Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

Fear is the killer of thought . He swallowed hard and banged on the door. Something hissed at him.

The door opened. Berren didn’t recognise the man standing behind it, but there was only one person it could be. The witch-doctor. Saffran Kuy — the Headsman’s grey wizard who could make the dead speak and who’d been with the thief-taker on that night. For the first time, Berren saw the witch-doctor’s face, old and watery-eyed, pale white skin like the men from the far north. Like a ghost. He was clean-shaven with strange tattoos on his cheeks and on his neck, disappearing down beneath his robe.

The death-man, the witch-doctor. Berren took a pace backwards then stopped himself. He was a man now, not a boy, and he had no cause to be afraid of anyone.

‘I’m looking for Master Sy,’ he stammered. ‘I mean Syannis. Syannis the thief-taker. Is he here?’

Kuy looked him up and down. He beckoned Berren to follow then turned and withdrew. Berren went after him. The door closed as he passed. Outside, the sky was clear and the sun was bright; inside, the darkness was so thick you almost had to push your way through it. The windows were boarded and shuttered, a few pale and feeble rays of sunlight poking through the cracks and that was all. Candles lit a short hallway and then an expanse of space, a huge black room filled with shadows and shapes and more candles, candles everywhere, so many of them and yet all so dim. Despite their little flames, most of the witch-doctor’s home was lost to the gloom.

Saffran Kuy turned to look at him.

‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said.

Kuy settled into a stiff high-backed chair. ‘Syannis. He comes here in the middle of the night, asking his questions. Full of them, and so are you. Black powder, disguised as black tea: who would have thought it? And traitors in your temple. Have you noticed, Berren, how the pure are always so full of sin. Sit! ’

The command carried a force that made Berren drop where he stood and sit cross-legged on the floor.

‘You saw us. The Two Cranes. Then back to your nest of liars in blindfolds.’ He shook his head. ‘You’re a fool, boy, if you think an open door stays open. I know what questions brought you here and I have answers for them, for some of them, but they are answers you will not like. They are answers not to be shared, not before the year begins its slow slide to death. They will close doors and bar them firmly shut. They will make you mine and you will wonder if you were a fool to come to me. Are you ready for such answers? Do not move! ’

Berren had started to rise. He fell flat as though he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse.

‘So you’re looking for Syannis are you? Yes, we came here. I haven’t seen him since. Would you like to see what we brought with us?’

Berren shook his head. Last he’d seen of Master Sy, he was hacking the Headsman’s head off his shoulders. ‘I … I just wanted to know if he’s here.’

‘And I’ve told you that he is not, but that is not the answer you’re looking for. It’s not the one that dares you to come here. Is it?’

‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Thief-taker Velgian, that is what brings you here, with his cold dead seducer song and his warnings that lure you onward.’ Kuy raised an eyebrow. ‘Yes, I take answers from the dead. From their spirits or from their flesh. From wailing ghosts and cold gibbering heads. Would you like to see the one we brought back with us?’

Berren shuddered. He couldn’t move. Wanted to but couldn’t.

‘Tush! And I’d taken you to be one of those young men with a fascination for the ghoulish, for the macabre, for the touch of cold damp skin. Here you are, full of questions and you don’t want my answers? You will have them though, wanted or not.’

Berren shook his head. All I want is Master Sy . But his mouth stayed firmly shut.

‘I know all about you, Berren. Syannis talks of you. He’s proud of his little lookalike bastard brother with the mistake in his head. Come, Headsman, speak! Show the young man that we can do what we say we can, yes?’ Something rolled across the floor of its own accord, something the size of a head. ‘Berren, the ghost of Aimes. I’ve waited many nights for you to come with your questions and now that you are here, you must look!’

Berren shrank away. The Headsman’s severed head was on the floor at the witch-doctor’s feet. He wanted to run but his legs weren’t listening. Kuy’s mouth gulped air like a fish. ‘Berren, Berren. You might have stayed in your bed with your head on your arms and gorged yourself with dreams, but what then?’ For a moment Kuy hesitated. Then, in the gloom, a smile twisted across his face. ‘He’s full of answers, this one. I can show you how to make him tell.’

Berren shook his head again. ‘I just want … Master Velgian … He knew something. Maybe. Whose gold did he take? Do you know?’

‘Do you have his head?’

‘No!’

‘A part of him? A part of what was his? Anything?’

Berren gulped. ‘No. I’m sorry. I didn’t know …’

‘Didn’t ask!’ The shadows around Kuy began to move, closing in on Berren, pressing him down like sticky sheets and nets as heavy as lead. They nailed him to the ground, killing his desires and dulling his thoughts. ‘Where is your offering, Berren? You have no fish to nourish my eyes and my ears!’

‘I …’ He tried to get up but his legs refused to move. ‘I can go and get some! I thought … I thought you were Master Sy’s friend.’

‘Friend? A craftsman and his tool and now I have a better one.’ Kuy’s bloodless lips grinned. Berren bit his tongue.

‘Pluh …’ Please . He didn’t know who he thought he was talking to. The gods? He had to fight these shadows. When he blinked, they were gone, just figments of his imagination, but when he blinked again they were heavy as stone once more.

‘Here you are and you ask for something and yet you have brought me nothing! Ignorance! Rude boy! So now you are here you will listen. I have power. You feel it. You fight it but you mustn’t. Let it be a friend to you. Let it in. Be its master. It will show you how to fight in ways you’ve never dreamed. I know nothing of swords, not even a tiniest little part; but you’re to be a killer, that is certain. Great things wait for you. The Bloody Judge. Gods and ice and lightning and the bringing of the black moon, all of that. You bring me nothing and so I have no answers for your questions, yet I offer you a gift, a marvel. I will show you how to ask those questions of the dead ears who will know. I could show you more if I had a mind to, much more. Speak with the dead? You could raise them from their ashes.’

Berren shook his head again. A sorcerer? Him? Sorcerers were wicked people, that’s what the priests at the temple said. What had Tasahre called them? Abominations! Anathemas! He was still powerless. He couldn’t even lift his hands off the floor. His fingernails dug into his palms.

‘Sorcery?’ Kuy shook as though he was silently laughing. He left the head where it was, lying on the floor, shrouded in its own shadows only a few feet from where Berren sat, and shuffled away into the darkness. He came back clutching strips of paper, a quill and some ink. ‘Now, boy, what was the first thing your master tried to teach you?’

Letters. Those were the lessons Master Sy had tried to give him when he’d first started as the thief-taker’s apprentice. They’d been a disaster.

‘Take them!’ Kuy stood over him, thrusting the quill forward. Berren’s arm rose of its own accord. His fingers uncurled to take it, then a strip of paper, as long and as wide as his forearm, then another. The second had strange symbols written across it. ‘Open the lips of the dead. A simple sigil and every secret in every splinter of the world is yours for the taking if you can find the right mouth to speak it. You want to know where to find Syannis? This one knows where he will be in days to come. He will not give it willingly, but you can take the answer from him. So do it!’