The agent was advancing on him, and he couldn’t see where Noon had ended up. He scrambled back, mud slipping through his free hand.
‘I would normally have let you be,’ the woman was saying in a conversational tone of voice. ‘But this has turned out to be a particularly unpleasant experience for me, and I think someone else should pay for once. Someone other than me, other than my boy.’
‘Lunatic,’ Tor muttered under his breath.
‘No one will know, anyway,’ the woman was saying now. ‘I’ll leave your body here to rot in this haunted place. Your people are nearly all dead anyway, one more won’t be a great loss.’
Noon appeared at the woman’s right. Her black hair was standing on end, and she had an expression on her face Tor had not seen before. Without knowing why, he felt a cold trickle of dread move down his back.
The Winnowry agent shook her head as though dealing with an errant puppy. ‘You’ve not learned your lesson yet, Fell-Noon? Very well, I can’t say it won’t give me pleasure—’
Noon jumped and turned gracefully in the air, bringing down her arm in a sweeping motion, and with it several darts of fire, so bright that they were almost white, were born out of thin air. They shot across the clearing and exploded at the feet of Agent Lin, sending the woman flying up into the air, before she dropped, sprawled in the mud some distance away. To her credit, she was on her feet again immediately, flinging a barrage of fireballs at Noon’s advancing figure, but the young fell-witch raised her arms and produced a shimmering wall of green flame; the fiery orbs were absorbed into it with barely a hiss. Dropping her arms, the fire was gone.
‘What is this?’ Agent Lin’s face had gone white, speckled here and there with black mud. ‘What have you done?’
Tor doubted the agent heard Noon’s words, they were spoken so quietly, but he heard them clearly enough. They made him think of his childhood, the smell of clay and his cousin Aldasair, although he couldn’t have said why.
‘I am death and glory, tired one.’
Noon crouched, bracing herself on bent legs, before turning her upper torso in a slow circle, her arms outstretched. A bright shard of green fire formed there, which she gathered into a globe before pushing it towards the woman. It wasn’t fast, but it expanded as it travelled, and the agent turned and started to run.
‘Noon?’
Ignoring him, Noon swept her arms up and round, throwing a dart of green fire after the expanding cloud of flame. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the dart hit the cloud and it exploded, showering the agent and the area around her with a rain of emerald fire. There was no escaping it.
‘Noon? Noon!’
She took no notice. She advanced on the woman, who was writhing on the wet ground in a circle of fire, and, unconcerned by the flames, Noon reached down and seemed to pull something from around the agent’s neck.
‘Come on, before the spirits follow.’
They ran then, leaving the burning woman behind. Noon took a whistle from her pocket and blew a single sharp note. With a thunder of leathery wings, a dark shape rose above them and followed them. Noon caught Tor’s eye, and the look on her face was one of quiet satisfaction.
‘It will be faster to get to Ebora with two bats, wouldn’t you say?’
37
I have asked Nanthema what she thinks about the Eboran war-beasts many times, of course, but I only get a few small pieces of information from her on each occasion. I think it makes her sad, to think about them. To her, of course, they are not distant mythical creatures that were only ever seen in paintings or depicted in poems, but living, breathing figures that were of enormous importance to her people. Nanthema herself was a child at the time of the Eighth Rain, and during that time of war her mother had seen fit to hide her away in a country estate – consequently, she did not witness the death of Ygseril, or the defeat of the Jure’lia. Before the invaders came, however, she often saw the war-beasts on their visits to and from the central city of Ebora. She describes them as impossible shapes in the sky, a thunder of laughter passing overhead. Once, there was a great celebration in the central plaza, and several of their number were honoured by the emperor of the time. Nanthema was there with her mother and brothers, a shy child peeking between cloaks and robes to get a better view. (It is difficult, I will admit, to imagine Nanthema as a shy child.)
She grows saddest when she relays this memory to me, however. She claims it is impossible to describe their glory to me, and I get frustrating snippets: the clack of a griffin’s claws against the marble, scales like shining bone, an eye like an enormous opal, turning to watch the crowds with amusement. I have pressed her for more on the relationship between the beasts and the tree, but she will speak of this even less. The death of Ygseril, and the knowledge that there will be no more war-beasts, is a deep wound for the Eboran people. One that will not heal, it seems.
I have my suspicions. I believe that the war-beasts were essentially an extension of Ygseril, and therefore almost as sacred as the god itself. Usually, Nanthema will turn the tide of the conversation back to me, asking endless questions about things that she can’t possibly find interesting, but I am flattered enough to give her what answers I can; about growing up in the vine forest, about my impossible father, my long-suffering mother, about my own favourite wine – even as she pours us another glass. And who could possibly resist the curiosity of a beautiful woman?
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
‘What is this place? It’s remote enough.’
The moonlight had turned Bern’s golden hair silver, and, standing on the summit of the small hill, he looked to Aldasair like some sort of unlikely statue – of an ancient human hero, perhaps. The Bitter Twins added to the illusion.
‘I used to come here when I wanted to remember there were places other than Ebora.’ Aldasair placed the box of figurines on the grass, and then turned to face the mountains. They were an ominous presence in the dark, more like a terrible absence than a great ruction in the earth. ‘There, you see, is the Wall.’ At this distance, it was little more than a pale line, scratched across the shadows of the night. ‘When I saw the Wall, I could remember that there were people on the other side of it. Beyond the Tarah-hut Mountains, there were people living and talking and eating, and – not dying.’
‘We call them the Bloodless Mountains,’ said Bern. He sniffed. ‘I was never sure if that was supposed to be a joke or not.’
‘Because of the Carrion Wars?’ Aldasair’s heart dipped a little in his chest, but he forced himself to face Bern and keep talking. He would converse like a normal person. He could do this. ‘A great many people died. A man I knew once, a relative of mine, jested that by the time we had dragged the humans as far as the mountains, they were certainly already bloodless. A poor joke.’