Stop! I held to his arm with all my will, but still it crept forward.
Miana looked angry rather than scared. Ready to do bloody murder.
My hand started forward, lunging with the knife, aimed low, below the swing of Mianas bow. I couldnt stop it. The gleaming blade would pierce her womb, and slice, and in a welter of gore she would die. Our child with her.
The assassin thrust, and a hand span from finding flesh our arm shuddered off course, all its power cut clean away by a blow that sheared through my shoulder. I twisted as I collapsed, the ironwork of the crossbow smashing into my face. Marten stood behind me, a devil clothed in blood, his snarl veiled in scarlet. My head hit the carpet, vision turning black. Their voices sounded far away.
My queen!
Im not hurt, Marten.
Im so sorry I failed you he passed me.
Im not hurt, Marten A woman woke me in my dreams.
3
Youre quiet this morning, Jorg.
I crunched my bread: from the Haunt, a day old and slightly stale.
Still brooding over the chess? The smell of clove-spice as he came close. I told you Ive played since I was six.
The bread snapped and scattered crust as I broke it open. Get Riccard in here will you?
Makin stood, downing his java, a cold and stinking brew the guards favour. He left without question: Makin could read people.
Riccard followed him back in moments later, tramping mud over the floor hides, crumbs of his own breakfast in his yellow moustache.
Sire? He offered a bow, probably warned by Makin.
I want you to ride to the Haunt. Take an hour there. Speak to Chancellor Coddin and the queen. Catch us up as soon as you can with any report. If that report makes mention of a white-skinned man, bring the black coffer from my treasury, the one whose lid is inlaid with a silver eagle, and ten men to guard it. Coddin will arrange it.
Makin raised an eyebrow but came no closer to a question.
I pulled the chessboard near and took an apple from the table. The apple sprayed when bitten and droplets of juice shone on the black and white squares. The pieces stood ready in their lines. I set a finger to the white queen, making a slow circle so she rolled around her base. Either it had been a false dream, Katherine designing better torments than of old, and Miana was fine, or it had been a true dream and Miana was fine.
Another game, Jorg? Makin asked. All around, from outside, the sounds of camp being struck.
No. The queen fell, toppling two pawns. Im past games.
4
Five years earlier
I took the Haunt and the Highlands crown in my fourteenth year and bore its weight three months before I went once more to the road. I ranged north to the Heimrift and south to the Horse Coast, and approached fifteen in the Castle Morrow under the protection of Earl Hansa, my grandfather. And though it was his heavy horse that had drawn me there, and the promise of a strong ally in the Southlands, it was the secrets which lay beneath the castle that kept me. In a forgotten cellar one small corner of a lost world broke through into ours.
Come out come out wherever you are. I knocked the hilt of my dagger against the machine. In the cramped cellar it rang loud enough to hurt my ears.
Still nothing. Just the flicker and buzz of the three still-working glow-bulbs overhead.
Come on, Grouch. You pop out to badger every visitor. Youre famed for it. And yet you hide from me?
I tapped metal to metal. A thoughtful tempo. Why would Fexler Brews hide from me?
I thought I was your favourite? I turned the Builders view-ring over in my hand. He hadnt made me work very hard for it and I counted it a gift above any my father had ever given me.
Its some kind of test? I asked. You want something from me?
What would a Builder ghost want from me? What couldnt he take, or make? Or ask for? If he wanted something, wouldnt he ask?
You want something.
One of the glow-bulbs flickered, flared, and died.
He needs something from me but cant ask.
I thought I was your favourite? I turned the Builders view-ring over in my hand. He hadnt made me work very hard for it and I counted it a gift above any my father had ever given me.
Its some kind of test? I asked. You want something from me?
What would a Builder ghost want from me? What couldnt he take, or make? Or ask for? If he wanted something, wouldnt he ask?
You want something.
One of the glow-bulbs flickered, flared, and died.
He needs something from me but cant ask.
I held the view-ring to my eye, and once again I saw the world the whole world as viewed from outside, a jewel of blue and white hung in the blackness that holds the stars.
He wanted me to see something.
Where are you, Fexler? Where are you hiding?
I moved to pull the view-ring away in disgust when a tiny point of light caught my eye. A single red dot in all that swirling blue. I pushed the ring tight against the bones of brow and cheek. Where are you? And dialled the side of the ring so the world grew beneath me as though I fell into it. I steered and dialled, homing in on my prey, a constant red dot, drawing me to it now, faster and faster until the ring could show no more and the dot held steady above a barren hill in a range that stretched across badlands to the west of the Horse Coast.
