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Flying South Chapter 17
Australia Day holiday. Since I'm not at work it doesn't make that much difference. I don't call it Invasion Day but I don't get into the patriotic overdose either.
Finished up a bit of gardening; piled clippings etc into bin now that the garbage truck has collected last week's. The climbing beans are still climbing. I don't actually know how tall they can grow but I've given them long branches to grow along and they could be 8-9 feet if they like. I think they like :-)
Got some writing organised. This means I actually write and print out some notes to keep me on track with what I'm doing. Haven't done as much as I intended but I did finish a short story, Bluer Sky about kids growing up in a spacecraft culture because their parents picked it but now Earth is really desperate to get them back. Before that there was Stranger of his Counsel which is rather political, to do with the secret police knocking on your door in the night if you read/disseminate the wrong books. Australia 21st century. I don't think it's impossible. The long piece I'm trying to control is about drought and manufactured plagues in Perth - ever noticed how sf writers love to destroy their own birthplaces? - and a Federal govt decision to abandon WA. WA people, meanwhile, are trying to build their own starship...
Anyway, here is another chapter of Flying South. Not much more to go!
FLYING SOUTH
Chapter 17
Black spirits and white
Red spirits and gray
Come ye, come ye, come ye that may
Throughout and about, around and around
The Circle be drawn, the Circle be bound!
Traditional chant
Author Unknown
I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the thought of facing Audryn in the morning, I don’t know, or dread of what I would face in dream. Time was passing strangely and I couldn’t seem to focus on what was wrong with it. So I wrapped a cloak around me and paced the cold stone floor of the infirmary, looking out of the windows to the courtyard and carriageway below, walking the length of the room and trying not to look at the knives and the bleeding bowls on the surgeon’s table.
I’d been here so short a time; six days since I’d come home. Three days since I’d had to leave Catri in the grip of the Royal Guards. Always, it seemed, I’d been yanked up and made to go on before I was ready. I couldn’t make any more sense of it than that, so I paced and looked around and waited.
It seemed that I had been pacing only an hour or so when I suddenly blinked, aware of sunlight and footfalls and voices around me. The infirmary door was unlocked and one of the doctors came in, followed by a guardsman and then by someone in a grey gown who moved very slowly as though it hurt her to do so. Audryn got them out of her way by looking at them. They scuttled and so did the second guard who came in behind her, leaving her an open path to where I stood.
There was a lot more grey in her hair than I remembered and her face was shockingly thin and lined, but her ice blue eyes fixed me as fiercely as ever. I suppose there were correct words for me to say, but my mouth opened and I heard myself blurt, “Where’s Catri?”
“Below,” said Audryn. “Vidar does not trust three of us in one room.” Her voice was as I remembered too; dry and critical and certain of itself. I almost raced forward and embraced her, but stopped myself in time, knowing that such an act would horrify both of us. She looked me over as I was doing to her. “You don’t have much of a hold on your flesh,” she said. “Is that the magic of dragonkind?”
“I don’t know, Witch-mother.” With all these ears about, I didn’t want to tell her the story of my flight to Boorlo and what I had found there. “They’re making me sail with them, to show them where the Land of the Dragons lies.”
“Did you swear?”
“Yes, Mother Audryn.” Even here, it was comforting to say the familiar words. If only a day mucking out the stables was the worst that could happen.
“And this is the price for our freedom?”
“Yes, Witch-mother.”
She didn’t bless me, she didn’t curse me, only bowed her head a little as though accepting the will of the Goddess. Then she said quietly, “I understand that you have had some encounters with an old acquaintance of mine.”
I stared, trying to understand. This was something she couldn’t say straight out, so who could she mean? Not Geofrey or even Vidar – she knew I had met Vidar before at festival. The only other one was Asherley himself.
“I think they are over,” I dared to say.
She nodded. “It was given to you to finish what I started, Amber, to end the dark dreams, but you have other tasks to consider now. Make us proud of you.”
