Battle for Elt: The Taking of the Wizard Bearer Read online

  Not by choice, Merek thought. Lord Eudo is shrewd, but never evil. He's changed his allegiance to save his family's life, I suspect.

  “Then it's only a matter of time before Volk turns his attention to us,” Merek said.

  “Some are saying you have already changed your allegiance, Sire.”

  “Excuse me?” Merek tried to hide his hurt, but knew it was evident in his voice. “Who is saying this?”

  “Some of the villagers to the north. They are saying you are Volk's puppet.”

  “Nothing can be further from the truth. I'm merely trying to keep the peace. King Bahlinger and I will never see eye to eye, but to say that I serve Volk is preposterous.”

  “Just what I'm hearing, Sire.” Adam held his hands up as if to free himself of blame. “It seems to me we should close our gates. In these dangerous times we can ill afford to welcome strangers. Anyone can enter our city posing as a peasant or a traveller and be instead a man like Graff serving Volk. There could be a hundred like him living inside our walls, right now, waiting to take us apart from the inside when the command is given.”

  Merek was shaking his head. “I will not close the gates to those who have been displaced by war.”

  “And yet you closed it on Stetland,” Natasha put in.

  This was like a slap in the face to the king. I'm sorry, Stetland. “I had to, Natasha, you know that. Graff threatened our daughter, right here, in my Great Hall.”

  “And there's the reason we should shut Graff out and all those like him,” Adam said, pounding a fist, albeit softly, on the table top. “We have tall walls, Sire. Taller than Kingstown's. And a moat, too. Volk would find it difficult to breach our walls. Your father, God bless him, knew High Hunsley was a fortress, otherwise he would never have broken away from the realm and the security it offered, despite how terrible your sister's death was.”

  Merek remembered the day his father had beat his fist upon this very table and declared High Hunsley a city on its own. That was nineteen years past. When I was just fifteen.

  “Volk's numbers are growing day by day,” Merek said. “You said the same yourself, Adam. And with Lord Eudo changing his allegiance too . . . They'd swarm on us in vast numbers, bringing catapults and fire and ladders to scale our walls. We wouldn't have enough men to keep them out.”

  “So what do you suggest we do?” Adam said. “Have men like Graff walk all over us? Have them take our women? Do you know how they treat their women in Wyke, Sire? Women are nothing more than slaves to sex and work in their land. And of love, there's no such thing. Wykes get married, like us, that's true. But whereas here the wedding night is a chance for the newly married couple to consummate their love for one another, Wykes do things very differently; the groom will watch while the entire male wedding party have sex with his bride prior to having her himself. It's savage and barbaric, Sire, and we want no part of their customs. I urge you to close our gates and, if we have to, reach out to Kingstown. Let's unite against this.”

  Merek sighed. He could feel the presence of his father in the room, as if his ghosts was standing right behind him, squeezing his shoulders, urging him to never open dialogue with King Bahlinger. But it's just my imagination. Ademar is gone and this decision is mine.

  “Did you manage to identify the young woman in the wain?” Merek asked the chamberlain.

  Adam shook his head. “I will try and find out. I will send someone to Kingstown, if need be. I suspect she was a slave. Their kind take sex slaves with them wherever they go, to use when they feel like it. Poor girl.” Adam was shaking his head.

  “And yet, Stetland was in pursuit . . . for a slave?”

  “He's a sellsword when it comes down to it. Perhaps she was someone's daughter and he was trying to rescue her.”

  “All women are someone's daughter, Adam. Besides, he was with Kingstown men, and a wizard, I'm told. She was important, I know it.”

  “I'll find out.”

  King Merek stood. “We need to hold counsel with the Grand Master. I wish to know how many soldiers we have and his strategies for defending the city. We should help those in the north too; it seems the Kingstown guard is overrun.”

  “I'll send for the Grand Master. And your steward too? Finances will have to be considered. We'll need new armour and weapons, not to mention medicine for those injured.”

