Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

I turned to Ryshad who was leaning on the tiller with unseeing eyes. “Ryshad?”

He smiled at me. “I just remembered where I’ve seen this stone before. One of Messire D’Olbriot’s sisters has some pieces, passed to her by an aunt from one of the House’s cadet lines. She got them from some ancestor who married into a family trading out of Blacklith.”

“When we get back, you might like to ask your D’Olbriot just where his kin by marriage were trading in the Dalasor grassland clans,” Sorgrad remarked as he leant into his oar. “Now, where are we’re heading?”

“Just out of sight of Rettasekke and across the strait,” Ryshad told him. “I’ll be cursed before I flog you all the way up to where Olret suggested.”

“Cursed by me, that’s for sure.” ’Gren looked at Ryshad. “You don’t trust him?”

It’s always reassuring to have people thinking the same way as me.

“I don’t trust his reasoning.” Ryshad checked wind and wave before leaning on the tiller. “His route would take far too long. I want to be ready to hit Ilkehan as soon as we can.”

“If his attack goes badly, Olret might just give us up to save his own skin,” I pointed out. “He was discussing some kind of a truce when Ilkehan mutilated his son.”

“That lad’ll likely lose the other eye, even if he lives,” grimaced Sorgrad. “I’ve seen it before with a blinding.”

The memory of the tortured boy prompted another long silence as we toiled up the Rettasekke coast.

“This is our closest approach,” Ryshad announced some while later. “Shiv, you and Livak take the second set of oars and for all our sakes, match your stroke to hers.”

Rettasekke reached out into the sea, rising up to a headland faced with sheer cliffs. Distant Kehannasekke lurked just visible, a long sweep of low land among the ever-present mists across the open water. I made my way gingerly up the boat to join Shiv on the forward thwart.

“I’ll keep us balanced,” Shiv assured me.

“What do you think we’ll find when we land?” asked ’Gren. “Do you think Ilkehan truly has Eldritch Kin to call up and do his will?”

I was regretting telling him what the children had said. “Let’s just get safely ashore, shall we?”

“As long as the mist hobs don’t get us first,” chuckled ’Gren.

“What’s one of those, when it’s at home?” I demanded.

“They blow in with the fogs and tempt away children and goatlings and foolish hounds,” said ’Gren with relish. “They carry them off on the back of the north wind.”

“Do you suppose these people share many myths with yours?” Shiv asked ’Gren thoughtfully. “Childhood nightmares would make useful illusions to clear our path out of there.”

“That’s a sound notion,” Ryshad approved.

“What would scare you, ’Gren?” I corrected myself. “What would scare normal people?”

He laughed. “There’s wraiths. They’ll suck the light out of your eyes, given half a chance.”

“Wraiths live in dark holes and you can generally avoid those,” countered Sorgrad. “Gwelgar always worried me more. They make themselves out of mud and grass and that’s everywhere.”

“They rip evildoers limb from limb,” said ’Gren gleefully.

“If the bones of a soke’s ancestors feel someone guilty of a mortal crime passing their cave, they summon up a gwelgar,” Sorgrad explained. “It follows the guilt in their footsteps and nothing stops it, nothing kills it, nothing throws it off the scent.”

“According to our Aunt Mourve,” ’Gren continued sourly, “after it’s killed whoever it’s hunting, it goes looking for naughty children to give them a good spanking.”

“I never liked her,” remarked Sorgrad.

I wouldn’t exactly call it entertainment but, between them, Sorgrad and ’Gren had enough fables of disconcerting horrors lurking in mountain crevices to take our minds off the backbreaking work of rowing. Even so, by the time we reached Kehannasekke’s sprawling maze of salt marsh and treacherous sands, my shoulders were burning and my arms trembled between every time I hauled on the oar.

Ryshad was scanning the shore for somewhere solid enough to set foot. “Over there.”

As soon as we were all on the dubious safety of a stone-spotted bank of dour grey sand, Sorgrad pulled out a dagger and ripped a rent in the hide hull. “Cast it adrift,” he ordered. “We don’t want anyone thinking Rettasekke men have landed.”

Ryshad shoved it off into the retreating ripples with one booted foot. He smiled reassurance at me. “We’ll be leaving by magic or not at all.”

“Let’s get on.” ’Gren was already heading for the grass-tufted dunes inland, bag slung over his back.

No one wasted breath on idle chatter as we hurried into the shelter of the dunes. The sands gave way to a narrow expanse of close-cropped turf but thankfully any goats were off being coiffed for the summer. I murmured the Forest charm for concealment as we darted across, feeling as vulnerable as any hare started from its form until we reached the broken, hostile land beyond. Stark grey hills rose all around us. Not the raw peaks of Rettasekke, these mountains had been worn to low nubs by countless generations of cold and storm. Screes striped the steeply sloping sides of a cleft that offered our only path.

“Where do we run if we meet trouble?” Sceptical, I looked at treacherous slopes offering scant safe footing.

“We don’t,” Ryshad said, drawing his sword.

“We kill it.” ’Gren was scouting eagerly ahead.

Thankfully we didn’t meet anyone, just spent an interminable day negotiating ankle-wrenching rock fields, skirting bogs that could swallow a horse and cart and skulking along the edges of the few patches of land that showed any sign of tillage or grazing. We ate as we walked until finally the curious, endless dusk of these northern lands began shrinking the world around us. Shadows gathered in hollows and dells, gloom thickening beneath the few spindly trees. Beneath the translucent lavender sky, darkness shifting and deceiving the eye, I could see how people might believe in Otherworldly creatures using such half-light as a path between their realm and ours. I rather wished ’Gren had kept some of his more bloodcurdling myths to himself.

“This looks a good place for the night.” Shiv pointed to a tangle of stunted birch trees, dry earth bare beneath them.

Sorgrad dumped his satchel and rummaged in it for some food. “Let’s have a plan before the morning,” he suggested. “Something a bit more definite than ‘just kill Ilkehan’. Surprise will be everything, if we’re to get in and out alive, so we need to know exactly what we’re doing and not waste a breath as we do it.”

Ryshad lay down on the dry ground and stretched his hands over his head. “How do we get inside the keep for a start?”

“How do we find out where he is inside it?” added Sorgrad. “We don’t want to be wandering round, knocking on doors.”

I patted the pouch where my parchment crackled. “I can use one of the Forest charms for finding prey to seek out Ilkehan.”

“You’re sure?” Ryshad couldn’t help himself.

“Of course she is, and so are we.” ’Gren winked at me. ”Belief’s everything with Artifice, isn’t it?”

“Remember what Guinalle said about Artifice and Ilkehan?” Shiv was kneeling by a paltry spring whose flow was soon sucked back into the thirsty land. “The more shameful we can make his death, the more effectively we destroy the power those enchanters in Suthyfer rely on.”

“You can leave humiliating the corpse to me.” ’Gren looked disconcertingly eager.

“Is this safe to drink?” At Shiv’s nod, I dipped a handful from the little pool and drank gratefully. “Lore and Artifice seem centred on these hargeards, these stone circles. Could we destroy Kehannasekke’s?”