The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Read online

  “Baiart thought somebody helped him on his way,” said Aldric. “If it causes so much trouble, then I doubt it.”

  “Exactly. Taroen may have helped himself, with a bellyful of wine and a headful of smoke. Or his brother could have done it.”

  “His brother?” Aldric sounded appalled, and Gemmel remembered the closeness of Alban family ties. “All right, Baiart didn’t like me, but he wouldn’t…Well, I don’t think he…” Aldric shrugged and produced another sour little smile. “With the right reason and a chance to get away with it, I suppose he would. He really didn’t like me at all.”

  “How much better reason with an Empire as your prize, eh? No matter how he might have moved into the succession, Ioen’s a better man than his brother, much better – or will be, if he survives. He’s sixteen, he didn’t grow up in the decadence Etzel provides for his puppet emperors, and he’s more adult than his dear departed brother ever was.”

  “So whether Warlord Etzel likes it or not, the next Emperor won’t be just a figurehead.” Now his interest was aroused Aldric paid more attention, and he could see how things fitted together. “He’s doing what he can while he can, because if the Empire stops expanding there’ll be no need for a War Lord any more. And he picked Alba because… Because if the worst happens, he’ll have a bolt-hole out of the Emperor’s reach. And by using a filthy, treacherous, backstabbing—” He checked and took a deep breath. “Using a sorcerer when sorcery’s forbidden in the Empire shows how desperate he must be.”

  “Desperate indeed. He’s also aware Rynert condones piracy against Imperial shipping, and Alban vessels smuggle arms and gold to insurrections in the Imperial provinces. Your king is involved, Aldric. He just takes a great deal of trouble not to seem so.”

  “Ah.” breathed Aldric. “How in the name of the Highest Hell did you learn all that?” There was no anger in the outburst, only curiosity.

  “What would you prefer, sorcery or friends in high places? Call it some of both. and knowing when to say nothing and just listen. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But I think you may have it all wrong.” Aldric gave up. Tracking the wizard’s mental processes was like trying to read a book in a fog, without lights, after midnight.

  “Then what’s the real answer?”

  Gemmel stood up and went to the big oak desk, returning with a long slender pipe. Aldric had seen the lengthy rituals of the habit before and that nothing else was likely to happen until it was filled and lit, so instead he helped himself to wine.

  “Now why would Duergar Vathach be sneaking about the old Baelen battlefield?” Gemmel muttered. “Was he looking for something? Some unusual thing? A piece not shaped to fit the Empire’s puzzle…?” Aldric began topping up his glass as a buffer against more convoluted discussion, then spilt about half the contents as Gemmel thumped the desk and barked, “Of course!”

  “Of course what?” Aldric shook wine from his fingertips into the fire and finished what remained before he spilled that, too. “I’m tired of asking simple-minded questions you never answer.” Those last words and their tone were more than mere petulance. Aldric sounded like a kailin-eir and a clan-lord’s son. Like a Talvalin. Perhaps that made Gemmel careless.

  “Duergar wanted the sword-hilt…” Aldric gave him a sharp, quizzical look and he faltered, knowing he had said too much. Once again, this was when he could, should, admit using dream-dust and face the consequences. And once again it didn’t happen. “You, er, you mentioned it once on the road.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Hardly surprising. And I didn’t realise it might be important until now.” Gemmel breathed more easily as the moment passed. “There’s more to enchantment than just a spell to keep beasts away…”

  *

  Duergar, he said, must have been searching until the boar-hunt interrupted him. Then he watched from a distance, either in the form of a wolf himself or with long-sight through the wolf’s eyes, and saw Aldric unearth his trophy quite by accident. His charm of forgetfulness was cast in haste and too late, otherwise Aldric would have retained no memories of the incident at all.

  When fumbled magic didn’t make Aldric drop the hilt, Duergar had changed his plans and sent for disguised mercenary soldiers before going to Dunrath. Killing the Talvalins was no deep-laid scheme. They were an obstruction, and in the death-casual manner of necromancers he had snuffed them out without a thought. Time spared for that thought would have ensured a thorough job, but the lack of it could prove the end of his whole scheme.

