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

  He turned away and as if for the first time, Duergar realised his guest was dressed in unbroken red. No Alban ever wore it without some other colour to offset its malign influence and vermeil, the blood-clot shade of dark crimson Kalarr wore with such arrogance, was the single most unlucky tincture in the spectrum. It was associated with misfortune and violent death.

  Cu Ruruc and his chosen colour were well matched.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Aldric lay in bed, half-dozing, and let his mind wander back over the past three years. They had passed more quickly than he would have believed possible, and he was already in the spring of his twenty-fourth year. Though he felt no different, he was: not just older, but with a scar down his right cheek and a mind better versed in certain subjects than any honourable kailin-eir would admit. Gemmel called it ‘survival.’

  Gemmel…

  When Aldric first learned how long he would stay, there was an undignified scene. Only cowards deferred sworn vengeance, he had shouted, and whatever else he might be, he was no coward. There was more in the same vein, some repetitive, some original, all obscene, but Gemmel weathered the storm of abuse with the little half-smile of a man who knew he would have the last word. He had been right, as usual, and the topic hadn’t been raised since.

  An eijo and honourless wanderer lost nothing by tuition in the Art Magic. Aldric already knew a few pesok’n, petty-spells, from old books borrowed in secret, because despite their presence in his library as a proof of wide learning, Haranil-arluth despised sorcery. After a notably sharp punishment Aldric kept his own counsel on the matter and hid his borrowed books more carefully. They gave him a certain ability to make friends with dogs, cats and horses, and to find lost trinkets, but it was little more than toy magic. Thanks to Gemmel he now understood a little of the real thing, and what chance unaided revenge might have against Duergar.

  None at all.

  Months had passed before Aldric called Gemmel anything but his name or carefully-neutral terms of respect. Then one evening he used altrou, foster-father, and the undisguised delight at something with more meaning than any lordly title broke down their awkward host-guest attitudes once and for all.

  Even so, Aldric shouldn’t have laughed aloud when Gemmel claimed to be a taiken-master. If false, laughter was cruel, and if true it was unwise. There hadn’t been a true master of the longsword since Baiel Sinun died two hundred years ago, so claiming the term without credential was unseemly. Gemmel remained unruffled.

  “Sinun was passable,” he said. “Not as good as some, though he taught me techniques of ward and guard I hadn’t seen before. In exchange I showed him some practical work with hilt and pommel the manuals had forgotten.” Before Aldric could start asking How? and When? Gemmel demonstrated at least the ‘how’ with a taidyo staff-sword, catching him off-guard three times within the first four passes. Not even Joren had ever managed that.

  Despite his apparent age, and Aldric didn’t ask what it might be, the enchanter’s gaunt frame concealed wiry strength and his hands had the skill harpers exaggerated in their songs. Gemmel wasn’t a master; he was a genius, a virtuoso, perhaps the finest swordsman Aldric had ever met, seen or heard of. In his late teenage years he’d beaten Joren by skill not luck several times, yet against Gemmel Errekren he was a child with a stick trying to harm a battle-armoured kailin.

  Whenever Aldric thought about sword-work now he could see the wizard, eyes glittering like emeralds, whirling and stamping like some graceful, demented dancer. With his wizardly dignity set aside Gemmel was opinionated, excitable, quick to argue and had no tolerance for the more useless rituals of swordplay.

  The first time Aldric took guard with both hands on his sword’s long grip, Gemmel copied him and held the pose for a full second. Then he closed the distance in a single stride, locked hilts in a close bind to push both swords off-line and chopped his left hand like a striking snake across the younger man’s neck.

  “I could have had a dagger in that hand,” he said over the sound of coughing. “Even when you’re observing the courtesies, keep observing your opponent. He’ll certainly be doing the same to you, and if he gets a chance, he’ll take it. Now, again!”

  Aldric took many slaps and cuffs like that first one, delivered through openings in weak defence or misread moves. His teeth were rattled and more than once he got a bloody nose. But he bore it all as calmly as he could, because he’d seen from early on that Gemmel-altrou was teaching him to stay alive.