Proud of me? The Aradians had never been proud of me; they had spent all these months trying to fit me into their mould and I had always fallen out again. Nothing I did was ever good enough and usually much worse than that. But Audryn clearly wasn’t joking – she had never joked that I could remember and now I couldn’t even answer properly. At last one of the guards said, “It is time, Lady.” That courtesy, at least, was given her and after a searching look at me, she turned away and let them escort her out. I stood there as though chained to the spot, as though I had never had wings.
I wondered if they would bring Catri to see me but they didn’t. I glimpsed her from the window, a tiny blob with windblown brown hair in the courtyard below. I couldn’t even be sure it was her. Nicholas woke up a short while after, still weak and confused but better than he had been. The doctors were scared of me and only paid attention to me when they had to, so nobody gave me any trouble. They did not offer to bleed either of us.
Later in the morning, two Star-priests came into the room and helped Nicholas, still shaky on his feet, to leave. I sat watching but he didn’t speak to me. I felt empty, as though my power had been pulled out of me once more, but strangely, not much more. Perhaps later we would talk, but if we didn’t, I wasn’t sure it would matter a lot to me. I’d have to be strong enough to get through the rest of this mess, to help my friends, and maybe later I could help Nicholas too. “Nick,” I said aloud when they got to the door, “I didn’t say no, not ever. I only said not now.”
He paused but didn’t answer me as he walked out.
*
Next day, I was moved to apartments high in the castle. I was treated well enough, with good food and books provided - nothing about magic - and allowed to go for walks inside with a sullen guard following behind me. No one important visited me for another day, during which I completely recovered from the magic I had performed.
Vidar came to see me on the evening of that day, the third since our return from battle sorcerous. I didn’t greet him. In fact, I said nothing at all and sat on the window ledge, knees drawn up to my chin, staring at him.
He did not look particularly bothered by this and seated himself on my chair without asking. "You're looking much better," he commented. "I take it your strength has returned?"
"What does it matter?"
"Actually, it matters a good deal. Asherley and Cavris have been sentenced to death."
I looked at him. He was regarding me steadily, without emotion, but I felt like a bird being watched by a cat preparing to spring. As for what I felt about the sentence, I felt dirty. Not regretful, it needed to happen, the Goddess wanted it to happen, but I didn't want any more to do with it. I wanted to forget about them and all they'd done, do what was required of me and somehow get back to my life. Nor did I care enough to try to explain all this to the Master Inquisitor, even if he'd listen to me.
"Are you asking my permission?"
"With Cavris there is no difficulty," he said as though I had not spoken. "He is like any other man. Asherley, however, is a sorcerer."
"Do you mean you can't deaden his power?"
"We can, but there is the matter of his death curse."
I only looked at him blankly. On this matter I knew as much as any village wife, which meant a lot of rumour and stories and not much substance. I'd spent less than two years studying with the Aradian Order and though we'd helped out in the hospital when the plague struck Skarrel last year, I’d never studied death curses. It wasn’t exactly a profitable field of study because people with the power to deliver them are very rare and they can only do it once. I thought I had better make sure of what he meant.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand. "
Vidar looked honestly surprised, which might have made me angry if I'd been less scared. "A sorcerer's final curse can kill. He has the power to take his chosen enemy with him as he dies.”
“Or she,” I said pointedly. Vidar ignored this and I went on. "So why don't the sorceresses and hedge witches who get killed take people with them?"
"Hedge witches and most others, have not the power," he said.
Audryn, I thought. This is the only reason they had kept her alive. It wasn't for bargaining; they never knew they had to. I didn't want to do Vidar or the Inquisition any sort of favour but . . .
"It could be me he means to curse," I said, mouth dry, and Vidar nodded.
"Possibly. Or me; Asherley is quite aware of my role in the whole endeavour and he will not name the one he plans to take with him."
"Why don't you ask Audryn?"
"I do not choose to be in the Witch-mother’s debt," he said. "Your abilities are beyond the norm even for one of your order." Great, now I can't even be a normal sorceress. "Nullify Asherley's death curse. If you do not and it is I whom he takes, I have given orders that you follow me. The same if he chooses the Queen.”
"And the Land of the Dragons?"
