Farlander

His eyes fell on Rianna, and she tried to look away. But her body was not hers any longer: her eyes would not close for more than a blink.

He passed the bowl to the priestess, then stepped towards Rianna. No sound would come from her throat.

Eager hands ripped away the remnants of her dress. His face was a mask as he stared at the rise and fall of her white breasts, at her nipples stiffened by fear. The seal still rested between her breasts, pulsating as it always did. He fixed his gaze on it, puzzled at first, and then a cool understanding followed.

He bared his teeth, and snapped them at her. At first, she thought he was trying to bite her, but instead he ripped the seal away with an angry jerk. He spat it into the flames of the brazier.

'The flesh is strong,' breathed the young priest foully upon her face.

But by then, Rianna was already dying.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Vendetta 'Where are we going?' demanded Nico as he hurried after Ash into the west wing of the monastery, along the main tiq-panelled corridor, down steps into a dim basement that held casks and boxes and various assortments of stock. Ash moved quietly to the centre of the wooden floor, his form casting a long shadow from the solitary lantern hanging above. Nico stopped by his side. He followed Ash's gaze towards their feet.

The old man took a key from his robe. It was as thin as a carpentry nail, and fine-toothed at one end. He bent to insert it into a hole in the floor that Nico was unable to see. A twist and a click, and suddenly Ash was tugging open a trapdoor that uncovered a stone stairwell and a release of stale air. They descended in silence.

Twelve steps down, they reached a low, damp tunnel, and they followed it to a source of light at its very end.

'We call it the watching-house,' Ash explained softly, as he nodded a greeting to the two long-haired Rshun who knelt, back to back, in the centre of the brightly lit vault they now stood within. A ceiling of white plaster arched high over their heads, an occasional root poking through it to dangle as if lost in the smoky atmosphere. The ceiling curved down to meet a circular periphery of walls plastered in the same sad, damp white.

The walls were lit by countless lanterns, and punctuated by rows of identically tiny alcoves, hundreds upon hundreds of them. Inside many of these alcoves Nico could see the familiar dark shapes of seals hanging from hooks. There were thousands all around.

What might ordinarily have been a solemn experience, standing deep beneath the ground surrounded by their sheer multitude, was instead something creepy and surreal, owing to the fact that all the seals were moving. Nico peered closer at them. It took several moments, as though his mind refused to see things for what they really were, but suddenly the scene snapped into clearer focus and he could see that steadily, perhaps five times in a minute, these thousands of seals were breathing in and out like tiny leathery lungs.

All of them, except for one.

They moved to stand before it, Nico's breath sounding loud in his ears, while Ash explained in a low drone about how it had died during the night, and how he hoped it was merely an accidental or natural death, and not murder and thus requiring vendetta. And, with that, Ash plucked it from its hook and swept out of the watching-house with Nico scurrying in his wake.

They left the monastery at a fast trot.

'Where are we going?' asked Nico, as they turned to hike a path up the valley floor.

'To see a man,' Ash replied over his shoulder. 'A man I should have taken you to visit long before now.'

'So why didn't you?'

The farlander leapt over a small slope of stones, and kept walking without reply. Nico scrabbled up after him, increasing his pace to catch up as the dry grasses clutched at his legs.

'Who is this man?' he called out.

'A Seer. He will read the seal for us, and then tell us what occurred in the night.'

'It's true, then?' panted Nico. 'What the other apprentices say, that he's a miracle-man?'

'No. The Seer merely understands subtle wisdom. With technique, and great stillness, he can do things that others can achieve only by chance, if at all.'

'I don't understand.'

'I know.'

They followed the stream for a short time, then angled away from it, treading across marshy ground that sucked at their sandalled feet. Ash continued walking without effort, as though he was taking an afternoon stroll. Nico, by his side, was now sweating.

'The Seer is our order's most valued member, boy. Remember this when you meet him. Our lore, our history, all of it has been passed down through the line of Seers. Without a Seer we would become blind, without direction. He alone can look into the heart of a seal and tell us what we must know from it. He can look equally into the heart of a novice, and judge if he is worthy. In a way, he will do so with you.'

'I am to be judged?'

'You will not know it. Mostly he will concentrate on the seal.'

'I still think he sounds like a miracle-man.'

'Boy, there are no miracles. What the Seer does is wholly natural.'

'In the bazaar of Bar-Khos, I once saw a man who could stand upside-down balanced on his lips. He could do press-ups of a kind when he pursed his lips against the ground. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.'

Ash gave a dismissive toss of his head. 'The Seer is what you Mercians call a… prodigy. They have not always been so, our Seers, but this one… this one is a man of learning as well as of intuition. When we first came here, to the Miders, he heard of Zanzahar and the many things they imported there from the Isles of Sky. He travelled to the city to study them, though it was not always clear what those things had been designed for. The seeds of the mali tree, for instance. They are sold in that city as rare charms capable of bonding to their wearer. They store a person's life in some way, so the wearers, if they practise certain techniques, can relive those events in dreams of their own choosing. The Seer – it was he who discovered how to bisect those seeds and twin them, so we could use them for our own purposes. In that way he invented the seals.'

'So how did you conduct vendetta before then?'

'With great difficulty.' Ash cast a backward glance at his apprentice. There was a sparkle to his dark features, a vitality that seemed to have been absent for some time. 'Your wounds have healed well,' he observed to his apprentice.

'Yes,' Nico agreed.

It was true. The wounds caused by Aleas had been small enough cuts, as it turned out. They had not even require stitching. Nico had simply applied beeswax to them, as Aleas himself had suggested, whereupon the wounds had not bruised but stayed red and raw for some days, before scabbing over, causing the discomfort of constant itching more than anything else. When Nico had later caught his reflection, backlit by candle flame, in the glass of one of the kitchen windows, he was even somewhat taken with what he saw. The small scars made him look older, he decided.

The Seer lived alone in a little hermitage further up the valley. His hermitage sat on a hump of grass in the bend formed by a small, frothy brook that ran between rocks turned green with algae. Trees protected it on the windward side, gnarly jupes in full bloom and a large weeping willow whose leaves trailed in the current of water and sparred with its passing. The hermitage itself was nothing more than a shack, with a rectangular hole cut in one wall to overlook the brook, and which served as both window and door.

'Remember what I have told you,' said Ash as they approached.

Nico followed him inside. For a moment, in the dusty sunlight filtering past him though the doorway, he wondered if they had come to the wrong place.

In the centre of the tiny hut, the Seer sat cross-legged on a mat of woven rushes, facing the door with his eyes half closed. He was a skinny, ancient man, with a milky film covering his hooded eyes, and skin like that of fruit left too long in the sun. He was a farlander, obviously, and his dark skin contrasted sharply with the great puffs of white hair sprouting from his nostrils and ears. His scalp was bald. His earlobes, ritually mutilated, hung obscenely down to his shoulders in a manner Nico had never seen before.