  Soon they graduated from plain practice hilts to complex real ones, curves and bars of polished steel like abstract artworks that fitted Aldric’s hand like an extension of it. Then came the day during a practice bout without masks when a stroke opened his face from eyebrow to cheek. It wasn’t a dangerous cut, not even unsightly though he would bear its mark for the rest of his life, and it proved he had become too fast for the wizard to merely slap at any more. As realisation dawned, a grin twisted the stream of blood on his face into grotesque tributaries.

  “You’ll have a scar,” said Gemmel. “Try to ensure it’s the only one.”

  “Only one? That’s a bit much to hope for.”

  “Wounds in melee are excusable. The only thing proved by a wound in single combat is that you’ve survived being careless.”

  Aldric wondered what getting killed in single combat would prove, then decided not to ask.

  The fierce tuition continued for three hours each day, on six days out of every seven. Aldric didn’t enjoy it and hadn’t expected to, but his skills with long and short sword, with dagger and with cutting-spear were soon far beyond anything learned from Joren.

  The improvement wasn’t only with weapons. When Gemmel instructed him as they fought, he could think through the often-abstruse questions and give the right answers even while avoiding a blade swung at his head. A sudden flurry of Jouvaine or Drusalan no longer left him floundering in a morass of bad translation and worse defence. That was when he knew he was becoming something more than just a clan-lord’s youngest son, trained for war but little else. Whatever Gemmel had in mind was much more than helping an Alban eijo who chanced to looked like his son. All those lessons in languages, politics and geography added up to something on a scale Aldric preferred not to think about. Not just now, at least.

  He smiled at the thought as he turned out the light, and was still smiling when he fell asleep. For once, he didn’t dream.

  *

  “Where can he be?” Kalarr cu Ruruc’s soft, introspective murmur stung Duergar like the shrillest accusation of guilt. He shrugged and made helpless gestures that went unnoticed, because Kalarr was standing near the window, his vermeil crest-coat a coagulated blot in the sunset light, and paid no heed to what went on behind him.

  “Where…?” he said again.

  Despite hunting Baelen Forest and beyond for almost two years before abandoning his search, Duergar still lacked a solid answer. He knew about the little cache of spellbooks in Aldric’s room, and when the trail went cold at a cottage hidden by an insignificant charm, it was likely the young man had cast it himself. Duergar’s horsemen, with bad habits picked up in their Drusalan service, had burned the place, but their rough search had confirmed it empty. Aldric Talvalin had most likely died long ago from the arrow he’d taken as he fled from Dunrath, using up the last of his strength in that sorcerous attempt to hide his tracks. If only they had found his body…

  Kalarr was less easily convinced, and the repeated searches he ordered made Duergar wonder if his associate was looking for something else. What that might be, the necromancer didn’t know. He needed to find out, because alive, missing or dead, Aldric Talvalin wasn’t Duergar’s only concern. There were five letters locked in his desk, four enciphered and the latest in clear, unequivocal language. Warlord Etzel was losing patience with his agent’s carefully worded excuses; he wanted action and an end to subtlety. The Alban Royal Council, stated the latest message, was secretly financing a rebellion by two prominent Jouvaine city
-states, and arms of Prytenek manufacture had been seized in the province of Tergoves at the heart of the Empire.

  Where is the political instability you are to foster? Why has your much-vaunted seizure of a fortress not borne fruit? Perhaps, snarled the spiky letters, written by a secretary whose penmanship captured tone of voice with frightening success, the time has come for you to explain your failure here, while someone else completes your mission there!

  Kalarr derived much cynical entertainment from Duergar’s planned treachery, and as always when he thought what cu Ruruc found amusing, the necromancer put one hand to the chain around his neck. The ancient sword-hilt hung from it like a ponderous good-luck token, but its cold metal gave little comfort at the best of times and none now, for Kalarr caught the gesture and smiled in a way that made Duergar’s stomach tighten like a fist. All requests to aid the Drusalan’s mission had been ignored, and though the binding-spell on the hilt allowed commands not just requests, Duergar didn’t dare test his strength until there was no other choice.

