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  Isak shook himself out of his reverie and started paying attention again as Bahl said, ‘Lesarl, make sure the army is ready to march in two days; everything we can put together in that time, and send riders out to every suzerain able to catch up.’

  ‘You’re not riding with us?’ asked Suzerain Fordan. He was a grandfather, and well past the age that any would expect him to fight a battle, let alone join a forced march in winter, but there was no man in Tirah who would dare to suggest he didn’t come.

  ‘There is a vampire in the city. I don’t intend this one to be given the chance to fly before we catch it.’

  The news startled both Isak and the young scions, but the older men had seen it all before. Their expressions turned to sharp interest; they knew well the cat-and-mouse games it would take to catch a vampire.

  As unofficial Commander of the Guard, Kerin stood to brief them all. The Swordmaster coughed to clear his throat and tugged the sword at his hip into a more comfortable position. ‘We’ve had killings on and off for several years,’ he began, ‘but there is no real pattern or regularity, which is why it went unnoticed for so long. The Guard isn’t set up for efficient policing of the entire city.’ He paused for a fraction, giving Lesarl a look that was totally ignored before continuing, ‘It isn’t the same creature we had last time, the one that, unfortunately, escaped us.’

  Tebran nodded. ‘Ah well, what can I say? The man was a drunken fool he’ muttered, raising his mug in toast to his father, the man who let the news slip in a tavern one night and caused the beast to flee.

  The Swordmaster smiled and continued, ‘Most assuredly, but the vampire this time is cunning. That is why you were not told of it earlier, Lord Isak. The last one would have been a good challenge for your growing skills, but we fear this one is greater. Lord Bahl is the only mage we have capable of hunting one down alone.’

  Isak nodded, grateful that Kerin had passed over Isak’s own inadequacies in front of men he would be leading into battle.

  ‘I will stay for as long as needed, then catch you up,’ Bahl declared then, looking pointedly at Isak, ‘Do not get it into your head to look for the creature; you’ve danger enough waiting for you outside Lomin. In the meantime, you’re not to leave the palace without a detachment of Ghosts. I don’t want you involved.’

  Two days later, Bahl sat in his personal chambers, trying to force the muzzy confusion of sleep from his mind. The effort of eating a bowl of honeyed oats defeated him and he sank back into his chair, looking down at the bustle below. The wind rushing in through the wide-open windows helped somewhat, but his fatigue was unnatural in origin: he had spent much of the previous night letting his soul soar high in the heavens. A storm had raged over Lomin, and Bahl had gone with it, directing as much of its strength as he could against the besiegers. The old Lord shivered at the memory of the intoxicating blend of pleasure and fear he felt as his own considerable magic entwined with that vast elemental power.

  The effort required to master the storm was massive, and he couldn’t even tell whether it had worked - the distance and the strength of the storm were too great to gain much more than an impression of what was happening - but it was a useful ability. Bahl suspected that Isak would be even better at it than he was; there was a savagery about the youth that would suit riding with the storm.

  Bahl had played with this storm out of a sense of guilt: the real reason he was not marching with the army had less to do with the suspected vampire - although that was true - and more to do with the death of a friend, as Lesarl’s knowing eyes had recognised. A white-eye’s longevity meant that generally they had few friends, but those he had, Bahl treasured. He had been absent at the death of the one he loved most, so he had resolved to never let those who meant most to him die alone. The Abbot of a nearby monastery was one.

  ‘And yet it interferes with my duty to my people,’ Bahl murmured to himself. ‘Times are still so precarious; what will they think if I’m not there for the battle?’ As if in answer to his question, the writings of a warrior-monk centuries dead surfaced in his mind: Doubts cloud purpose, in battle as in life. No swordsman is complete without resolve and purpose of movement. Bahl nodded wearily; his mind would not be swayed on the point, so he must cast off the guilt. It would do him no good to doubt his own actions, there were plenty of others to do that.