You want me to go here? I asked.
Silence. Another glow-bulb flared and died.
I stood a moment in the trembling light of the last glow-bulb, shrugged and made my way up the narrow spiral of stairs toward the castle above.
My grandfathers map room is in a tall tower that overlooks the sea. The map scrolls are held in oiled leather tubes, a wax seal on each set with his sigil. Seven narrow windows admit the light, at least in the months when the storm shutters are not closed against the elements. A scribe is employed to tend the place, and spends his days there from dawn to dusk, ready to open the tubes for anyone authorized to view the contents, and to seal them away again when the work is done.
Youve never thought to suggest a different room? I asked the scribe as the wind tried to steal the map for the twentieth time. I had been there an hour, chasing documents across the chamber, and was ready to commit murder. How Redmon hadnt taken a crossbow and opened up on the folk below through his seven windows I didnt know. I caught the map before it left the table and replaced the four paperweights it had shrugged off.
Good ventilation is essential for preserving the vellum, Redmon said. He kept his gaze on his feet, his quill turning over and over in his hand. I think he worried I might damage his charges in my temper. Had he known me he would have worried about his own health. He looked narrow enough to fit through one of the windows.
I located the hills I had seen through the view-ring, and found the general area of the particular hill where the red dot had sat so patiently. I had wondered if there might truly be a red light blazing on that hillside, so bright it could be seen from the dark vaults of heaven, but I reasoned that it had grown no brighter as my view closed in upon it and so it must have been some clever artifice, like a wax mark on a looking glass that seems to override your reflection.
And what does this signify? I asked, my finger on a symbol that covered the region. I felt pretty sure I knew. There were three similar symbols marked on the maps of Ancrath in my fathers library, covering the regions of Ill Shadow, Eastern Dark, and Kanes Scar. But perhaps they served a different purpose in the southlands.
Redmon stepped to the desk and leaned in. Promised regions.
Promised? I asked.
The half-life lands. Not a place to travel.
The symbols served the same purpose as they did in Ancrath. They warned of taints lingering from the Builders war, stains from their poisons, or shadows from the day of a thousand suns.
And the promise? I asked.
Noble Chens promise, of course. He looked surprised. That when the half-life has spent itself these lands will be returned to man, to till and plough. Redmon pushed the wire-framed reading lenses further up his nose and returned to his ledgers at the big desk before the towering shelves of pigeonholes, each crammed with documents.
I rolled the scroll up and took it in my hand like a baton. Im taking this to show Lord Robert.
Redmon watched with anguish as I left, as if Id stolen his only son to use as target practice. Ill look after it, I said.
I found my uncle in the stables. He spent more time there than anywhere else, and since Id met his shrew of a wife I had come to understand. Horses made her sneeze I heard it told, worse and worse minute by minute, until it seemed she would sneeze the eyes from her head. Robert found his peace amongst the stalls, talking bloodlines with his stable-master and looking over his stock. He had thirty horses in the castle stables, all prime examples of their lines, and his best knights to ride them, cavalrymen billeted away from the house guard and wall guard in far more luxury, as befits men of title.
What do you know of the Iberico? I called out as I walked toward him between the stalls.
And good afternoon to you, young Jorg. He shook his head and patted the neck of the black stallion leaning out at him.
I need to go there, I said.
He shook his head with emphasis this time. The Iberico are dead land. Promised but not given. You dont want to go there.
Thats true. I dont want to. But I need to go there. So what can you tell me? I asked.
The stallion snorted and rolled an eye as if venting Roberts frustration for him.
I can tell you that men who spend time in such places sicken and die. Some take years before the poison eats them from within, others last weeks or days, losing their hair and teeth, vomiting blood.
I will be quick then. Behind the set of my jaw second thoughts tried to wrest control of my tongue.
There are places in the Iberico Hills, unmarked save for the barren look of them, where a mans skin will fall from him as he walks. My uncle pushed the horse away and stepped closer to me. What grows in those hills is twisted, what lives there unnatural. I doubt your need exceeds the risks.
Youre right, I said. And he was. But when was the world ever so simple as right and wrong? I blinked twice and the red dot watched me from the darkness behind my eyelids. I know youre right, but often its not in me to take the sensible path, Uncle. Im an explorer. Maybe that itch is in you too?