Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

A white-haired man was tending a climbing plant, clipping undisciplined shoots from the base and training wayward tendrils within the strict confines of a trellis. This was the bastard who’d set all the confusion of these last few years in motion. This was the man who’d sent Elietimm spies to Tormalin and beyond. They had robbed and murdered with the help of his Artifice as they hunted for those artefacts that would enable their master to kill all who might oppose his seizure of Kellarin’s rich lands. I sensed Temar throttling his own rage and tried to contain my own hatred but our detestation was a muted note beneath the resounding apprehension of all three sleeping enchanters. They saw themselves as much subject to him as the mindless vine. They must seek nothing but his bidding, so their skills and knowledge of Artifice might flourish under his guidance. Painful awareness lurked just beneath such thoughts. Any deviation from his will would be cruelly punished, their freedom curtailed with every last person they loved sharing their fate for any dire transgression.

“Ilkehan,” breathed Guinalle with satisfaction. “Now we have his name.”

We’d just called him the Ice Man when we’d been his captives. It had suited his dead white hair, fleshless, merciless face and his calculated brutality, lethal and indifferent as winter’s bitterest chill.

Faces flickered across our vision like memory slipping out of reach. A baby, too small to be identified as boy or girl, came and went almost before we realised but we all felt a surge of fatherly love from the sleeping Moin. A couple, elderly by Ice Islander reckoning, prompted filial affection from Darige that touched even me, who’d walked away from such ties without regret. The girl Yalda kept her devotion for a barrel-chested warrior looking not unlike Sorgrad, his leather armour studded with emblems of rank.

“He’s that bastard Eresken’s father,” remarked ’Gren with interest.

“Who?” Temar frowned.

“The warrior?” I was puzzled as well.

“Yon Ilkehan.” At ’Gren’s naming of him, we saw the Ice Man again. He was addressing cowed Elietimm among a scattering of squalid hovels, who waited in rags for grain doled out by Ilkehan’s well-fed minions. We couldn’t taste their hunger but we felt their trepidation. On every side, black-liveried troops stood alert for any dissent.

“No, who’s Eresken?” Temar let slip exasperation.

“The Elietimm enchanter who tried to rouse the Mountain Men to war last year.” Pered summoned sufficient confidence to join our silent conversation. “The one who seduced Aritane from the Sheltya.” She’d been all too ready to believe Eresken’s promises that Artifice would right the many and manifest wrongs the Mountain Men had suffered as recent generations of lowlanders encroached on their territories. Personally I’d have been suspicious, given Eresken openly acknowledged his descent from a clique long exiled from the Mountains for the highest crime of using enchantment to serve their ambitions. But I hadn’t suffered the frustrations of Aritane’s celibate life and the curbs the Sheltya voluntarily imposed on their own so-called true magic.

The image suddenly shifted. We saw Eresken’s face, coldly handsome and then a ghastly mask of blood, neck half hacked through.

“I thought cutting his head off was safest,” ’Gren explained genially.

Eresken vanished to whatever punishment Poldrion’s demons had prepared for him. Then we saw another Elietimm enchanter, the one who’d sought Ryshad’s death by conniving at his enslavement among the perils of the Aldabreshin Archipelago, for the sake of the D’Alsennin sword he carried.

Temar knew this one’s name. “Kramisak.” Quick as imagination, I saw Ryshad’s sword foiling the bastard’s mace stroke and ripping out his throat when their rival quests for the lost colonists had brought them face to face.

“Ilkehan’s sent three because one alone is too vulnerable.” Guinalle nodded to herself.

“But they’re not as strong as either of the other two.” Inadequate as Temar’s Artifice might be, it was showing him something hidden from the rest of us. I shared a shrug of incomprehension with Pered and ’Gren.

“He keeps so much learning to himself.” Guinalle looked thoughtful as she read the blank, sleeping faces. “He has no one stronger to send.”

“Why doesn’t this big man come himself?” ’Gren’s eyes lit with his unvarying readiness for a fight.

“It’s not in his nature.” As Temar spoke, we saw Ilkehan in the study I’d at least managed to loot of maps and sundry other records before we’d escaped the Ice Islands. Pen in hand, he was making notes on some chart. This bastard was a schemer, a conniver of other men’s deaths who seldom got blood on his own hands. I didn’t need magic to tell me that.

“Other concerns keep him close to home.” Guinalle’s words threw the image into confusion so abruptly we were all startled.

This slaughter had none of the riot of battle we’d known today but the shadowy Elietimm lay surely dead. Two armies were meeting on a barren pewter shore, broken rocks behind them strewn over a scant stretch of faded grass, stark heights behind still topped with winter’s stubborn snows. Warriors’ boots churned up the shallow grey-green sea as they hacked each other to pieces. We couldn’t feel the cold spray or the cutting wind, the treacherous sand beneath our feet but turbulent emotions roiled around us. Panic lest his own entrails be ripped out spurred one man on to gut another. Rage burned a youth so fiercely that anyone within sword reach was mere blood for spilling to quench his anger.

Ilkehan’s men were clad in the black leather we’d come to know and loathe while their opponents wore a dull brown.

“Is this real or imagined?” Temar studied the aetheric vision.

“Hard to say,” Guinalle murmured. “That’s Moin, though.”

We saw him on an arid turf bank. Liveried like a soldier, gorget bright at his collar, he raised a hand and brown-clad figures began dropping like medlars from a frosted tree, gashes in their faces and chests showing red like the flesh of burst fruit, the only splash of colour in the pallid landscape. Moin’s livery sprouted new adornments and his gorget blurred from silver to gold. We saw Eresken again, at Ilkehan’s shoulder, then his face blurred and became Moin’s.

“Our boy’s looking for promotion,” commented ’Gren.

“So he’s the one to watch?” I felt Temar promise himself the man’s early death.

Guinalle shook her head slowly. “He’s just the one whose thoughts are closest to his skin.”

I noticed the woman Yalda tossing and turning in her distant sleep. “What happens if they wake up?” As I asked, I felt alarm from Pered and perverse anticipation from ’Gren. In a nauseating instant, I learned how Eresken had come to grief. It seemed getting out of ’Gren’s head was nowhere near as easy as getting in. The Mountain Man was eager to try driving another intrusive enchanter into insanity and death using only the untrammelled force of a mind blithely untroubled by conscience.

Guinalle spared ’Gren a faintly repelled look before focusing her attention once more on the sleeping Elietimm. “I just want to see what they know of this pirate.”

She coaxed memories from their dreams like a musician drawing music from a lyre. We saw a broad haven sheltered by a mighty headland offering sanctuary from the savage rocks and seas of Toremal’s ocean coast. A town sprawled behind the tufted dunes and rowboats ferried men and goods between the shore and ships swaying at anchor.

“Kalaven.” Pered was surprised. “We stopped there before setting course for Suthyfer.”

“Sorgrad found some good crewmen there,” ’Gren observed.