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Flying South Chapter 13
Flying South
Chapter 13
The guard ignored my questions, half pushing, half carrying me up a flight of stairs. We passed a landing and went up again, tight, twisty stairs that soon became torture to climb. We had to be at the very top of the castle, I thought, but he wouldn't even tell me that, only unlocked a door and gave me a push inside, then locked it again behind me.
I found myself in a bare little room of gray walls and cold gray stone floor, with a cot and little else. There was a narrow window and I rushed over to it. Below were the royal gardens and beyond them, a perfectly tended expanse of green. No one but nobles would waste that much space on flowers and grass in the middle of a crowded city.
Not long after the door closed, a maidservant came in with a tray of food. It contained cheese, bread, fruit and roasted meats of excellent quality. Venison, perhaps; I’d never tasted it before. There was a jug of water, a goblet and also a small jug of red wine. The maid set it down on the window-sill and backed out without meeting my eyes. I hardly waited for her to be gone before going to the tray and digging in. Couldn't fault the food, that was for sure. Vidar had given me exactly what I'd asked for, including the last thing, which arrived as I was polishing the plate. A guard pushed Nicholas through the doorway and locked the door once more.
"I hope you've eaten, Nick. There’s wine."
"Yes, they fed me." He looked ruffled and angry, like someone not used to being pushed around, but he wore clean clothes and had had a bit of a wash. He looked over at the window, through which a chilly breeze was wafting. "Why are you still here?"
"Where would I go?” It came out sarcastic, which I hadn’t meant, but better than abject fear. My nervousness about Nick’s behaviour came back again. He hadn’t seemed to care much whether I minded or not, or rather, he hadn’t understood that I might mind. He was still staring at me, so I told him about my vision of the Goddess and also what Vidar had commanded me to do and finally Varimonde’s appearance and attempt to kill me.
"Uh huh. Have you heard what our wayward Wizard Lord has done now?"
"No, but does it have anything to do with the Queen wanting to strangle me?"
"Ah. Very likely. Asherley sent word that sorceresses had stolen both the children and that he had in turn taken
Princess Erlina captive, no more detail than that and no word about anyone else." I guessed he was being deliberately vague in case other ears were listening to us, but if they were, I wouldn't know it unless they used magic.
"Anyway, you're here because I told Vidar I needed your help," I said into that silence.
"Did you say what help you needed?"
"No, I didn't. I’m not even sure why I said you, but I need someone to draw on. I’m not strong enough.”
I had the vague idea this was less than tactful but I was too agitated to care by now. "I need your magic."
"I don’t have any.”
"You have what anyone has, that’s life energy. Sorceresses can use this to perform magic. If I’m to do what Vidar wants, I need more than my own strength.”
“Like bleeding me?” He didn’t look happy, but he accepted the glass of wine I handed him.
“Yes.”
Nicholas gulped the wine too fast and had a coughing fit, which I watched, not offering to slap his back or do anything else remotely helpful. He set the glass down hard and waved a hand at the room. "And what are we supposed to do here, jump up and down and shout rude remarks?"
"Meditate," I said. "Tomorrow morning, we'll probably be asked for our plan. Asherley didn't ask for anything, did he, like a ransom?"
"Ha," said Nicholas. "Only the throne. He wants to draw you into fighting, Amber, he knows you'll be looking for him. Do we have a plan?" He seemed to recognise the unfairness of that a moment later and waved an apology at me. "When you say you talked to the Goddess, do you mean she was really here or you meditated and thought of all this?"
"Like I said, she was here as a she wolf, Nick. "Really here" is not something I feel able to answer. She said I would have to go through the shapechanging hunt for real. You remember when we dreamed together?" Uncomfortably, he nodded. "I already told you she said this time it wouldn't be a dream, that the one defeated would leave their blood on the ground. I said I might not be able to come back to my human shape or I might die and the Goddess agreed with me and said if that happened, I had to take him with me.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. Audryn described it once, in training. The last chance, she said. You grab hold as you die and drag your enemy’s soul down with you.”
Even as I said it, it sounded confused. Nicholas stared at me and didn’t say the obvious.
“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “I might be able to death curse an enemy – if I could concentrate – but the last chance is advanced magic.”
“I don’t exactly see how you’d practise it,” Nick remarked.