  What did worry him was the elven army’s strange behaviour. That they were attacking at the onset of winter was illogical; their rush to besiege Lomin deepened the mystery even more. Was there something in Lomin they wanted, or was the object of their attack more obscure than that? Was this siege the product of some minor prophecy, a feud between elven noble houses or something even more troubling?

  ‘Damn you, Isak, why have these elves come? Have you brought this down on us?’ Now he felt guilty for his thoughts: this was the first time he had voiced out loud the words he knew Lesarl was also thinking. It was an unfair accusation, perhaps, but a very real possibility.

  Bahl hauled himself to his feet and walked to the long table in the centre of the room. Sleep would have to wait. On the table, neatly folded and pressed, were two leather undersuits, one tailored to Isak’s current measurements and the second to an estimate of how big the Krann might be in a few weeks, somewhere between Bahl’s size and Isak’s current build.

  The tailor had been overwhelmed when Lord Bahl himself had appeared in his shop late one evening, but it had been necessary. Isak was growing at a prodigious rate; he was already significantly taller and heavier than he had been when he arrived, and the growth spurt wasn’t slowing down. Growing pains were doing little for the young man’s mood, but the benefits were clear.

  As for the armour on top of the leather, Bahl suspected that would find its own accommodation. The elves of old had been taken with Kasi Parian, the man who’d been the model for all white-eyes, because he had matched them in size as well as skill.

  Bahl picked the bundles up and tucked them under his arm. He started for the door, then hesitated and retrieved his massive broadsword from the stand beside the fireplace. Looking at the weapon, named by its maker White Lightning, he had to wonder whether even Eolis would tempt him away from this brutal and inelegant sword. Its fat double-edged blade curved out into spikes at the hilt which should have made it too heavy but for the magic it contained - yet he’d owned it for so long he couldn’t imagine himself going into battle with any other weapon.

  He made his way down to Isak’s chambers, where he let the guard in the corridor knock once to announce him before striding in. Isak was rising from the desk as Bahl entered, a sprawl of open books before him. Lady Tila sat to one side and jumped up a fraction after Isak had. Bahl caught her expression and sighed inwardly; it looked like she was becoming fast friends with the Krann - perhaps more, judging by the closeness of their seats. He noticed her fingers closed tightly around the enamel crest that pinned the sash at her waist; it appeared that the girl’s affection did not extend to all white-eyes.

  Bahl tossed the bundle to Isak, who snatched it from the air like a dog catching a bone. The weeks together had given the two of them some sort of uneasy familiarity; both were cautious of intruding on the other, but there was an unspoken sympathy between them.

  Isak, his books forgotten, set the bundle down on the desk and, with a gleam in his eye, he ripped open the linen packaging. He held the undersuit up to inspect it.

  ‘It is time for you to take possession of your gifts.’ Lord Bahl’s voice sounded unusually sonorous, and Isak looked up quickly.

  ‘It’s a suit of armour then?’ He looked as though he wanted to ask more, but controlled himself.

  ‘A suit of armour,’ Bahl confirmed. ‘And whilst I assume you would like to know why you’re only just getting your gifts now, the only answer I will give you is “because”.’ He smiled a little at Isak’s expression. ‘Not the answer you were hoping for, I see, but something you will have to get used to one of these days. The actions of the Gods are not ther
e to be questioned. Sometimes it is simply a question of faith.’

  He saw no reason to tell the boy that he and Lesarl had wanted time to better prepare him for his gifts.

  ‘There are two undersuits; the other is larger so you have one to grow into; no doubt you’ll need more by the time you return. You lead the army out of the city in one hour, so come quickly now.’

  Without a word, Isak rolled the undersuit up again and handed the other to Tila. ‘Can you put that with my baggage and make sure everything is waiting for me?’

  Bahl saw her rouged lips part fractionally. She obviously wanted to argue, but dared not in his presence. Had they been alone, Bahl could see she would have asked to go with Isak. A bad sign, that; the youth’s infectious humour had drawn the girl closer to him than was good for either.

