Текст книги "The Raven Collection"

Автор книги: James Barclay

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 179 (всего у книги 235 страниц)

Inside, he could make out the shapes of bookshelves and tables. Little seemed to have been seriously disturbed though the wind picked at the pages of a few volumes scattered on the carpeted floor.

There would be demons in here somewhere. An earlier abortive raid had reported what appeared to be a systematic search through every piece of work. They’d had two years to find what they wanted but still the searching went on. Sharyr wondered briefly what it was.

He checked the team. They nodded their readiness and he moved in, every footstep fraught with the potential of a protesting floorboard. He felt naked outside the protection of the ColdRoom yet energised by the connection with the mana spectrum. The crack of the first spell behind him told him he was not alone.

It was a curious mix of feelings. He’d grown accustomed to the aura of security the ColdRooms provided but always lurking was the pain of being shut off from the spectrum. This way round, he had the comfort of mana at his command. All he had to cope with was the dread that accompanied it. Death a mere touch away.

Suarav came to his right shoulder as they entered the library. Sharyr’s augmented eyes picked out objects and edges in sharp, monochromatic relief. It showed him Suarav’s face, lined with concentration, beaded in sweat despite the chill of the air. He felt a surge of respect for the man. Nominally, he and the other soldier were spotters. In reality, they were there to sacrifice themselves to save the mages should the need arise.

The grand three-floored building was silent but for the ruffling of loose pages. Light was edging through the stained-glass windows leaving deep shadow untouched under stairwells and recesses.

Sharyr kept to the centre of the carpeted path, the team bunched behind him. Their eyes would be everywhere. Left and right past every aisle of shelves, up into the arches and upper floors, ahead into the heart of the library and down lest they kick a stray book or put boot to bare wood.

He could feel the tension soaring. Suarav repeatedly tightened and relaxed his sword grip. Sharyr had to fight hard to keep the ForceCone construct steady. The breeze outside threw unsettling eddies into the library, like the downwash of wings. Sharyr drew in a deep breath and moved further in.

The signs of the demons’ search were everywhere. Bookcases had been moved, glass fronts smashed. Parchments, volumes and tied scrolls were heaped in piles on shelves, stacked on the floor or scattered into corners. The damage was worse than at first sight. Ripped pages sat in drifts on lower shelves. Ancient texts were torn, spines broken. The knowledge of ages discarded. Whatever it was they were looking for, the demons had gone about their work methodically.

Sharyr felt his heart fall. This organised demolition was going to make their job all the harder and they couldn’t afford to be in here a moment longer than absolutely necessary. Looking about him, he wondered if they’d find anything useful at all.

At the base of the grand staircase that swept left up to the next floor, he took them from the central path and underneath the marble steps. The demonology section was just ahead. It was the first of three they’d identified. Sharyr checked them all again, saw the strained but determined faces. Outside, spells cracked and echoed in the quiet of early morning. Distantly, a demon screamed.

He turned back and there they were. Floating gently down from the upper floors. He wasn’t sure how many. Ten at a quick count. He backed up under the stairwell. Suarav just in front of him, the others behind, all wanting to feel a wall at their backs. The demons were stark grey against the deeper background, shining slightly. They were all of one strain. Long faces containing huge oval eyes. Tiny mouths but rimmed with fangs. Distended skulls. Delicate feathery wings and long slender arms at the end of which spidery fingers writhed.

‘Keep calm,’ said Sharyr. ‘Keep your concentration.’ He had lost his ForceCone construct and was desperately trying to reform the shape. ‘Don’t show them fear. We can take them.’

‘You heard him,’ growled Suarav. ‘They’ve got to get past me first.’

He stepped square in front of the mage team, indicating the conscript do the same. The man didn’t move but for the quaking of his body. A whimper escaped his mouth.

‘Stand aside, Captain,’ said Sharyr.

‘They will not take you before me.’