If I thought about Asherley's power, about what he could do to me, my throat went dry and my mind numb with fear, so I pushed it back and concentrated on making Nicholas understand what was involved. He looked pretty scared too. An enemy he could fight, that he could physically act against, that was a lot easier than standing there and letting magic happen to you. If he went against Asherley with mundane weapons, he'd have about as much chance as ridiculous Sir Ranald in Korreg had had, riding against the dragon. The knight had done it, though, because it was all he knew to do to protect his people. That was what it meant, to be the lord of his lands. I was about to say something like that when Nick raised a hand to stop me. "If that's what you need, that's what I'll do. I don't like it, Amber, I really, really don't like it, but I'll do it."
The feeling between us eased at his words. He still didn’t come over to me or hug me again – this time I really could have used a simple friendly hug – but there seemed a chance that we would be able to work together. At length Nicholas frowned thoughtfully and said, “ “Amber, how do you suppose Asherley got hold of Erlina?"
I sighed and tried to work it out. "If he could pull Erlina and I into his dream, or put us in her dream, why not a call to Erlina to walk out of the inn room? He could maybe build on Erlina’s own nerves and boredom, just a little walk, then back inside. It'd be pretty simple magic, woven into her dreams. Maybe Asherley said her mother was waiting for her, all was forgiven, I don't know."
"That easy?"
"Nick, you're an Inquisitor. Why do you think the Inquisition exists?"
I could see him thinking about that, about what 'black' magic really meant, maybe for the first time and that perhaps policing the Aradian Order was not the sole reason for the Grey Shadows.
"We don't seem to be able to do a lot against the Wizard Lord's power," he said at last.
"We will," I said firmly, trying to make myself believe it.
We stayed up for several hours, talking and fidgeting and trying to decide what to do. It wasn’t comfortable from my point of view and probably not his either, but in the end I got the bed and Nicholas stretched out on the cold stone floor with one of the two blankets.
Even now, I could not let myself sleep. If I wanted a chance to find Asherley tomorrow, I had to do what I’d tried to avoid all this time and link with him in spirit, give him a way to home in on me, because that would enable me to do the same to him. It didn’t matter any more if he found me, there was no one I had to protect except Nicholas and as an Inquisitor, he could hopefully shield himself. If he couldn’t, there was no more I could do about it. I visualised him in my mind and called to him, lowering my shields and leaving myself wide open.
“Here I am. Where are you?”
I didn’t speak out loud, at least, I hope I didn’t. I was trying to concentrate on producing thoughts of curiosity; really shouldn’t do this, can’t help myself. Then anger at my confinement: I tried to help them, now they’ve locked me up. This wasn’t at all hard to manufacture as it was nearly all true. Then I closed my eyes to take myself further into trance, filling my thoughts with Asherley and the things he had said to me, the terrible things that were nonetheless too enticing to ignore now that my own people had turned on me.
I waited for some vision to come to me, something which would tell me Asherley had heard me, but there was only the red inside my eyes as I squeezed them shut. I was so tired and in a few moments would be asleep for real. The red slipped to black, but not the still black of night. Against my eyes beat the wild rhythm of raven wings. Scores, hundreds of ravens beating their wings against the wind, wind high on a treeless plateau, scouring cliffs and rock, white stone against the spreading green below.
I couldn’t see Asherley, he would not allow me in even in dream, but I could see the birds which had become a part of his spirit, his emblem. Yukungadak had called this having a totem; the animal whose characteristics you were supposed to share. It wasn’t ravens who had any interest in Asherley, it was Raven; the spirit of all the birds. Intelligent, tricky, powerful and quite ruthless in getting what he wants. It did not matter that I couldn’t see any more than a night of ravens above a desolate landscape. I had my link and I would find the place when I woke.
The dawn light woke me and someone shouting, far below. The voice had a ritualistic sound, a herald of some kind or maybe only someone declaring the hour. For a few moments I lay, sleepily content, until I remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. A cold, faintly nauseous feeling ran through me as though I'd eaten something bad. The bed creaked and Nicholas sat down upon it, placing a cautious hand on my bare shoulder.
"You don't have to do this, you know."
What I wanted was a cup of something hot, some bread and cheese and fruit, and I wanted to be back in the Order House in Skarrel. I wanted everything to be all right but it couldn't be and nobody could tell me it would be. "The Goddess told me, Nicholas." That was all I had to cling to. My magic had come from her and now I had to make a return for that magic, even though I'd never asked to have it. My thoughts spun confusedly around and nothing came out when I opened my mouth. I tried again. "You're a Star-priest. Have you never had a vision of the Star-Brother or had him speak to you?"
