The crack of a cane against my head shattered the memories and I staggered to the side, my fists coming up.
‘Damn you, listen to me!’
I righted myself and stared down at Crow. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘By the gods, haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?’
‘No.’
‘Look, damn you.’ He thrust a bony finger over my shoulder, back in the direction of the Penullin camp.
The clouds, which had begun to disperse since the wizard’s most recent assault on Falkenburg were now gathering over their camp again, their shapes twisting and rolling upon each other as if driven by hurricane winds from every side. A series of flashes illuminated the purple and green undertone of their mass from within as I watched. There was something mesmerising, and almost organic about the way they rolled over each other, and I felt the stirrings of something within me. I dragged my gaze away and stepped closer to Crow, blocking his line of sight to it.
‘Don’t look at it.’
He swayed but remained standing. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing good,’ I said, holding a finger to his lips to silence the protest he was already forming. He swatted my hand away but kept his teeth together. ‘That is the work of their necromancers. They are preparing a terrible weapon, and I fear our time to stop them is nearly spent.’
‘What kind of weapon does that?’ He turned and spat. ‘And what can we possibly do?’
The urge to turn and stare at the cloud pulled at me, but I kept my back to it. ‘We keep walking for now.’
‘Where to?’
It was a fine question. Where was I going? Whichever way I turned there seemed to be more questions and enemies, with no answers in sight, only strife and doom. I had no doubt now that Navar’s lances were the greatest threat, far more so than a lost prince, tainted paladins, and the fall of cities. A few dead humans weren’t my concern, since they’d simply start breeding again as they always did once the dust settled, but if the power of the lances was half as catastrophic as I feared it could be, there would be nothing left to live or fight for.
I had no doubt that I could kill Navar, but killing him wouldn’t be enough if the lances remained. I needed to end him and destroy his works and everything they represented. I had to break the lances’ power, and to do that, I needed to understand their power in order to fight it.
‘What’s that about Aknak?’ asked Crow.
‘I was thinking out loud,’ I said.
‘Well, don’t stop on my account,’ he said, so I didn’t. He was garrulous and annoying, but he was also good at listening, and there was nothing to lose given that he already knew my gravest secret.
‘They used a similar weapon at Aknak. If I am to destroy it, I need to understand it, so I am of a mind to go there and do just that.’
‘Aknak is a ghoul- and Penullin-infested ruin that glows at night, and is surrounded by an entire army. An army which, I might add, chooses to camp outside the city walls.’
‘You know it then?’
‘I know what I heard. There was a massacre when the city fell, but the way I hear it, the dead and buried are the lucky ones. Everyone who was there is dead.’
‘Not everyone,’ I said, reaching for my sorcery with new vigour. I had made a decision, and even though the challenges and horrors ahead remained daunting, having a purpose buoyed my spirit. I melded the sorcery into what I needed then released it.
‘You know someone?’
‘I do.’
‘Who?’
‘The last scion of Aethbert Henkman,’ I replied. ‘She was there, right to the last.’
He made a show of looking around. ‘So where is this hero?’
‘I must find and rescue her.’
‘She a princess then?’ he asked, cackling wetly and leaning on his cane as his bony chest shook with laughter.
‘Not quite, but I’ll make an exception.’
‘Nice of you,’ he said.
I ignored him and closed my eyes so that I could focus on the feel of my sorcery racing away from me, skimming across grass, and ponds, and the boulders that broke the ground like the bones of some great, buried beast. It passed over the myriad of small creatures hiding, feeding and killing in their own hidden world, making some of them pause and sniff the air in bewilderment. And then, when my hope and focus were both being eroded by distance and the cost of spreading my sorcery so wide, I felt a gentle tug against the rolling flow of the sorcery. I narrowed the spread of my net and swept it back through the area again. The trace was small, but it was all I needed. I knew where they had taken her from, so now I knew the direction they were heading in.
‘That way,’ I said, pointing to the south.
‘South’s a good a direction these days I suppose.’ He started walking. ‘Might as well get started.’
‘You offer no protest?’ I asked.
‘Would you listen?’
‘You are most astute.’
