You’d think to force me down the mountainside, Councilor?” Arlin laughed, the inconstant firelight warm on his still-damp hair. “You fool, it’s not in your power.”
Rafel rubbed a hand over his unshaven face, stubble rasping. I’m too bloody tired for this. “Maybe not, Arlin, but it’s in mine,” he said, letting his voice bite. “And I’m as keen to know what you’re on about as they are. Then again, I’d be happy as a pig in shit to keep going without you, too. So take your pick. Either way I win.”
Arlin sat a little straighter. “You dare threaten me?”
“Bollocks, Arlin,” he sighed. “Why d’you have to make everything a brangle? Just tell us what you’re talking on. I’m pretty sure your teeth won’t fall out.”
Unless I punch you, and right now that’s bloody tempting.
Flames crackled in the damp silence as Arlin chewed on his chances of defeating Asher’s son in a fight. He had to know he was in danger of losing. Badly.
“It’s nothing,” he said at last. “An old family tale. More like a legend, really. Hardly worth mentioning. Which is why I never mentioned it.”
Arlin’s eyes were wide, his gaze steady. Too steady. Rafel felt himself smile. He remembered looking like that when he fibbed to Darran. Or to Da. With so much magic to hide, he’d had to fast become a good fibber.
“Lord Garrick, I don’t believe you,” he said. And before Arlin could blink, or think of stopping him, he conjured the Doranen’s pack halfway across the cave, to his ready arms. “I wouldn’t!” he added, as Arlin started up, ugly with rage. “Or I’ll freeze you where you sit—and might well forget how to let you loose again.”
Tom Dimble made a sound of protest. “Really, Rafel, this isn’t—”
“Shut up, Tom. You want to know what he’s hiding, or don’t you?” Tom looked at Clyne and Hambly, who shrugged. “We want to know.”
Arlin’s face was drained chalky-white. “You dare touch my belongings? You dare use magic on me? I swear to you, Rafel, I swear, there will be—”
“What’s in here, Arlin?” he said, softly polite. Hefting the heavy pack. “What don’t you want me and Tom and these fine sirs to know of?”
Arlin said nothing, his breathing thick with fury.
He smiled. “Tell me, or I’ll tip the whole sinkin’ lot on the floor and paw through it till I get me an answer. You think I won’t? You bloody know I will.”
“Return my belongings,” said Arlin tightly, “and I’ll tell you. Touch one thing in that pack and I’ll burn it to cinders with a word.”
“And leave yourself with nowt?” He hooted. “Not even spare under-drawers? I don’t bloody think so.”
Arlin’s eyes narrowed. “To thwart you, Rafel? I’d do without a lot less.”
“Give it back to him, Rafel,” said Nib Hambly. “This is our first night and you’re at each other’s throats? Ain’t much hope of us lasting weeks at this rate, is there? Give it back.”
Instead of a conjurement, he used his muscles. Threw the pack at Arlin, and smiled again when it was fumbled.
“You councilors,” said Arlin, undoing the pack’s buckles. “I hold you witness to this thuggery. When we return to Dorana City—if you’re not dead from your own incompetence long before—you’ll side with me and watch as this lout is removed from Justice Hall in chains.”
Rafel rolled his eyes. “Is this where I’m meant to start shaking in my boots?”
“Be quiet, Rafel,” said Tom, his own temper fraying. “Don’t make things worse. Lord Garrick—”
Arlin finished rummaging in the pack and pulled out a slender, leather-bound book. “The husband of my late mother’s second cousin was a member of Tollin’s expedition. Vont Marbury. This is his account.”
Rafel stared. “You had family on that first expedition? I didn’t know that.” He looked at Tom. “Did you?”
“No,” said Tom stiffly, after a moment. The Council, caught napping. “It’s a tenuous connection. Not a matter of blood. We had no reason to even suspect.”
Seemed no-one did. He looked back at Arlin. At the diary. “Has Sarle Baden got a copy of that?”
The oddest glint in Arlin’s eyes. “No.”
“You kept it from him?”
“Yes.”
“But why would you—” And then he shook his head. “You really are a miserable shit. You were punishing him?”
Hosh Clyne broke from his whispering with Tom and Hambly. “Punishing? Rafel, what are you—”
“You wanted to go with him and Pintte, didn’t you?” he said to Arlin, flapping a hand at the gaping councilors. “You weren’t half-witted with grief, like Baden claimed. You wanted to go and he wouldn’t bloody have you.”