"You are useful, not essential to that journey. Remember that either way, it will be your own life which you save."
"I don't know if I can," I pleaded. "I've never done anything like that; I don't even know how to stop someone else using a spell. Um, what are you doing to stop Asherley calling something up in his cell?"
"The Inquisition is able to nullify his other powers," Vidar reminded me. I felt like an idiot.
"And when you leave me alone with him, what then?"
"We will be close by. In the event of trouble, I am sure you will be able to think of something."
*
Asherley looked hellish. Pale, thin, he didn't appear to have eaten or slept since he was taken prisoner. When I came in, or was pushed from the doorway, he didn't get up from the floor. Instead of his expensive, beautiful garments, he was wearing prison issue brown homespun. His eyes flicked to the closing door behind me, then to my face. "This could have turned out so differently," he said.
"They're afraid of your death curse," I said. I thought about staying where I was, within reach of help, then wondered what I was worried about. He knew they'd kill him; if he wanted to, his magic would drag me after him. So I sat crosslegged on the cold stone floor, close enough for easy conversation or strangulation. "Vidar thinks it might be him you take with you. He also said it might be me. If it’s him or Varimonde, he swears his people will kill me after you're dead."
"I do not think you have spent much time learning the arts of courtly conversation, my lady."
"Don't make fun of me," I said.
He laughed, a soundless gasp, before closing his eyes. I watched him for several minutes, wondering whether he was asleep, but presently he opened them again. "I was not mocking you. It is refreshing. You do know that none of them will do anything for you, don’t you?”
"You shouldn't have harmed the children," I said doggedly.
"They're from a tainted line. Weak. If they acknowledged and used their power, they could rule an empire, but instead they’re afraid of their own shadows.” He smiled slightly. He was only talking about Kieran and Erlina, not even considering his murders; they were forgotten, part of the past. I didn’t want to have any sympathy for him, but the thought jumped into my mind that maybe he was right. What I knew of Queens Catherine and Varimonde didn’t bode well for poor Erlina. Maybe the madness was inflicted from outside, but the way she had been brought up would have a lot to do with how Erlina saw the world. She had only met sorceresses very briefly and in the end we’d let her worst fear steal her away after all. If this man had been prepared to rule without magical power, without the constant spilling of innocent blood, perhaps he would have been a better choice than Catherine or her line? But then, if he had been prepared to do all that, he would not have been Warwick Asherley.
Unfortunately, I’d told Vidar the truth. I didn’t know what I could do about his death curse. I couldn’t stop anyone’s magic midflight, I could only act on the spell after he had done something, as in the spell-song where the female magician changes her shape and the wizard, her pursuer, changes into a corresponding creature, as cat to mouse.
We shall follow as falcons grey
And hunt thee cruelly as our prey.
Oh yes. He couldn’t stop her, only try to match her. I opened my mouth, took a breath, not even sure what I was going to say until it was emerging from my mouth. “I’ll intercede for you with the Goddess.”
Vidar’s gaze was suddenly clear and startled. “What?”
“I’ll ask that you not be punished beyond this life. That you are reborn again as anyone might be, a fresh chance. I’m not sure you deserve it, but I swear that I’ll ask it of her. Vidar can’t promise you that. No one else can but me because the Goddess speaks to me and you know she gave me her seeming.”
I meant it as I’d never meant anything and seeing his eyes, incredulous and bright, I knew he read the truth and that he was buying it. After a long moment, he nodded. “Then I swear in her name that I will withhold the curse.”
Vidar accosted me as I came out of the cell. “Well? What did you do? My people say you did no magic.”
“I didn’t have to. We made a deal. He’ll withhold the curse.”
“For what reason?”
I wanted to say: Nothing you would understand, but thought I might have gone as far as I could go with insolence to Vidar, at least for now. “I’ve promised to intercede with the Goddess, that punishment end with this life and not go on to the next. And he’s to die fast, without pain.”
“Is that part of his conditions?”
“No, my lord, it’s mine.”
“Very well,” said Vidar, surprisingly calm. He walked beside me along the cold stone corridor, lit only with torches, a permanent, terrible night. “It will be done before morning. Did you want to see Cavris?”