Where the terrain allowed we walked side by side for most of the day, Crow pointing out various edible plants and growing excited over a type of bird he hadn’t seen for many years. He didn’t press me with as many questions, and seemed happy enough that I answered the few that I did. It was actually fairly companionable despite the occasional swarm of stinging flies, which made it all the more disappointing when I scented men on the breeze. I slowed our pace and drew a deeper breath.
‘There are men some way ahead of us. At least a dozen.’ A dozen did not trouble me overmuch, but I also did not want to trigger a pursuit. ‘We’ll need to keep off the known paths,’ I said. ‘How well do you know this country from your travels?’
‘Um. It’s not really my patch, see. This close to the city, folk are spoilt by the choice of traders. Most of my work is further out, where a copper pot and a sharp knife is still a cause for some excitement.’
‘You can make knives sharp again?’
‘Not anymore. Those bastards took my stuff.’ He spat into the grass, but without his usual venom.
‘A pity. Mine could do with sharpening.’
He was strangely quiet for a while after that, but I wasn’t about to complain about that. I paid more heed to my surroundings now, and I kept our path amongst the wild hedgerows and ditches where I could. We were in an area that the Penullin forces controlled now, and while we avoided their ambush, that sort of encounter could draw unwanted attention. I set a careful pace, or at least I thought I had until Crow’s strength gave out late in the afternoon. He’d abandoned the stolen robes when we had stopped for a rushed lunch and had seemed to recover, but by the time the sun was dipping towards the horizon his pace had slowed dramatically and his breathing sounded wet and throaty. He didn’t protest when I picked him up, and dozed off as I carried him. He didn’t weigh much, and I quickly caught up some of the time that his weakness had cost us.
I stopped sometime after the last traces of the sunset had sunk into the west and set him down in a small clearing I had chosen for our night’s camp. He didn’t wake, and I let him sleep while I sent out my sorcerous snares and drew in some small game that I quickly despatched. The previous night’s meal had been enough to satisfy the debt I owed healing my shoulder but little else, and as a result I was positively ravenous. I set aside a portion for Crow, then set about eating the remaining game from snout to tail, leaving me sticky with their blood but feeling almost whole again.
So fortified, I was about to settle down for some well deserved sleep when I felt a painful, stabbing pain saw through my chest. I fell to my knees, vainly clutching at my breastbone, momentarily confused when I didn’t find an arrow sticking out of it, for that is how it felt. The pain rippled through me in waves, but it was only when my sorcery woke in response to it that I recognised the sensation.
Tatyana was hurt once more, and grievously so if the healing enchantment was pulling so greedily at my sorcery. It pulsed twice more, pulling hungrily at my power, heedless of the pain that lanced through me.
The connection between us was an accident, an unexpected side effect of me having rushed to save her life after she was stabbed in the heart. I had worried when it pulsed this strongly before I left the city, but that paled in comparison to what I felt now. Until now, it had never drawn on so much of my sorcery, not even when that insect Polsson had set her on fire, and until that moment I had not thought to wonder what the full implications of having bound her to me might be. How would it feel if she died? What would that do to the enchantment, given that not even I knew the full scope of it? Would it keep drawing power even though she was gone, like a wound that would never stop bleeding? Another pulse hammered through me and, like the final blow that breaks a dam, I felt my sorcery respond to it with greater force, so much so that for a few brief moments the filament of energy that joined us materialised as a line of golden energy streaking towards the south, curved like a rainbow.
A rainbow. Rainbows have beginnings and ends, and as the glowing line faded I jumped to my feet and traced it across the darkening sky. She was not that far away, perhaps ten or so miles as I judged the curve and fall of it. The connection was still pulsing, but not as powerfully as before. Whatever had happened to her had stopped, for now, but the amount of energy she had drawn was enormous. If whatever had hurt her didn’t kill her, the deficit of energy in her body once the sorcery had healed her wounds surely would.
I moved back to Crow and whispered a farewell into his ear, lacing my words with sorcery so that he would remember them when he woke. He had been kind to me, this wizened little figure with a face like a disappointed walnut, and I felt a stab of remorse at leaving him like this. I left him what food remained, as well as one of my knives, then turned south and coaxed my tired legs into a run.