The slowly dying fire washed Arlin’s face with shadows. “He didn’t need Marbury’s account. He had Tollin’s.” A careless shrug. “Which I’ve read.”
“Then why niggle me on it?”
“To amuse myself.”
“Rafel, this is most disturbing,” said Hambly. “How do you come by a copy of Tollin’s account? It was to be kept privy, for the Council only. And it’s the Council that should—”
Rafel hunched a shoulder at him. With their whisperings and their suspicions he wasn’t of a mind to be scolded by the likes of Nib Hambly. “All right, Arlin.” He wriggled his fingers. “Let’s have a look at it.”
“No, let us have a look at it,” said Tom. “Rafel, you overstep yourself!”
He turned round. “No, Tom, I don’t think I do. Last time I looked, I’m the one who sailed Westwailing Harbour. Don’t seem to recall any of you three helping out.” He turned back. “Arlin. Give me the bloody diary, would you?”
With a contemptuous smile, Arlin floated Vont Marbury’s expedition diary across the cave, to his hand. Rafel plucked it from mid-air, opened it carefully, and started reading its scribbled pages. The writing was cramped and crabby, the ink faded with age and blotched with strange stains.
“I don’t see there’s any difference between their tales. His and Tollin’s,” he muttered eventually. “They both talk on taking care with the same stretches of the pass. Where to find water. Which lizards and birds’ eggs are safe to eat. They even describe the mountains the same way—two sets of teeth set close together. So I don’t—”
“What?” said Tom, breaking the taut silence. “Rafel, what have you—”
“Sink me,” he breathed, and looked up at Arlin, whose tired, stubbled face was tight-drawn now… ’cause he knew, he bloody knew. This was what he’d not wanted to be found. “You didn’t think to mention this?”
“Mention what?” Tom demanded. “Rafel, what have you—”
“Pipe down, Tom,” he said, his skin crawling. “And I’ll read it to you.”
Tom’s expression was as tight as Arlin’s. Clyne and Hambly, seated on either side of him, glared. “I don’t care for your tone,” said Tom. “I’ll thank you to—”
“You want to hear this or not?” he snapped, still staring at Arlin. You poxy, poxy, poxy little shit. “ ’Cause if you do, pipe down.”
When Tom said nothing, he took silence as an invitation to continue. Cleared his throat and tipped Arlin’s family diary towards the sputtery glimlight.
“Over three weeks of travel into these desolate new lands, and we have encountered a dreadful, lingering evil. A terrible malevolence. The very air we breathe is poison. And Vesty—Vesty swears he hears a voice. In his dreams, he hears it.”
Nib Hambly was a brawny man, muscled from hard farming work, but he looked shaken. “Barl save us. What does that mean?”
“Vesty,” said Clyne. “That’s one of the Doranen who died on Tollin’s expedition, isn’t it?”
Rafel nodded. Anger was stirring, and with it his power. The glim-light he’d conjured flared and spat sparks. “According to Tollin, he swelled up and turned black and rotted to pieces before he stopped breathing.” The way Tollin himself had died, according to Mama. It was one of the gruesome expedition details that had so delighted him and Goose, as sprats.
Goose.
He scrambled to his feet, the diary discarded. “You’re a sinkin’ bloody bastard, Arlin. You knew about this and you didn’t say a word? So you’re pissy with Sarle Baden. So what? That’s your shitty trouble; that ain’t to do with anybody else. But you’re so sinkin’ selfish, you don’t care who gets hurt just so long as you get what you want. And when you don’t…”
Eyeing him warily—and he was bloody right to be wary—Arlin uncoiled gracefully. Stood lightly on the balls of his feet, tensed. “Calm yourself, Rafel, you—”
His clenched fist came up, and the sparking glimfire flared hot. “I ain’t finished, Arlin. You kept your mouth shut to punish Sarle Baden and now there’s Goose out there somewhere in the wicked dark, and that Fernel bloody Pintte, and them others who never hurt you, and from what we heard through their talking stone it sounds like they’ve been punished right along with Baden. And for what? For what? So you can have revenge?”
The damp night air in the cave was shivering, shining golden. The ball of glimfire glowed like a small captive sun. Eyes glittering, Arlin stepped back.
