Stephen Deas: Warlock's shadow

With a sigh, he got up. It was going to be one of those make-an-example-of-Berren afternoons. There were a lot of those with Sterm. He weathered them with an indifference that only made Sterm even angrier. In another month, he’d move on to a different teacher. They all knew him by now. None of them liked him. That was fine — he didn’t like them either. He didn’t like priests, he didn’t like temples, he didn’t like gods, didn’t like any of it. They were all just something he had to put up with to get what he wanted. What he wanted was Master Sy, teaching him to use a sword.

‘Come to the front, boy.’

Berren shuffled forward. He was here because nearly two years ago, Master Sy had promised to teach him swords on the day he mastered his letters; now, even despite his complete apathy, he could read and write. He was slow, he was clumsy, but he could do it.

‘Right.’ Sterm’s voice was clipped and sharp. The cell smelled of damp but as Berren walked to the front, he picked out a whiff of sugarleaf on Sterm’s breath. ‘Berren will now tell us everything he knows about Saint Kelm.’ Sterm smiled, stepped back and stared at Berren. Around him, a dozen novices looked up. They all hated Berren too. They were envious, he thought. Envious because they had to stay at the temple every evening and every night with nothing to look forward to except more of the same for the rest of their lives, while he, Berren, was apprenticed to the best thief-taker in the city. He spent his evenings in taverns and markets and walking the twilight streets.

He sighed. Envious or not, when it came to letters and words and the histories of pointless saints that no one else cared about, they all knew a lot more than he did. He had no idea at all what Sterm had been talking about. Something about some priest who’d done something incredibly dull, most likely. Probably in some part of the world that didn’t exist any more, and all so long ago that no one apart from Sterm even remembered it.

‘We’re waiting, Berren.’ Sterm the Worm, Berren called him behind his back. Master Sy had tried to tell him off the first few times. He’d also been trying not to laugh, so it hadn’t really worked. Here, though, the other novices all gasped and tutted. Such insolence! Such disrespect! Such a bunch of boring …

‘Kelm, boy!’

One of the novices at the front grinned and bared his teeth.

‘Teeth!’ blurted Berren. ‘He had teeth!’ Kelm’s Teeth! He heard someone utter that curse almost every day.

‘Yes, boy. And horses have teeth and so do little rats and weasels and sleepy little sloths who doze in the corner of my class. Sit down!’

The priest slapped his cane across Berren’s arm, more out of a bored sense of duty than anything else. Berren ignored the sting. He got much worse from Master Sy when they sparred. The wasters, the wooden practice swords they used, were about the same length as Sterm’s cane. They were heavier and harder and Master Sy didn’t pull his blows.

‘Kelm.’ Teacher Sterm grimaced and started to pace. ‘The greatest saint in the illustrious history of the sun. Berren tells us he had teeth. I imagine we can do a bit better.’ Somewhere outside, one of the temple bells started to ring, warning them all that it was an hour until sunset. Time for novices to ready themselves for their prayers; time for Berren to run through the city streets to the Watchman’s Arms and finally see a prince. He could barely stop his toes from wriggling. None of the other novices seemed to be in the least impressed but surely they were just pretending; underneath they had to be green with envy. A prince! How many people ever got to meet a prince? How many poor orphans from Shipwrights’ …?

The cane caught him round the ear and this time Sterm didn’t hold back. Berren gulped down a squeal of pain.

‘For the love of all that’s bright, will you keep still , boy!’ Sterm’s knuckles were white. ‘Kelm! You will devote your evening to study and you will learn about Kelm.’ He gave Berren a withering look. ‘You may wish to use the temple library. You may wish to learn from the wisdom of your forebears. You may wish to read their words and their histories. Unless you are Berren, of course, who believes he will attract knowledge like a lodestone; that it will appear out of the very air and force itself in through his ears despite his every effort to the contrary. Or is there some other explanation for your lack of attention, boy?’ For a moment the priest looked pleased with himself. His eyes scanned the class. ‘We will have visitors in the temple soon. The Autarch himself is coming from Torpreah. He plans a great summer tour of the empire. He will bring many priests and many holy artefacts with him and he has chosen Deephaven as the place where he will begin. In a few days his dragon-monks will be coming here.’ He looked at Berren now and smiled. ‘Whatever else some of you may have heard, the Autarch’s dragon-monks are the best swordsmen in the world. They are his personal guard and a score of them will be coming to make sure our temple is safe. Each monk will be given a novice to assist them in their duties.’ Sterm’s eyes stayed on Berren. ‘Those novices who are most gracious and penitent and have best applied themselves to their studies. For the rest of you …’ His smile turned sickly. ‘The rest of you will still have me. And since our numbers will be so few, you will have the opportunity for some very personal teaching. You may go. Tomorrow you will tell me what you know of Kelm.’

On other days Berren might have patiently taken his place in the line of novices that filed slowly towards the door, heads bowed, mumbling prayers to themselves as they crossed the threshold into the open yard outside. Today he couldn’t get out fast enough. He barged through the line, dashed outside into the rain and the smell of the sea blowing in from the harbour and ran for the temple gates. The soldiers who stood guard there in their bright yellow sunburst shirts threw him a half-hearted glare. Heavy grey clouds pressed down against grey streets. The cobbles were slick with water but Berren was far too busy to be worrying about that. He skittered and slid across Deephaven Square, splashing through puddles, paying no heed to the angry shouts that followed him. Down the sprawling Avenue of the Sun and into the city’s second great square, the square of the Four Winds. Here men and women scurried back and forth, heads bowed against the weather. A steady line of carts trudged from one side to the other. They came up the Godsway from the river docks, then went down the Avenue of Emperors to the harbour and the sea. They were the city’s blood, the flow that never stopped, up and down from river to sea and back again, filling the coffers of rich men with gold.

Habit made him stop at the top of the Avenue of Emperors. Rain hissed into steam from the braziers pressed against the walls, smells of hot fat and butter and onions and spices mingling with the smell of the damp street and the ox-carts and the ever-present whiff of rotting fish. The noise was a cacophony of shouting, offers of everything from fried dough-balls to strips of pickled fish to spiced ratsticks and baked weevils, all hurled and battered against one another by the whirl of the wind. Berren hardly noticed it. He came here every day, and every day here was the same, rain or shine.

You see those ships, boy? On the day the thief-taker had bought Berren from Master Hatchet and his gang of dung-collectors, they’d come here too. Before he’d even taken Berren home, he’d turned Berren around and pointed him down the Avenue of Emperors to the jumble of ships and masts anchored out in Deephaven Bay. When I’m done with you, you’ll come here every day and you’ll look at the flags. You’ll tell me if you see four white ships on a red field. If ever you do, there’s an emperor in it for you .