‘You’re standing in the line of our spells.’

‘Just tell me when to duck.’

The demons watched the exchange intently. Sharyr, who hadn’t taken his eyes from them, felt as if he were being examined. Studied. He became aware that he could hear the whirring of their wings at the edge of his consciousness.

‘We don’t want to have to cast,’ he said.

‘The damage to the library would be considerable,’ replied one of the demons immediately, voice soft and seductive.

The conscript muttered again.

‘Strength,’ snapped Suarav. ‘They don’t know what to do.’

The demons spread slightly, moving to cut off any escape back towards the main doors. There was a gap to the back of the library. It had been left quite deliberately. No escape there.

‘They’re going to get us,’ said the conscript.

‘No they aren’t, not if we stick together,’ said Suarav. ‘Keep your blade out front.’

‘Won’t do any good. Just one touch.’

Sharyr felt the soldier tense to run. They had little time. ‘Mages, what do you have? Speak quickly.’

‘Orbs.’

‘Orbs.’

‘Ice.’

In concert, the demons opened their arms and glided in. ‘Your souls will replenish us.’

‘No!’ The young soldier broke left and ran, colliding with one of the archivists and sprinting away into the shadows.

‘Structure down.’

‘Reform!’ snapped Sharyr.

‘Get back here!’ roared Suarav.

‘Forget him and duck,’ said Sharyr. Suarav dropped to his haunches. ‘Orbs now.’

It was a single focused FlameOrb and it struck the centre of the pack. The glare was painful, the effect brutal and instant. The tight globe of flame singed wings and burned coarse hair. It ate demon flesh. Smoke roiled. The scream was terrible. Sharyr followed it with his ForceCone. He directed it at the left side of the group. Unprepared, the demons were flicked away, twigs in the gale. He drove them up and back, flattening their bodies against the marble balustrade opposite. He wouldn’t kill them but it represented space and time.

‘Ice, right!’

Hardly had he uttered the command than the spell washed out, sucking and tearing at demon bodies, driving freezing air through their mana protection. Gouging, flaying.

‘Now run, left. Find that idiot and get searching. We’ve still got a job to do. I’ll hold these here.’

His men obeyed without question, scattering into the back of the library. ‘And be careful of what’s down there!’

Sharyr took stock. He held four struggling demons in check. The others were dead or dying. The IceWind blast had covered shelves, texts and tables over a ten-yard area with a thick coating of frost. That wasn’t what worried him. It was the fire taking hold where the Orbed demon lay. And as the first scream of pure terror rang out from the back of the library, he turned to warn them that time was running out even faster than they had first thought.

The four surviving mages flew in at a frightening pace. Left and right, spotter soldiers called out the locations of demons now turning their attentions to the Xeteskians in front of the tower complex. Focused Orbs scattered out in a wide arc. In the thinning mist, demons howled and the noise grew as more and more ignored their airborne quarry. And in the centre of the mage defence, deep blue ForceCones and IceWind kept open the slimmest corridor.

‘Let’s be moving back slowly!’

Chandyr’s voice towered over the slowly rising panic. They had to get this just right or they’d lose more mages saving Dordovans than if they’d all stayed inside and let their erstwhile enemies die. Dystran eyed the sky again. Vuldaroq was at their head, the other three now in close attendance. They had abandoned any thoughts of evading the mass of demons closing around them and were flying headlong and head-first straight at the doors of the complex. The timing was going to be tight.

‘FlameWall preparation now,’ he barked to the mage at his side.

Both men formulated the rigid, single-sided structure into which was built the mechanism that caused the flames to decay slowly. It was a static spell. They could cast and forget. Right now that was more than merely a blessing.

From his left, Dystran heard a sudden surge in shouting. Demons were attacking hard on the flank, threatening to overwhelm the flimsy mage defence.

Chandyr’s voice sounded softly in his ear. ‘It has to be now, my Lord.’