“You’re wrong to blame me, Rafel,” he said. “You said it yourself, Tollin’s account also spoke of the gruesome illness that befell them. How can you blame me when—”
“Tollin never said a bloody word about voices!”
“Most likely because he knew he’d be laughed to shame!” Arlin retorted. “These are the mindrotted ramblings of a dying man, you fool. Who would give them credence? No-one with a whit of commonsense!”
“Da would’ve!” he said, so close to breaking, so close to smashing Arlin flat with his power. “After what he survived with Morg? Da would’ve known to take those ramblings serious. And if you’d given him the bloody chance, Arlin, if you’d told him, told someone, then—then—”
Then Goose wouldn’t be out there alone. Maybe dying. Maybe dead already. None of them would.
Arlin stepped back again. More than cautious now. More than wary. The poxy shit was afraid.
And so he bloody should be. He should be pissing himself.
“Rafel—” Arlin held both hands out. No shimmer of power in him, all his magic locked away. “It was a mistake. You’re right. I was angry with Sarle. My only thought was to deny him success. I didn’t believe the diary. I didn’t think anyone would get hurt. We still don’t know for certain that anyone has been hurt. For all we know their talking stone was damaged. For all we know we’ll stumble over them in a day or two. Rafel.”
Slowly, so slowly, the roaring in his mind faded. His burning blood cooled, and with it the urge to slaughter. He breathed out, hard, so dizzy he nearly staggered.
“As the official Council presence on this expedition,” said Tom Dimble, “I tell you, Lord Garrick, that we are heartily displeased.” He looked at his companions, and they all clambered to standing. “The Council should’ve been told of Marbury’s account before it allowed Mayor Pintte and Lord Baden to lead their expedition. Before we were sent in their footsteps. You might well have put us all in grave danger!”
Recovered most of his arrogance, Arlin shook his head. “And you wonder why I never mentioned this. You Olken… you start at your own shadows and somehow you’ve managed to turn the Council’s Doranen as cowardly as yourselves. If I’d shown you Marbury’s diary you and those other timid fools might not have allowed—”
“Might not?” said Hosh Clyne, his voice uneven with temper. “Would not. Permission for this expedition would not have been granted had we known—”
Arlin smiled, so unpleasant. “But it was. And we’re here. And—”
“We’ll not be here beyond tonight,” said Tom flatly. “This expedition is over. Mysterious, malevolent voices in the dark lands beyond these mountains? It’s too dangerous to continue. Not until this matter has been discussed by all the Council and prayed on by Barlsman Jaffee and—”
“Prayed on?” said Arlin, incredulous. “Discussed in Council? There’s no time for that. We must—”
“The decision’s made, Lord Garrick,” said Nib Hambly. “No point you arguing. You’re not the authority here. Come first light we’ll—”
“Keep on going,” said Rafel, stirring. I can’t bloody believe it. I’m agreeing with Arlin. Again. Much more of this and he’d drop dead with a brainstorm. “He’s right, Meister Hambly. Lur’s running out of time. And Goose and the others, they’re running out of time too, even faster. Dangerous or not, we’ve got to keep going.”
All three councilors were staring at him, dismayed. “You’d side with the Doranen?” said Clyne. “But Rafel—you loathe him.”
He shrugged. “No. Loathe is much too mild a word. But it happens I agree with him on this. I can loathe him and agree with him, Clyne. It ain’t that hard, ’specially with so much at stake.”
“Rafel—”
“Save your breath, Tom,” he said, suddenly so bloody tired. “If you want to turn tail, you go right ahead. I won’t stop you. Truth be told, I’ll prob’ly cheer. But I ain’t turning back and neither is Arlin. Any of one of you try to stop us and—” Another shrug. “Well. Ain’t no point in you trying to stop us, is there? We all know you might as well try spitting against the wind.”
The looks on their faces answered him.
“Good,” he said, nodding. “Now I’m a mite weary—and we need to be on our way again come dawn. Reckon I’ll get some sleep.” With a snap of his fingers he extinguished his glimlight, plunging their meagre cave into flame-flickered darkness.
As Tom and the others huddled close, muttering, he dropped to his groundsheet. Felt the abandoned diary under his arse, tugged it free, then held it out to Arlin. “Here.”