  “Very well,” Merek said. “Do whatever you need to do.”

  “Are you going somewhere?” Natasha asked her husband.

  “There's someone I need to see.” She knows where I'm going, he thought. He could see it in her brown eyes. “I won't be long.”

  “Take the king's guard with you.”

  Merek nodded and left the Great Hall.

  Outside the castle, the wind howled. Despite the sun hanging high in the hazy, blue sky, a chill frosted the air. Sitting atop his horse, Merek pulled his collar up against the wind. Flanked by two guards in red tunics, he made his way through the streets of High Hunsley. There was rarely trouble when he appeared in public. He was a well-liked king, he knew. The city was secure, taxes were kept low, and businesses prospered. There were things that irked him, though, the brothels for one, but he turned a blind eye to them.

  As he made his way up the main street, a man stopped, removed his hat, and bowed. Further on, a woman curtsied. Next to her, two children clapped, their faces beaming. Merek smiled back and waved. War is coming, he thought. Please, God, let this city and its people be safe.

  As he entered the oldest part of the city, the houses became smaller, but more numerous. Some were packed so tightly together he wondered how anyone could live in them. Yet he knew the smallest houses were often home to the largest of families. These buildings reached over the stinking street like old gnarly trees, some bowing under the pressure of age. He remembered coming this way as a child, following his father on horseback. King Ademar was not as well liked as his son had become. Occasionally, a disgruntled man or women would throw a rotten turnip or something even more terrible (once a man threw his own faeces). Ademar would order his guards to arrest the protestor and have him thrown in the cells for up to three days. That only made relations worse, Merek remembered.

  “Shall we wait outside for you?” one of the guards said to Merek as they arrived at the old house.

  “Yes, please. On my wife's orders, not mine.”

  Merek climbed from his horse and handed the reins to one of the guards. He looked at the building: it was old and warped. Its roof was sunk in the middle and its window frames were no longer square as if an inexperienced builder had used off-cuts of wood to construct them. His father once told him that Mama Maud had lived in this house since the time of The Ancients, some one thousand years past. Looking at the building, Merek could well believe it true, although his rational mind told him that the old woman could not be a thousand years old.

  He pushed on the door; it was always unlocked as no one with malicious intentions would dare to enter. Mama Maud was sitting by the window, gently rocking back and forth in her chair. She was a wizened old women no taller than four foot. Her hair was immaculately white and her face heavily creased. She had no teeth, which made her lips look like an empty leather purse. But what scared Merek the most was her white eyes. She was blind, he had learned, but as a child he hadn't understood why her eyes were so milky white. As an adolescent, he would often wake up in the dead of night drenched in a cold sweat after dreaming of those ghostly eyes.

  “Hello, my Merek,” Mama Maud said. How she knew it was him, he did not know.

  “I need your help,” Merek said, remaining by the door. He was still frightened of her. Childhood fears are hard to shake.

  “Come sit down, child.”

  He thought about telling her that he was no longer a child, but he guessed everyone was a youngster to her.

  He walked to where she rocked, seating himself on the floor. The room was empty apart from her chair and a table with a broken leg. There was a fireplace set into the wall
at the far side of the room, but it wasn't lit. He couldn't ever remember seeing a fire blazing there. She didn't feel the cold, she once told him. She's doesn't eat, either.

  “What can I do for you?” Her voice was croaky and weak. It seemed an effort for her to speak. But she’s always sounded like that.

  “You see everything, Mama Maud,” he said, crossing his legs and feeling like a frightened child again. That feeling intensified at the sight of her milky-white eyes. “Despite your blindness, you see the future.”

  His father once told him that Mama Maud was half Monk of the Night. “That's where she got her psychic abilities,” Ademar had said.

  “To look into the future is a dangerous thing, my Merek. One look and one careless word can change everything. If I look, I can only speak what I decide is safe to tell.”

  “It's your wisdom I desire, too. You've lived through so much. Counselled my father in times as hard as these.”

