Time slowed. The warlock stared into the trees where Berren and Talon’s swords were hiding. The two other figures with him turned to stare as well. They were little more than children, a boy and a girl, although what children might be doing in a place like this was beyond Berren. He felt sick. A strange taste filled the air around him. He struggled to breathe. A few yards away, one of the soldiers sprang to his feet. Steel scraped on steel, swords drawn, and as one the mercenaries leaped forward and hurled themselves out of the trees. Berren stayed frozen, pinned like a butterfly by his memories of Deephaven. Of the warlock driving Berren’s own hand to cut out a piece of Berren’s own soul. Of the same hand striking down Radek of Kalda. If Kuy knew he was here, Berren was bound to obey the warlock’s every desire, just as he had when he’d murdered Radek.
Saffran Kuy turned to face the rush of soldiers. His hands twirled. Dark smoke boiled in the air around him and then broke into pieces, each piece darting outwards. The shadows struck Tarn and his men and coiled around their throats, yet Tarn and the others seemed not to notice. Then Kuy turned and hurried his two young charges away. The slavers who’d been flogging their prisoner ran with him.
Berren snapped out of his trance. He ran after the others, after the cries and shouts of surprise. Slavers still blinking in the sunlight were cut down where they stood, too shocked by the suddenness of Tarn’s onslaught to put up a fight. There were more men here than Tarn had thought. The soldiers seemed not to notice, though — they were after the warlock, chasing him down with a vicious certainty of purpose — sure of their victory; but Berren had seen those shadows before, wrapped around Radek’s throat, paralysing him. They were all in terrible danger and they didn’t even know it!
More slavers emerged, put to the sword before they understood what was happening. Kuy scuttled into the building from where the man on the whipping frame had been dragged. Tarn charged after him with his cohort; Berren followed more cautiously, skirting fallen bodies on the beaten earth. Some of the slavers weren’t dead yet; some reached out for him with their hands or their eyes, silently pleading for help; those who were hurt but knew they might yet live watched him with fear, hobbling or crawling away as fast as they could. Still more of them spilled out into the light, shouting and squinting and waving clubs and axes. Berren ignored them. He ran after Tarn and the rest into the building that had swallowed Kuy.
It was dark, windowless, lit only by dim curtains of sunlight that crept between the cracks in the walls. The air stank, the rancid stench of too many men in too little space, covered in their own filth. Berren had smelled it before, when his ship had carried a hold full of slaves for a few weeks. The smell had lingered for months, but here there was something else as well, something even more familiar, the old smell of rotting fish that he knew from Deephaven.
His eyes began to adjust. The soldiers had stopped. They were right in front of him, clustered in the centre of the room, formed up in a semicircle. They looked like men who’d cornered a tiger and now weren’t sure what to do with it. Each still had a swirl of dark mist coiling around him, and now that he was closer Berren could see the mist for what it was — the terrors that Kuy had summoned in Deephaven, the ones that he’d thrown at Tasahre until she’d called down the light of the sun and banished them.
Berren shivered. Couldn’t they see what was wrapped around them? But if they did, they didn’t show it.
His eyes shifted. Dozens and dozens of filthy naked men were fettered to the walls. In the corner the warlock was pressed among them. He had one hand reached out towards Tarn while the other clutched one of the prisoners. The boy and the girl in their robes — apprentices? — huddled next to him.
‘No closer.’ Kuy’s voice was thin. The strength and the venom that Berren remembered were gone. ‘Dance in the darkness with me and this life will be mine!’
‘You!’ One of the soldiers poked at Berren. ‘Watch the door! Keep them out!’
‘Sun and Moon protect us,’ muttered another.
Tarn shook his head. ‘Death-mage!’ he hissed. He raised his sword and took one lunging step.
The shadow around Tarn’s neck that only Berren could see drew tight. Tarn fell as though he’d been struck by an axe. A surge of anger swept over the others, but before they could throw themselves on Kuy and tear him to pieces, their terrors sprang to life too. The prisoner Kuy was clutching screamed. He began to spasm, twitching as black blood dribbled and then poured out of his mouth, until he finally slumped silent. A sudden darkness filled the room and a terrible keening wail began. Berren bolted, stricken with terror, too full of the memories of what he’d seen once before; but outside in the light a dozen slavers were waiting now, clustered together with swords and axes and spears drawn, watching from a distance. He skittered to a stop, not knowing which way to run. Behind him, the shouts and screams of soldiers and the chained slaves alike filled the room.
One of the slavers held a crossbow. He raised it. Berren dropped his sword. He didn’t mean to, but his hands were shaking so much that it happened on its own.
Move, he told himself. Move! But his feet stayed frozen to the ground.
A soldier staggered out of the door. He had one hand stretched out in front of him, the other clutching at his throat. Two of Saffran Kuy’s terrors were throttling him. He barged blindly into Berren, knocking him aside. The crossbow fired and the soldier fell to the ground. He hauled himself forward on his belly for a few feet, and then slumped over on his back, an arrow sticking from his chest in the middle of a circle of red. The terrors uncoiled themselves. The slaver with the crossbow bent forward to reload.
Berren ran now, as fast as his legs would carry him. He heard another crack as the bow fired again, heard the fizz of the bolt through the air, but he was still running and the slaver had missed — that was all that mattered. He looked over his shoulder as he reached the trees. No one was following him. He ran on until he was deep into the woods and then crouched down among the ferns to catch his breath. He’d thrown away his memories of Saffran Kuy long ago, wrapped them up and locked them down; now they were back, the full force of them, and they had him as helpless as he’d been back on that day in Kuy’s House of Cats and Gulls, the old terror writhing like a snake inside him.
