Tobry ground his teeth and continued. ‘She said the Pale are enslaved, and beaten for the smallest infringement. She said her best friend was beheaded yesterday because she used magery to save herself from a flogging.’
‘She’s lying,’ Rix said half-heartedly, for he knew how hard it was to lie to Tobry. He could read people the way anyone else might read a map. Rix stared ahead, refusing to meet his friend’s eyes.
‘Tali said magery is forbidden in Cython.’
‘We know that.’
‘Will you listen!’ roared Tobry. ‘They kill every slave who shows a gift for it — even children. They were going to kill that little urchin hiding behind the tussocks — ’
Rix swung around. ‘WHAT?’
‘You heard.’
‘They kill children, because they have the gift?’
‘That’s what she said.’
Rix did not want to believe it, yet Tobry could sniff out a half-truth a mile away. ‘Can the Pale really spring from child hostages?’
‘Never ransomed, Tali said. Hightspall’s noblest children, abandoned to the enemy. She was furious about it.’
‘Why haven’t we heard about it before? Everyone knows the Pale are traitors. All the history books say so.’
‘How would you know?’ said Tobry. ‘You’ve never read a schoolbook in your life.’
Rix scowled. ‘Who has time for that rubbish?’
‘You saw the bruises on Tali, and the little girl was covered in them. Does that sound like they serve willingly?’
‘All right, I believe you,’ Rix snarled. If Tali was telling the truth, it made his behaviour even more inexcusable. ‘How did they escape from Cython?’
‘A question the chancellor will certainly be asking, once he hears.’ Tobry came up close. ‘Listen! Tali said they’re going to war in ten days.’
At last! Rix thought. ‘Then we’d better ride home like a hurricane.’ He took hold of the saddle horn.
‘Not yet.’
‘Why not?’ Rix snapped. If there was to be a war, his life would mean something at last.
‘The Caulderon road can’t be far ahead. We can send warnings with the first riders we meet — they’ll be a lot faster than our worn-out horses. Then we’re going back.’
Rix prepared to swing into the saddle. ‘There isn’t time.’
Tobry’s fingers dug into Rix’s shoulder, holding him back. ‘You’ve acted dishonourably to a woman and abandoned a child in danger. You can’t run away.’
‘I’m not running away,’ said Rix, all the more irritated with Tobry for pointing out the uncomfortable truth. Rix had offered Tali help, then insulted her and fled. His cheeks burnt. ‘All right! But if they’re not at the oasis, I’m not searching the Seethings for them. My house is in danger. My country.’
They had just reached the Caulderon road, a broad, well-built thoroughfare paved with slabs of white sandstone, when a crimson fireball erupted many miles to their right, bursting and billowing upwards in silence.
‘What the hell was that?’ said Rix. ‘Was it an eruption?’ Though it wasn’t in the right place. The Vomits were west of here, not east.
Small white flashes twinkled around the base of the fireball, and shortly flames lit up the rising cloud. Uncanny flames, not orange or red, but a lurid, unnatural crimson.
‘I’ve never seen any fire like that before,’ Tobry said slowly.
The ground quivered and thunder rumbled, though not normal thunder. It had a brittle, crackling quality.
‘New volcanoes sometimes appear from nowhere.’
‘It’s not a volcano.’ Tobry consulted his map by a glimmer of mage light. ‘Close to Gullihoe, I’d say.’
‘Then what is it?’ The answer was obvious but Rix did not want to jinx them by putting it into words. He looked up and down the road but saw no lights, no travellers. ‘We’d better find out.’
As they rode across undulating country, the dry grass swishing around the horses’ fetlocks, more fireballs appeared behind them. Two were towards the south coast of the lake on the far side of the Seethings, three others in the direction of Caulderon. Rix wheeled Leather about and drew his sword.
‘It’s war! Come on.’
Tobry caught the reins. ‘They’ll be long gone by the time we can reach Caulderon.’
‘What if they’re not? What if they’re in the city?’ Was this what his nightmares meant? Were they blasting the palace walls right now, butchering his helpless people and murdering children they suspected of having the gift?
‘Caulderon isn’t that unprepared. We can’t do anything for them, but we may be able to help Gullihoe.’
Rix strained forwards. ‘I’ve got to fight.’
‘We could learn vital intelligence in Gullihoe.’ Rix did not reply. ‘Besides,’ Tobry added, ‘the enemy might still be there. You could put that sword to good use.’
It was well after ten o’clock when they crested a gravel-topped hill and looked down on the smoke-wreathed ruins of the stone town. The central arch of the thousand-year-old bridge across the river had fallen. The granaries, warehouses and barges along the shore were ablaze, and hundreds of cottages, and the mayoral mansion lay in ruins.
‘What can have done this?’ said Rix. He sniffed the smoky air. ‘That’s not blasting powder.’
‘Something far stronger,’ Tobry said quietly. ‘I don’t like this, Rix.’
They rode down, keeping to the shadows, though it soon became evident that the attackers had gone. Dead lay everywhere in the main street, women, children and men, yet few bore any sign of injury.
‘What’s going on?’ said Rix, more unnerved than he would have been by a battlefield full of dead. ‘How can the enemy kill without leaving a trace?’
He crouched beside an elegantly dressed old woman who lay in the middle of the street as if she had fallen asleep. A red wig lay beside her; her own hair was white, wispy and scant. The only sign of trauma was a dribble of blood from her ears. The child beside her had a bloody nose and red eyes, but no bruises or evident wounds.
‘I’m not seeing any enemy dead,’ said Tobry, who was walking down the middle of the street, sword in hand. ‘Nor any spears, arrows or other abandoned weapons. Nothing to indicate a fight.’
Rix checked another group of bodies: a stout woman with grey hair, dressed like a nurse, and two little boys in nightgowns, all dead without a mark on them. Rix felt a sharp pain in the centre of his chest, as though they had been his own sons.
Tobry emerged from the doorway of a substantial home. ‘There’s been no looting either.’
‘What kind of enemy doesn’t loot afterwards?’
A long pause, then Tobry said, ‘One that values nothing of ours. Or expects to soon have it all.’
‘I don’t like that kind of talk.’
Someone groaned, not far away. He swung down and made his way towards a half-naked figure convulsing in the shadow cast by a broken wall, a short, balding man with skinny little legs and a massive belly.
‘Stop!’ Tobry said urgently.
Rix froze, blade out, eyes searching the shadows. Tobry conjured a tiny light from his fingertips and came up beside him.
‘What’s the matter?’ said Rix.
The light touched on the man’s bare back and side, where the skin was embedded with dozens of small spines like red pins.
‘Looks like he’s backed into a needlebush,’ Rix added.
The man made a clotted sound in his throat. His watering eyes were blank — he did not appear to have seen them. Rix was bending over when Tobry drove a shoulder into him, knocking him out of the way.
‘Don’t touch anything!’
Rix took another look at the man, whose skin was red and raised around each of the spines. Purple nodules were swelling visibly as though a handful of bean seeds were embedded under the skin. He felt his hackles rising.
‘Those aren’t needlebush spines,’ said Tobry.