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Tobin heard a strange buzzing, like bees, but it was too early in the year. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the damp ground, looking up into Tharin’s worried face as the man chafed his wrists and chest.
‘Tobin? What’s wrong with you, lad?’
Puzzled, Tobin sat up and looked around. There was his bow lying on the damp ground, but no one seemed upset about that. Koni was sitting on the fallen tree beside him, holding the dead grouse up by its feet.
‘You got him, Prince Tobin. You knocked old Master Grouse right off his log. What did you go and faint for, eh? Are you sick?’
Tobin shook his head. He didn’t know what had happened. Reaching for the bird, he spread its tail and admired the fan of barred feathers.
‘It was a fine shot, but I think perhaps that’s enough for today,’ said Tharin.
Tobin shook his head again, more vigorously this time, and jumped up to show them how well he was.
Tharin hesitated a moment, then laughed. ‘All right then, if you say so!’
Tobin shot another grouse before dusk and by the time they started down the road everyone had forgotten all about his silly faint, even Tobin.
Over the next few weeks the days grew longer and they spent more time in the forest. Spring came to the mountains, clothing the trees in fresh new green and pulling tender shoots and colourful mushrooms up through the brown loam. Does came out into the forest clearing to teach their spotted fawns to graze and Tharin would not shoot them, just grouse and rabbits.
They stayed out all day sometimes, cooking their kills on sticks over a fire when the hunting was good, eating the bread and cheese Cook sent along when it wasn’t. Tobin didn’t care either way, so long as it meant being outdoors. He’d never had so much fun.
Tharin and Koni taught Tobin how to keep his bearings in the trees using the sun’s position over his shoulder. They came across a nest of wood snakes in a rock pile, still sluggish from their winter sleep and Koni explained how to tell if they were vipers or not by the shape of their heads. Tharin showed him the tracks and spoor of the creatures that shared this forest. There were mostly signs of rabbits and fox and stag. As they walked along a game trail one day, however, Tharin suddenly bent down next to patch of soft earth.
‘See that?’ he said, pointing out a print broader than his hand. It looked something like a hound’s, but rounder. ‘That’s a catamount. This is why you play in the courtyard, my lad. A big she cat with cubs to feed would consider you a good day’s catch.’
Seeing Tobin’s look of alarm, he chuckled and ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘You’re not likely to see one in daylight, and as summer comes they’ll move back up into the mountains. But you don’t ever want to be out here alone at night.’
Tobin took in all these lessons eagerly, and made a few observations of his own: the inviting gap beneath a fallen tree, a sheltered circle of rocks, a shadowy hole beneath a boulder – all fine hiding spots, big enough for the troublesome doll. For the first time, he wondered what it would be like to walk here alone and explore these hidden places by himself.
His father hunted with them now and then, but he was too quiet for Tobin to feel comfortable around him. Most days he stayed shut up in his room, just as Tobin’s mother had.
Tobin would steal to his father’s door and press his ear to it, aching for things to be the way they had been. Before.
Nari found him there one afternoon and knelt down, putting her arms around him. ‘Don’t fret,’ she whispered, stroking his cheek. ‘Men do their grieving alone. He’ll soon be right again.’
But as wildflowers burst out to carpet the new grass in the meadow, Rhius remained a shadow in the house.
By the end of Lithion the roads were dry enough to drive the cart to market. On market day, Cook and Nari took Tobin with them into Alestun, thinking it would be treat for him to ride Gosi beside the cart. He shook his head, trying to tell Nari that he didn’t want to go, but she clucked her tongue at him, insisting he’d enjoy the ride.
There were a few new lambs and kids in the meadows around the town, and the fields of young oats and barley looked like soft woollen blankets thrown on the ground. Wild crocus grew thickly at the edges of the road and they stopped to gather handfuls of these for the shrine.
Alestun held no charm for Tobin now. He ignored the other children and never allowed himself to look at any dolls. He added his flowers to the fragrant piles around the pillar of Dalna and waited stoically for the adults to finish their business.
They arrived home that evening to find Rhius and the others in the courtyard, packing their horses to leave. Tobin slid off Gosi’s back and ran to his father.
Rhius. took him by the shoulders. ‘I’m needed at court. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’
‘So will I, little prince,’ Tharin promised, looking sadder than his father did to be leaving.
