“Girton,” said my master. I could hear amusement in her voice. “Have you forgotten everything I ever taught you?”
“Master? I did not think it would be you.”
“Obviously.” She loosened her grip on my throat and sat back on her haunches, offering me my knife. “Now what was that about?”
“Leiss is dead—a line across his body that almost cut him in half.” I levered myself up to a sitting position and took the offered knife.
“The black whip.”
“Heamus said as much before he sent me off. Drusl said a cowled figure fled through the back of the stables and—”
“And when you saw me, you thought you had caught this sorcerer?”
“Aye.”
“Well you were brave, if foolish, to attack.” She pulled her cowl off and let her hair free. “Best I make sure no one else makes your mistake.”
“Will Heamus call the Landsmen in now? He is honour bound to—”
“Heamus will not say a word,” she said quietly. “When a Landsman is too old to carry out his duties he is meant to spill his lifeblood into the sourlands. Heamus should be dead by all rights. They will overlook him as long as he is out of sight, but if they came here he’d be clapped in irons and taken to join the desolate.”
“Oh,” I said, then added, “but why did he have those things in his drawer?” I suppressed a shudder at the thought of the symbols I had seen in his quarters.
“Maybe they are just to remind him of what he was.”
We sat quietly. Talk of magic was making me uncomfortable, which in turn was making me sullen and angry. Leiss’s death was a vivid reminder of what dwelt within me. And her.
“Master,” I asked quietly, “why are you here and not guarding the queen?”
“Are you suspicious of me, Girton?”
“Never, Master.”
“Never say never. You do not know what fate will bring.” She sounded terribly sad, and my anger became mixed with guilt. “And to answer your question, Adran gave me the afternoon off. She has locked herself in a room with her son and Neander. Celot guards them.” She balled up the material of her cowl. “As to why I am here, first I went to retrieve your climbing foot from the courtyard—I hid it under your bed. Then I came here to tell you so you did not panic when you could not find it, if you thought about looking for it. I thought it likely you were in the stables.” She smiled at me and I blushed. “However, as it seems we have had another death, perhaps I should take the opportunity to look around.”
“Heamus will think it odd if a jest—”
“No.” She dipped into the bag she carried and took from it one of the white masks used by priests’ acolytes. “Black robe, white mask. Heamus will accept my presence.” She slipped her cowl back on.
“But what if the actual—”
“Don’t worry. You go back through the window, and I will go round the front. And Girton?”
“Yes, Master?”
“Be careful of Heamus.”
“Heamus? But why? I thought you had decided he was no longer a Landsman.”
“Think about it.” She stood and wiped dirt from her black trousers.
“He knows about magic?” I said.
“Partly, but more than that. Heamus is trained to fight sorcerers and magic users. Why does he send Girton ap Gwynr, a boy he thinks is barely able to lift a sword without tripping over it, to chase a sorcerer?”
“Oh,” I said.
“Oh indeed.”
I climbed back up the bales of hay, into the tackle room and down the giant dung presses. As I opened the door the fragrant atmosphere of the stable wrapped itself around me and the world moved infinitesimally more slowly, giving those within a grace they would not have had otherwise. My master entered swathed in black cloth that moved strangely around her, as if it had its own mind. Rather than an acolyte she had come as a wandering priest of Xus. As I walked to the front of the stable I thought it was amazing how well she aped the priest I had seen around the castle. Her mannerisms, her step—everything about her was the same. I began to speak in the Whisper-That-Flies-to-the-Ear.
“Master—”
She silenced me using a finger on my lips and her body to block me from the sight of those in the main room of the barn. Then she walked away with her head down while I realised, with a feeling like sinking into icy water, how stupid I had been to use magic right in front of an old Landsman. I told myself I hated magic but had used it without thinking. I had a sudden flash of images—blood gibbets and the desolate, the gruesome ends that awaited a magic user.
The air shimmered. My skin became hot. A black sea shivered within.
I threw up. One second I stood, the next I was on my knees, spitting up the contents of my stomach and grimacing at the sour taste of bile.
“Do not worry, boy,” said Heamus. He clapped me on the back. “Yours is often the reaction to a great shock such as death. And to a death like this?” He helped me up gently, using my elbow. He seemed to be speaking to me from very far away and I had to fight not to shake him off because his hands dripped with blood—though as soon as I noticed the blood it began to fade away. “Magic is never pleasant to be around,” he said and then leaned in close. “Tell no one of this death, Girton,” he whispered, his words were blue and icy as they sank into my skin. “We will sort this out ourselves. Castles have fallen for less and there are those within Maniyadoc who would use this misfortune for their own ends.” I nodded, looking for all the world like I was shocked by the death of Leiss when instead I was disorientated by the way the world around me was throbbing. “Did you find anything outside the stables?”
“No, Heamus,” I said. My voice was no louder than a breeze and it wound its way around Heamus like a vine. I glanced at the old Landsman’s hands. No blood. Why did I feel so strange?
“Well, at least you tried, boy.”
Behind Heamus my master was crouched over Leiss’s body. She plucked at his wound then stood and walked away, leaving a slowly fading after-image of a black-clad figure staring at Heamus from within a mocking mask. I watched all this through a haze as if the barn were full of woodsmoke. What was happening? I thought I had almost come to terms with the idea of magic but now, as my master stared at me from the door to the pressing room, I felt like I was coming apart.
Then there was a human warmth. An unexpected touch. Fingers wormed themselves between mine to clasp my hand. I turned. Drusl, tear-stained and desperate.