  After the briefest of pauses, Tila ducked her head in acknowledgement, managed a quick curtsey and fled the room. It was clear she feared for Isak in his first battle, as well she might. The boy was reckless and inexperienced, but every soldier had to muddle through a first battle, and it would be no different for Isak. He, like every other soldier, would return a changed man, but Bahl felt a flicker of concern at what those changes might be.

  ‘Are we going underground?’

  ‘We are; leave Kerin’s Eagle-blade here. I think we’ll be able to find something better for you.’

  Isak grinned. He looked uneasy as well as excited, and with good reason, for the changes Nartis had wrought over the past few weeks had made him taller and stronger. He was now of a size with General Lahk, already twenty stone in weight and strong enough to kill a grown man with his bare hands. His gifts would elevate him to a level no normal soldier could hope to reach: speed and strength accentuated beyond even a normal white-eye’s power - and that took no account of what spells might be imbued into the metal. Tour shield?’

  Isak leaned over the desk and drew the shield out from the footwell. Bahl frowned when he saw it, once again reaching out his senses to touch the gleaming silver. He still could not place whatever spell it contained: it wasn’t complex, but that simplicity confused him. ‘Can you read any of the runes on it?’

  ‘There aren’t any.’ Isak held up the shield for Bahl to see, keeping a tight grip on it. Bahl made no attempt to touch it as he inspected the surface.

  Not on either side?’ Isak turned it over to show his Master the inside. There was nothing, not even written on the leather straps for Isak’s arm.

  ‘I did dream of a rune the night I got this. Tila found me a book to look them up in.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘It-there were, ah, lots, of runes in the book. It was a core rune, meaning something like “Merge” or “Union”.’

  ‘Ah.’ Bahl drew back from the shield, understanding suddenly dawning as he remembered the thread of magic that had wormed its way between the flagstones of the Great Hall that day. ‘That makes sense - although I suspect the connotations will be a puzzle.’

  ‘Why? What makes sense?’

  ‘Best you see for yourself. Come.’

  The pair descended the main stairs side by side. The chaos of preparations for the army’s departure was strangely absent here; the running feet and bellowed commands were distant, behind thick walls of stone. As they neared the bottom, a scampering soldier in Tehran’s livery appeared before them, on an errand to his lord’s chambers. Startled by the two white-eyes, the man accidentally careened into a wall, then pressed himself up against it to make room for them. As soon as they had passed, he took off again, and they heard his feet pounding heavily on the stair as he made his way to the suzerain’s suite.

  In the lower level of the tower, the air was cold and dank. With no fire burning, it felt like a dungeon. Since the advancing elven army had first been drawn to their attention, the call of Isak’s gifts had intensified. Bahl was sure Isak had felt it too; more than once he had left his room in the morning to find Isak lingering at the base of the tower, instead of eating breakfast in the Great Hall.

  Isak pulled his paral shirt tighter against the clammy air, which pushed the dragon brooch pinned to it to a strange angle, snout down, as though it was digging into the ground. It reminded Bahl that he had not spoken to the beast below in six months. He had no idea how it would react to Isak’s presence.

  The cycle of a dragon’s life consisted of long periods of rest and sleep, then perhaps half a century of destruction and terror in the mating rituals. In return for a safe haven for this beast, Bahl had secured the promise of assistance in battle when it was required, and that the destructive phase would take place far from Farlan lands. It was a strange bargain to have struck, but the cost of feeding a dragon was far less than maintaining troops enough to match the dragon’s worth.

  Down they went, deep into the belly of the earth, far from prying eyes. Isak, used now to the tower’s magic, guessed the distance to be half the height of the tower - a long way down to put a strong-room; when he announced that, it elicited only a humourless snort by way of reply.

  Now it was pitch-black, and Isak could see nothing at all, not even the hand he reached out in front of his own face, until Bahl muttered a few words under his breath. Isak detected the dirty-sour smell of magic as a ball of flame appeared in Bahl’s palm. Although the words were too quiet for Isak to hear, they rose in his memory: one of many spells he’d memorised over the past few weeks but couldn’t make work.