Dystran nodded his understanding. ‘Ready,’ he said.

‘Last spells and retreat!’ shouted Chandyr. ‘Don’t look back, get inside the ColdRooms. I want men ready if any of those bastards follow our friends in. Go!’

Heartbeats later, a volley of spells clattered into the mass of demons still a hundred yards distant but closing hard. To the left, the distance was not so great. Mist burned away, screams filled the sky and cold washed out over the college, IceWind finding its targets and flaying the skin from its victims. But there were so very many of them. They choked the sky and now the ground in front of the college. All the spells had done was buy them a few moments.

‘Run!’ Chandyr led the charge back to the doors, stopping by Dystran who had backed right to the edge of the ColdRoom.

Soldiers and mages rushed past. Demons closed in from left, right and above. The corridor down which the Dordovans flew narrowed, the quartet dropping to line astern to keep the demons crucial feet from them. The last mage didn’t want to look back. A huge winged creature was slashing at his feet, missing them by hairs alone.

‘Wait just a moment,’ said Dystran, feeling the anxiety of the mage next to him. Vuldaroq was fifty yards away. ‘Right, let’s give them something to aim at.’

The two mages cast, FlameWalls, parallel, forty feet high and a hundred long sprang up either side of the doors. Demons coming in from the flanks were forced to stop, those above veered away. Vuldaroq charged headlong.

‘Oh Gods,’ muttered Dystran and stumbled back inside the complex, dragging Chandyr and the other mage with him. ‘We’re going to have to break their fall. Get in front of the tower pillar. This is going to hurt.’

He’d only got a few yards inside and turned before Vuldaroq flew into the doorway. The ColdRoom snapped off the flow of mana. His ShadowWings disappeared and he plunged the dozen or so feet to the ground and rolled out of control towards the uncompromising stone of Dystran’s tower. Fortunately for him, he hit Dystran first and the two men sprawled to a stop.

Immediately after him, the surviving three flashed in, dropped and bounced, mages rushing to their aid. Behind them, those demons too enraged to pull away followed them in. Three of them, one huge, the size of a wagon, two smaller, man-size, and all three keening in pain inside the ColdRoom that stripped them of the mana that gave them life.

The battle was brief but loud. Swords flashed in the torchlight. Chandyr shouted for concentration and caution. The demons flew raggedly, dropping quickly as their strength ebbed but determined to take any with them that they could. Right in Dystran’s eyeline, one of his men moved too slowly. His blade missed the claw that dragged at him and he was helpless, his soul snagged and taken. He crumpled.

Chandyr’s blade thudded into the back of the same creature, others joining him. They drove it to the ground, hacking and slashing. One blow took its head from its body and the whole of it shuddered and lay still.

Silence but for heavy breathing and quiet reassuring voices. The other two demons had fled through the open complex doors which were shut on the decaying FlameWalls. Dystran looked about him at the white-faced men sitting or leaning against walls. Many had their heads in their hands. He could see tears, though whether through relief or terror he couldn’t say. The close friends of the man who had died surrounded him. There was the sound of a blade dropping from a tired grip.

‘Well done, everyone,’ said Chandyr. ‘Well done.’

Dystran turned his attention to the man lying in his arms. Vuldaroq. The last time he had seen Dordover’s Arch Mage, he had been belligerent, obese and arrogant. The man he looked at now was a shadow. Gaunt and pale, the skin of his face and neck hanging loose as it must do over his entire body. Dystran felt the shake in Vuldaroq’s muscles and saw the tears squeezing from his tight-shut eyes. He drew breath in ragged gasps. Blood ran from cuts on his face and hands, and already skin was discolouring where he had struck the ground hard.

Dystran knew he should hate the man but two years changed so much. The war had been over ever since the demons first appeared and the Wesmen had left the city. Since then, the scant communication between the colleges had been like finding long-lost friends. There had been no time for recrimination.

