The Master Read online

  Tarod said nothing, didn’t move, and slowly, with relish, Ravakin drew a long knife from his belt. His thumb played on the hilt. ‘Did you hear me, Margrave of the Seven Hells? We’re going to send you to your own domain … ‘ He reached out and, with practised confidence, touched the point of the knife to Tarod’s throat, while two of his men started to whistle in crude harmony. ‘Entertain us, Margrave. Let’s see you dance to our tune!’

  Tarod had stood impassive throughout the brigands’

  taunting, but suddenly anger smouldered in him and with it came a resurgence of another, familiar feeling.

  He’d made no move to challenge his assailants, knowing he was at a disadvantage and unsure of how much power, if any, he could bring to bear against them. But the anger had awoken other emotions, and he realised that, weakened though he might be, he was still far more than a match for such a gaggle of arrogant fools.

  ‘Ravakin.’ He spoke quietly but the abrupt change in the tone of his voice made the brigand leader frown. The knife-blade wavered, and with a contemptuous gesture Tarod reached up to brush it aside. Ravakin’s face reddened with rage and he would have struck out, but his horse shifted back, sensing something that, as yet, was beyond its master’s comprehension. Green eyes met Ravakin’s faded grey ones, and the brigand leader’s gaze was held fast.

  ‘I give you one chance,’ Tarod said softly. ‘Go about your business - trouble some other traveller, and leave me in peace. You’ll have no further warning, Ravakin.’

  Ravakin continued to stare at him for a few more moments, then he threw his head back and bellowed with laughter.

  ‘A threat! A threat, from the Margrave of the Seven Hells and no less a personage!’ Reassured, his followers joined in the laughter. ‘No knife, no sword, not even a stave about him, and he thinks to frighten me!’ The laughter died into a hiccup and Ravakin wiped his nose and streaming eyes on his sleeve. Then his broad grin abruptly changed to an ugly scowl and he said with harsh contempt, ‘Kill him.’

  In their anxiety to ape their leader’s every change of mood, the men were still sniggering, and were slow to react to the command. Before they could make a move, Tarod’s left hand shot out and clamped over the nose of Ravakin’s horse; and he spoke a single, alien word.

  The animal shrieked and reared and Tarod only just ducked aside in time to avoid its flailing hoofs. The brigand leader let out a yell of astonishment that instantly changed to a cry of terror as the panicking beast bucked. He lost his grip and pitched sideways out of the saddle, to land with a bone-cracking thump in the dust.

  The horse bolted, and Ravakin’s cry became a roar of insensate fury as he tried to struggle to his feet, groping for his lost blade. He was halfway up when appallingly powerful fingers took him by the throat and forced his head round at an agonising angle, until, twisted and racked with pain, he stared into Tarod’s ice-hard green eyes.

  The men who survived him could never even guess at the nature of the horrors that Ravakin saw in that moment; the illusions Tarod conjured were for him alone, and they were born of an ancient, malevolent power that delighted in torment. All they saw was the dark and malignant aura that flickered into existence about the man who, until moments ago, had been easy and entertaining prey. Their horses whinnied and reared, and above their noise came the sound of Ravakin’s scream, an incoherent plea and protest as his mind toppled over the brink of insanity. His eyes bulged and his face turned purple; his hands clawed desperately at the unnameable phantasms that bore down on him, and among which the cruelly smiling face of the black-haired stranger seemed to burn like fire. He twisted and writhed, gargling as his tongue protruded like a bloated serpent from his mouth - then the transfixed men heard a single, sickening crack, as, one-handed, Tarod broke Ravakin’s neck.

  The brigand band didn’t wait to witness their leader’s final fate. Even as Tarod swung to face them, incensed still by rage and anticipating attack from behind, they were hauling their mounts’ heads around and digging frantic heels into the animals’ flanks, spurring them away and not caring where they fled. Their voices, shrill with panic, goaded the animals on, and Tarod was left staring after them as the blindness of fury slowly drained away.

  The brigands’ voices and the thunder of hoofs were lost to the soughing wind, and he reeled back against the rock outcrop, suddenly drained and weak. Not two paces away Ravakin lay, tongue out and round eyes staring stupidly at a boulder a foot from his nose, and Tarod looked down at the corpse with a surge of disgust.