  They were in a cave, a hollowed-out space some ten feet high and wide, unfinished walls still marked by the tools used to carve out the hole. The flame gave off only enough light to see that not even an iron brand adorned the walls. Bahl led him through a hole in the wall into an undulating tunnel, wide enough only for one at a time. Isak trailed along behind, wondering where this was taking them.

  He tried another attempt at conversation, something that had been nagging at his mind for a while. ‘My Lord?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘When we return from Lomin, what will I do?’

  ‘You’re the Krann, you do what you like.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. If I’ve proved myself in battle - if I have gifts like yours - what should I be doing with my life?’

  Isak knew it was a strange question, but in a nation of allotted roles, he could not now see one for him - at least until he became the Lord of the Farlan, and that was a long way ahead.

  Bahl stopped, his expression hidden by his mask. ‘What should you be doing with your life? A good question, I suppose.’ Abruptly, he started walking again. ‘You’re a suzerain. You have an estate and a shire to manage; just getting your lands in order may take years. Lesarl will provide you with records of the suzerain’s possessions in Anvee - I think you’ll have quite a lot of evictions, rent collecting and deal-making to do. Crops grown on your land now belong to you, no matter who planted them, your nobles will have redrawn boundaries, your shire seat will be in disrepair, your bondsmen need accounting-‘

  ‘Oh, playing with bits of paper, measuring land, counting money,’ Isak couldn’t hide the boredom in his voice.

  ‘Hunting, hawking, practising your magic, horse-breeding, bullying old aristocrats and charming their innocent daughters; I assumed you’d enjoy it. Estate managers can be found to deal with the administrative side. Did you expect more?’

  ‘I suppose-‘ Isak sounded a little diffident now. ‘Well, I had wondered whether you’d be sending me on diplomatic missions.’ ‘You? A diplomat? What a curious concept.’ Isak smiled at Bahl’s tone, glad for any levity between them. ‘There will certainly be lots to keep you busy here if you want it, but our relationships with other states are limited. We are too powerful for them to attack us, and trade agreements are already in place, so your principal official role if you want it would be patrolling our borders to discourage raiding.’

  ‘What if-‘

  Isak got no further as Bahl interrupted, ‘Another time. We’re here.’

  Isak realised he’d forgotten to count the paces as he�
��d intended, but guessed they’d covered a hundred yards or more. Another twenty paces and Bahl stopped in front of the outline of a doorway hewn in the rock: sharp, irregular lines edged in the faintest of green.

  As they’d been walking, Isak had been more and more aware of the presence of magic of some sort up ahead, but the scent was unlike any he recognised. As he followed Bahl inside, the smell of wet lichen, animal dung and a piercing acrid odour grew hugely, as did the magic in the air. There were powerful streams of energy present, not building up, but attracted to this place for some reason, presumably his gifts. The smell of dung bemused him, though: it was not quite like a stable, nor a slaughterhouse, but the aroma was similarly pervasive.

  As Isak took in the proportions of the room, he faltered: this was a cavern stretching off into blackness, not the strong-room he’d been expecting. The faint green tint that outlined the walls and uneven floor had no apparent source, other than the magic he could sense swirling all around. The cavern was not one regular open space; the roof dipped and rose as it pleased and the floor rose up in the centre around a group of thick pillars clustered with quartz. Two large holes had been hacked into a side wall, presumably tunnels leading to more chambers. One had great chunks of rock lying broken at its entrance. ‘Where are we? What is this place?’ He found himself whispering-‘I keep some of the artefacts Atro collected over the years here. We cannot keep them in the palace itself, nor can we destroy most of them, for fear of releasing the magic inside - for the same reason why the Elven Waste is indeed a waste: that is where the Great War was fought and vast amounts of uncontrolled magic poisoned the ground.’

  ‘That’s all? But this is a cavern, and I can feel something else down here. Gods, is there something alive here? What’s that I can sense?’ Isak stood still, trying to make sense of what he could smell and feel, then he gasped as he recognised the ancient air that lingered in parts of the palace, like the presence of centuries but alive and aware, and terrifyingly potent.