Arlin was staring at him, half-lit by the dying fire. “You think this makes a difference? You think because you strut and puff your bravado like a cock on a dung heap I’ll forget Westwailing?”
He grinned, not kindly. Lightly sleeping in his blood, all that power. “I don’t want you to forget Westwailing, Arlin. I want you to remember it. Every bloody time you’re tempted to do me a mischief, I want you to remember it. Now take this sinkin’ diary before I use it as bloody kindling.”
Tight-lipped, Arlin took the leather-bound book. Shoved it safely back in his pack, then hesitated. Looked up. “What happened to Vesty and the others. The way they died. You’re not… concerned?”
“Afraid, you mean,” he said, curling up beside his fire. “I’ve known since I were a sprat how Morg’s magic killed them.”
Arlin finished shoving the diary away and dropped cross-legged to his canvas groundsheet. “That doesn’t answer my question.”
“No?” he said, yawning. “There you go. Fancy that.”
Tom and his Council friends were still huddled. Then their whispering stopped, and in the faint firelight their mingled shadows separated.
“We’ll continue,” Tom said coldly. “But Speaker Shifrin will hear of this, and the rest of the Council. You can both expect to be severely censured on our return.”
Arlin didn’t bother to reply. Rafel just sighed. Grunted. Let them make of that what they would. Tom and his namby-pamby friends chose to decide he’d accepted their authority, and all three settled themselves down to sleep. Beyond the cave, the rain continued.
And that was the first night.
A sodden dawn woke them, and the journey continued.
The long, wearisome days passed slowly. By their third sunset the constant rain had dribbled and died, along with any pretending that they were five men with something in common. Tom and his fellow-councilors even stopped their private whispering, all complaints exhausted. Strength was needed just to keep going. The Doranen hexes on the rocks and trees made sure they never once took a wrong step, and thanks to Tollin and Vont Marbury they knew where to find the natural springs bubbling through cracks and crevices in the mountains. Knew that the bright green lizards with the blue eyes were safe to eat, provided the sac of poison was cut from each scaly armpit… and that the stub-tailed brown lizards with the orange tongues were instant death. Knew that the dull blue berries on the scraggly vines wrapped around the mountains’ stunted saplings tasted bitter, but would help them stay awake… and the pale, foamy-headed fungus that fed on rotted logs would make a man vomit till he turned his insides out.
As they fought their way over the unforgiving mountains, hating them too much to care for their wild beauty, they stumbled across signs that Fernel Pintte and his group had journeyed ahead of them. Boot prints dried around this water spring, and that one. Recently broken branches. Charred embers where a campfire had burned. Roasted animal bones picked to ivory by small, busy ants. The going continued cruel. Phena hadn’t lied: Barl’s Mountains were merciless.
Lying each night on hard rock, or gathered leaf-litter, staring at the tree-latticed sky or hiding from rain and mist beneath his broad-brimmed leather hat, Rafel thought about Barl and the terrified mages she’d brought with her from the Lost Dorana he and Arlin were so desperate to find. Thought of the children. Children. It was a bloody wonder all the sprats didn’t perish. And babes-in-arms. There’d been babes-in-arms too, according to Doranen history and stories.
Hundreds of Doranen, starving and terrified, running for their lives from Morg. Hard to imagine. Though they brought such trouble with them, hard not to feel sad.
How can I blame them? You’d be crazy not to run.
With the unknown lands beyond the mountains crawled closer with every sunrise, the pain writhing in his blood and bones darkened. Grew more intense. As though now he didn’t only feel the echoes of bitter magic in the mountains… but also in what lay beyond them. The ruined lands Tollin and Vont Marbury had run from. That Da had said would never change. But still, still, he clung to hope.
Da could be wrong. He’s got to be wrong. Or we’ve come a sinkin’ long way for nowt.
And that was all he’d let himself think of his father. If he let himself think any deeper he’d stir his fears to waking. Start to wonder if…
Even his body’s constant thrumming of pain was more bearable than that.
Conversation continued scarce. What did any of them have to say to one another? The councilors were friends, true, but exhaustion had silenced them. Of the three men only Hambly, the farmer, was used to such relentless physical toil. Tom and Clyne, City folk both, suffered for their comfortable lives. He wanted to feel sorry for them, but it was hard.
I bloody told you not to come.
