmistakable. ‘Find a way. Understand me! This charge to entrap me is part of a sorcerer’s plot to extend the range of his power. Hold me in restraint, you will doom your princess. Your enemy knows me, surely has since the moment I entered the royal presence without the protection of the shaman’s mark on my sword! Force me above Highgate, and I very much doubt that I’ll be set free with my life.’
‘You realize you’re asking a traitorous act of me.’ Taskin raised his opened palms. ‘Until the king speaks, I’m bound by realm law to enact the will of the council.’
Mykkael shook his head. His fist closed, with distress, on his sword hilt. ‘Choose. I can’t plead.’
Shown the bared force of character behind Jussoud’s assessment, Taskin drew a breath just as shaken. Here was a man, a trained killer, who would hold his integrity above spoken promises. The question demanded an accurate answer: which faction claimed the weapon of this desert-bred’s resolute initiative?
Taskin collected the strained cloth of his faith. Only one course of possibility remained to dismantle the council’s ruling, based in law, by the king’s witnessed word. ‘For Anja’s life, then, answer me truthfully. Can you swear to me, Mykkael, that you never broke oath to Kaien’s do’aa? That the assassin you felled was not their man, sent out to call your life forfeit?’
The reply, forced through anguish, seared for its straight honesty. ‘Oh bright powers and Mehigrannia’s mercy! I breached honour with Kaien, but not for the cause you might think.’
‘Then the only shred of hope you have to establish your innocence is to hold your crown oath to Sessalie inviolate.’ Aware of the tenuous, last rags of trust shredding like tissue between them, Taskin extended himself beyond pride in appeal. ‘Captain, you won’t plead. I will, for your honour!
Show me the loyalty you gave the Sanouk for Orannia. Come in with my lancers and testify!’
‘Save your king as you can,’ said Mykkael with regret. He turned his back, walked, but not in submission. Ahead of his dreadfully purposeful, limped stride, the smudged form of his hobbled gelding loomed through the mist.
He would mount up and ride, Taskin realized, overwhelmed by his shattering failure. Sessalie’s fate no doubt rested still on the unknown, unproven alignment of this desert-bred’s fixed allegiance. A split second of time, to enact the decision: whether to reject the case in the untested belief set in foreign talismans, and arcane patterns of fire and string, or to hold out for the bedrock surety of evidence that this killer was not the tool of Devall’s shadowy enemy.
This, boiled down to the one damning fact: that Mykkael had not chosen to lie. ‘Save your king as you can.’ The last sentence became too ambiguously damning. Taskin understood, in cold fury, that he was outfaced without quarter. He would have to bid for hard proof.
‘Stand fast, soldier!’
No response; Captain Mykkael advanced. Deaf and blind to persuasion, he rejected just hearing under King Isendon’s ear, and the ties of his oath to crown law.
Taskin closed his hand on his sword hilt and cleared the blade with a warning ring from the scabbard. The next word he uttered must summon his lancers in command to ride down a fugitive.
Except Mykkael stopped. Faced about, he held his bared sword in hand, though no sound had attended its drawing. He did not speak. In the waxing light, through the dense mist, his features were expressionless stone. Eyes locked to the form of the crown’s first commander, he took a deliberate step back, then another.
Three more, and Mykkael would reach his saddled gelding. A single, swift stroke would sever the hobbles. His vault astride would happen before any mounted troop could cross the tourney field, far less react in armed strength to prevent him.
Pressed beyond options, Taskin shouted, and sprang.
His steel met the captain’s experienced parry with a virulent clangour. The sound would spur the lancers to charge. Crack men, each one devoted to Taskin, they would converge at a gallop to attack and cut down a traitor.