  *

  Gemmel set out his theory without rhetoric, and waited for a reaction. It took a long time in coming, because Aldric was digesting the implications of ‘a thorough job’. The welcome party awaiting his return from Radmur wouldn’t have killed him quickly. They would have asked him where the sword-hilt was and unless Duergar used sorcery to rip lost memory from his mind, the asking would have lasted a long and agonizing time.

  “When you mentioned the Empire,” he said at last, “I took comfort from the notion that Clan Talvalin was an important obstruction to some great design. That my family had to be removed before it could proceed. That all those deaths mattered.” He laughed an odd, choked little noise and scrubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes until they filled with sparks, then blinked until they cleared again. The time for grief and tears was past, or waiting in some uncertain future. Now he wanted to feel the jolt of a well-delivered cut running through the muscles of his arm, and see Duergar’s blood on his blade.

  “Instead we were just a nuisance, like wasps in an orchard. So much for pride.”

  “What about the sword-hilt?” Aldric looked at him, hoping for clues and seeing none. Then he remembered the old harper who refused to sing a song and the pieces came together.

  “No. It isn’t. It can’t be. It’s not possible!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Kalarr cu Ruruc’s a legend, a myth, a story to make bad children behave. He’s no more real than… Than a firedrake.” That earned him an odd look he would remember later.

  “Legends aren’t written into Books of Years,” said Gemmel. “Or so I was told. Yet it’s one place I read about him. There was nothing about firedrakes, though.” He hesitated, waiting for correction, and when it never came a small smile of relief tugged at the corners of his mouth. “If I can’t trust the chronicle of an honourable clan, what can I take for truth?”

  Though Aldric wanted to argue, it was difficult to deny the existence of legends when their reality surrounded him. A crow screaming like a human, a man who could see through a wolf’s eyes, another who could make a cottage vanish… Either none of it made sense, or all of it.

  “What makes you sure it’s part of cu Ruruc’s sword?”

  “It has to be. Duergar took such great pains to bore you out of interest about the subject.” Gemmel exhaled bittersweet aromatic smoke around his pipe-stem. “And to achieve it with one so inquisitive,” he added, not unkindly, “required considerable ability.” He went to one of the bookcases lining the walls of his study from floor to ceiling and searched for several minutes. “I should have something to enlighten us about why… And yes, yes indeed, there it is.” He pulled down a thick leather-bound book, leafed through its pages and marked one with his finger. “Not a Book of Years, more a personal archive of things that interest me. Alban hall-scribes wouldn’t care for them.” The double meaning did nothing for Aldric’s peace of mind. “Now, let me see.”

  Gemmel read quickly, muttering the words under his breath. What Aldric caught of them sounded like archaic Alban, closer to the ancient High Speech of religion and ceremony than everyday language. Suddenly reluctant to hear any more, he was about to say so when Gemmel put the book down.

  “Aldric, go fetch me your old jerkin.” There was an odd edge to his voice. Aldric went at once, and when he returned, the sorcerer was drawing a complex table of words and symbols on a sheet of paper. Gemmel glanced up, then drew a
nother sigil right in the centre of the page. “Turn out the pockets, please.”

  A brief search revealed the usual fluff, small coins, notes on scraps of parchment and threads from a hole in the pocket lining. Gemmel dismissed the unprepossessing rubbish but lifted one of the broken threads, frowning when he saw the jerkin’s own lining was still intact. When he took a small knife from the desk and sliced the seams apart Aldric opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again as an object fell out and rolled clattering across Gemmel’s desk. As it stopped they could see what it was: the wristband of a horseman’s sword, still with three links of rusty chain remaining of the length that once connected to a pommel.

  “Duergar has the hilt,” said Gemmel, “and we have the wristband. I wonder which is more important.”

  Aldric picked the thing up for closer inspection. It looked much as he had found it, green with verdigris except where the chain had left bright scratches and flecks of rust. The patina covered even the decorative bosses on its surface, and the more he stared, the less he felt it had anything to do with a master sorcerer like Kalarr. Plain bronze was too cheap.

  “Important? This?” He gave a small, disgusted snort and dropped it back onto the table. “Not even to a penniless eijo like me.”