"No," he said, and by his voice didn't expect to. Maybe he didn't even believe that Aradia's Brother was a real entity.
"Never mind." I drew in a long breath of cold air. "You'd better lie down on the bed when I shapeshift, Nick. When I take your energy it'll be like being bled, very fast, and you won't be able to move around."
"If I'm here, how am I going to call your name? I thought I'd be going with you."
"You can't. If I Changed you, you'd be using your own energy, and since I'll be taking it . . . "
"Yes, all right, I see. So how will I call?"
He couldn't, of course, and I wondered what else I would forget, without Audryn and the others to guide and check me. I wasn't ready for this. They should have a full sorceress, several, to do this work, the entire Aradian Order. For what else had it been created? Thanks to Varimonde and the Inquisition, every other sorceress was on the run or in chains. This was the truth. I would be going out alone. There would be no one to call my name and bring me home. I thought I could hold to myself for long enough to fight Asherley, but that would probably entail several shapeshifts and by the end of it, maybe I wouldn't remember being Amber any more.
I went to the windowsill and knelt, letting the cold wind wake me up. It was enticing, that wind, urging me to let go and fly, be one with it, wings extended, owing nothing to these stupid creatures that couldn't leave the earth and thought they ruled it. Asherley, I said to myself, and when that name fell away, added Erlina. But the bird within me thought nothing for a hatchling that wasn't mine and had already left the nest.
The flock, though, the birdmind understood a threat to the flock, to the continuation of kind and I did too, the human part of me that had had only these few days to wake up from its year's sleep. If Asherley won here, if Erlina didn't come home, he would go away stronger and win others to his side. That would make the Inquisition ever more set against magic and those who practised it and in the end, we would all die. Get the royal children home, get Erlina trained and on the throne one day and there was a hope. No more than that, maybe, but it was enough to make what I did today worth it. End the bad dreams.
"Pray," I said to Nicholas. “That’s how you call.”
I launched myself from the tower window in the powerful black shape of a raven.
Chapter 13
The guard ignored my questions, half pushing, half carrying me up a flight of stairs. We passed a landing and went up again, tight, twisty stairs that soon became torture to climb. We had to be at the very top of the castle, I thought, but he wouldn't even tell me that, only unlocked a door and gave me a push inside, then locked it again behind me.
I found myself in a bare little room of gray walls and cold gray stone floor, with a cot and little else. There was a narrow window and I rushed over to it. Below were the royal gardens and beyond them, a perfectly tended expanse of green. No one but nobles would waste that much space on flowers and grass in the middle of a crowded city.
Not long after the door closed, a maidservant came in with a tray of food. It contained cheese, bread, fruit and roasted meats of excellent quality. Venison, perhaps; I’d never tasted it before. There was a jug of water, a goblet and also a small jug of red wine. The maid set it down on the window-sill and backed out without meeting my eyes. I hardly waited for her to be gone before going to the tray and digging in. Couldn't fault the food, that was for sure. Vidar had given me exactly what I'd asked for, including the last thing, which arrived as I was polishing the plate. A guard pushed Nicholas through the doorway and locked the door once more.
"I hope you've eaten, Nick. There’s wine."
"Yes, they fed me." He looked ruffled and angry, like someone not used to being pushed around, but he wore clean clothes and had had a bit of a wash. He looked over at the window, through which a chilly breeze was wafting. "Why are you still here?"
"Where would I go?” It came out sarcastic, which I hadn’t meant, but better than abject fear. My nervousness about Nick’s behaviour came back again. He hadn’t seemed to care much whether I minded or not, or rather, he hadn’t understood that I might mind. He was still staring at me, so I told him about my vision of the Goddess and also what Vidar had commanded me to do and finally Varimonde’s appearance and attempt to kill me.
"Uh huh. Have you heard what our wayward Wizard Lord has done now?"
"No, but does it have anything to do with the Queen wanting to strangle me?"
"Ah. Very likely. Asherley sent word that sorceresses had stolen both the children and that he had in turn taken
Princess Erlina captive, no more detail than that and no word about anyone else." I guessed he was being deliberately vague in case other ears were listening to us, but if they were, I wouldn't know it unless they used magic.
