Heirs of the Blade Part 14

'That will make this easier. I cannot. See there?'

She followed his pointing finger, but it was a long while before she spotted them: a few small boats moored right underneath the arches supporting the jetties themselves. From her last visit here, she was familiar with their construction: narrow craft of wooden planks held together only with taut ropes, gathered at bow and stern into a raised carving that mimicked bundled reeds. Amnon was already creeping along the waterfront to try and snag one. It seemed that the Wasps must spot him at any moment.

With a curse she kicked off her sandals, hesitating a moment on the brink before letting herself down into the water. She had expected cold, but the sluggish river retained the day's heat, and the flow was not so strong that she could not brace herself against the quay before kicking her way towards the nearest boat. It almost tipped over as she wriggled into it, scrabbling about inside it for an oar. In the end she gave up on actually paddling, but by pushing against the stonework she levered the craft to beneath where Amnon was waiting, and held it steady while he clambered down.

There followed the slowest and most agonizing minutes of her life, as Amnon took the slender boat out on to the river, just catching the swell created as the burning Spiderlands trader lurched past. There were Wasps darting overhead almost constantly, and if just one of them looked down, or if the eyes of their fellows on the sh.o.r.e had strayed from the blaze, then Praeda and Amnon would have been dead in short order. A ship on fire provided sufficient distraction, though, and Amnon was able to bring their tiny vessel into the hulk's shadow, paddling until their two hulls sc.r.a.ped, and letting the river's current then draw them sluggishly out past the Estuarine Gate, even as embers started drifting down about them.

That should have been the end of their difficulties, and Praeda never did understand why the Wasps had patrols flying out over the marshland, save perhaps that they were expecting some attack from the natives there. In any event, they were not quite out of sight of the city walls when the cry went up above them, and a moment later a sting sizzled into the water in a flash of gold.

Amnon was instantly paddling for the sh.o.r.e on the water they offered too much of a target. Praeda scanned the skies but, with only a sliver of moon, she could not work out how the Wasps, as night-blind as she was, had ever spotted them. Stingshots came lancing down erratically, still off the mark but getting closer, and she could hear one high voice shouting instructions to the shooters, correcting their aim.

Abruptly their boat was grating on mud, and Amnon leapt out, pulling her with him. They had beached on a mudbank with only a few gangly, spider-rooted trees for cover, and he was leading her towards deep marsh, into a twisted maze of ferns, horsetails and gullies that could swallow an army.

Two more blazing shots pursued them, still nowhere near, then a sharp snap that whipped the water almost at Praeda's heels. She recognized that distinctive sound instantly, and whoever wielded the snapbow clearly had a much better idea of where they were.

They splashed on through clear, shallow water for a moment, then there was plantlife all around, more mud underfoot, and a fog of gnats that seemed almost solid. Amnon began slowing down, and Praeda only hoped that he had some destination in mind, rather than just charging blindly into this maze of mud and vegetation. She could hear the enemy voice shouting directions again, and sensed the Wasps coursing overhead, still searching.

There was no real silence in the swamp, for the stridulations of hundreds of nocturnal denizens kept up a constant racket, but still she felt that the enemy had lost their trail, their wings lending them too much speed and sending them ahead of their quarry.

'Where now?' she hissed.

'Come dawn, we shall work our way back to the river,' he told her. 'If we see a ship, we shall warn them of the Wasps, and with luck they shall carry us to the stone town.'

'To Porta Rabi, yes,' she agreed. 'And what about until dawn?'

She did not find out what his reply might have been, because that same voice above suddenly cried out, 'I see them! Get the lamp on them!'

The swamp was abruptly on fire, or that was how it felt. A white light sheared over everything and, had Praeda been looking in that direction, it would have blinded her. The source was a mirrored lantern mounted on the shoulder of one of the Wasp fliers, the sort of device used by explorers heading underground. Its bearer hung well back, but the blazing light made stark silhouettes of his two companions, who were even now advancing. Praeda understood immediately how they had managed to follow a trail at night, for one of them was a Fly cradling a cut-down snapbow.

