Stephen Deas - Warlock's shadow

‘I am aware, Master Berren, but you are blades drawn against a disciple of the fire-dragon. Until our time is done and I let you go, nothing short of the sun falling out of the sky should be of more concern to you than the point of my sword. Now guard!’ She jabbed him in the ribs.

They sparred for a few minutes more. Berren tried to turn the fight so he could see what was happening in the yard. When she realised what he was doing, Tasahre tried to turn the fight so that he couldn’t. After a while she stopped, withdrew, saluted and bowed.

‘I give up. I release you.’ she shook her head and Berren couldn’t tell whether she was more amused or annoyed. ‘Go! Listen at doors or whatever it is you mean to do.’ She glowered. ‘I will forgive you, but only if you remember that we are not done for today. So you will come back and tell me all that you have heard, yes?’

He turned and ran, chasing after the Overlord and his soldiers as they vanished into the temple dome, racing into the atrium in time to see the inner doors slam shut. Temple soldiers in their yellow sunbursts barred his way, along with two soldiers in imperial eagles.

‘The temple is closed, novice.’ A soldier glared at him. The temple soldiers generally took their lead from the priests in not having much love for Berren. ‘The Sunherald is in private session.’

Berren gawped. The Sunherald? The highest priest in Deephaven? A priest who answered only to the Autarch himself? The Overlord was here to see the Sunherald ? But then, who else would the Overlord come to see?

‘Oi! Novice! You deaf?’

He obviously wasn’t going to see or hear anything from this door, but there were plenty of others. He skipped back outside, all ready to run to the back of the temple and one of the other ways into the great dome. But outside he almost ran straight into Justicar Kol and his wagon, parked in the shade around the corner from the grand gates.

‘Berren.’ Kol wore a grim smile. ‘Well, well. Fancy seeing you.’

‘Justicar.’ Berren looked from side to side. ‘What’s happening? That’s the Overlord!’

‘Yes.’ Kol raised an eyebrow. He seemed unusually pleased with himself. ‘I noticed.’

‘What’s he doing here? What are you doing here?’

Kol grinned. It was a nasty grin, the sort a cat might give to a cornered mouse. ‘Where’s your master, boy?’

Berren shrugged.

‘And if you did know, would you tell me?’

Berren shrugged again. ‘Not if he told me not to, Master Kol.’

‘That’s justicar to you today, boy. You know I could have you sent to the mines just for that, just for not telling me things that I want to know.’

This time Berren sniffed. ‘Might as well send the whole city then, Master Kol, because it’s packed full to bursting with people who don’t know where Master Sy is hiding.’

Kol bared his teeth some more. ‘You think you’re safe in here where I can’t touch you, but you won’t be here forever, and I’ll always be waiting. One by one I’ll bring you in. I don’t know whose side you think you’re on, Berren, but for as long as you’re not telling me what it is that you know, it’s not mine. And that’s a bad place to be.’ His eyes gleamed. ‘Tides ebb and tides flow. The Autarch rests in Torpreah, the Emperor still has an heir, armies have stayed in their castles and it seems there is to be no war after all, not this year; so our Overlord finally grows a spine and climbs off his fence. And so now I’m here, with the one and only man in this city who can command the priests of the sun, and at last we get to the truth.’

‘I told you everything I know, Master Kol. All of it.’

Kol snorted. He pulled back the shroud on the cart. Underneath was a body, someone who’d been dead and drying out for months.

‘I haven’t forgotten you and your master, Berren, but today I have my eyes on a different prize.’

It took Berren a moment to recognise to corpse, and even then, it was the clothes he recognised more than the dried peeling leathery face.

Master Velgian.

He ran straight back to Tasahre, who was sitting at the edge of their fighting circle, legs crossed, eyes closed, with a smile on her face.

‘They’ve got Master Velgian’s body! They’re going to call his spirit and make him talk! Or something like that.’

‘Good.’ She unfolded her legs, stood up and tossed a waster at Berren. He caught it without thinking. ‘Now can we resume our practice?’

‘It’s Master Velgian! They’re going to bring him back from the dead!’ Practice? This was no time for practice! Berren hopped from one foot to the other. ‘Don’t you want to be there? Don’t you want to hear what he says?’

‘No.’ She came to him and lifted his arm so he was holding his waster out straight. Then she balanced her hourglass on the end of his blade and took her own position across the circle. She stared at him down the length of her sword. ‘Calling back the dead is … it is an unclean thing to do. A necessary evil perhaps, and it will be kind when this is done to give the assassin’s body to the sun at last. But no, I do not wish to witness such a deed.’

‘I do! I want to know who made him do it!’ Berren grinned. He couldn’t ask the priests of course — they wouldn’t tell him anything and he’d just get a telling-off for being nosey. Even following a few around trying to eavesdrop on his way back to Tasahre hadn’t helped.

‘To what end? What difference will it make?’ She was trying to sound severe but there was a twinkle in her eye that Berren had come to recognise. One that said we are more than just a teacher and her student . One that said they were friends.

‘You want to know too!’

For a moment, Tasahre’s sword wobbled, actually wobbled, and Tasahre’s sword never wobbled. It took Berren a moment to realise why. She was trying very hard not to laugh.

‘What?’

She shook her head and then she couldn’t stop herself from smiling. ‘Of course I do. But it is forbidden.’

‘Forbidden? Why?’

‘A sword-monk does not dabble in such things.’

They stared at one another. Berren glanced at the glass on his sword: five minutes left.

‘But shouldn’t you be there? I mean one of you? Sword-monks can smell a lie — that’s what they say!’

‘Yes, Berren, we can, as you very well know, but from the living, not from the dead.’ For a moment he thought he caught a slight stiffening in Tasahre’s face. She was always hard to read, but there was an air of unease to the way she stood.

Two minutes on the hourglass. Berren watched the sands trickle down. ‘I’m going to go and listen,’ he said.

‘They will not let you in.’

Which made him laugh. ‘I know more ways to get about this temple than the rest of you lot put together. I was raised a thief, Tasahre. There’s nowhere I can’t go.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘And here we are, teaching you swords too? I shall begin to wonder if that is wise if you continue to say such things.’

He shrugged and beamed. ‘I could say nothing. Wouldn’t make it any less true.’ One minute. ‘Tasahre?’

‘Berren?’

‘Come with me.’ Thirty seconds. His shoulder was starting to go, the tip of his waster just beginning to wobble. Behind Tasahre, the great gates to the temple dome were opening and there was Justicar Kol and his cart. Berren watched it roll slowly inside and the doors close again. The last grain of sand trickled through the hourglass. Berren didn’t move. After another minute, Tasahre gently lowered her own sword.

‘I cannot.’ She stepped smartly away. ‘Now! Guard!’