"Anyway, you're here because I told Vidar I needed your help," I said into that silence.
"Did you say what help you needed?"
"No, I didn't. I’m not even sure why I said you, but I need someone to draw on. I’m not strong enough.”
I had the vague idea this was less than tactful but I was too agitated to care by now. "I need your magic."
"I don’t have any.”
"You have what anyone has, that’s life energy. Sorceresses can use this to perform magic. If I’m to do what Vidar wants, I need more than my own strength.”
“Like bleeding me?” He didn’t look happy, but he accepted the glass of wine I handed him.
“Yes.”
Nicholas gulped the wine too fast and had a coughing fit, which I watched, not offering to slap his back or do anything else remotely helpful. He set the glass down hard and waved a hand at the room. "And what are we supposed to do here, jump up and down and shout rude remarks?"
"Meditate," I said. "Tomorrow morning, we'll probably be asked for our plan. Asherley didn't ask for anything, did he, like a ransom?"
"Ha," said Nicholas. "Only the throne. He wants to draw you into fighting, Amber, he knows you'll be looking for him. Do we have a plan?" He seemed to recognise the unfairness of that a moment later and waved an apology at me. "When you say you talked to the Goddess, do you mean she was really here or you meditated and thought of all this?"
"Like I said, she was here as a she wolf, Nick. "Really here" is not something I feel able to answer. She said I would have to go through the shapechanging hunt for real. You remember when we dreamed together?" Uncomfortably, he nodded. "I already told you she said this time it wouldn't be a dream, that the one defeated would leave their blood on the ground. I said I might not be able to come back to my human shape or I might die and the Goddess agreed with me and said if that happened, I had to take him with me.”
“Can you do that?”
“I don’t know. Audryn described it once, in training. The last chance, she said. You grab hold as you die and drag your enemy’s soul down with you.”
Even as I said it, it sounded confused. Nicholas stared at me and didn’t say the obvious.
“I don’t know how,” I admitted. “I might be able to death curse an enemy – if I could concentrate – but the last chance is advanced magic.”
“I don’t exactly see how you’d practise it,” Nick remarked.
If I thought about Asherley's power, about what he could do to me, my throat went dry and my mind numb with fear, so I pushed it back and concentrated on making Nicholas understand what was involved. He looked pretty scared too. An enemy he could fight, that he could physically act against, that was a lot easier than standing there and letting magic happen to you. If he went against Asherley with mundane weapons, he'd have about as much chance as ridiculous Sir Ranald in Korreg had had, riding against the dragon. The knight had done it, though, because it was all he knew to do to protect his people. That was what it meant, to be the lord of his lands. I was about to say something like that when Nick raised a hand to stop me. "If that's what you need, that's what I'll do. I don't like it, Amber, I really, really don't like it, but I'll do it."
The feeling between us eased at his words. He still didn’t come over to me or hug me again – this time I really could have used a simple friendly hug – but there seemed a chance that we would be able to work together. At length Nicholas frowned thoughtfully and said, “ “Amber, how do you suppose Asherley got hold of Erlina?"
I sighed and tried to work it out. "If he could pull Erlina and I into his dream, or put us in her dream, why not a call to Erlina to walk out of the inn room? He could maybe build on Erlina’s own nerves and boredom, just a little walk, then back inside. It'd be pretty simple magic, woven into her dreams. Maybe Asherley said her mother was waiting for her, all was forgiven, I don't know."
"That easy?"
"Nick, you're an Inquisitor. Why do you think the Inquisition exists?"
I could see him thinking about that, about what 'black' magic really meant, maybe for the first time and that perhaps policing the Aradian Order was not the sole reason for the Grey Shadows.
"We don't seem to be able to do a lot against the Wizard Lord's power," he said at last.
"We will," I said firmly, trying to make myself believe it.
We stayed up for several hours, talking and fidgeting and trying to decide what to do. It wasn’t comfortable from my point of view and probably not his either, but in the end I got the bed and Nicholas stretched out on the cold stone floor with one of the two blankets.
Even now, I could not let myself sleep. If I wanted a chance to find Asherley tomorrow, I had to do what I’d tried to avoid all this time and link with him in spirit, give him a way to home in on me, because that would enable me to do the same to him. It didn’t matter any more if he found me, there was no one I had to protect except Nicholas and as an Inquisitor, he could hopefully shield himself. If he couldn’t, there was no more I could do about it. I visualised him in my mind and called to him, lowering my shields and leaving myself wide open.