Amnon rushed at them with a bellow, drawing their attention. Praeda saw the Wasp's sting flash off his breastplate, but then the snapbow spoke again, and punched Amnon off his feet. She shouted incoherently, lifting her weapon and pressing the trigger without even considering whether she had remembered to reload it. Plainly her hands had attended to that task without her recalling, for her shot slapped the closer Wasp off his feet, without a cry, and then she and the Fly were both busy trying to reload ahead of the other, while the lamp-man came rushing in clumsily under the offset weight of the lantern.

And then the light went out, as Praeda heard the gla.s.s break. Absolute darkness descended, but her hands kept following the motions: slotting a new bolt into place and winding up the pressure in the battery.

She wanted to call out to Amnon, but that would give the Fly something to aim at. She strained her ears above the monotonous sounds of the swamp, willing her eyes to reaccustom themselves to the night, take advantage of that sliver of moon.

She could make out a little more now, the faint glimmer of water against the deeper darkness of the plants, but of course the Fly's eyes would be so much better than hers.

She heard his quiet sound of satisfaction at reacquiring her position, and she loosed in that direction at once, feeling certain that she had missed and that she might as well have shot blind.

There came a grunt not quite from the direction she had aimed her bolt towards, and she stared wide-eyed, trying to make sense of the shadow play before her with the unreliable a.s.sistance of the moon. At last it came to her that the shape over there must be the Fly, and the straight shaft protruding from it was therefore . . . an arrow.

'Be very still,' Amnon's voice reached her, sounding pained. 'They are all around us.'

Despite the grim news her heart leapt to hear him. 'You were shot,' she reproached him.

'When the Iron Glove make armour, they make it well. The bolt pierced enough to draw blood, but the metal slowed it down,' he murmured back. 'Now be quiet and let me speak to them.'

She had absolutely no sense of there being marsh-kinden around them, those slender Mantis-kinden that called the Jamail delta their home. There could be ten or a thousand of them, silent and invisible, and she would never know for sure.

'You know me,' she heard Amnon announce. 'You are bound by the old covenants. Let us pa.s.s.'

Praeda strained her eyes, trying to make out the swift, small forms of the Mantis-kinden. It was all too easy to imagine their flint-tipped spears, their arrowheads of poisoned bone.

'We know you,' came a woman's voice. 'You are Amnon, who was First Soldier, but you are exiled.'

Praeda had known Amnon long enough, now, to sense his stance even in the faint moonlight. He had been ready to prove himself to these people in some savage trial, or to bluff his way back into their good graces, or to threaten the wrath of the Masters of Khanaphes. What he plainly had not expected was that they should be so well informed of his current status, and therefore his lack of the Masters' protection. For the first time in many years Amnon was without a plan.

She raised the snapbow again, realizing as she did so that she had not reloaded it since their skirmish with the Wasps. All around them she heard a faint creaking as a dozen of the Mantids' savage little compound bows were drawn back.

'The Loquae will be pleased with us,' their leader remarked with satisfaction.

What happened next was something that Praeda would never remember clearly.

There was a gasp from the Mantis-kinden, one arrow leaping from its bow to skim directly between Amnon and herself. The Mantids already were backing away, all stealth forgotten, their circle widening and widening, and for no apparent reason, save that . . .

Praeda would later decide that the night's exertions had begun to tell on her by then. She was hot and tired, and possibly poisoned by insect bites or marsh water. It would be easy, in such circ.u.mstances, to imagine things.

But she knew with an absolute certainty that there were three of them. She and Amnon were now standing a little further apart, because someone invisible was standing between them. No not invisible, because the Mantis-kinden had already spotted whoever this third traveller was. They had seen it, and they recognized something in it that overawed and terrified them.

'We will,' the Mantis leader was promising. 'We will lead them to the sea, we swear. We did not know . . . We could not have known . . .'

'What is this? You recognize your oath to Khanaphes, after all?' Amnon demanded.

'There are other oaths,' the Mantis replied, her voice trembling. 'There are other loyalties. We did not know what you brought with you.'

Praeda was feeling light-headed by that point, for while she stared straight ahead at the shadowy Mantis-kinden, she could also glimpse a third figure out of the corner of her eye. It was someone she knew, someone who could not possibly be with them.

'Che?' she whispered.

Seventeen.

When Varmen had pulled ahead, Thalric found a moment to murmur to Che, 'You look terrible. What's wrong? You're ill?'

