It was as if he read my thoughts. “And it’s sorry I am, lass, but she was wise and never quickened from all our loving in those days. Ii was best for her, I suppose, but I have regretted it all my life.”

  My newfound longing died a swift death.

  “Yet after three years, I knew her not half so well as I thought. We left the mountains to travel west again for the Great Fair at Illara in the autumn, and I swear we had no sooner arrived than she fell into Marik’s arms.”

  I stared at him. “Marik? Who’s Marik?”

  “Marik of Gundar,” said Jamie, his voice deepening with anger. “Son to Lord Gundar, a very minor noble in the East Mountain Kingdom. Marik’s own father had thrown him out of the family, and Marik was just beginning to make his way as a merchant. I know only a little of what has become of him since, but I can’t tell you for nothing that he was as nasty a son of the Hells as ever escaped the sword.”

  “What happened?” I asked. I was like a child at the foot of a bard, spellbound, listening to the tale of my mother’s life unfold like a ballad. I had forgot Jamie’s killing of the ruffian for the moment, forgotten all but the weaving of my mother’s past.

  Jamie sighed. “It’s not a tale I relish telling.” He poured himself the last of the ale—a small matter indeed—and glanced mournfully into the depths of the jug.

  Despite myself I laughed. “You old liar! This is your way of getting another round out of me.”

  He smiled. “True enough, it wouldn’t go amiss. But I’ll have to get a few rounds out of me to make room first.” I couldn’t help myself, I grinned as I called for the ale. I stood and stretched, checked my still-damp clothes before the fire and turned them over, and visited the necessary myself. When I returned Jamie was seated at the table again, and as I sat down he leaned forward on his elbows, gazing into my eyes, searching for I know not what. He must have found it, though, for without further words he poured a fresh tankard for us bothand took up his tale.

  III

  JAMIE’S TALE

  “Marik. Well, he was a handsome youth, I suppose—when we first ran into him, he was in the center of a bevy of young beauties. Give him credit, the beggar, he saw your mother and the others dissolved like the dew.”

  “Was she beautiful, then?” I asked in a whisper. I had heard all my life, from Jamie and Hadron both, how much I looked like my mother, but that was always where it stopped. And to be so tall, man-height they called it, and strong with it—“look twice to see you’re a woman,” indeed! It cost me the world to ask, but I had to know why this handsome young man had been so drawn to the mother I was so like.

  Jamie was silent for a moment, considering. “I honestly couldn’t tell you, my girl,” he said at last. “I don’t remember her being a great beauty when first I saw her, but that never seemed to matter. She was—she looked—ah, there’s no words for it. She was so alive, that was what you saw, and beside her the others were candles to the sun.”

  So, I thought. Not beautiful, but attractive. There are worse fates.

  “Tall as Marik was, he stood yet taller, though he never stood straight—but he was a scrawny thing, compared to her. Altogether he reminded me of a red hawk, stooped in the shoulder, nose like a hooked beak and green eyes flecked with yellow. To this day I don’t know what your mother saw in him. When I asked her she hadn’t the words, though she seemed to think his voice the best of him. It just sounded high to me, soft and mannered like a man who never deals with men. But then I wouldn’t know.” Jamie stared into his tankard. “I never did understand it.”

  “The long and the short of it is, she left me for him that very day, with barely a word after three years.” Jamie’s voice grew softer, just for a moment. “I would have laid down my life to keep her from harm, and she ran to it fast as she could go.” He looked up at me and a rueful smile touched his lips. “You’d think I’d have been furious, wouldn’t you?”

  “I would have been,” I answered, a little sadly. “And I was just starting to like her.”

  He snorted. “I’d been at it longer. I had told myself all the while we travelled that there’d come a time when she’d leave, but I never believed it. And even as her name was linked with his by the market place gossips, I waited. I found odd jobs, nothing much, enough to keep me near her, for my heart misgave me, and I would not leave her to him so swiftly.”

  “It was two months before I saw her again to talk to, and it was the last thing I’d have imagined that made her turn to me again. I began to weary of waiting, and I had gone to the marketplace with some idea of buying provisions and leaving—though in truth I had no thought of doing such a thingwhen someone grabbed me by the arm from behind.”

