‘Forgive me, I thought I got up from the cushions to learn how to use a freaking sword.’ He let it clatter to the ground.
‘Yep. This is about footwork. And enough with the whining. That won’t impress her.’ Sharfy laughed at the blush rising to his cheeks. ‘Yes, I know you’re in love. More dangerous than combat, that is. Here. Catch these stones with your right hand. Lunge forwards to catch them, if I throw in front of you. Step this way if I throw left, or this way right.’ Sharfy demonstrated what looked like the steps of a dance, then threw the first pebble, which bounced off Eric’s knuckle. A second pebble whizzed straight into his forehead. ‘That’s what happens when you miss.’
‘This is going to be a long day, isn’t it?’ said Eric, rubbing what felt like a bee-sting between his eyes.
‘That’s up to you. Catch! Good. Catch! Better …’
‘Least you know how to hold a blade now,’ said Sharfy at nightfall as they headed back to the verandah, sweaty and tired. ‘Holding the sword right might be enough to make someone think they’re in for a fight, maybe enough to stop em starting one.’
‘That’s not a ringing endorsement of my potential, is it?’
Sharfy shrugged in reply.
‘I’ll make the front rank one day, you wait,’ said Eric, strangely buoyed as they sat on the back steps and surveyed the darkening horizon.
Sharfy laughed his unpleasant laugh. ‘First lesson, you did all right,’ he said. ‘Your eye’s fine, seen worse make it to military grade. We’ll work on your defence. Stay alive as long as you can, Anfen or me will kill whoever’s attacking you.’
‘Cutting the enemy’s head off seems a pretty good defence.’
Sharfy nodded. ‘Maybe so. Getting yours cut off’s a pretty poor one. Hey, before. When Loup took you to the cliffs. What’d he do?’
‘Not much, just crushed my most valuable possession into powder.’
‘Which one? Not the black?’
‘The black.’
Sharfy looked stricken. ‘I’ll kill him! Why’d you let him? Don’t worry. Your other scales, all valuable. Worth a bag of gold each, two bags for the blue. Did he keep the powder or give it to you?’
‘It’s right here.’ Eric held up the pouch. When Sharfy looked at it, a change came over him: his dents and scars had made him seem a hardened old warrior, but now he had the desperate leer of an addict. He looked around conspiratorially, leaned close, voice lowered. ‘Might as well do a vision, if it’s already crushed. If you can spare a pinch, I’ll owe you.’
Eric experimentally moved the pouch left, then right. Sharfy’s eyes followed its every movement till he put it away. ‘Just why have you lowered your voice there, Sharfy?’
Sharfy blinked and returned to normal. ‘Anfen and his rules. He’s not keen on scale visions. But listen. You know how I was saying Loup’s a bit of a mongrel, in what magic he knows? If he has a speciality, it’s visions and other Dreamcraft. Our secret though, just the three of us. And I can see by the look in your eye you’re keener than I am. Don’t deny it.’
‘I doubt you can see that in my eye, my friend.’ But it was true enough.
31
All had eaten and bathed, even Lalie, who was again tied up on the front porch and none too happy about it. Sharfy, Eric (and Loup, who had been put on notice visions were to transpire) were all patiently waiting for Anfen to fall asleep or busy himself on some hours-long mission, but as yet he was still around, and hadn’t seemed to notice all the furtive glances his way.
Siel now sat on Eric’s mat with her legs crossed, heels pushing into the brown flesh of her thighs. He lay with his eyes about level to her knees, chin resting on his hands and pleasantly close to hypnotised while her quiet voice spoke as though telling children a story. The half-giant’s footsteps occasionally creaked from other rooms, even her softest tread enough to make the floor shake as she put cloth covers on the bird cages and bade each bird good night.
Said Siel, ‘The castle was not always home to its current dwellers. It used to house powerful magicians from many schools. Before that, it housed no one, for it was not a castle but a hunk of magic stone, shaped, we guess, by the dragon-youths’ very own claws and teeth. But the dragons left no clue as to their use of it.
‘For much of history, none dared go close. Not until the mages arrived to start their work: hollowing out stairways, halls and chambers to make a great house of it. They dwelled there for a long time, developing their arts, ignoring the rest of the world, which had so mistrusted them and driven them away from the cities.
‘Then five centuries ago came the War that Tore the World. All eighteen cities were dragged into a tangled mess of allegiances, betrayals. More people died in that war than live today, and the Great Spirits intervened to end it before we killed each other completely. Stories are told of Mountain stepping into a valley and sitting, legs crossed, to block the path of two great armies marching at each other. Catapulted rocks flew from both sides, striking his front and back, but he wouldn’t move.
‘When the War finished, the magicians devised a plan for permanent peace. They relinquished the castle to the Mayors for a staggering price, and retreated to their newly built temples. By agreement, the castle formed its own peacekeeping army, a force greater than that of any one city, or any two … but not great enough to defeat several cities at once. Cities took turns sending wise people to the castle to govern disputes. Of the eighteen cities, six had run of the castle for five years, then six others for the next five years, and so on. They made decisions by court, a charter of principles as their guide. Disputes were settled this way. Not without complaint, of course. But for the most part, peace held.
‘If only the dragons could tell us what they had done to that mountainous sculpture to make its airs run so thick with power … but they keep their secrets. Men who dwell there live longer, untroubled by sickness. Mages bask in the potent airs or at least pay a lower price for the magic that goes through them. It has been a temptation to all who have sat in those thrones, and walked those halls, to remain forever. It took a long time for someone to reach for the prize with enough cunning and luck to seize it. Vous was the one to do it.’
Siel paused to sip her drink, the same strong brew Case had been sipping most of the day. They’d seen Lut begin to make a new batch of it from roots and fat red berries. Eric sipped a far more agreeable drink, the Levaal equivalent of tea, its taste sweet and nutty.
Siel went on, ‘He was born of a powerful merchant family in the city of Ankin. He knew sons and daughters of other powerful families across the world. They all resented and mocked the magicians’ system, resented its taxes on their wealth, its limiting of their cities’ greatness. Their parents and grandparents had mouthed the same complaints, but this generation decided to act. Vous, a gifted speaker, a skilled swordsman, soon earned his cause a small, devoted following. They were few, but had great wealth behind them. They recruited the help of rogue mages, many of whom hated the Schools’ decision to sell the castle to the Mayors.
‘It was easy for Vous, with bribery, lies and blackmail, to be Ankin’s nominated wise-man when the time arose, despite his youth. It was a longer, dirtier battle to get his co-conspirators nominated as their respective cities’ wise-men. A trail of intrigue and murder churned in their wake. The families emptied their safes of riches, knowing the prize they reached for would be greater. And they achieved their goal. For the first time, all six wise-men had the same interests at heart.
‘The rules appeared to be followed, when the newly appointed wise-men set forth for the castle gates from their cities to claim rule. They appeared to rule justly at first, and fears were soothed. But much went on behind the stage of this performance. In five short years, with vast new resources and powers, the six used the same blackmail, bribery, lies, and murder on a grander scale. Soon the ring of cities closest to the castle were the first of what we now call ‘Aligned Cities’. Puppets of the conspirators were put in charge of each, generals were likewise replaced, and those cities’ armies swelled the castle’s ranks. War brewed silently and invisibly. The cities further away did not see it coming.