The Lord of the Mount of Xetesk sat up and dragged Vuldaroq to a seated position. The Dordovan was spent. He surely could not have flown for much longer. A quick glance told him that the others were in no better condition.

‘Get me hot drink, food and blankets. I want beds made for these men to rest on,’ said Dystran. ‘We’ve saved them from the demons. Let’s not lose them to exhaustion.’

Vuldaroq’s eyes flickered open. They were red and brimmed with tears.

‘Thank you,’ he croaked, voice dry and cracked.

‘That was quite some entrance,’ said Dystran. ‘What the hell happened?’

‘Dordover is gone,’ said Vuldaroq, voice suddenly loud in the silence that fell in the dome as he spoke. ‘We’re all that is left.’

Dystran felt cold. The second great college of Balaia. Reduced to four mages.

‘How?’

‘We were never strong enough and they grew stronger every day. It was sudden in the last few days. Like they’d gained power from somewhere.’ He coughed. It wracked his entire body and he shivered.

‘Later,’ said Dystran. ‘Food and rest now. You’re safe here for the time being.’

But the words Vuldaroq had spoken backed up everything Dystran feared. He searched for Chandyr. The commander met his gaze levelly from across the dome.

‘I need some good news,’ said Dystran. ‘Where’s my library team?’

‘They aren’t back yet,’ said Chandyr. ‘Patience, my Lord.’

‘It’s happening now,’ said Dystran. ‘We don’t have time for patience.’

The shadows of demons flitted in and out of Sharyr’s peripheral vision. The whir of their wings was the only sound they made. He had to keep out of his mind the thought of their spindly fingers reaching for his soul while he searched feverishly among the shelves for anything that might give them a clue to the demons’ tactics.

Smoke was filling the library from the fire that was fast consuming the accumulated knowledge of Xetesk. Whatever he and his team collected now could well be all that was ever salvaged.

Sharyr knew the demons had lost him temporarily after he’d pushed them through a skylight and dropped the ForceCone. But they hadn’t lost Suarav. What a spirit the man had. He could hear the captain’s taunts and shouts, trying to draw the soul stealers away from the two surviving archivists looking for Dystran’s prayed-for panacea.

The conscript was gone. The sound of the man’s cut-off scream would live with him forever. He smiled grimly at the thought that forever for him could be a very short time indeed.

Sharyr grabbed a demonology scroll and with a surge of excitement having seen the author’s name, stuffed it into his cloak. Behind him, new flame flared high into the library and sent a billow of choking smoke across the lower hall. The shadow of a grasping demon was cast huge against a wall. He heard one of his archivists call a warning.

‘Time’s up!’ roared Suarav. There was the sound of a sword thudding dully. A demon yelped and screeched. ‘Meeting point, now!’

Sharyr turned right, heading back towards the seat of the fire. Back towards the library doors. He heard the whir and saw a demon round the corner and float gently towards him along the aisle. He backed away.

‘No escape,’ said the demon, advancing with hands outstretched. ‘We seek what you seek.’

‘It’ll burn before you set eyes on it,’ said Sharyr. He backed off further and felt a chill, heard the whirring again, this time behind him. He was trapped.

‘No escape,’ repeated the demon. It came on, fingers rippling.

Right was wall, left, bookcases. Sharyr’s mind was made up. The rest went by in a blur.

‘You will not have me,’ he whispered.

He could not cast, there was no time. Flames crackled menacingly in the centre of the library. Smoke irritated his eyes. The demons closed lazily. Sharyr had only one chance at what he intended to do. He threw himself shoulder-first into the freestanding bookcases that were the left-hand border of the aisle. It was a long, solid structure with more shelves racked beyond it. About ten feet high and heavy with books. Mercifully, it was not bolted to the floor.