As for Arlin, he was showing the strain of their travelling, too. Like all of them he was scraped and cut and bruised from clambering over boulders, over fallen trees, into gullies and out again. No Doranen magic to ease his way—it was too dangerous. Could start a rockslide, or worse. Even he could see that. Did he still mourn his father? Watching him sideways from time to time, Rafel found it hard to tell. The way Rodyn had snapped and snarled, the way Arlin never stood up to him… had there been love there? Was there true grief? How could any son love a father who treated him so cold?
But that kind of thinking sailed him too close to dangerous waters. Better to dwell on less difficult distractions, like his never-ending pain.
Once he spoke to Arlin on something personal. Something not to do with trapping lizards or finding water or making sure a guiding hex wasn’t corrupted. On the nineteenth night of their brutal journey, wrenched and skinned and too tired for sleep, he sat propped against the scorched trunk of a lightning-struck tree and struggled to breathe through the seething agitation in his blood. His small fire, carefully walled with loose rocks, threw a little heat and light. Better than nothing, but not enough to chase the deep-seated chill from his bones. He was used to it now. Had glumly accepted he’d likely never be properly warm again.
Beneath him, around him, the poisoned earth whispered. Here in the wilderness, just like in Lur’s Home Districts, there was nothing stood between him and what he felt.
A good job Deenie ain’t here. She’d be curled up screaming right about now.
Spikily aware of nearby Arlin’s brooding gaze on him, he opened his gritty eyes. “You don’t feel a sinkin’ thing, do you?”
Stubbled with beard, his blond hair dirty, matted with sweat, Arlin looked as battered and exhausted as he felt. Unhealthily thin, the flesh fallen away in his face, ’cause the jerky and nuts and hard-tack biscuits, the lizards and berries and occasional birds’ eggs, they kept starvation at bay, and no more.
I’d bloody kill for a ginger cake.
“What? What are you talking about?” said Arlin, croaky with weariness. Snappish that he’d been caught staring.
Rafel let his head bump against the rough dead bark behind him. “No. You feel nowt. Reckon this is the first and last time I ever felt jealous of a bloody Doranen.”
Arlin snorted. “That you’ll admit to.”
Sitting well apart, like they always did, Tom and his friends fed twigs to their own campfire. Pretending they were the three of them alone. Just as thin, just as filthy and stubbled. Regretting their predicament, now it was days too late to change their minds.
“You still insist that as an Olken, you’re special?” said Arlin, prodding. Even parched and croaking, he managed to sneer. “That your mage senses are superior to mine?”
“Not superior,” he said wearily. “Different.”
“And what is it you claim to feel that I don’t?”
He should’ve kept his mouth shut. “Nowt,” he muttered, letting his eyes drift closed. “Leave me to snore, Arlin. Sunrise comes bloody early this high up.”
“Rafel …”
Startled, he opened his eyes again because Arlin had thrown a stone at him, hard. “Don’t bloody do that!”
“Then answer me!” snapped Arlin. “What do you feel?”
Beneath the arrogant belligerence—was that a whisper of fear? He thought it was. He thought maybe Arlin was frighted. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, at long last, Arlin is feeling something. Could be the darkness had finally touched him. He rolled his head, just a little, and met Arlin’s resentful stare.
“I feel the mountains, Lord Garrick.” The young night’s silence deepened, as though every unseen bird and tiny animal was holding its breath. Listening. “They’re alive with the memory of what happened here. They suffer. They hold grudges. They remember the Wall, and what brought it down. They remember Morg and all his wickedness, six hundred years of hurling dark magics into their stones and buried bones. The mountains are weeping. That’s what I feel.”
For a long time Arlin said nothing. Then he laughed, scornful. “Fanciful nonsense. You’re lightheaded, Rafel. Raving. Westwailing addled you. I’ve never heard such tripe.”
“No. He’s right,” said Tom, stirring beside his fire. “I can feel it too. Not as deeply—he’s Asher’s son, after all—but I feel it.”
“So do I,” Nib Hambly whispered. “My dreams… my dreams… they’ve been cruel and cold these last few nights.”
Surprised, unsettled, Rafel squinted at them. “What about you, Meister Clyne?” It was too dark to see the barber’s downturned face, but he could hear the man’s unsteady breathing. “What do you feel?”
“I don’t know,” said Clyne. “But my dreams have grown fearsome. And my spirits are low.”