Even the name gave me the sense of something dank and slimy crawling down my back. I shivered. Strange, that Cavris did that to me more than Asherley, but it was a worse thing, in a way, that he’d done. He’d given over his own niece and nephew, betrayed his sister, all for power over people who would never love or trust him. I had no more to say to Cavris. “No,” I said, realising I hadn’t answered. “I don’t want to see him.”
“That is fortunate, since he was executed shortly before I came to get you.”
He said it in such an easy, ordinary way that my neck prickled cold and I shivered, though the temperature hadn’t changed. I had not expected the execution to happen like this, without ceremony. Vidar glanced at me, casually interested and smiled, a mere stretching of lips.
“Intriguing that you are so stricken on his behalf. Cavris was never one to care for any beside himself or his own pleasure, yet at the same time believed that his hands should wield the power. Asherley was often in his company, whispering in his ear, and it seems the councillor was more convincing than we thought. We had Lord Matthew’s words of Cavris, we needed no more questioning of him.”
“But the Queen can’t rule without him, can she?”
Vidar gave me a grim look but somehow my fear of him had gone. When I first saw him riding into Skarrel, he’d seemed something more than human, something more than life, a dark, malevolent being intending to break our festival and our power. Now, maybe he’d learned or maybe I had, for he seemed more like a person I could talk to. He would strip my magic from me and wreck my life, but he would never ignore me.
“There is a cousin,” he said. “The Lords will deliberate upon the matter in our absence; they need neither my voice nor yours at their council.” I said nothing. We climbed stone steps for some time until we got back to the quarters I had been assigned. The guard opened the door for me and stood aside. Vidar’s voice followed me in. “One more thing, Amber. As you know, I intended Harnage to accompany us on this voyage. When I was summoned to the council who were deliberating the fate of the Queen’s Brother and the Lord of Cairenor, the Queen expressed her . . . concern that Harnage had been so much in your company and doubtless been contaminated. The only hope of saving him is to sunder that link with you in the eyes of the Queen.”
I didn’t answer and he allowed me my silence.
Finished up a bit of gardening; piled clippings etc into bin now that the garbage truck has collected last week's. The climbing beans are still climbing. I don't actually know how tall they can grow but I've given them long branches to grow along and they could be 8-9 feet if they like. I think they like :-)
Got some writing organised. This means I actually write and print out some notes to keep me on track with what I'm doing. Haven't done as much as I intended but I did finish a short story, Bluer Sky about kids growing up in a spacecraft culture because their parents picked it but now Earth is really desperate to get them back. Before that there was Stranger of his Counsel which is rather political, to do with the secret police knocking on your door in the night if you read/disseminate the wrong books. Australia 21st century. I don't think it's impossible. The long piece I'm trying to control is about drought and manufactured plagues in Perth - ever noticed how sf writers love to destroy their own birthplaces? - and a Federal govt decision to abandon WA. WA people, meanwhile, are trying to build their own starship...
Anyway, here is another chapter of Flying South. Not much more to go!
FLYING SOUTH
Chapter 17
Black spirits and white
Red spirits and gray
Come ye, come ye, come ye that may
Throughout and about, around and around
The Circle be drawn, the Circle be bound!
Traditional chant
Author Unknown
I couldn’t sleep. Maybe it was the thought of facing Audryn in the morning, I don’t know, or dread of what I would face in dream. Time was passing strangely and I couldn’t seem to focus on what was wrong with it. So I wrapped a cloak around me and paced the cold stone floor of the infirmary, looking out of the windows to the courtyard and carriageway below, walking the length of the room and trying not to look at the knives and the bleeding bowls on the surgeon’s table.
I’d been here so short a time; six days since I’d come home. Three days since I’d had to leave Catri in the grip of the Royal Guards. Always, it seemed, I’d been yanked up and made to go on before I was ready. I couldn’t make any more sense of it than that, so I paced and looked around and waited.