  She seemed to stretch her lips into a smile. They were like leather. “Your father was a good man, but his heart was tinged with black. Life does that to some people.” She leant forward and touched his face. Her hands were cold, like ice. She ran her fingers over his nose, his mouth, his cheeks. “You are like him.” Then she rested back in her chair and gently rocked back and forth. “But you have a better heart. You've come to me to help you decide what to do. You want to do what's right. Your father would have come to me in the hope that I would tell him what he wanted to hear. If I said something he didn't like, he would leave in a huff and do what he wanted regardless.”

  “So what should I do? I want to protect my people. We are a fortress. Safe here, at least for now. But the war is growing closer. Should I reach out to Kingstown? I don't know if I can forgive Bahlinger for what he did, or rather, what he failed to do. I can feel my father's disappointment for even thinking it.”

  “There's only one answer, my Merek. It's the answer to everything. It will solve not only Elt's problems, but the world as a whole.” She leant forward again, tipping the chair. Then, she whispered: “Love.”

  He was baffled by this. “I can't fight Volk with love, Mama Maud.”

  She began to rock again, back and forth.

  “If love had been given and love had been allowed, our troubles would be far less. Far less. Stop loving, or stand in the way of love, then the troubles begin.”

  He thought about this for a moment. What does she mean?

  “To love means to not go to war . . .” King Merek said.

  “Or does it mean love your fellow people and fight the tyranny that threatens to destroy them?”

  He knew this was all she was going to say on the matter. She's never literal in her tellings. But it will come to me, what she means, perhaps in the dead of the night or when I'm busy with something else.

  He made to stand, but she grabbed his wrist. She was surprisingly strong for an old woman.

  “When you decide to close the gates,” she said, “keep the east one open, long after dark.”

  He nodded, wondering who was going to arrive at the city's east gate at such a late hour. Smugglers or travellers looking for whores were usual at that time of night, he knew.

  Outside, it had grown even colder. His guards sat atop their horses, their collars up high and their chins buried deep within. One of the horses snorted, sending a cloud of mist into the air.

  “Let's go and get warm,” he declared. The guards nodded their approval.

  CHAPTER 18

  Christian was deeply concerned. His mind had shown him something. In the same way he'd known the dead would attack them on Killingwoldgraves; in the same way he'd known one of them wouldn't make it to High Hunsley, in the same way he'd known the cottage he'd stumbled upon was the home of a bad person; in the same way he'd known his village of Staddlethorpe was about to be attacked. And now I know Stetland's life is in danger. His mind had shown the Dark Rider being stabbed in the stomach by a blade. Fire glinted off that silvery blade as blood ran down its length in finger-like trickles. Although it was dark, he could see that Stetland was standing in front of a stone wall. Perhaps a castle or a city wall, Christian thought. At this moment, they were far from such a castle or a wall, but he knew his sight usually foretold things that would happen imminently or no more than a day ahead. So where will the castle be?

  Stetland Rouger was currently standing in a clearing remonstrating with Sir John and Marcus about which way to go next. They were lost somewhere in Ellerker Rise. Pine trees, dusted with snow, stretched out in every direction. Each way looks the same as the other. It’s no wonder we are lost.

  Gladden was sitting on the trunk of a fallen tree away from the argument, eating bread from his pocket. “Wizards have deep pockets,” Gladden had told Christian earlier. When he saw Christian looking, he patted his hand on the bark of the tree gesturing for the boy to sit with him.

  Christian glanced at Stetland and, deciding his noisy discussion wouldn't be over any time soon, joined the young wizard on the fallen tree. Gladden offered Christian some bread, but he declined.

  “Have they decided anything yet?” Gladden said, nodding towards Stetland, Sir John and Marcus. Each of them pointed in different directions.

  “No,” Christian said. “I think we're well and truly lost. I'm worried we won't find the Great Road and that Volk's men will make it to Wyke with your sister.”

  “Too soon for thoughts like that, my boy. Stetland will find the way, he always does.”