“Of course they’re low,” said Arlin, scathing. “Look around us, you fool. Look where we are. You can’t give his claims credence. You may be Olken, Clyne, but you’re surely not so stupid.”
Rafel scowled. Shut up, Arlin. You ain’t bloody helping. “Tom? How long have you been feeling like this?”
“For certain?” Tom exchanged a cautious glance with his companions. “A few days. Before that?” He shrugged. “There’s much of what we’re doing would give any man bad dreams.”
Arlin shoved a broken branch onto his dwindling campfire. Kicked the flames higher with a snap of his fingers. “This is nonsense. The four of you frighten each other like little boys.”
“Do we?” Rafel pulled a knee to his chest and wrapped his arms around it. Rested his chin, the dull throb behind his eyes threatening to sharpen. “But you’re feeling bad too, Arlin. You’ve got to be. A mage like you? You might not feel the earth, like we can, but don’t tell me you can’t at least feel Morg’s presence here.”
With four pairs of Olken eyes on him, Arlin busied himself thumping his pack into a lumpy pillow. “What I feel is my business.”
“And what I feel is your business?”
“You started this, Rafel,” Arlin retorted. “Not me.”
“I asked one bloody question! You’re the one couldn’t leave it alone.” Frustrated, he snapped his other knee close. Was glad of the tree-trunk behind him, a bolster. “You’re the one sitting there calling me a—”
“I’m the one who’d like to get some rest,” said Arlin. “And instead I’m being kept awake by Olken bedtime daffydowns.” He settled onto his groundsheet, curled tight to hold in any meagre warmth. “Morg is dead. His magic’s dead. There are no voices. Go to sleep.”
Bemused, Rafel shook his head. Just when I think he can’t get any more arrogant. Then he rolled his eyes at Tom and the others. “You heard Lord Garrick, sprats. Beddy-bye time.”
Muttering, the councilors bedded down. He bedded down too, but sleep came slow and fitful. No voices, true. Just the earth’s keening cry, moaning through the empty places inside him.
The next day they continued, and did not speak of darkness and bad dreams again. But Rafel kept an eye on Tom and the others, every instinct telling him to beware. But beware of what? Maybe Arlin’s right. Maybe it’s ’cause I’m worn down. Worn out. And he was. No point denying it.
Except Arlin’s fear remained, too. Ruthlessly buried. Not spoken of. But there.
Another three days of punishing travel, another three nights of restless, painful sleep. Hour by hour he felt more and more beaten, more and more bruised. The air thickened around him, so that walking in sunlight was like swimming in the dark. His blood felt like molasses, his heart struggled to pump. He wanted to pull Arlin aside, to whisper, Can’t you feel it?
But letting Arlin see weakness would be a sinkin’ mistake. Arlin wasn’t Goose, a shoulder to lean on. Arlin would smell uncertainty and move in for the kill.
Tom and the others were feeling it, he could see that. He could see the pain in them, slowing them down. Tom he did take aside. Tried to make him see sense. “I know it’s risky, but you should turn back. It’s only going to get worse.”
“We can’t,” said Tom, his voice thinner than it had been, his eyes sunken and bloodshot. “We have a sworn duty. We’ll see this through.”
He sighed. “You’re a fool, Tom. It’s not worth your life.”
“You think it’s worth yours,” said Tom, shrugging. “And you’re not the only Olken willing to fight for Lur.”
“Hosh and Nib might see it different,” he said. “They might think—”
“They agree with me,” said Tom. “Give over, Rafel. Save your strength for climbing the next bit of cliff.”
What could he do? No law said they had to listen. “Fine,” he said curtly. “But don’t blame me when you’re broken, and can’t be fixed.”
The twenty-fifth day since their leaving of Gribley dawned cool and cloudy. According to Tollin’s expedition account, they were nearly four days slower in their crossing. But even so, they should be quit of Barl’s Mountains before sunset.
Worn to a thin edge, as he chewed a leathery mouthful of jerky he found himself comforted and frighted by the notion. He was more than ready for this part of the journey to be over. But come so close to Morg’s abandoned domain, his heart thudded hard against his ribs. He felt bad enough now. How much worse would he feel walking through the lands Morg used to rule?
Don’t think on that. You’ll feel what you feel, and whatever you feel, you’ll bear it. You ain’t got a choice. Goose is relying on you.