  “Well, you don’t live long in my profession if you let that kind of thing happen. Without thinking I whirled and braced in a fighter’s crouch, my dagger in my hand though I didn’t remember drawing it, distance between us that I pulled from thin air.”

  “She laughed, part from surprise, part from something else, something I had not seen in her before.”

  ” ‘I never thought to see you here,’ I told her, putting my blade away, the anger of two months washing through me. ‘Lover boy leave you, or you him?’

  ” ‘Neither,’ she said, her eyes troubled. ‘Take me somewhere private. We have to talk.’

  “For a bent copper coin I’d have cursed her and left, I was that angry, but even as I turned to go I finally recognised what was new in her. It was fear.” Jamie shook his head gently. “I had travelled the breadth of Kolmar with her for three years, Lanen. We’d fought off winter storms and treacherous cliffs and the occasional band of roughs and worse, and in all that time I had never seen fear in her. I swore to myself then that I would banish it if I could, and if that bastard Marik had somehow frightened my fearless Maran, I’d put the cap on my career and kill him. Cheerfully.”

  He took a drink. “Of course, it didn’t work out that way. Usually doesn’t.”

  He fell silent for a moment. The couple in the corner clattered about, having a meal served them. I waited, but Jamie seemed to have lost himself in his memories. “Jamie?”

  “Eh? Oh.” He picked up my tankard, felt the weight and set it down again. “You’re not drinking,” he said, looking at me with a slight frown. “Something wrong?”

  “No,” I said, lying. “Go on. Please.”

  “It’s not pretty, my Lanen,” he said sadly. “Make you a deal. You drink, I’ll talk. You stop drinking, I stop talking. Done?”

  “Done,” I replied. I lifted my tankard and half-drained it, filled it back to the brim and made a point of sipping at regular intervals: The brew was starting to affect me, but I kept my mouthfuls small and listened with all my might.

  “We found our privacy in a hidden nook in a crowded pub much as you and I have. Seems she had found a secret passage in Marik’s house—and being who she was, instantly went in. She heard voices, Marik and a stranger, a voice she didn’t know. ‘He was bargaining, Jamie,’ she tells me. ‘The stranger is a demon master called Berys. He said he was a Magister of the Fifth Circle; whatever that means. He was angry at Marik and said he needed more gold. When Marik asked how he should gain it, Berys told him to send a ship to the Dragon Isle!’” .

  Jamie paused: glancing at me. “You’ve stopped drinking again, lass,” he said, a wry smile ghosting past his lips. “And remember to breathe while you’re about it.” I nodded and took a deep breath. He went on. .

  “Maran told me that Marik tried to beg off that particular venture, because of the storms and. because every last one for a century had disappeared without trace. Seems Berys didn’t much care. ‘He told Marik to call on him again in thirty or forty years,’ she said. ‘Berys started to go but Marik called him back. He said he needed power now, not in thirty years. So Berys said he would make a Farseer for Marik. Thank the Goddess Marik’s gasp was louder than mine. I thought such things were only legend, and so did Marik, but Berys was serious, and the price is to b
e—oh, Jamie, it turns my stomach!’ she said, covering her mouth. When she could speak again, she said, ‘The price is his firstborn child. I thought for a second he was jesting, but he meant it.’ She caught my eye and shook her head. ‘And no, I’ve not quickened, he doesn’t have a child, Not yet,’ she said, shuddering.

  ” ‘Then Marik asked if Berys intended next to go to his rivals and make Farseers for them, but Berys said there could only be one of the things in the world at any time, and that if he never had children there would be no price extracted. Marik asked what would happen if it were stolen from him. Berys would only say that if he were unlucky he might live.’

