All three men watched it go in amazement. Then Rodney handed the scroll to King Sevrin. “For you, m’lord. The seal is unmarked.”
The small king took it, broke the plain wax seal, unrolled it and read the words. “It’s not for me,” he said.
He handed it to Elyon Daecar.
51
The fire priest fell to the mud with a splash, his legs giving way beneath him.
“To your feet,” Ulrik Marak commanded roughly. “Stand. Or you will be dragged.”
The priest scrambled up clumsily, wiping the mud from his face. His wrists were bound in rope, mouth gagged with a filthy cloth, eyes staring out in boundless hate as the dragonlord stared back impassively. Mud and rainwater coated the priest’s once red and orange robes, the fine thread spoiled and ruined. He had fallen many times that day, and bore the marks to show it. His hands showed cuts and bruises, he had a deep gash on his left cheek where a branch had whipped back at Marak’s passing, slicing the flesh open, and he had started to walk with a limp having landed awkwardly on his hip when stumbling over a root.
The dragonlord seemed to take pleasure in the man’s pain. “I don’t think he likes me,” he said, staring into those cloudy red eyes. “Perhaps it’s the gag, Pagaloth, what do you think? Should we take it off him?”
“No,” the dragonknight said at once. “My lord, if we do that…”
Marak snorted and waved it away. “Nothing will happen,” he dismissed. “Not to me, anyway.”
“You? My lord, I’m not sure I understand.”
“You will. We’ll be there soon enough, Pagaloth. And you will.” He turned forward and kicked his spurs, urging his horse onward. The rope that tethered the priest to the mount grew taut, then tugged him forward at the wrists, and on they went through the wood.
The day was as grim and wet as those that had come before, but for once Pagaloth felt rested and full, his hunger satiated at last. The rabbit stew had seen to that, cooked in a pot above the hearth fire in the common room of the inn, where they had camped for the night following the slaughter. Lord Marak had taken the watch, to allow Pagaloth to get some sleep. “Save your protests,” he had said. “I’ve had rest enough of late, and you look about ready for the pyre. Find a bed upstairs and sleep soundly. I want you back to full strength, Pagaloth. You’ll be perfectly safe with me.”
Sir Pagaloth did not doubt it. He had seen what the man had done. The Fireblade was as lethal as the finest godsteel and granted Ulrik Marak the same set of powers. Whirling through the woods like a flaming cyclone, he had made short work of the fire priest’s company, sparing only the man himself.
“We should kill him,” Pagaloth had insisted, once the bloodshed was complete. “He is too dangerous to be left alive.” He had thought of the damage Ten’kin had done. Thought of Sa’har, taken back under Eldur’s spell. If the same happened to Lord Marak…
But the dragonlord shook his head. “I have another use for him. Bind him and gag him, Sir Pagaloth. We will leave at first light.”
They had, though where, Marak still hadn’t told him. The dragonlord had been miserly with his tale thus far, though had demanded Pagaloth tell his. When the dragonknight spoke of Lythian, and his plan for unity, Lord Marak only grunted and gave a sour shake of the head. When he told the dragonlord of what had happened to their party, about Ten’kin and the ambush and the self-sacrifice of Sa’har Nakaan, his eyes had darkened with grief and he had turned his head away. Sa’har had been his dearest friend, his wingrider, the closest thing he had to a brother, and for a fleeting moment Pagaloth had wondered if he might rip the Fireblade from its sheath and give the priest a grisly death in retribution. But he had only closed his eyes, as though remembering fonder times, and then ridden on in solemn silence, never speaking a word.
Later, as they forded a swollen stream, Pagaloth had mustered the courage to ask of Garlath. “No one knows what happened to you after the battle, my lord,” he had said. “Some say Garlath took a wound…a wound bad enough to kill him.” He had paused, checking the dragonlord’s eyes. “Is he…”
“Garlath is very much alive.”
“But…you did not come on him, when you found me. You rode a horse.”
“A horse served my needs.”
They continued on through the rustling waters, the priest splashing and slipping on the stony bed behind them. Pagaloth glanced back at him. “And…how did you find me, my lord? Or was it him you were hunting?”
“Him,” Marak said at once. “Finding you was mere happenstance.” The dragonlord looked over at him, granite-jawed and grim. “Some would call that fortune, even fate. Others a second chance.” His eyes bored into him. “Do you still curse yourself for your betrayal, Sir Pagaloth?
The dragonknight lowered his eyes. “Every day, my lord.”
“Good. Guilt can drive a man to make amends, whether that guilt is valid or not.” He’d looked him up and down, appraising. “There’s fire in your blood.” It wasn’t a question.
Pagaloth answered anyway. “Yes, Lord Marak. On my mother’s side.”
“And rich enough, so I remember.” He’d given a smile, hard and knowing. “Well, we’ll see about that later. Now come, we have a way to go yet. I want to get there by dusk.”
They had spoken little since, leaving the dragonknight to ride in mystery, trying to puzzle out Lord Marak’s meaning. The rain had waxed and waned, reliable only in its presence, coming down in black sheets sometimes, and sometimes falling gently, but never once deigning to cease. The lands, too, were much as they’d been. Eerie woods and waterlogged valleys, rushing rivers and haunting fogs. Pagaloth heard howling, as he did most days, and once the low rumbling of something much bigger as well, echoing through some dark thicket. The fire priest’s eyes widened in fear at that, his bleats of alarm muffled by his gag.
“The will of Eldur,” Marak mocked. “Terrified of some mortal beast.” He reached back, tugging on the rope, and the priest went stumbling forward. “Quiet now, priest. You wouldn’t want to draw it near.”
The priest had been silent since, just staring at them with those hostile eyes as they drew him along on his rope. By now the light was just starting to fade, leeching out of the overcast skies. They rode on through the woods, entering a thicker forest, the canopy dense above them. It grew dark in there, as though night had come on suddenly, and they moved slowly on their steeds, carefully picking through the roots and grasping growth of the forest floor.
Then suddenly the trees ended, abruptly and dramatically, and light filled the world once more. Right ahead of them, the earth fell away into a great abyss, as though some god had hacked down at the land with a colossal axe, splitting it asunder. The rift must have been a hundred metres across, cutting right through the heart of the forest. “Gods,” Pagaloth whispered. “What happened here?”
“Earthquake,” Lord Marak said. “This rift wasn’t here a month ago.”
Pagaloth trotted his horse as close to the edge as he dared, his eyes roaming left and right, trying to see where the rift began. Both ways it bled beyond his sight, trees cloaking its sides. From its sheer far wall, Pagaloth could see thousands of roots dangling out of the rock like strands of hair on a thinning scalp, some thin and wispy, others thick and long. He was amazed at how deep some of them went. And how many there were. It gave him a new appreciation of just how much was going on beneath his feet. “This canyon’s got to be miles in length,” he said.
“It is,” Marak told him.
“How do we cross it?” Lest their horses learn to fly he couldn’t think of any way but to go around. “Ought we track back through the forest, my lord?”
“No. We are here.”
“Here?” He did not understand.
“We go down, Pagaloth. There is a way a little further along the edge where we can descend.”
Down. Pagaloth leaned forward, looking over the lip. The plunge was almost vertical, with thick shafts of rock poking out here and there. In a net of roots and vines he saw a fallen tree, suspended above a cloud of mist, which souped between the canyon walls some thirty or so metres below them. He could not see the bottom through it. “How deep does it go?”