Close by, Arlin was choking down cold, charred lizard meat. He felt the Doranen look at him, as though he’d spoken his fears aloud. Met the poxy shit’s stare unblinking, daring him to speak.
Arlin looked away.
Breakfast finished, they shrugged into their much lighter packs, morosely silent, and trudged on. Soon enough the path tumbled downwards, steep and treacherous, shrouded so thickly with foliage they couldn’t tell how close to the ground they were, or what waited for them beyond the mountains’ blotting blanket of trees. One mis-step, one stumble, and there’d be broken legs—or necks. Sweating and swearing, clutching at low-hung branches and saplings, unbalanced by packs and swords and stout walking sticks, they struggled to stay on their feet as they wended their way down the lower slopes of the mountain. There was no birdsong. No lizard skitterings. No sense of any life. This close to Morg’s old kingdom, everything felt dead.
And then a burst of daylight, blinding, as at last they emerged from the forested gloom.
“Barl’s mercy,” said Tom Dimble, panting, his face contorted. Running sweat. “We’ve done it. We’ve escaped Lur.”
They had. Before them, a new stretch of mountain, this time split in half by a wide gap. Clinging to the edge of the weathered left-hand peak, a man-made stone staircase, narrow and crumbling. Years and years old. Treacherous: one careless step and a man would plummet to his death. And through that wide gap, bathed in cloud-filtered sunlight, glimpses of a land they had never seen before.
Tom, Clyne and Hambly were clasping hands, patting shoulders. Wearily celebrating despite their undisguised discomfort. Even now they remained their own privy expedition. Arlin, stood apart and disdainful, picked at the worn stitching on a finger of his leather gloves. Seemingly unmoved by what they’d achieved.
Rafel smeared his forearm across his filthy, sweaty bearded face.
Sink me, Da. We crossed the mountains.
So… what next?
Though he was exhausted, and the stench of Morg’s magic rose unleashed within him, burning his blood and scalding his bones so he could easily weep from the torment, he broke into an unsteady run. He heard Arlin curse and follow, battered boots loud on the uneven rocky steps, desperately trying to overtake him. Of course. Further behind Arlin came Tom, Clyne and Hambly, gasping and wheezing. He heard his own harsh, laboured breathing as he staggered up the staircase on lead-heavy legs. Nearly. Nearly. He was nearly at the top. One more step. Another one. Just one more. He thought he could feel Arlin’s ragged breath hot on his neck.
There.
Hand flung against the bare rock wall beside him, perilously close to tumbling, he took a deep breath. Took another. Another. Tried to subdue the sick churning in his guts. But before he could blink away the sweat and properly see the new land spread before him, he heard an agonised, choking moan.
Turning, staring past clumsy, crowding Arlin, he saw Tom Dimble’s legs buckle and drop him sprawling on his back. His staff hit the stone steps and rolled away. Further down the staircase Hosh Clyne and Nib Hambly were struggling too, fallen against each other, barely staying on their feet.
Tom’s eyes were anguished in his sickly grey face, blood seeping like tears. His chest heaved for air, every muscle twisted with pain. “Rafel—”
Tossing aside his own staff he shoved by Arlin, ignoring the Doranen’s furious protest, and plunged back down the staircase.
“Tom—Tom—what is it?” he said, dropping to the ground beside him. “Can you talk?”
Eyes rolling, nostrils bubbling a bloody froth, Tom shuddered. “You don’t—feel it?” he gasped. “Darkness—
darkness—” A dreadful moan. “Hosh… Nib…”
Rafel glanced up. Saw Tom’s fellow-councilors, sprawled now like he was, writhing in pain.
“What is this?” Arlin demanded, keeping well back. “An Olken affliction?”
“No,” he said tautly, holding tight to Tom’s hand. Looked behind him at Rodyn’s unlovable son. “It’s this place. It’s Morg. Can’t you tell? You’re ice-white, Arlin. Don’t deny you can feel it.”
Arlin’s eyes narrowed. “I may feel it but I’m not dying. Why aren’t you?”
Still holding on to Tom, he shuffled round awkwardly, the stone steps bruising his knees. “Don’t sound so sinkin’ disappointed. I’m sickened. It’s just—I’m stronger than them. And they’re not bloody dying!” Not if I can help it. “Tom—” He bent low. “I’m sorry. I should’ve kept on at you until you turned back.”