I need you here! Tobin wanted to cry out. But words still would not come, and he had to turn away so they wouldn’t see his tears. By nightfall they were gone, leaving him lonelier than ever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Iya and Arkoniel spent the late winter months just outside Ilear, guesting with a wizard named Virishan. This woman had no vision except her own, which drove her to seek out and shelter god-touched children among the poor. She had fifteen young students, many of them already severely crippled or battered by the ignorant folk they’d been born to. Most of them would never amount to much as wizards, but what humble powers they’d retained were cherished and coaxed forth under Virishan’s patient tutelage. Iya and Arkoniel gave what help they could in return for shelter, and Iya left Virishan one of her pebbles when they departed.
When the weather cleared they made their way to Sylara, where Iya had arranged passage south. They reached it just before sundown and encountered an unusual number of people on the road, all streaming into the little port.
‘What’s going on?’ Arkoniel asked a farmer. ‘Is it a fair?’
The man eyed their silver amulets with distrust. ‘No, a bonfire stoked with your kind.’
‘The Harriers are there?’ asked Iya.
The man spat over his shoulder. ‘Yes, Mistress, and they’ve brought a gang of traitors who dared speak against the King’s rule. You’d do best to steer clear of Sylara today.’
Iya reined her horse to the side of the road and Arkoniel followed. ‘Perhaps we should take his advice,’ he muttered, looking nervously around at the crowd. We’re strangers here, with no one to vouch for us.’
He was right, of course, but Iya shook her head. ‘The Lightbearer has put an opportunity in our path. I want to see what they do, while we’re still unknown to them. And that’s something we should make certain of, too. Take off your amulet.’
Leaving the road, she led him to a small oak grove on a nearby hill. Here, protected by a circle of stones and sigils, they left their amulets and every other accoutrement that marked them as wizards except the leather bag.
Trusting that their plain travelling garb would excite no suspicion, they rode on to Sylara.
Even without his amulet, Arkoniel couldn’t help glancing around nervously as they entered the town. Could these Harriers recognize a wizard merely by his powers? Some of the rumours they’d picked up invested the white clad wizards with powers beyond the normal range. If so, they’d chosen an odd place to show them off. Sylara was nothing but a rambling, dirty harbour town.
The waterfront was already crowded with spectators. Arkoniel could hear jeers and catcalls echoing across the water as they made their way down the muddy street to the shore.
The crowd was too thick to get through, so Iya paid a taverner to watch from a squalid little upper room that overlooked the waterfront. A broad platform had been set up here, built between two stone jetties. Soldiers wearing dark grey tabards with the outline of a flying hawk stitched in red across the breast stood two deep on the landward side. Arkoniel counted forty in all.
Behind them stood a long gibbet and a knot of wizards by two large wooden frames. These last looked like upended bedframes, but larger.
‘White robes,’ Iya muttered, looking at the wizards.
‘Niryn’s fashion. He had on a white robe the night Tobin was born.’
Six people already dangled from the horizontal pole of the gibbet. The four men hung limp at the end of their halters; one still wore the robes of a priest of Illior. The remaining two, a woman and a boy, were so small that their weight was not enough to snap their necks. Bound hand and foot, they bucked and twisted wildly.
Fighting for life, or death? Arkoniel wondered, horrified. They reminded him perversely of a butterfly he’d watched emerge from its winter chrysalis – suspended beneath a branch by a bit of silk, it had twitched and jiggled inside the shiny brown casing. These two looked like that, but their struggle would not end in wings and colour.
At last some soldiers grabbed their legs and hauled them down to snap their necks. A few cheers went up among the crowd, but most of the onlookers had fallen silent.
Arkoniel clutched the window frame, already nauseous, but there was worse to follow.
The wizards had remained motionless near the wooden frames all this time. As soon as the last of the hanged went still, they spread out in a line across the platform, revealing the two naked, kneeling men they’d been shielding with their circle. One was an old man with white hair, the other was young and dark. Both wore thick iron bands around their necks and wrists.
Arkoniel squinted down at the Harrier wizards and let out a gasp of dismay. He couldn’t make out faces at this distance, but he recognized the forked red beard of the man standing closest to the frames.