It seemed that I had been pacing only an hour or so when I suddenly blinked, aware of sunlight and footfalls and voices around me. The infirmary door was unlocked and one of the doctors came in, followed by a guardsman and then by someone in a grey gown who moved very slowly as though it hurt her to do so. Audryn got them out of her way by looking at them. They scuttled and so did the second guard who came in behind her, leaving her an open path to where I stood.
There was a lot more grey in her hair than I remembered and her face was shockingly thin and lined, but her ice blue eyes fixed me as fiercely as ever. I suppose there were correct words for me to say, but my mouth opened and I heard myself blurt, “Where’s Catri?”
“Below,” said Audryn. “Vidar does not trust three of us in one room.” Her voice was as I remembered too; dry and critical and certain of itself. I almost raced forward and embraced her, but stopped myself in time, knowing that such an act would horrify both of us. She looked me over as I was doing to her. “You don’t have much of a hold on your flesh,” she said. “Is that the magic of dragonkind?”
“I don’t know, Witch-mother.” With all these ears about, I didn’t want to tell her the story of my flight to Boorlo and what I had found there. “They’re making me sail with them, to show them where the Land of the Dragons lies.”
“Did you swear?”
“Yes, Mother Audryn.” Even here, it was comforting to say the familiar words. If only a day mucking out the stables was the worst that could happen.
“And this is the price for our freedom?”
“Yes, Witch-mother.”
She didn’t bless me, she didn’t curse me, only bowed her head a little as though accepting the will of the Goddess. Then she said quietly, “I understand that you have had some encounters with an old acquaintance of mine.”
I stared, trying to understand. This was something she couldn’t say straight out, so who could she mean? Not Geofrey or even Vidar – she knew I had met Vidar before at festival. The only other one was Asherley himself.
“I think they are over,” I dared to say.
She nodded. “It was given to you to finish what I started, Amber, to end the dark dreams, but you have other tasks to consider now. Make us proud of you.”
Proud of me? The Aradians had never been proud of me; they had spent all these months trying to fit me into their mould and I had always fallen out again. Nothing I did was ever good enough and usually much worse than that. But Audryn clearly wasn’t joking – she had never joked that I could remember and now I couldn’t even answer properly. At last one of the guards said, “It is time, Lady.” That courtesy, at least, was given her and after a searching look at me, she turned away and let them escort her out. I stood there as though chained to the spot, as though I had never had wings.
I wondered if they would bring Catri to see me but they didn’t. I glimpsed her from the window, a tiny blob with windblown brown hair in the courtyard below. I couldn’t even be sure it was her. Nicholas woke up a short while after, still weak and confused but better than he had been. The doctors were scared of me and only paid attention to me when they had to, so nobody gave me any trouble. They did not offer to bleed either of us.
Later in the morning, two Star-priests came into the room and helped Nicholas, still shaky on his feet, to leave. I sat watching but he didn’t speak to me. I felt empty, as though my power had been pulled out of me once more, but strangely, not much more. Perhaps later we would talk, but if we didn’t, I wasn’t sure it would matter a lot to me. I’d have to be strong enough to get through the rest of this mess, to help my friends, and maybe later I could help Nicholas too. “Nick,” I said aloud when they got to the door, “I didn’t say no, not ever. I only said not now.”
He paused but didn’t answer me as he walked out.
*
Next day, I was moved to apartments high in the castle. I was treated well enough, with good food and books provided - nothing about magic - and allowed to go for walks inside with a sullen guard following behind me. No one important visited me for another day, during which I completely recovered from the magic I had performed.
Vidar came to see me on the evening of that day, the third since our return from battle sorcerous. I didn’t greet him. In fact, I said nothing at all and sat on the window ledge, knees drawn up to my chin, staring at him.
He did not look particularly bothered by this and seated himself on my chair without asking. "You're looking much better," he commented. "I take it your strength has returned?"
"What does it matter?"
"Actually, it matters a good deal. Asherley and Cavris have been sentenced to death."