'Not ill,' Che a.s.sured him. Her dream last night had stayed with her this morning with unwelcome clarity. When she had embarked on this business of pretending to be some kind of magician, she had perhaps antic.i.p.ated some manner of prophecy, portentous images that she might decode after much thought, and no doubt riddle out too late to be of any use. Achaeos had always spoken of dreams thus, but then he had ranked low by the standards of Moth magicians. Only the fact that he had somehow attracted the notice of the spirits of the Darakyon had marked him out in any way. The ancient Mantis-kinden dead of that abandoned forest had used him as a tool, in their quest to recover the Shadow Box that had held their collective heart, and when he called, they had come.

Che retained the memory with perfect and unwanted clarity: Achaeos touching her mind whilst she fought in Myna and he undertook a ritual in Tharn. Achaeos borrowing strength from her, even as his own failed, and using that same strength to call out to the Darakyon.

And the Darakyon had invaded both their minds, cold and hideous and thorned, and Achaeos, still weak from half-healed wounds, had died.

She had felt every moment of his pa.s.sing through the bond that had connected them.

She was beginning to wonder if the world of magic would do for her as well. She would have liked to convince herself that it was merely her own imagining that had put her back in Khanaphes, but she found she could not stretch credulity so far.

I cannot be seeing these events as they occur, she complained to herself. Sometimes it is day in Khanaphes, whilst I sleep here. But last night . . .

She had never intruded into the dream before, never been anything other than a bodiless observer, watching the Empress and Praeda and the others, and coasting on their thoughts, seeing pictures in their minds, dreams within dreams. But the Mantis-kinden had seen her, as though she had physically been standing between Amnon and Praeda. And then, just for a moment, Praeda had seen her too.

Che had woken up with a start then, and not dared go back to sleep.

I really need to talk to someone knowledgeable about this. But she had already made cautious enquiries of Varmen. Hunting magicians was an old practice here in the Princ.i.p.alities, though the game had grown scarce indeed. During the occupation, the Wasps had singled out any who had claimed such powers, not because they believed the claims, but because supposed seers and mystics were often a focus of rebellion amongst Commonweal loyalists. Since the Empire itself had receded, the new lords of the Princ.i.p.alities had apparently kept up the practice with gusto, and if there were any magicians left, they were certainly not announcing it to the world.

But we near the Commonweal proper, a.s.suming Varmen can get us across the border. I will find all the magicians I want amongst the Dragonfly-kinden.

'What's your plan for getting over the Commonweal border, then?' she asked Varmen.

'We need to hop a barge soon,' he said. 'Easiest way, always.' When Che looked puzzled he explained, 'They have these ca.n.a.ls all over. A couple cross right between the Princ.i.p.alities and the Commonweal proper, see?'

Thalric was frowning. 'Why not just cross by land. Surely that's easier?'

'Oh, you'd think so.' Varmen gave a grin, then repressed it. Since his discovery of Thalric's former role in the Empire, his manner had become odd: now friendly, now standoffish, as though he had to keep reminding himself that he didn't like Thalric any more. Che found his att.i.tude almost endearing. Clearly he was not a man who held grudges well.

And a Wasp, too, like Thalric and who knows how many other Wasps there are, that I would like if I ever got to know them? She felt a stab of anger at the Empire, and at the Empress who was invading her dreams piecemeal. These people could be so much more, if they were only allowed, but their kin and their rulers sharpen them into weapons, over and over.

'What?' said Varmen suspiciously, and she realized that she had been staring at him.

'Nothing,' she told him. 'You were saying about a barge?'

Two days later found them camping beside a slipway, on the banks of a ca.n.a.l that looked as though it had been old when Collegium was built. The great grey stones of its walls had crumbled and fallen away in places, and the water was green and ribboned with weed, dancing with the golden flecks of insects.