“Here I am. Where are you?”
I didn’t speak out loud, at least, I hope I didn’t. I was trying to concentrate on producing thoughts of curiosity; really shouldn’t do this, can’t help myself. Then anger at my confinement: I tried to help them, now they’ve locked me up. This wasn’t at all hard to manufacture as it was nearly all true. Then I closed my eyes to take myself further into trance, filling my thoughts with Asherley and the things he had said to me, the terrible things that were nonetheless too enticing to ignore now that my own people had turned on me.
I waited for some vision to come to me, something which would tell me Asherley had heard me, but there was only the red inside my eyes as I squeezed them shut. I was so tired and in a few moments would be asleep for real. The red slipped to black, but not the still black of night. Against my eyes beat the wild rhythm of raven wings. Scores, hundreds of ravens beating their wings against the wind, wind high on a treeless plateau, scouring cliffs and rock, white stone against the spreading green below.
I couldn’t see Asherley, he would not allow me in even in dream, but I could see the birds which had become a part of his spirit, his emblem. Yukungadak had called this having a totem; the animal whose characteristics you were supposed to share. It wasn’t ravens who had any interest in Asherley, it was Raven; the spirit of all the birds. Intelligent, tricky, powerful and quite ruthless in getting what he wants. It did not matter that I couldn’t see any more than a night of ravens above a desolate landscape. I had my link and I would find the place when I woke.
The dawn light woke me and someone shouting, far below. The voice had a ritualistic sound, a herald of some kind or maybe only someone declaring the hour. For a few moments I lay, sleepily content, until I remembered where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. A cold, faintly nauseous feeling ran through me as though I'd eaten something bad. The bed creaked and Nicholas sat down upon it, placing a cautious hand on my bare shoulder.
"You don't have to do this, you know."
What I wanted was a cup of something hot, some bread and cheese and fruit, and I wanted to be back in the Order House in Skarrel. I wanted everything to be all right but it couldn't be and nobody could tell me it would be. "The Goddess told me, Nicholas." That was all I had to cling to. My magic had come from her and now I had to make a return for that magic, even though I'd never asked to have it. My thoughts spun confusedly around and nothing came out when I opened my mouth. I tried again. "You're a Star-priest. Have you never had a vision of the Star-Brother or had him speak to you?"
"No," he said, and by his voice didn't expect to. Maybe he didn't even believe that Aradia's Brother was a real entity.
"Never mind." I drew in a long breath of cold air. "You'd better lie down on the bed when I shapeshift, Nick. When I take your energy it'll be like being bled, very fast, and you won't be able to move around."
"If I'm here, how am I going to call your name? I thought I'd be going with you."
"You can't. If I Changed you, you'd be using your own energy, and since I'll be taking it . . . "
"Yes, all right, I see. So how will I call?"
He couldn't, of course, and I wondered what else I would forget, without Audryn and the others to guide and check me. I wasn't ready for this. They should have a full sorceress, several, to do this work, the entire Aradian Order. For what else had it been created? Thanks to Varimonde and the Inquisition, every other sorceress was on the run or in chains. This was the truth. I would be going out alone. There would be no one to call my name and bring me home. I thought I could hold to myself for long enough to fight Asherley, but that would probably entail several shapeshifts and by the end of it, maybe I wouldn't remember being Amber any more.
I went to the windowsill and knelt, letting the cold wind wake me up. It was enticing, that wind, urging me to let go and fly, be one with it, wings extended, owing nothing to these stupid creatures that couldn't leave the earth and thought they ruled it. Asherley, I said to myself, and when that name fell away, added Erlina. But the bird within me thought nothing for a hatchling that wasn't mine and had already left the nest.
The flock, though, the birdmind understood a threat to the flock, to the continuation of kind and I did too, the human part of me that had had only these few days to wake up from its year's sleep. If Asherley won here, if Erlina didn't come home, he would go away stronger and win others to his side. That would make the Inquisition ever more set against magic and those who practised it and in the end, we would all die. Get the royal children home, get Erlina trained and on the throne one day and there was a hope. No more than that, maybe, but it was enough to make what I did today worth it. End the bad dreams.
"Pray," I said to Nicholas. “That’s how you call.”
I launched myself from the tower window in the powerful black shape of a raven.