No. He couldn’t just run, though. Couldn’t. Couldn’t leave Tarn and the others, but he couldn’t go back either, not after what the warlock had done to him in Deephaven. If Kuy saw him here, one snap of his fingers was all it would take and Berren would be his slave, his puppet. Three little slices. You! Obey! Me! Did wounds like that ever heal? He had no idea. The priests at the temple had said yes, they did, but they’d never seemed entirely sure.
He looked back up the slope towards the ridge over which Talon and the rest of the Hawks would come. He could run for help, but it would take ages to climb back up, to explain to Talon what had happened and then get down again. By the time he did, Tarn and the rest might well be dead.
He skirted the edge of the camp and crept closer once more. Tarn and the other soldiers were out in the open now, in the space between the three buildings, grouped together and on their knees. Saffran Kuy was there too. As long as the warlock didn’t see him, that was what mattered. Or maybe the years at sea had changed him enough — maybe Kuy wouldn’t recognise him?
The smallest of the three buildings had a door that opened away from the middle of the camp. A path ran towards the sea where the ship was anchored. There was no one there. Berren slipped inside. The slavers clearly slept here. He counted the sets of bedding. Fifteen. And then he saw what he was looking for. Another crossbow. As quietly as he could, he loaded it and then peered through the door out into the central compound. Tarn’s soldiers knelt in a circle, all together now, all except for Tarn himself who lay still on the ground. The slavers stood cautiously apart while Saffran Kuy paced in slow circles. Kuy was talking, but Berren couldn’t hear what he was saying. The terrors were still there, wrapped around everyone’s throats.
He held the crossbow tight. He’d never been good with one, never had much chance to learn, but Master Sy had taught him the basics. Now he aimed at the warlock. Until he fired, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing, or why, except that he wanted Saffran Kuy to be dead; but when he pulled the trigger, the bolt flew low and hit the warlock in the thigh, not killing him at all. Kuy lurched and shrieked and then his leg buckled under him and he fell. The slavers looked around, saw Berren and charged towards him, shouting and waving their swords. Berren fled down the path towards the ship. As he did he caught a glimpse of the terrors unwrapping themselves from Tarn’s soldiers and flying back to the warlock. It seemed they shared his pain.
He glanced up at the slopes high above as he ran, hoping again to see the rest of Talon’s men swarming down, but there was nothing. The slavers behind him were yelling dire threats and urging each other on. Somewhere not far ahead would be the beach, and that was no good. Out in the open they might catch him, but in the trees he was sure he could escape. It would be like the old times, racing through the alleys of Deephaven’s Maze with a posse of militia at his back!
A stray thought came to him: if the warlock could brew a potion to see the future, as he’d claimed, how had Berren managed to shoot him? He didn’t have an answer to that.
He rounded a turn in the path, ready to dive among the trees, but now Kuy’s two startled apprentices were right in front of him. The boy was hurrying the girl towards the ship. She was crying. Unable to stop, Berren ploughed into the back of them, knocking them apart. His weight went into the boy, sending him sprawling. The girl staggered. She looked at him with big eyes. She was so young — eleven, twelve years old — and Berren could only wonder why she was here at all, what Kuy was doing to her. But other thoughts pressed him. He could see the beach now. There was a boat drawn up on the sand and the two men beside it were getting to their feet, roused by the hue and cry.
He seized the girl. ‘Do you want to live?’ She looked blankly back at him, then heaved a sob and stared with huge pleading eyes, and he knew straight away that it was the warlock she was afraid of, not him; but before she could say anything, the boy was up again.
‘I’ll kill you,’ he spat. ‘Master Kuy will rip your soul out. We’ll feast on it, just like we did-’ His hands were turning black, the nails into claws. Fear stabbed at Berren — he’d seen this before — but this time he brushed it aside. Before the boy could finish, Berren punched him on the nose. He felt the bone crack beneath his knuckles, and suddenly the boy was just a boy again, fourteen years old maybe, sobbing and shaking. ‘Please don’t hurt me!’
Is this what I looked like to Master Sy when he found me in that alley? No time for that though: the soldiers would be on him in any moment — he could hear them — and the boy would tell them which way he’d gone. His hand went to his knife, but in the end the boy was just a boy, miserable and defenceless. Berren let the knife go, kicked him down instead and took the girl by the hand. ‘Come with me.’ He gave the boy one last look. ‘You’ll come to no good end following the likes of him. I should know.’
More shouts came from the camp, screams and battle sounds. Berren ran into the trees, half dragging, half carrying the girl. They hid, crouching deep under the cover of the ferns, still and silent, and yet even after the slavers didn’t come, Berren couldn’t shake a feeling of disquiet. However much he told himself otherwise, the warlock had done things to change him. The terrors. Neither the soldiers nor the slavers could see them. Only him.
‘I see them too,’ whispered the girl when they realised the slavers must have turned back to the fight in the camp. She squeezed his hand. ‘I always did.’
Had he been thinking out loud? He must have been.
‘He said it was a present but I don’t like it. I like making potions though. I’m glad you came.’
Berren shivered uneasily. ‘My friends are coming,’ he said. ‘They’ll take you home.’
‘I know.’ Her eyes were wide and earnest. ‘He told me. He said Prince Syannis would come. My shining prince.’ She stared at him. ‘But he’s not here, is he? Not yet. It’s all right, though.’ She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘I know who you are. You look like my cousin. You’re Berren. We’ve done lots together. Lots and lots. It’s nice to see you at last.’
Berren stared at her. He’d never met her before, not once in his life.