  “Well, the long and short of it was that Marik agreed to the bargain and signed away the life of his firstborn child in blood. The ritual was set for that very night at moonrise.” Jamie wrapped both his hands around his tankard and stared into its depths, and his voice dropped to a rough murmur. “We talked for a while about what to do. She had the start of a plan, and together we worked out the details. When all was set, I—I offered her my services.” He swallowed hard. “As assassin. I asked her if she wanted me to kill them. I had not killed in more than three years, and the very thought made my gorge rise up to choke me, but if she needed me to…”

  I sat frozen, my throat thick with dread. For me, no matter what came after, this was the center of all Jamie’s telling. I could not breathe. I had to know. And below dread, below thought, deep in the center of my soul, I prayed faster and harder than ever I had before. Blessed Lady, Mother Shia, please, please let it be that my mother did not ask Jamie to kill for her…

  A tiny corner of his mouth lifted, he glanced at me, and I breathed again. .

  “She took me by the shoulders and turned me to face her. ‘Jameth of Arinoc,’ she says, solemn as judgement, ‘rather would I cut off my own arm. If you have forgotten, I haven’t. I may be fool enough to take a dark soul like Marik as a lover, but while I live you are the man I care most about in the world.’ “

  I saw the tears slip down his cheeks, this man who was farmer and assassin and all but father to me, and I knew that he remembered those words as if she stood before him and spoke them fresh at the very moment, and that they were all he had of her to remember.

  “I believed her, though I could see her own words shocked her. And me. ‘I swear to you, Jamie,’ she says; ‘if either of us has to kill anyone it will be only to save our own skins.’

  “We waited until just after moonrise; then she led me through the house to the secret passage. I was dressed in my old uniform, a kind of mottled black tunic of silk with no clean edges. I left her halfway down the passage, as we’d agreed, and crept on to the room at the end. There was a little light only a few candles—but it was enough. I waited at the corner some few minutes, listening, until I guessed they were too interested in what they were doing to notice me. I peered round the wall just as the voice I assumed was Berys rose high and loud in a kind of incantation. Just as I looked round the light changed, from dim candlelight to a bright red glow, and I heard a hissing voice like nothing I’d ever imagined.

  “There, above the small altar between Berys and—Marik, a figure of nightmare hovered in the air above glowing red coals, and it was much the same colour. It didn’t take much to guess that it must be one of the Rakshasa, a demon from the Seven Hells. I’d only ever come across the Rikti, the minor demons, on one of my jobs—it was a pleasure taking out that demon caller—but this was its older cousin, and a foul, fierce thing it was. The voice made my skin crawl.

  “That was a bad moment, because even if the men couldn’t see me the demon sure as all Hells could.” He smiled grimly. “I had forgotten the nature of the things. They don’t give away spit. It probably hoped I was there to kill them, which would leave it free to go. In any case, it never even hinted to them that I was there.

  “I don’t remember what they said—there was a lot of bickering, threats, and empty posturing on both sides. I remember Marik’s voice swearing his firstborn child to Berys, though, and Berys saying it was time for the blood sacrifice. I didn’t think much of it until I heard a small sound, startling in that place. Even in those days I knew the sound of a waking infant when I heard it.

  “It took me a few seconds to understand that they were going to kill some poor, nameless child then and there and give its blood to the demon for the making of this Farseer.

  “You must understand, Lanen, that all the while I was watching and listening, I was planning when and where to strike. All those years of killing left me with a good sound sense of survival and strategy.” He frowned. “I wish I could say my first impulse was to rush in and try to save the child. I thought about it, but I knew that the best that could happen was that I would be killed myself and do Maran and the child no good. Maran and I had decided it would be best to take the Farseer once it was made, and I knew I had to keep to the plan:” He lifted the tankard before him, which he had ignored for some while, and drank deep.

  “I watched it all, Lanen,” said Jamie, his voice deep with old sorrow. “Berys chanting, the child crying louder and louder, screaming in fear and pain, then suddenly, horribly silent. I moved no muscle, invisible in the shadows that hid me at the back of the room, but I swore revenge for that babe as it died.

  “Then Berys told Marik that he would have to give of his own blood to seal the spell. The craven bastard yelled near as loud as the child had, and cursed Berys through his teeth when his arm was opened to let the blood. I began to slip my dagger from my boot. A poignard would have killed, but somehow, in the face of that evil, the thought of giving more death to that creature made me sick. My hands were stained enough as it was.’