“They can turn back now,” said Arlin, as Tom heaved for air. “They have to. They’ll only slow us down.”
“Turn back?” he said, disbelieving, and waved a hand at all three men. “Arlin! For pity’s sake, look at them!”
“I am looking,” said Arlin, and took a cautious step closer. “They stay here or they turn back, Rafel. That’s it. That’s the choice.”
Hate for Arlin was sharp as a stab wound. Fear for Goose stabbed sharper than that. Had this happened to Pintte’s expedition? If they kept walking would they find their bodies? Black and bloated and running with pus?
“Sink that. There’s got to be something else.”
Arlin shrugged. “There isn’t. Stay and perish with them, Rafel, or guide them back to Lur. It’s up to you. But I’m not wasting any more time on this.”
Letting go of Tom’s hand, sparing a look for Clyne and Hambly, suffering as horribly, he lurched to his feet.
“You’re going to abandon three stricken men?” You bastard, Arlin, you sinkin’ bastard. “You can’t. That’s—that’s wicked.”
Pale and filthy, stinking—as they all were—Arlin smiled. There was no pleasure in it, only a cold and calculated cruelty. “I’ve crossed the mountains to find Lost Dorana. I’ve no interest in mollycoddling three sick Olken who were forced upon me against my will. And if you attempt to stop me, Rafel…” Power seethed, swift and lethal. Boiling through the tainted air. “This isn’t Lur. Get in my way and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
Tom was making strangled noises in his throat. Hosh Clyne and Nib Hambly had started to shake. Remembering Da on the floor of the Weather Chamber, the blood and the convulsions, Rafel had to close his eyes. And then he looked back at Arlin.
He doesn’t mean it. He can’t.
“If you walk away what am I s’posed to do? Snap my bloody fingers and—”
“Rafel?” said Arlin, suspicious. “What are you doing?”
Sweat prickling, Morg’s hate darkly whispering, he ignored poxy Arlin Garrick. Finished shrugging out of his pack, let it and his sword fall to the stone staircase beside Tom, then dropped into a crouch to fumble at its buckles. He didn’t dare try to do this from memory. He’d read the incants a number of times since copying them in Da’s library but he was a long way from trusting himself to know the words and sigils by heart.
I can do this. I have to.
But this was such a poisoned place. Tollin and the others, they’d struggled with their magic here. What if he struggled too? What if the dregs of Morg’s blighting magic tainted the spells? Tainted him? What if—
I have to try.
Tom was weeping now, little sobs of unbearable pain. He and Nib Hambly and Hosh Clyne—they didn’t have much time. Morg’s malevolence was crushing them. It was trying to crush him. He’d die before he let it.
“Rafel!” Arlin stepped closer again. “What are you—”
Tugging the folded papers out of the pack, Rafel looked up, knowing his eyes were terrible. Knowing rage and power burned in his stare.
“Shut up and stand back. I ain’t got the first sinkin’ idea if this’ll work.”
And if it doesn’t I really will be a murderer.
But he couldn’t think on that. Leave Tom and the others here, send them back across the mountains on their lonesome, or kill them by trying to conjure them home. Whatever he did they’d be just as dead, and he’d be to blame. But at least this way the poor bastards stood a chance.
Finding the scribbled page he was after, he folded the others and shoved them back to safety in his pack. Then he read the conjuring incants quickly, looking for the one that would best suit his purpose.
“Rafel, what are you doing?”
He almost laughed, he felt so frighted. “I’m sending them home, Arlin. Now bloody stand back.”
Scowling, Arlin retreated three steps. “Sending them home? Rafel, have you lost your mind?”
Shutting out Arlin’s nagging voice, shutting out fear and doubt and every scent and sound around him and every hurt in his body, Morg’s insidious magic, Rafel tucked the sheet of paper under the toe of his boot… rested his left hand on Tom Dimble’s lolling head… read out loud the words of the incant… said “Dorana City” in a clear voice, holding in his mind’s eye an image of the Council chamber… wrote burning sigils on the curdled air with his right forefinger… and waited.
Nowt happened. Nowt happened. He nearly wept with despair. Then the power inside him stirred, hugely and hotly. He felt dizzy. Felt vomiting sick.
A twist of pain… a flare of tarnished gold… and Tom Dimble disappeared.