  Such a test might fail.

  He hadn’t recalled all the spies sent out after Aldric, and now they shadowed Kalarr’s people. Whatever lay undiscovered in the far reaches of Baelen Wood, Duergar wanted it first.

  *

  What Kalarr wanted was the wristband of his sword.

  Duergar’s spell used any artefact of a sorcerer’s life to restore him whole and entire and, if the artefact was the last object touched before death, it granted control to the spellcaster. Yet Duergar knew nothing of Alban military history. A man might drop a sword-hilt from his fingers, but the last thing to touch him as he died would be its metal band, locked in place. Trivial oversights like that had killed many otherwise-careful wizards, and when Kalarr no longer needed to pretend subservience it would kill another. All he had to do was find the wristband.

  Best of all, the Echainon spellstone would magnify his own considerable power. Kalarr had used it that way until fear of loss made him hide it on the band of his war-sword, where its metal shroud muted the stone’s influence. He had never foreseen a time where he would lack the few seconds needed to free it, until Clan Talvalin’s last suicidal charge burst through his battle-line and swept him dying to the ground.

  The clan-lord’s name was long forgotten, but Kalarr could still recall blue eyes wide with battle-rage and terror, snarling bloodied teeth within the mask of a scored and buckled helm, and a taiken already scything in even as he killed the man with a lethal blast of sorcery. He remembered the sword better than its owner, for Isileth, Starsteel, already had a grim reputation. Friends and enemies alike called it The Widow Maker. The blade had lopped hand from wrist on the way to his face and a brilliant blaze of pain, then darkness and oblivion…

  Kalarr drew a shuddering breath and massaged his right hand with his left. It was fitting that he now held the Talvalin citadel, but terrifying that another Talvalin might hold the Echainon stone. This was a Talvalin who had defied his clan history and read books of sorcery, who had ignored the kailin Honour-Code and refused to kill himself.

  What else might such a man do after brooding on vengeance for years?

  Once he regained the spellstone Kalarr would fear nothing. He would show Duergar, and Rynert of Alba, Emperor Droek and his Warlord or anyone else who dared face him, what a true Overlord was like. After half a thousand years there would be no wizard with enough schooling in the Old Magics to defy him.

  Once he regained it. If he regained it. Because though he was already a power to be feared, the spellstone was in the hands of someone beyond familiar rules. Aldric Talvalin should have died with the rest of his clan or by his own hand afterwards. Instead he was alive for a purpose made clear by those three tags of severed hair found eerily unburnt on the bloody floor. Duergar could make claims about Talvalin’s probable death for his own reasons, but until a head or body lay on that same floor in front of him, Kalarr would believe none of them. With his honour laid aside, a venjens-eijo might hire another enchanter to use the Stone on his behalf, and Kalarr’s own skill would count for nothing if he was taken by surprise. History had confirmed that already.

  Another enchanter…

  Kalarr shot a suspicious glance at Duergar’s bowed head. His own deep-laid plans would benefit from the chaos of an imminent invasion, once the Drusalan sent ciphers to authorise it. When he did, everything would change in the blink of an eye. A bead of sweat trickled past Kalarr’s own eye, tickling the skin and causing just such a blink. In a sudden blaze of frustration he flung the window wide.

  “Where are you, Talvalin?” he yelled into the afternoon air, but only the distorted echoes of his voice came back from the citadel walls. Kalarr turned as the door of the chamber opened and watched the man in the doorway bow low.

  “Is anything wrong, my lord?” he said humbly. Kalarr’s face twisted, angry at his own loss of control.

  “No!” he snapped. “Get out!” The man bowed again as he backed away.

  “As my lord pleases,” said Baiart Talvalin.