  “That’s its function: to look unimpressive, and be ignored.” Gemmel scraped dirt from the band with his knife. “It isn’t even magic. We judge worth by appearance, and when appearance doesn’t match our expectations, we’re easily deceived. Yet an older man may prove stronger than a young one, a plain ring may have more value than any set with gems. And a band of inexpensive bronze may prove of greater interest than one of jewelled gold, if you know what…to…do.”

  Metal squeaked under stress as he pried with the knife, then a catch went click and a flickering nimbus of pale blue light sprang up around his hands. The radiance poured from one of the ornamental studs on the wristband, where a cap of bronze plating had sprung back to expose the cabochon crystal secreted beneath. It was blue, like a sapphire, but lit from within by cold, fierce white fire, altogether beautiful and at the same time as awesome as the vast dark shape Aldric had half-glimpsed in the outer cavern.

  “This,” said Gemmel, holding it up, “is one of the Seven Spellstones of Echainon.” Aldric could hear the capital letters dropping into place like lumps of lead. “They’ve been lost for what the storytellers like to call ‘uncounted ages’. Well, maybe so and maybe not. I’m not convinced about the Seven, but if I’m right about this one’s provenance I can count the ages of its loss well enough.”

  Aldric almost asked for more details, then thought better of it. Perhaps later. Perhaps never. Curiosity might be as unhealthy for a kourgath as a house-cat. “Who or what was Echainon?”

  “A scholar possibly; a sorcerer perhaps.” Gemmel glanced at Aldric. “Does it disturb you?

  “I’ve been disturbed by more this past while. Why do you say the name as if it’s imp…” his pronunciation shifted, “it’s Important?”

  “Respect costs nothing.” Gemmel glanced at the spellstone. “And better safe than sorry.”

  “Now that disturbs me.”

  “It should.”

  Aldric looked at the glowing blue stone, thinking of how long it had lain inert and unnoticed in the pocket and the lining of his jerkin. “You said there were seven spellstones?” He cleared his throat. “I mean, Seven Spellstones. Where are the rest?”

  “According to the chronicles, there were seven…” Gemmel began, then noticed the crooked smile on Aldric’s face. “What?”

  “Why not just use according to legend and be done?”

  “Would you prefer It is said…? Most of what I’ve read is no more trustworthy. Truths, half-truths, guesswork and drunken scribbles in the margin. One, three, five, seven, nine is a progression of numbers in mathematics as much as in magic. You don’t need to know why. One of anything attracts attention, but several—” Gemmel waved one hand as if fanning away his pipe-smoke, “—can be more vague. Some sources even insist Echainon was a place, not a person. And I think evidence doesn’t get so comprehensively muddled just by accident.” If that was intended to put Aldric off, it didn’t work.

  “What does a spellstone do?” he asked, and the wizard chuckled.

  “Inquisitive hardly begins to describe you. Duergar must have a real talent for tedium. All right, try this. The crystalline matrix within the stone stores power, energy, magic if you like, and the cabochon shape gives focus to the power like sunlight through a burning-glass. Learning to implant and contain such power, then direct its release with control and safety, is part of what sorcerers do. Sometimes they don’t survive the lesson. Now do you understand?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You might, if you studied for ten years or so. Will you do that?”

  “No, I won’t.”

  “Then you’ll have to trust me.”

  “Have I any other choice?”

  “As you just said: No, you don’t.” Gemmel set down the spellstone, gazing for a while at the pale light twisting at its core. “Finding this suggests what Duergar has in mind, if he hasn’t done it already. He means to summon a mad dog as his ally, because he thinks he has the collar to control it. Instead all he has is a broken leash. If the dog discovers it can run free as it tried to do before…” He glanced at Aldric. “Imperial invasion will be pleasant by comparison.”

  *

  There was a stone plinth, with a slab of crystal resting on top making it look like a catafalque for the lying-in-state of some great man. A slow dance of green flames surrounded it, burning without heat, without smoke and without fuel.