  “There was a loud hiss as Berys poured the mingled blood of Marik and the babe over the hot coals, and the voice of the demon slithered through the air. ‘It iss done, Masster. Behold that which you dessire.’ There was a globe on the altar now, of what looked like smoky glass, about the size of a small melon.

  ” ‘It is done, slave,’ says Berys, calm as could be. ‘Begone to the Fourth Circle of Hell that spawned you, but know that if this is not the true Farseer I will have claim to your miserable hide for a year and a day.’ .

  ” ‘Ssso bee itt,’ the thing hissed; and with a loud pop it disappeared. Then Marik grabs up the globe and says, ‘Show me the head of the Merchant Bouse of Hovir.’ I couldn’t see exactly what was happening, but from his expression the thing worked well enough. With that kind of power Marik would quickly rise to lead the Merchant Houses. At least.

  “I felt my jaw draw tight as my body set itself for an attack. All of Kolmar’s trade ruled by demons? Not if I had word to say about it.

  ” ‘Do you accept this Farseer and seal our pact?’ asked Berys, calm as if he was asking about the weather. Marik should have seen it coming. Idiot.

  ” ‘Yes. I will take this in exchange for the life of my first child, whensoever it might be born,’ replied Marik, staring into the depths of the thing like a man in a daze.

  “Then Berys laughed, and it was a terrible sound. ‘It is done! Fool! Could you imagine the road to power so swift and simple? Ere ever you sought me, ere ever you were born or named, a prophet of our brotherhood knew this would come to pass. For his pact with the Lords of the Hells he was given visions of endings and beginnings, and for the four Kingdoms he prophesied:

  ” ‘When the breach is healed at last—

  when the two are joined in one—

  when the lost ones from the past

  live and move in light of sun,

  Marik of Gundar’s blood and bone

  shall rule all four in one alone.’

  ” ‘What is this gibberish?’ snarled Marik. ‘My blood and bone are within my body. You are the fool, Berys, it is simple enough to ensure that I never have issue. Then I shall rule Kolmar, I, Marik of Gundar!’

  “Berys never moved, and his voice went cold and calm. No, Your destiny is merely to bring into being the child who will rule al
l of Kolmar—and now the child is mine!’

  “I had heard enough. I spoke low but loud, to shock them and alert Maran. ‘Now.’

  “I threw myself at Berys, but I might have saved myself the trouble. Somehow I’d have thought a master of the Fifth Circle—there are only seven—would have safeguards against just this sort of thing, but the luck was with me. I can only guess he couldn’t have summoned the Raksha with his guard about him. A few cuts that wouldn’t kill him to get him into position, one deep wound to keep him down, and that was it.

  “I turned just in time to see Maran deal with Marik. He had disarmed her, but she never was much for weapons.” Jamie grinned then, all the way up to his eyes. “He’d grabbed her right arm to keep her off balance. Idiot. Spent all that time with her and never noticed she was left-handed. She hit him in the stomach like the hammer hitting the anvil. I heard ribs crack from where I stood. He’d doubled over, of course. Then’ she straightened him out. He dropped like a stone.

  “She wrapped the Farseer in her cloak and we ran for the horses I’d left nearby. May I never again face such a wild ride in darkness. Our noses were pointed north and west and we followed them, caring only about putting as much distance as we could between us and them.

  “We had been going for some half an hour when something made me turn in my saddle. There behind us I watched as two red smears of light streaked towards us in the darkness. They were at about the same level above the ground as we were, and they were gaining on us far too quickly.

  “The horses saved us, I think. They caught wind of the things and bolted. I thought they were running before, but sheer terror is a wonderful spur. We fairly flew.

  “And just as well, for despite our speed the things caught us up. I knew of nothing to do against such creatures, and I had no idea what would happen, but I learned soon enough. A red mist covered my sight, and every inch of my skin crawled as though a thousand ants swarmed over me. The itch swelled from a burning to a knife-prick to a deep stabbing pain. I never meant to, but I cried out, about the same time Maran screamed.”