  Christian wasn't so sure. Something was amiss, he just couldn't put his finger on it.

  “I heard Stetland telling you about Elysande,” the young wizard said.

  “He said she was attacked and murdered on her way from Kingstown to High Hunsley and that was why King Merek's father, Lord Ademar, fell out with King Bahlinger.”

  “That's right. What he didn't tell you – and its common knowledge in Kingstown – is that Stetland and Elysande were in love.”

  Christian looked towards the Dark Rider, who was still standing in the clearing, gesturing this way and that. “He said nothing about that.”

  “He doesn't talk about it much. Blames himself for not being there to help her.”

  “Why wasn't he with her?”

  “He was on a mission for the realm, away in the north somewhere. He came back as soon as word reached him, though. He was the one who found her body. After her murder, he left Kingstown behind. He was looking for peace of mind, I guess.”

  “That's sad.”

  “It is. He's a good man is Stetland.”

  Christian slipped a cold hand down the back of his sheepskin. The cuts on his back left by Tarquin Gains's belt were itching.

  “Do they hurt?” Gladden said.

  “Mostly they itch.”

  “They're starting to heal, then. The last lash marks you'll ever have, Christian.”

  The boy smiled at that.

  “I've never met a wizard before.”

  “Well, you have now. Albeit a young one.” Gladden chuckled. “Wait until you meet my great-uncle Fabian. He's a proper wizard. Powerful too.”

  “Should I be scared of him?” He was a little apprehensive about meeting someone with so much power at his disposal.

  “Of Fabian?” Gladden laughed heartily. “On my, no. He's the kindest soul you could ever wish to meet.” Then, quietly, as if whispering a secret, Gladden leaned close to Christian's ear. “Just don't upset him.” Christian felt the colour drain from his face. Gladden must have seen it, as he elbowed the boy in the ribs and said: “Only joking, my boy.”

  Christian laughed nervously. He was unsure of wizards, especially the one beside him who joked so much.

  “What of your other uncle – Eaglen is it?”

  “Eaglen's an odd one.” Gladden was not joking anymore, Christian knew. The wizard's smile had fallen from his face. “Keeps himself to himself up on his hilltop to the south. He does his duties, which is to keep the peace and serve the good, I'll give him that, but he
rarely visits Kingstown, unless summoned.”

  Gladden was looking off into the distance.

  “Is he powerful too?” Christian asked.

  “He's powerful, as I will be one day. But he's not as powerful as Fabian. Nowhere near.”

  “But he will be, right? And you will be too?”

  “Wizards are not as powerful as they once were. No one quite knows why that is. Fabian is one on his own. He's powerful like the wizards of old. My mother read me stories about those wizards and the things they did, but I'll never be like that. Nor will Eaglen. And nor was Fabian's uncle – my great, great-uncle.”

  Christian thought of the books his mother used to read him. “Wizards can go from one place to another in a heartbeat by using their magic, right? I heard that in a story once.”

  “Only powerful wizards can do that.”

  “Like Fabian?”

  “I've seen Fabian do that only once. It’s called dispersion”

  “So why doesn't he do it all the time? It would be a lot quicker than walking.”

  Gladden crossed his legs at the knee. “Let me ask you a question, Christian. If you were to journey from Kingstown to Wyke without the aid of a horse, would you run all the way?”

  “Well . . . no.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because I'd get too tired.”

  “So you'd walk instead, right?”

  “Yes, that's what I'd do.”

  “And yet you have the ability to run, but choose not to. Instead you walk?”

  Christian nodded.

  “Magic uses a lot of energy, Christian. Like running.” Gladden tapped his staff on the ground, twice. “A piece of magic that takes you from one part of the land to another uses great amounts of energy. I witnessed Fabian disappear in front of my eyes once. Three days later, a bird came with a message – it was from Fabian – he was two hundred leagues away.”

  “Two hundred?” Christian said in awe.

  “Two hundred. After using so much energy he slept for five days straight.”