Sharyr felt it move and he started to climb, scrambling up the shelves, arms and legs scrabbling for purchase. His momentum carried him up while the bookcase tipped away from him. With his feet on the top shelf, the bookcase passed the point of no return. The thundering sound of books falling mixed with that of his breathing, his heartbeat, Suarav’s shouts and the flames. The shelving creaked. He stood, riding the case. It gathered momentum and cannoned into the one across the next aisle.

‘Oh shit,’ he muttered. There were six aisles before the wide gap of the centre aisle of the library.

He began to move again, running at an angle across the cases, jumping to the next, almost stumbling. He could feel the quickening movement beneath his feet. He kept himself going, his paces light. The clattering of the cases and the slipping of books reached a crescendo. Suarav was barking orders. He could see the heads of his friends bobbing as they sprinted down the centre aisle, demons in pursuit. He daren’t guess how close his own pursuers were.

Sharyr took one last leap, caught the falling edge of a case and tumbled hard to the ground. He turned a diving forward roll, feeling a sharp crack in his collar-bone. He sprawled and cried out, clutching at his clothing, desperate to keep the texts with him.

A strong hand gripped him under his good arm and hauled.

‘By all the Gods burning, that was quite a performance,’ growled Suarav. ‘Now go, run hard left at the main doors as we’d planned. You know the way in.’

Sharyr could feel the heat of the fire on his face. It was eating up at the walls. The pain in his right shoulder was terrible, nauseating.

‘What about you?’

‘I’ll keep them back.’ Suarav leaned in. ‘Don’t argue with me, boy. We always knew this could happen.’

Sharyr nodded, turned and ran; the last thing he heard behind him was Suarav daring them to try and pass him.

Chapter 14

The Unknown made them all wait. The longboat was ready to take him and The Raven to join the others already aboard the Calaian Sun but he wasn’t ready yet. There was never enough time for goodbye. Particularly when he had no desire to leave.

‘I can’t believe I’m doing this,’ he said, walking arm in arm with Diera through the woods to the left of the path that led to the landing beach. Jonas trotted along next to them, oblivious to the mood for the moment, lost in a nonsense game of his own devising.

‘It’s the price we have to pay because of who you are,’ said Diera, her words carrying no conviction.

A stiff warm breeze swayed the narrow trunks surrounding them. A few dead leaves fell.

‘We’ve paid enough,’ he said.

‘Apparently not.’

The Unknown stopped and faced her, looking into her lovely face, the fear in her eyes clear behind her forced smile.

‘One word and I’ll stay,’ he said.

‘What, and wonder how they are coping without you? We’ve been through this, Sol. There isn’t a choice.’ She looked down at Jonas who had stopped his play to stare at them, a frown across his innocence. ‘There never is.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Every word was clumsy. None of it helped. He was trapped between his desire and his calling. Gods, he’d shunned the soldier’s life to avoid exactly that. At least now he knew why. It hurt.

‘What for?’ She placed her hands on his chest, smoothed his shirt to either side. ‘I heard Sha-Kaan. I do trust him. This is the only way.’

He was unsure who she was trying to convince.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Or you’ll miss the tide and we’ll have to go through all this again.’

He crushed her to him and felt her strength give and the sobs coming. Jonas clung onto his mother’s leg, his expression collapsed into anxiety.

‘Mummy?’

The Unknown swept him up and the three embraced long and hard.

‘You’re not coming back, are you?’ said Diera, voice thick and half muffled by his chest. ‘Not this time.’

The Unknown released her, keeping hold of Jonas. ‘I—’

‘No time for dreams or lies,’ said Diera, stroking his face.

‘I want to believe it,’ said The Unknown. ‘The Gods know it’ll be the one thing that keeps me going.’

‘But your head says what?’

‘That we’re going against an enemy so powerful it has all but overrun the four colleges and controls Balaia. That in all probability, we will all die attempting to liberate our country. That what sort of husband and father would I be if I didn’t at least try?’

Unexpectedly, Diera smiled, this time with warmth and humour. The Unknown smoothed away her tears.