I looked at him. He was regarding me steadily, without emotion, but I felt like a bird being watched by a cat preparing to spring. As for what I felt about the sentence, I felt dirty. Not regretful, it needed to happen, the Goddess wanted it to happen, but I didn't want any more to do with it. I wanted to forget about them and all they'd done, do what was required of me and somehow get back to my life. Nor did I care enough to try to explain all this to the Master Inquisitor, even if he'd listen to me.
"Are you asking my permission?"
"With Cavris there is no difficulty," he said as though I had not spoken. "He is like any other man. Asherley, however, is a sorcerer."
"Do you mean you can't deaden his power?"
"We can, but there is the matter of his death curse."
I only looked at him blankly. On this matter I knew as much as any village wife, which meant a lot of rumour and stories and not much substance. I'd spent less than two years studying with the Aradian Order and though we'd helped out in the hospital when the plague struck Skarrel last year, I’d never studied death curses. It wasn’t exactly a profitable field of study because people with the power to deliver them are very rare and they can only do it once. I thought I had better make sure of what he meant.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand. "
Vidar looked honestly surprised, which might have made me angry if I'd been less scared. "A sorcerer's final curse can kill. He has the power to take his chosen enemy with him as he dies.”
“Or she,” I said pointedly. Vidar ignored this and I went on. "So why don't the sorceresses and hedge witches who get killed take people with them?"
"Hedge witches and most others, have not the power," he said.
Audryn, I thought. This is the only reason they had kept her alive. It wasn't for bargaining; they never knew they had to. I didn't want to do Vidar or the Inquisition any sort of favour but . . .
"It could be me he means to curse," I said, mouth dry, and Vidar nodded.
"Possibly. Or me; Asherley is quite aware of my role in the whole endeavour and he will not name the one he plans to take with him."
"Why don't you ask Audryn?"
"I do not choose to be in the Witch-mother’s debt," he said. "Your abilities are beyond the norm even for one of your order." Great, now I can't even be a normal sorceress. "Nullify Asherley's death curse. If you do not and it is I whom he takes, I have given orders that you follow me. The same if he chooses the Queen.”
"And the Land of the Dragons?"
"You are useful, not essential to that journey. Remember that either way, it will be your own life which you save."
"I don't know if I can," I pleaded. "I've never done anything like that; I don't even know how to stop someone else using a spell. Um, what are you doing to stop Asherley calling something up in his cell?"
"The Inquisition is able to nullify his other powers," Vidar reminded me. I felt like an idiot.
"And when you leave me alone with him, what then?"
"We will be close by. In the event of trouble, I am sure you will be able to think of something."
*
Asherley looked hellish. Pale, thin, he didn't appear to have eaten or slept since he was taken prisoner. When I came in, or was pushed from the doorway, he didn't get up from the floor. Instead of his expensive, beautiful garments, he was wearing prison issue brown homespun. His eyes flicked to the closing door behind me, then to my face. "This could have turned out so differently," he said.
"They're afraid of your death curse," I said. I thought about staying where I was, within reach of help, then wondered what I was worried about. He knew they'd kill him; if he wanted to, his magic would drag me after him. So I sat crosslegged on the cold stone floor, close enough for easy conversation or strangulation. "Vidar thinks it might be him you take with you. He also said it might be me. If it’s him or Varimonde, he swears his people will kill me after you're dead."
"I do not think you have spent much time learning the arts of courtly conversation, my lady."
"Don't make fun of me," I said.
He laughed, a soundless gasp, before closing his eyes. I watched him for several minutes, wondering whether he was asleep, but presently he opened them again. "I was not mocking you. It is refreshing. You do know that none of them will do anything for you, don’t you?”
"You shouldn't have harmed the children," I said doggedly.
"They're from a tainted line. Weak. If they acknowledged and used their power, they could rule an empire, but instead they’re afraid of their own shadows.” He smiled slightly. He was only talking about Kieran and Erlina, not even considering his murders; they were forgotten, part of the past. I didn’t want to have any sympathy for him, but the thought jumped into my mind that maybe he was right. What I knew of Queens Catherine and Varimonde didn’t bode well for poor Erlina. Maybe the madness was inflicted from outside, but the way she had been brought up would have a lot to do with how Erlina saw the world. She had only met sorceresses very briefly and in the end we’d let her worst fear steal her away after all. If this man had been prepared to rule without magical power, without the constant spilling of innocent blood, perhaps he would have been a better choice than Catherine or her line? But then, if he had been prepared to do all that, he would not have been Warwick Asherley.