'You see, there's a whole load of raiding that goes on across the border, heading both ways,' Varmen was explaining. 'This side, the local captains and what-have-you are all men who have just a little slice of things, pushed to the edge of power, and so they're basically bandits in all but name, stealing from their neighbours 'cos they want something to bargain with, with their betters, right? Only, on the other side there's not much better. No princes or n.o.bles, much, because this is where the army stopped, and the n.o.bles who used to hold all these lands are dead or driven off. So the Commonwealers raid right back, fighting all over the place. Couldn't tell you where the actual border was, it moves about so much.' He pointed along the straight line of the ca.n.a.l, where it was cut into the hillside, a water-road running eastwest as far as the horizon. 'There's trade, though, and 'cos the trade comes from the big noises in the Princ.i.p.alities, and goes to the bigger brigands and the dodgier princes on the other side of the border, it's not a good idea for your little fellows around here to get in its way. n.o.body wants a hundred soldiers turning up and asking awkward questions, right? So the way things work is that only the big boys use the ca.n.a.ls and anyone on land is fair game.'

'That sounds utterly unworkable,' Che told him. 'How could they be sure n.o.body would try and rob them?'

'Well, they have guards and the like, and I reckon some of them do get hit, but it must work out all right, most of the time, or they'd not still be doing it.' He shrugged. 'Anyway, the next boat comes past, we'll hop a ride, offer our swords, tell them the . . . you know, the Rekef story or whatever feels right. Then we're over the border, and I'll find me someone wanting an escort back.'

After a day and a night's tense wait, a barge came as promised. Its master was a surprise, neither local nor Wasp but a spindly Skater-kinden, hunched up in a Commonweal-styled robe that failed to hide his fantastically long limbs. He had a face that was all sharp angles, down to the forked beard he affected. Varmen clearly recognized him, and seemed moderately glad to see him, naming him 'Skelling'.

Skelling needed suspiciously little cajoling to take them on as additional guards, though he had half a dozen armed Dragonfly-kinden already on board. While they waited for the barge, Che had spotted two roving parties of what she took for bandits, so she had the impression that the border troubles Varmen had mentioned were now going through an active phase.

The barge itself was a long, graceless thing built of heavy timbers, its hold stuffed with all manner of crates and sacks that Skelling expressly forbade them to meddle with. The vessel moved ponderously, and at first mysteriously. There was a sail but it seemed ludicrously small to shift such a weighty craft, nor did the crew seem to be doing anything to contribute to its motion. The vessel was double-ended, too, and it was clear that, had Skelling wished, they could simply have headed back the way they had come, as the ca.n.a.l had very little current to it.

However, as they moored up after their first day's travel, Che noticed a great disturbance at the vessel's fore, as something broke the surface there. She caught only a glimpse, but divined that it must be some manner of insect nymph trained to the task of hauling. One of the Dragonflies appeared to be the creature's handler, for he had spent the day's journey at the bow, and he now threw chunks of something into the water where the beast had last surfaced. She wondered whether the man possessed that elusive Art that allowed him to speak to the creature.

'Skelling reckons we'll get within the general region of the border tomorrow,' Varmen explained. 'Exactly where the border runs is a matter for debate, as they say, but by dusk we'll be inside the Commonweal proper. a.s.suming nothing bad happens.'

Che merely nodded, She was holding her dream-catcher in one hand, uncertain what to do with it. Last night she had left the thing inside her pack and, as a result, whatever dreams had come to her had failed to remain in her waking mind. Instead she had suffered all morning with a terrible feeling that something was going wrong: that some threat was approaching that she had thus blinded herself to.

But the dream of Praeda and Amnon had frightened her. They had been in great danger, in that dream, and she had been moved to step in. Or it was just a dream, and none of it happened. She could not believe that, even for a moment. She had already crossed some line, in coming to their aid, and she knew, beyond understanding why, that she had somehow opened herself up now, made herself somehow both vulnerable and powerful.

Achaeos never spoke of influencing the world thus, through a dream. Nor had any of the old tomes she had read in Collegium mentioned such a thing. What is going on? Even if I am a magician now, I must be the most wretched and powerless of them all. What is happening to me?

She put the dream-catcher down, knowing that whatever she did now, it would be the wrong choice.

The next day, Skelling set off before dawn, and everyone knew, without being told, that there would be trouble. The Dragonfly crewmen all had their bows ready strung, with spare quivers of arrows hooked on to the side rail, within easy reach. They also erected boards on either side of the barge, big solid pavises that would give them some protection from inbound arrows. Che had wondered if Varmen would take out his suit of mail, but in the end he obviously decided against it. He would vanish forever into the murky water should he go over the side in so much steel.