‘That’s Niryn himself!’
‘Yes. I didn’t realize there were so many, but I suppose there would have to be … Those prisoners are wizards. See those iron bands? Very powerful magic, that. They cloud the mind.’
Soldiers pulled the prisoners to their feet and bound them spread-eagled on the frames with silver cables. Now Arkoniel could see the complex spell patterns that covered each man’s chest. Before he could ask Iya what these signified she let out a groan and clutched his hand.
When the victims were secured the wizards flanked them in two rows and began their incantations. The old man fixed his gaze stoically on the sky, but his companion panicked, screaming and imploring the crowd and Illior to save him.
‘Can’t we do –’ Arkoniel staggered as a blinding ache struck him behind the eyes. ‘What is it? Do you feel it?’
‘It’s a warding,’ Iya whispered, pressing a hand to her brow. ‘And a warning to any of us who might be watching.’
The crowd had gone completely silent now. Arkoniel could hear the chanting growing louder and louder. The blur of words was unintelligible, but the throbbing in his head grew stronger and spread to his chest and arms until his heart felt as if it was being squeezed between heavy stones. He slowly slid down to his knees in front of the window, but could not look away.
Both prisoners began to shake violently, then shrieked as white flames sprang from their flesh to engulf them. There was no smoke. The white fire burned with such intensity that within a few moments nothing was left on the frames but shrivelled black hands and feet dangling from the silver bonds. Iya was whispering hoarsely beside him, and he joined her in the prayer for the dead.
When it was over, Iya slumped down on the narrow bed and wove a spell of silence around them with shaking fingers. Arkoniel remained where he was under the window, unable to move. For a long time neither could speak.
At last Iya whispered, ‘There was nothing we could have done. Nothing. I see their power now. They’ve banded together and joined their strength. The rest of us are so scattered …’
‘That, and the King’s sanction!’ Arkoniel spat out. ‘He’s his mad mother’s son after all.’
‘He’s worse. She was insane, where he is ruthless, and intelligent enough to turn wizards against their own kind.’
Fear kept them in the tiny room until nightfall, when the tavern keeper shooed them out to make way for a whore and her cully.
The taverns were open and there were still many people on the street, but none ventured out onto the platform. Torches had been left burning there. Arkoniel could see the bodies on the gibbet swinging in the night breeze. The frames, however, were gone.
‘Should we go see if there’s anything to be learned?’
‘No.’ Iya drew him hastily away. ‘It’s too dangerous. They might be watching.’
Slipping out of town by the darkest alleys, they rode back to the grove and gathered their tools. But when Arkoniel reached for the amulets, Iya shook her head. They left them where they lay and rode on without speaking until the town was far behind them.
‘Eight wizards could do that, Arkoniel, just eight!’ Iya burst out at last, voice shaking with fury. ‘And there was nothing we could do against them. I begin to see more clearly now. The Third Orëska the Oracle revealed to me in my vision – it was a great confederation of wizards in a shining palace of their own at the heart of a great city. If eight are enough to carry out the evil we witnessed here, what could a hundred accomplish for good? And who could stand against us?’
‘Like in the Great War,’ said Arkoniel.
Iya shook her head. ‘That union lasted only as long as the war, and in the face of the most horrible conflict and upheaval. Think what we could do with peace and time enough to work! Imagine – the knowledge you and I have collected in our travels combined with that of a hundred other wizards? And think of Virishan’s poor children? Imagine them saved sooner and brought up in such a place, with dozens of teachers instead of one, and whole libraries of wisdom to draw from?’
‘But instead, that same power is being used to divide us against ourselves.’
Iya stared into the distance, her face unreadable in the starlight. ‘Famine. Disease. Raiders. Now this. Sometimes, Arkoniel, I see Skala like a sacrificial bull at Sakor-tide. But instead of a clean stroke of the sword to kill it, it’s being stuck over and over with little knives until it weakens and falls to its knees.’ She turned grimly to Arkoniel. ‘And there’s Plenimar just across the water, scenting blood like a wolf.’
‘It’s almost as if Niryn has had the same vision, but turned it on its head,’ Arkoniel murmured. ‘Why would the Lightbearer do that?’
‘You saw the priest on the gibbet, my boy. Do you really think it’s Illior who guides him?’
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