  To do what he had done had been sheer, wanton maleficence. It would have been simple enough to kill the brigand leader, without the need for such savage cruelty; and yet he had been unable to resist the temptation.

  The power had flowed in him, and he had used it… he looked at his left hand, and the ruined base of the ring that he still wore on his index finger. Even without the Chaos stone there was evil in him. With the stone restored, how much harder would it be to fight such a baneful influence?

  On the heels of that thought came a barbed feeling that he was indulging in self-pity. More important than his well-being was that of Cyllan, who carried the Chaos stone and had none of his powers to aid her. If he was to find her, pragmatism dictated that he must waste no time and use whatever resources he had to hand, whatever his conscience might argue.

  He straightened, moved to stand over the corpse, and stirred it with one foot so that it rolled on to its back.

  Ignoring the accusing, sightless stare, Tarod searched Ravakin’s body. As well as his short sword, the brigand leader had carried a sharp and well-balanced knife in an embroidered sheath, doubtless the property of some earlier victim; and in a pouch under his coat were coins - about fifty gravines in all - and a handful of small but fairly valuable gemstones. Enough, at least, to enable Tarod to maintain an image that would arouse no suspicion in the provincial towns.

  He looked up, and saw the dead man’s horse standing a short distance away, head down and watching him. It had obviously been trained to stand when unmounted, and once its fear had receded it obeyed that training.

  Tarod raised a hand and snapped his fingers, uttering a low, guttural sound. The horse pricked up its ears and approached, uncertainly at first then with greater confidence as he added a silent, mental command to the gesture. It was a good animal, a big-boned and powerful bay; no brigand in his right senses would use anything but a strong and reliable mount, and Ravakin had been an expert in his own nefarious way. The horse stood passive while Tarod examined its two saddlebags. In them he found more coins, a woman’s bronze and enamel necklace and matching bracelet, and a supply of food - dried meat and slabs of a naturally fermented fruit; the rations of a man who travelled light but needed good sustenance. There was also a wine-skin, three-quarters empty but useful for carrying water, and Tarod drank the remainder of its contents and ate one of the dried fruit slabs while he checked the animal’s harness, buckled the sheathed knife on to his belt, and finally swung himself into the bay’s saddle. As the animal raised its head and snorted, eager to be away from the outcrop with its smell of death, Tarod pulled the necklace and bracelet from the saddlebag and dropped them on to Ravakin’s body, where they fell with a small, cold clink.

  The brigand’s followers wouldn’t dare to return here; with luck, the corpse would be found by men from the Empty Province mines and it was possible that these ornaments would eventually be returned to their rightful owner, if she still lived.

  He looked over his shoulder. The rain clouds were little more than a mile away now, but he believed the bay could outdistance them. Turning the animal’s head South, he urged it into a canter along the rough track.

  Cyllan woke to see the ghostly glimmer of false dawn casting the small window of her room at the High Tree tavern into pale relief. She turned over in the soft bed, huddling deeper under the plentiful blankets, and for a few minutes simply stared at the window until her awakening senses had fully returned. Then, alarmed, she sat up.


  She hadn’t intended to sleep for so long. Although it was still night, the faint shining in the East told her that morning wasn’t long away, and she had planned to be far from Wathryn before anyone else was abroad.

  She slipped out of bed, wincing as her entire body protested. The fall she’d taken had battered her badly, and the full extent of the bruising was only now starting to make itself felt. To make matters worse, she’d grown unaccustomed to long hours in the saddle during her stay at the Castle of the Star Peninsula, and the ride - especially the flight from the bandits - had given her muscles further punishment. No matter; she must still be away. In the wake of what the youth, Gordach, had unwittingly revealed to her last night, she didn’t dare stay in this town a moment past the dawn.