‘You know, when I was growing up, I dreamed I’d have a husband who was a true hero. Someone who I’d wave off to fight for me and welcome back time and again. I got my wish, didn’t I? Almost.’

‘Looks like it,’ he said. ‘You should have chosen better.’

‘And be a demon-slave or dead,’ she said. ‘I’ll take the heartache.’

‘There is that.’

‘I can’t wave you off. Not again.’

The Unknown nodded. He unhooked Jonas’s grip from his shoulder and brought the boy in front of him. Jonas regarded him quizzically.

‘You look after your mother, won’t you?’

Jonas’s sombre nod dragged a chuckle from The Unknown’s dry, sore throat where he’d been swallowing hard. He kissed the boy on his cheeks and handed him back to Diera.

‘Goodbye, Sol,’ she said, tears falling anew. ‘I love you.’

‘And I love you. With every beat of my heart,’ he said. ‘Keep believing.’

‘I’ll try.’

He leaned in and kissed her on the mouth, a tender, lingering touch. Their tongues met briefly, firing passion, and pulled away. He stepped back, let his hand brush her cheek and then forced his legs to turn and carry him to the waiting longboat.

Sha-Kaan had stayed in the Klene a very long time. He had cursed the conspiracy of circumstances that had taken the eyes of the Kaan from the Balaian dimension. But he knew also that there was little the brood could realistically have done. The Xeteskians had dabbled once too often with the power of dimensional space and now they were all paying the penalty. Contact with Dragonene mages was sparse and difficult. Soon it would cease altogether. The demons grew stronger every day.

He was unused to the fear he felt at what he had to do. His brood urged him not to travel alone but he really had no choice. A flight of Kaan dragons would be seen as a threat and destroyed. Further, he still could not afford to take able dragons from the defence of his Broodlands while the newborn were so weak.

So it was that he flew high and alone for the Broodlands of the Naik, his fiercest enemies. He already knew he could rely on the Veret to support him. Long-time allies, they had foresight that the Naik had never displayed. His greatest fear was that the Naik would see this as an opportunity to destroy the Kaan, as indeed it was. But if they did, it would consign them to death also. The question was, could he persuade them of that fact?

One factor was of some comfort. Should he fail, the enemy would not be long following him to the dead lands.

No Kaan knew the exact location of the Naik Broodlands but they all knew in which part of Beshara they would encounter attack. Sha-Kaan prepared himself for the inevitable challenge. His flame ducts were full and lubricated should he need them. The Vestare had spent days massaging balms and oils into his scales and the old muscles at his wing roots to give him increased flexibility; and he practised in his mind what he would say to buy him life enough to at least face Yasal-Naik, their brood leader.

And once he was prepared, he pulsed a message to Hirad Coldheart that he was among enemies and dived through the high cloud, barking loud to announce his presence.

For a while, he saw nothing in the skies. Below him, a vast desert fled away to distant iron-grey mountains. The great ocean was far away to his right and behind him the lush plains of Teras were a distant memory. He saw them first as a cloud like a sandstorm brewing ahead and close to the ground. The cloud boiled upwards, spiralling fast towards him, resolving itself into six rust-brown Naik dragons. All were young to his eyes, all desperate to reach him first, all charged with aggression and hate.

Sha-Kaan watched them come. He made sure he displayed no aggression himself. He circled slowly, his belly scales fully displayed, his neck straight and his wings deployed. Their formation worried him. It was by no means a holding pattern. It was an attack chevron.

He barked again, a sound of submission, but they still drove on unchanged, their calls a challenge to him and his brood. He held station a moment longer until it became plain their pace was going to take them straight through him. Barking his irritation, he beat his wings hard, propelling himself up and north of them, forcing them to break formation to intercept. One was ahead of the others. Sha-Kaan saw its mouth open.