  Duergar dozed before it in a cushioned chair, untroubled by the shifting light and so weary that little could disturb him. The rituals had lasted four days and their completion had left him exhausted. One hand cradled a sword-hilt of antique design, scratched and shiny from recent cleaning and with the incised letters on its guard and pommel outlined in fresh black ink. Those square, heavy letters were everywhere. He had read them, and others like them, in the many grimoires scattered about the room, and now they twined among the intricate symbols covering the floor.

  Duergar settled deeper into his chair and dreamed that the sluggish flames began swirling upwards into a tapering spire of translucent emerald ice. A globe of amber radiance spun at the heart of the fire until its golden light swallowed every trace of green, and darkened from the colour of hot honey through incandescent scarlet to a bloody crimson. The globe narrowed to a spindle of dark red poised atop the catafalque, then even its sullen glare faded and everything grew dark.

  Waking with a nervous jerk from a dream close to nightmare, Duergar found his dream had become reality. The light of a solitary candle was barely enough to discern outlines, but he could see that the granite plinth now held more than just the slab of crystal. This tall, rustling silhouette was none of the possible shapes his grimoires had described, and like all sorcerers Duergar lived in dread of the day when what appeared was not what he had summoned, making all the blocks and wards against it useless.

  Today was that day. The candle-flame sparkled back at him in a hundred ruby-red reflections, from polished metal, from cut gemstones – and from gleaming eyes.

  The eyes blinked, savouring his terror, and drifted closer. Sweat coursed down the necromancer’s face and his tongue stuck in his dry mouth as he tried to form the words of a defensive spell. Then the shape halted and the eyes glanced down to where a line of the pattern drawn so carefully around the catafalque glowed white, blocking its path. With a soft, venomous hiss of indrawn breath the dark outline shifted sideways, but always the lines of the pattern brightened before it, tracking every move.

  “What… Who are you?” Duergar said at last. There was no reply and the evident power of his restraining-spell made him bolder. “I summoned you, I command you! Give me your name!”

  There was a noise almost like a sigh of boredom, and all the other candles sprang to life
. They revealed a man leaning against the catafalque, tall and lean, his features framed by dark, grey-flecked hair bound back in a kailin’s braid. It was the face of a man who seldom hears refusal of his wishes, and right now he was far from amused.

  “If you could remove this obstruction?” he said in a deep voice, gesturing at the warding-pattern. Duergar did nothing of the sort.

  “What is your name?” he repeated.

  “You summoned me, you command me.” The man echoed Duergar’s words with sarcastic contempt. “Do you doubt your skill so much that you dare not also name me? Then let me spare you further effort.” He left the plinth and sauntered with a predator’s grace to the edge of the ward, watching as it flared with excruciating brilliance to hold him back. “I am Kalarr cu Ruruc.”

  He made a complex sign in the air with his hand. Demons could lie, could cheat, could change their form, but some things they could not do, and perform the Sigil of True Summoning was one of them. Duergar bowed low, almost abasing himself.

  “Your pardon, my lord. I was… Unsure. Welcome, welcome! Let me Open the way for you.”

  “The ancient rules of binding still hold good, do they not?” said Kalarr. “You gave me welcome, so I have no need for Opening.” He raised both hands above the nearest blazing line and pressed their palms together. When they parted again so did the line, leaving his path clear. “Just as someone invited you across their threshold.” Duergar cringed like a dog before a beating, and failed to sidestep the hand that wrapped around his head. “Have no fear,” Kalarr reassured him. “I merely want to learn, and ymeth takes too long. But unlike dream-dust, I do not suffer the headache…”

  The sorcerer tightened his grip, yet it was more than physical pressure that made Duergar scream. The mind within his skull was being wrenched asunder, sifted through like papers in a trunk, examined and discarded. When those long fingers released him he almost fell.

  “So you hope for my aid in wrecking this kingdom of Alba, because I would enjoy revenge for my past defeat. How true. Then instead of turning it over to your Imperial masters, you mean to hold it for yourself. What laudable ambition. And since you possess the last thing I touched in life—” Duergar raised the sword-hilt like a protective amulet, “—I have no choice.” Cu Ruruc’s smile faded as if the implications of what he said were sinking in, but Duergar missed the glitter in his eyes when they saw the broken chain. “So be it. I shall obey.”