Sunrise showed them spa.r.s.ely wooded ca.n.a.l banks providing ideal ambush territory, and the local brigands were predictable enough to take advantage of it. The first arrow whipping from between the trees actually fell short, a remarkably poor shot for a Commonwealer, but soon there were plenty of other shafts in the air. Skelling's crew and pa.s.sengers crouched behind the pavises, waiting for a more personal introduction to their a.s.sailants. Che had the impression that these wooden shields were Skelling's own innovation, rather than standard fittings aboard Commonweal barges.

dark stone halls, and only a guttering lamp to guide her Che blinked and shook her head uncertainly. The sun was bright in the east behind them, and the sporadic thud-thud-thud of arrows into wood had slowed as their a.s.sailants evidently realized they were simply wasting ammunition. Everyone around her was now drawing weapons: the Wasps with their cross-hilted shortswords and the Dragonflies with their punch-swords, whose blades jutted straight out from the knuckle-guard. She hesitantly laid a hand on her own weapon's hilt.

'Che?' she heard Thalric address her, obviously noticing something in her face that worried him.

'I'm . . .' she began, but lacked the words to say just what she was. 'I'm fine,' she said, which turned out to be a gross exaggeration because- the slave Gjegevey leading the way, his own eyes proof against the darkness, and how she envied that now. In her dreams, these tombs had been visible by a curious grey half-light, devoid of colours, and she had wondered if that was how the Moth-kinden saw through their blank white eyes There was combat all around her. She heard a clatter of steel on steel, and the brief crack and sizzle of Wasp stingshot, the very sound of it striking fear into her stomach, but its wielder was standing right over her, defending her p.r.o.ne form.

'Thalric?' she called out.

'Che, get up!' he shouted down at her, as his hand spoke golden fire again. She heard a man scream, and a dying Dragonfly-kinden dropped to the deck before her eyes, a hole charred into his leather cuira.s.s.

I'm with Wasps, fighting Dragonflies. The thought rattled through her mind. I was in Khanaphes . . .

No! I wasn't in Khanaphes. That was the dream, but last night I didn't catch any dreams. I let them go.

Thalric was crouching beside her, in a moment of stillness while the barge's crew and Varmen continued fighting on every side.

'Che, what's wrong?' the Wasp demanded.

'Thalric . . . I don't know. Help me.'

His face said eloquently that he had no possible way to do so.

'The Empress . . .' she started. And then- The walls and floor of this place were slimy, so that each foot set down skidded slightly, then came up trailing threads of ooze. The lamp that Gjegevey had started for her set every surface glistening unhealthily.

They had been underground for long enough that Seda knew it would be dawn already above, but down here was a labyrinth of vast halls, lined with statues, every wall inscribed with the ancient glyphs of the Khanaphir. For hours they had walked, at first with the old Woodlouse choosing their path, and later with Seda herself taking the lead. By then she realized why they were finding nothing but empty chambers: the power here had been turning them aside.

'Stop,' she ordered the old Woodlouse.

'We have been travelling for some, mm, considerable time,' he admitted. 'One might almost think that we were, ah, going round in circles.'

'It is a test,' she decided. 'One I do not appreciate, but I shall pa.s.s it nonetheless.'

'There is, hm, a great deal of, ah, latent power here,' Gjegevey conjectured cautiously. 'I would hesitate to . . .'

'Yes, you would and you would be wise to. I am of a different order, however. I am the Empress of the Wasps.'

'I am not sure such t.i.tles will, ahm, mean a great deal to our hosts.' The Woodlouse-kinden's hollow eyes glittered in the lamplight.

'Then I shall enlighten them,' she replied pleasantly, and thrust a hand in the air as though grasping for something invisible.

The power awoke in her, digging its roots into the stonework of this place, then feeding, cannibalistic, on the ages of magic laid down here when the world was younger. She felt her blood stir and sing with all the borrowed life and youth she had taken into herself. In my dream she gained an audience with the lords of this place, and so shall I.

For a moment the monolithic grip of the place seemed immovable, and she was worried that she might not have enough reserves of strength within herself, for then her only option would be to seek the blood of another. And to lose Gjegevey would be a true tragedy, for he had been one of her very first supporters since before she had even come to her throne.