  *

  Aldric came out of a sound sleep with alarms jangling his mind for the first time in longer than he could remember, and rolled sideways off the bed with one hand already closed on the holstered telek behind the headboard. It cleared leather as his feet hit the floor and made a small, sinister double click as he racked its spanning-sleeve. The spring-gun held eight stubby steel darts, and inside twelve paces it would put each one through an unarmoured target as fast as he could crank them out. It was a weapon for places and times where a sword had insufficient reach but a bow had too much.

  Places like bedrooms; times like now.

  “Impressive,” said Gemmel from the doorway. “All I had to do was stand here and draw this,” he held up a long dagger, “and your subconscious did the rest.”

  “You weren’t being very clever, altrou.” Aldric disarmed the telek carefully; their long trigger-bars were sometimes over-sensitive, and it would be easy to put a dart through his own foot. “Especially after training me not to ask questions in a situation like that one. If I hadn’t remembered where I was…”

  “The day you take me off guard after I’ve set up the ambush is the day I’ll give up sorcery for keeping chickens.”

  Aldric made a derisive noise as he returned the telek to its holster. “Just don’t be too impressed,” he said. “This inner warning of mine doesn’t always work.”

  “Such things seldom do. Best not to rely on it.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Very wise. Now, pay attention. It’s time you found out what’s been going on in the world these past few years, because you’re going to rejoin it.”

  “You mean I’m leaving? Why?”

  “Reluctance, after so long? I thought you were eager to be away.”

  “I am eager, but… Well, this is one of the situations you told me about. The ones where I should ask questions. So when I ask, will I get more answers than usual?”

  “As many as you want.” Gemmel didn’t smile. “And some you might not want at all.”

  *

  “…which is probably why Kalarr hasn’t given Duergar any help so far, and why Duergar won’t force the issue. He isn’t a fool. If he hasn’t already worked out the true controlling talisman, a look at any other old sword should make it clear enough. Whether he knows about the spellstone I can’t say. I doubt it’s mentioned in the Talvalin Book of Years. Most clans don’t like keeping records of such things, and some are more reluctant than others.” Gemmel paused as he had done so many times over the past years in case Aldric rose to the tentative lure, and again there was no response. “Kalarr certainly won’t tell him.”

  “Altrou, you’re a wizard.” Aldric’s finger rapped the table to emphasise his words, making the spellstone tremble slightly in its velvet-lined case. Cold azure fire spilled out and sent shadows dancing across his features. “Why not use the stone yourself? Let it work with your power instead of his?”

  Gemmel shook
his head. “No. Sorcery’s like swordplay, there are different schools with different styles. Skill with an Alban taiken doesn’t mean skill with a Jouvaine estoc, and this is the same. I could use it, but an expert could turn that use against me. And cu Ruruc is an expert.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “You can learn why I gave you such an elaborate education.”

  They talked over dinner, or rather Gemmel talked. As often happened when he was in the mood for a lecture, the meal was solid, homely food that gave Aldric more to do than interrupt. He listened in silence as he worked through mustard-spiced lamb braised with onions, carrots and garlic, served peasant-style with dumplings steamed on top. There were even little bowls of the fiery red and green emberseed sauces he remembered from happier times.

  Gemmel finished first as usual, since he didn’t observe high-clan table manners, adding liquid relish from the left hand and dry seasoning from the right, cutting meat with a long knife but bread with a short, and a dozen finicky rules besides. For Aldric however they formed a connection with what he had once been; so little remained of his past life, that he refused to break any remaining links.

  “I can’t use the spellstone to best advantage by itself,” said Gemmel, “so you’ll bring me something I can use. You won’t have to go far.” He cleared dishes to one side and spread a map on the table, a strange thing on stiff glass-clear parchment with letters much too small to see unaided. “This charts the location of various useful talismans.” Aldric raised his eyebrows at the idea there might be so many they needed mapped. Then he raised them even further when the map projected itself much larger into the air and the lettering grew with it.