  The air was bitterly cold, and Cyllan wrapped one of the blankets around herself before padding to the window and kneeling to peer out. She had been too tired last night to take in anything but the barest details of her surroundings; all she remembered was a market square and the plump, astonished face of Sheniya Win Mar when her escort brought her to the tavern door. The innkeeper had bustled her into a long, low room where brass and pewter gleamed in the light of a banked fire, and had brought her warmed towels and a dry robe, vastly too big, in which she had sat dazed on an inglenook seat while a bowl of hot stew and a cup of wine were set before her. Sheniya had fiercely rebuffed Lesk Barith’s attempts to question her guest, and once the man had disconsolately gone the innkeeper lost her initial sense of awe at housing such a lady - Cyllan smiled wryly at the memory - under her roof, and had kept up a stream of comments and reminiscences and opinions, which enabled Cyllan to eat her food and say nothing.

  Sheniya, it transpired, was a widow whose two sons had long departed the nest, and she had an ample streak of motherliness which she now lavished on her guest in full measure. At last, having twice almost fallen into the fire from sheer fatigue, Cyllan was bundled up a flight of steep, narrow stairs and helped into bed in the tavern’s best room, Sheniya departing with a final, anxious injunction that she should be roused instantly should the lady find herself in need of anything.

  Cyllan stared out over the deserted market square, and thought that what she needed was her horse, saddled and provisioned, and a good head start on the pursuit that would ensue when the news from the Star Peninsula permeated through to the High Tree tavern.

  As yet, so Gordach had said, only a few local dignitaries knew the nature of the message brought by falcon from the Circle’s stronghold, but when its full content became common knowledge she would be in danger. Keridil Toln must have given a description of the girl who had escaped the Castle after killing the Margrave of Shu’s son, and her distinctive hair and eyes would be enough to damn her at a glance. She couldn’t hope to maintain the hastily concocted story she had told to her rescuers; in the chaotic aftermath of the chase it had served well enough, but it wouldn’t stand up to further investigation. If she was to keep her freedom - and, she reminded herself grimly, her life - she must flee, while she still had the chance.

  She was about to move away from the window when a shadow that moved suddenly at the far side of the square arrested her attention. The stabbing glow of a lantern flared between two buildings, and a man, yawning and wrapped in a heavy cloak, appeared, crossing the wet flagstones towards a monolithic stone slab that stood alone at the square’s centre.

  Cyllan had seen Law Stones in every small town she had passed through during her harsh years as a drover.

  They were erected in market-places, harbours, anywhere, in fact, where people congregated; and on their pitted surfaces were displayed documents of vital importance to the inhabitants. News of the death of any one of the land’s three leaders, or of the province’s own Margrave, would warrant display on the Law Stone, as would any new edicts passed by the Court of the High Margrave on Summer Isle … any information, in fact, that was intended for the attention of every man, woman and child in the district, or in the whole world.

  She licked lips that were suddenly dry as she watched the man stop by the Law Stone and take from under the folds of his cloak a rolled piece of parchment and a short, blunt-headed hammer. Moments later the dull, staccato sound of the parchment being nailed to the Law Stone cut through the night quiet. The coincidence was too strong - that notice could only concern herself and Tarod. And when dawn broke, a drum would be sounded in the market square to summon all within hearing to the Stone, where the details of the notice would be read aloud to the townsfolk, so that no one would miss the important news.

  Not for the first time, Cyllan cursed her own lack of learning. She could neither read nor write, and so if she wanted to find out what the notice contained she must wait for dawn and the official announcement. But she didn’t dare wait. If, as she believed, the parchment contained an edict from the Star Peninsula, the province militia would have been alerted long before the general notice was posted, and by now the hunt must be on.

  Chances were that the men who had saved her from the brigands had already been given her description, and realised whom they had rescued. The militia might come for her at any moment - she must go, and go now.

  The watchman, still yawning, had completed his task and was walking away, his lantern bobbing like a will-o’-the-wisp. Cyllan’s eyes were now better adjusted to the dark and she looked round her room. To her immense relief, she saw the clothes in which she had arrived at the tavern laid out neatly over a chair, cleaned and dried. Sheniya Win Mar had been better than her word; she’d promised the dry garments for the morning, but it seemed that her guest’s apparent status had been an incentive to complete the task before retiring to bed.

  As she discarded the blanket and began to dress, shivering, Cyllan reflected wryly that the past few hours had given her an undreamed-of glimpse of what life as a lady of quality must be like. People hanging on her every word, eager to do her bidding and wait on her … it was a pity, she thought with some irony, that she hadn’t been able to savour such treatment to the full. Now, with the full might of the Circle probably roused to find her, it was unlikely that such an opportunity would ever come her way again.