He had not survived so many cycles without being a master of timing his dives. The Naik drove onwards, sure of his quarry. Sha-Kaan saw the breath draw in and the neck swell around its flame ducts. Orange fire washed the space where he should have been but he had furled his wings and dropped like a stone, bringing his head round to pour flame over the young dragon’s flank.

In the next instant, he spread his wings wide, braking his fall dramatically. He roared loud. The remaining dragons faltered in flight, watching their brother plummet groundwards. Perhaps for the first time, they realised who it was they faced. This was no ordinary enemy. This was Sha-Kaan.

The five remaining fanned out around him where he hovered, again beating his wings gently, displaying his scales, hanging perpendicular to the ground thousands of feet below.

‘Do you know nothing, or are you so full of anger you cannot read the signs of your visitors?’ Sha’s voice carried across the winds of heights. He saw them hesitating, caught between their awe of him and their knowledge that together they might just take him down and strike a decisive victory.

‘You are alone, Old Kaan,’ taunted one. ‘Vulnerable.’

‘That I am,’ said Sha-Kaan. ‘And perhaps your minds should turn to wonder why that is? Had I come to challenge you, I would not have come alone.’

‘We are unsure that you are alone,’ said another.

Sha-Kaan looked long and slow at the skies all around them. The clouds he had come through were ten thousand feet above their heads. There was nowhere to hide.

‘Then you should open your eyes, whelp. Now take me to Yasal-Naik, I must speak with him.’

‘We will not. It is a trick to gain access to our Broodlands.’

Sha-Kaan sighed. ‘Then bring him to me.’

‘We do not take orders from the Kaan.’

Sha-Kaan rumbled in his throat. ‘It is a request.’

‘State the reason.’

‘Because if he doesn’t come and he doesn’t listen to me, the Arakhe will soon destroy us all.’

There was a pause while they digested his statement and no doubt spoke among themselves, pulsing thoughts and ideas.

‘There is no evidence to support this. Yasal will not thank us for disturbing him but he will thank us for bringing back your carcass.’

‘And you will condemn your brood to extinction.’ Sha-Kaan beat his wings once and extended his neck before bringing it back to a respectful ‘S’ shape. ‘I ask you to believe me. I am Sha-Kaan and I have travelled alone to speak to Yasal. Let him decide my fate. I will abide by whatever he decrees.

‘The choice, my young Naik, is yours.’

The Unknown didn’t say much for a day. Hirad left him to it. The big warrior, limping a little more heavily, spent most of the time leaning on the aft rail, gazing back across the open water. He watched the Ornouth Archipelago diminishing towards the horizon. It was a beautiful sight with the sun still catching white sand or the azure shallow waters and throwing vibrant patterns onto the haze in the sky.

But Hirad knew he wasn’t seeing that. All he could see were his wife and child disappearing beyond his reach and he had no real expectation of ever seeing them again.

It was dawn on the second day of their voyage back to Balaia. Hirad was on the wheel deck looking down on The Unknown’s shaven head. Behind him, Jevin was guiding his novice helmsman. The elf’s gentle voice little more than a murmur as he described the nuances of steering his sleek vessel.

Hirad felt a hand on his shoulder. Denser.

‘Hey, big fella. Thinking too hard?’

Hirad turned briefly. ‘Look what I’ve done.’

‘He knows he’s in the right place,’ said Denser. ‘Just give him time.’

‘I’ve torn him from his family. It’s unforgivable.’

‘True but you can’t think of it that way. Take it back as far as you like. Like I say, I’m more to blame. I’m a Xeteskian.’

‘No you aren’t. You’re Raven.’

‘I believed them for long enough.’

The Unknown turned and stared up at them, his face stone.

‘Neither of you are helping me with your feeble angst,’ he said. ‘I have my own mind. I exercised it. Now let it drop.’ He returned his gaze to the ocean.

‘Where’s Erienne?’ asked Hirad after an uncomfortable pause.

‘Resting. She and Cleress are still working on that casting.’