Unfortunately, I’d told Vidar the truth. I didn’t know what I could do about his death curse. I couldn’t stop anyone’s magic midflight, I could only act on the spell after he had done something, as in the spell-song where the female magician changes her shape and the wizard, her pursuer, changes into a corresponding creature, as cat to mouse.
We shall follow as falcons grey
And hunt thee cruelly as our prey.
Oh yes. He couldn’t stop her, only try to match her. I opened my mouth, took a breath, not even sure what I was going to say until it was emerging from my mouth. “I’ll intercede for you with the Goddess.”
Vidar’s gaze was suddenly clear and startled. “What?”
“I’ll ask that you not be punished beyond this life. That you are reborn again as anyone might be, a fresh chance. I’m not sure you deserve it, but I swear that I’ll ask it of her. Vidar can’t promise you that. No one else can but me because the Goddess speaks to me and you know she gave me her seeming.”
I meant it as I’d never meant anything and seeing his eyes, incredulous and bright, I knew he read the truth and that he was buying it. After a long moment, he nodded. “Then I swear in her name that I will withhold the curse.”
Vidar accosted me as I came out of the cell. “Well? What did you do? My people say you did no magic.”
“I didn’t have to. We made a deal. He’ll withhold the curse.”
“For what reason?”
I wanted to say: Nothing you would understand, but thought I might have gone as far as I could go with insolence to Vidar, at least for now. “I’ve promised to intercede with the Goddess, that punishment end with this life and not go on to the next. And he’s to die fast, without pain.”
“Is that part of his conditions?”
“No, my lord, it’s mine.”
“Very well,” said Vidar, surprisingly calm. He walked beside me along the cold stone corridor, lit only with torches, a permanent, terrible night. “It will be done before morning. Did you want to see Cavris?”
Even the name gave me the sense of something dank and slimy crawling down my back. I shivered. Strange, that Cavris did that to me more than Asherley, but it was a worse thing, in a way, that he’d done. He’d given over his own niece and nephew, betrayed his sister, all for power over people who would never love or trust him. I had no more to say to Cavris. “No,” I said, realising I hadn’t answered. “I don’t want to see him.”
“That is fortunate, since he was executed shortly before I came to get you.”
He said it in such an easy, ordinary way that my neck prickled cold and I shivered, though the temperature hadn’t changed. I had not expected the execution to happen like this, without ceremony. Vidar glanced at me, casually interested and smiled, a mere stretching of lips.
“Intriguing that you are so stricken on his behalf. Cavris was never one to care for any beside himself or his own pleasure, yet at the same time believed that his hands should wield the power. Asherley was often in his company, whispering in his ear, and it seems the councillor was more convincing than we thought. We had Lord Matthew’s words of Cavris, we needed no more questioning of him.”
“But the Queen can’t rule without him, can she?”
Vidar gave me a grim look but somehow my fear of him had gone. When I first saw him riding into Skarrel, he’d seemed something more than human, something more than life, a dark, malevolent being intending to break our festival and our power. Now, maybe he’d learned or maybe I had, for he seemed more like a person I could talk to. He would strip my magic from me and wreck my life, but he would never ignore me.
“There is a cousin,” he said. “The Lords will deliberate upon the matter in our absence; they need neither my voice nor yours at their council.” I said nothing. We climbed stone steps for some time until we got back to the quarters I had been assigned. The guard opened the door for me and stood aside. Vidar’s voice followed me in. “One more thing, Amber. As you know, I intended Harnage to accompany us on this voyage. When I was summoned to the council who were deliberating the fate of the Queen’s Brother and the Lord of Cairenor, the Queen expressed her . . . concern that Harnage had been so much in your company and doubtless been contaminated. The only hope of saving him is to sunder that link with you in the eyes of the Queen.”
I didn’t answer and he allowed me my silence.