  Carefully, she reached under her pillow and drew out the Chaos stone, trying not to be drawn by its solitary, winking eye. She thrust it into her bodice - it was a pity that the long, full skirt and jerkin were so impractical for a speedy, stealthy exit, but there was no help for it - then dragged her fingers quickly through her pale hair, and tiptoed to the door.

  The inn was silent. No tell-tale sliver of light shone from under any door, and the steep stairwell lay in darkness. Praying that she wouldn’t miss her footing, Cyllan crept down the stairs, freezing once with heart-stopping terror when a settling joist creaked somewhere in the depths of the old building. After what seemed a small eternity she reached the lower floor, and the heavy door that stood between her and freedom. The door bore a massive bolt, and it was too much to hope that the bolt could be drawn silently. It slid back with a grating rasp, protesting at long need of oiling, and Cyllan’s teeth clenched agonisingly together as she listened for an answering stir from upstairs. But no sound came; Sheniya Win Mar, it seemed, slept on. At last, knowing she dared wait no longer, Cyllan eased the door open and slipped out into the early morning.

  The cold struck her instantly; the windless, bitter cold of early Spring. In the Castle of the Star Peninsula she had had no need of shoes, and the cut-down men’s boots she had once worn were long lost to the sea. Now, as the chill of the market square’s stone paving struck up through her soles, she would have given almost anything to have them back, and, too, the cloak that had gone last night during her desperate flight from the brigands. No matter; she must do without - there were more urgent considerations.

  Teeth chattering, she moved along the front wall of the tavern, keeping a wary eye on the deserted square, until she reached a side alley. Through an arch she could just discern the outline of low buildings behind the inn, which logic dictated must be the
stables. She was halfway to her goal …

  Thankfully, it seemed that Sheniya Win Mar kept no stable lad, nor any of the ferocious geese which many farmers used as popular and efficient guardians, and only a continuing silence greeted Cyllan as she unlatched the stable door and glided inside. Dark shapes moved uneasily and she saw the white of a rolling eye; instinctively she made a low, soft noise in her throat, a sound her uncle had taught her to use in calming nervous animals. The horses subsided, and she heard a soft, contented blowing of breath.

  There were only three of them in the stables; a sway-backed black mare, a shaggy pony, and the big iron-grey gelding. Harness was ranged on hooks high on the wall; she recognised her own by the mud - and sweat-stains on the leather, and set about saddling the gelding. A swift check told her that the animal had been well fed and watered; giving the saddle-girth a final tug to check its security, she backed the gelding gently out of its stall and turned it towards the door. As they emerged, the animal’s hoofs rang loudly on cobbles, striking vivid blue sparks, and in consternation Cyllan brought it to a halt, staring up at the dark bulk of the tavern. For a moment she thought her luck had held - then a lamp flared in an upstairs window, and seconds later the curtain was pulled aside and a pale, indistinct face looked directly down at her.

  Cyllan felt bile clogging her throat as she stared, appalled, at the face. She heard - or thought she heard; she could never be certain - a voice calling out, and it snapped her out of the initial shock so that instinct took over. She reached up, grabbed at the saddle, and heaved —her foot, flailing, found a stirrup and with a frantic kick she sprawled astride the gelding’s back. It pranced sideways; she gathered up the reins, still struggling to right herself, then drove her heels hard into its flanks.

  The noise of the big horse careering out of the alley was enough to rouse half Wathryn town, but it was too late for any attempt at stealth. Cyllan had been seen - all she could do was ride for her life. She crouched over the gelding’s neck, shrilly urging it on and lashing at it with the looped reins; they raced out across the market square, missing the Law Stone by a hair’s-breadth, and pounded towards the road. Ahead, a break in the clouds showed a glaring, green-purple sliver of light where the Sun would rise; Cyllan swung her mount’s head to the right, cutting away from the road and turning southward. She expected at any moment to hear the sounds of pursuers, but none came; they reached the trees beyond the town, and still there were no distant hoofbeats echoing behind them. At last she allowed the gelding to halt, and turned in the saddle, looking back.