Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

‘More likely than not the abomination has already fled, if he has the power, and this will not take long. Today is the day of the Abyss, the day of the dark, a bad time to face such a creature. Perhaps that’s why my strength was not enough to break him, even as wounded as he was. Come!’

The practice yard was empty. The clouds had unveiled the sun and the sky was bright again. All the monks and the priests and the novices were closeted away in their temples. Tasahre took Berren into a small low hut with a sliding door, the place where the monks kept the tools and devices they used for training along with their weapons; and, it turned out, other things. Berren stared, wide-eyed. He’d seen lots of swords in one place in the Armourer’s Quarter, certainly he’d seen bigger swords there, but here … there were so many! Straight swords, curved swords, swords with a hook on the end, all short-bladed and in pairs to be used the way the dragon-monks liked to fight. He’d never seen so many different styles and designs.

Tasahre smiled. ‘When an elder dragon merges with the sun, his swords are left to the order. That is how we have remembered those who guide us for more than five hundred years, since before the schism. Since before the first of the sun-king’s ships with their Taiytakei guides cast anchor in Aria.’ She opened a small chest by the entrance, filled with neatly arranged pots of powders and salves.

Berren tried to grasp how long that was and failed. He started to count the pairs of swords instead but there were too many. There must have been close to a hundred.

‘Every sword has its story.’ Tasahre sat Berren down on a bench. Several of the swords were missing their twin, he noticed, and a few had clearly seen a good deal of fighting. ‘Berren! Look at me!’

She jabbed him in the neck with one finger, somewhere near where his jaw met his ear. He gasped, paralysed and swamped by a pain that ran up the entire side of his face as though all his skin had been torn off. After a second or two it ebbed and he could breath again.

‘What …? What was that for?’

Tasahre dangled something in front of him. He was starting to notice that his hand hurt. Really hurt. Warm blood was running down his palm and dripping onto his legs. Oh Gods — now she’d ripped his makeshift bandage off him.

‘Distraction,’ she said. She dipped into the chest and set to work, sprinkling powders into the bleeding wound, pressing a gobbet of black mud over the top and then wrapping a piece of cloth tightly over everything. ‘You have seen how we train. There are accidents, at times. So we learn to dress them. This is how a sword-monk treats a wound, Berren. See the difference.’

He tried but there were tears in his eyes. It burned like acid and he thought he might be sick. Tasahre stood back. She held his wounded hand in her own and touched the first two fingers of her other hand gently to it. Berren winced and almost whined, squeezed his eyes shut, fearing what would come.

The pain began to recede. In the dim light of the hut, he saw, her fingers were glowing. Not much, but enough that there was no mistaking it. It was the way she’d glowed when she’d chased down the warlock.

‘You’re …’ The pain was almost gone.

‘The blessing of the sun,’ she breathed. ‘A priest would do it better, but this will suffice. The wound will heal quickly and the pain will be tolerable. You will not lose more than you already have.’ Then she picked up the bandage she’d taken off his hand and sniffed it. ‘You know I cannot be silent about what you’ve told me. Where is your master, Berren? Truly now, do you know?’

Sword-monks could smell a lie, that’s what everyone said. They could sniff them out, easy as smelling out a dead fish. Tasahre was looking at him, eyes hard, straight into him.

‘That was the only place I could think of. He wasn’t there.’ The Headsman had told him where Master Sy might be, but the Festival of Flames was months away. ‘I don’t know where else to look.’ And that was true, and if he had known, right there and then, he would have told her too. ‘How did you know where I was?’

‘I followed you through the city.’

‘You tracked me? What, followed my footprints on the cobbles or something?’

‘I followed you , Berren. It seemed you might go looking for your master after Justicar Kol came to ask his questions. You were not truthful when you spoke with him. I watched and then I followed. It was easy enough.’ Tasahre’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are your master’s dealings with that monster?’

Berren shrugged. ‘He never says. I think … I think … The Headsman — he said he was bringing soldiers to the city for you from across the sea. He said the priests in this temple were going to start a war. Is that true?’

Now it was her turn to look away. ‘I cannot answer that, Berren. The city men who came here today think the same. That is why they were here, and that is why they are looking for your master who they say holds the proof. They cannot say who has done this, so they point their accusations at us all. I came to Deephaven to bring the word of the Sun. I came to serve the Autarch and to protect him. That is all.’

‘But he hasn’t come.’

‘I know.’

Berren swallowed. ‘Velgian. He was dressed like a sword-monk. Was he one of you once?’

Tasahre shook her head, almost laughing. ‘We heard the story. Not then, but later. You threw a bowl of porridge at him and then hit him on the nose with a waster and he ran away, yes?’

Berren nodded. ‘He had swords like yours.’

‘Perhaps he meant to be seen? Do you think, Berren, you could have hit a true sword-monk on the nose? Even now?’

He thought hard about that. No, there was the answer. He’d spent nearly two months with Tasahre and her brothers and sisters, and no, he couldn’t have hit any of them on the nose, or probably anywhere else. Not then, before the training, and probably not even now. He shook his head.

‘He was never one of us, Berren. In your heart, you know this. We do not murder men in their sleep. That has never been our way.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I remember His Highness coming to the temple and ordering me to train you. I thought the sun was punishing me for something. I didn’t know what it was but I hated him for doing that to me, for separating me from my brothers and sisters, for giving me such a burden. I didn’t want anything to do with you. I thought you were a stupid idiot boy.’ She laughed. ‘And sometimes you are. You are uncouth, rude, you have so little respect for our ways that you could never be one of us and you would never want to be. I thought all you wanted was to learn how to kill so you could strut about like the snuffers this city seems to breed like rats. And in part, it’s true that you do, and don’t try to tell me it’s not. But we are taught to take whatever the sun passes down upon us and carry it without complaint. So I did as I was asked, and in the end you were not such a heavy stone around my neck.’

Berren got up. His hand throbbed but it wasn’t so bad now. His skin tingled. He wanted to throw himself around her and hold her close to him. He took a step closer but she stopped him, a hand against his chest, gentle and firm.

‘It would not be right.’

He took her hand in his own. Pressed it to him. He could have cried. ‘I want to …’ Wanted to what? Run away with a sword-monk? Yes, but that wasn’t ever going to happen.

A sad smile flickered over her face. ‘The crossing of our paths will be a fleeting one. The time will come when you will leave and I will stay. When you are gone, I will remember you fondly, as you will remember me. I am glad to have met you, Berren.’ She reached out with her other hand. Two fingers glowing with a faint light in the gloom, warm and yellow like the sun, touched his brow. ‘The sun’s blessing be with you.’ For a moment, her fingers lingered. He half raised his injured hand to touch her arm and then stopped. ‘We should go now. The priests will need to decide what to do. I must tell them everything you have told me. I will have no say in what is to be done, but when they are deciding your fate, I will do what I can. When the abomination turned his power on me you had a chance to run. If you had, I would have been lost, but you didn’t. I will not forget that.’ Gently she withdrew and smiled one last time. ‘I am sorry about your hand.’