Caddoran Read online

  Grim-faced with effort, he forced his thoughts back to what he had been doing just moments earlier.

  It was the routine paperwork which still lay in front of him. He ran a hand over it gently, as if to confirm that it was really there. He had been relaxed and easy, with nothing in particular troubling him. Since sending out Aghrid and his special Wardens with their black uniforms and sporting the Tervaidin symbol, he had been, in many ways, more settled than at any time since his fateful encounter with Thyrn. He usually felt that way when a decision had been made – when conjecture gave way to action.

  His mind drifted after Aghrid racing northwards. The reports he had received so far were good. Indeed, they were very good. He had had to balance risks in telling Aghrid to move with the utmost urgency. While Thyrn and the others had to be dealt with as soon as possible, mounted patrols of Wardens were not common and would inevitably attract attention as they passed through the towns and villages which lay on the quickest route north. Would the appearance of the Tervaidin’s symbol be noted? Would it provoke an adverse response? As it transpired, the symbol had been noted and though there had been some adverse comments reported to him, the response was predominantly favourable. Unusually so. Indeed, on more than one occasion people had come running to cheer the passing riders. It seemed that the brief fire the Death Cry had lit was still smouldering. That intrigued him – could it be that he had actually underestimated the discontent that was bubbling through the country? He set the thought aside for later consideration – it carried many implications. For now he was content to note those places where there had been a good response. He would have done the same had the responses been bad. Either way, it identified possible friends and enemies; it was useful information.

  As if he had momentarily lowered his guard, panic suddenly washed over him, sweeping him along violently. Abruptly he was back at his desk, writing again. Not with the leisurely sensation of recollected thought however, but with the vertiginous vividness of actually having been dragged back through time to relive the events as they unfolded once more. He heard an echo of himself drawing in a gasping breath as the word he was writing seemed to unwrite itself, coiling from the page and back up the pen.

  As suddenly as it had come, the intense immediacy was gone, and the image before him became just a memory again. He found himself gripping the edge of his desk. He was sure he had seen what he had seen. No, not merely seen – felt. His whole body, his consciousness, had seemed to slide backwards in some way. It was as terrifying on recollection as it had been when it first occurred, but he clenched his teeth angrily and forced himself to move on. It must have been nothing more than a momentary dizziness presaging Thyrn’s attack. For attack it surely was. He remembered screwing his eyes tight shut in an instinctive attempt to stop the slithering unreality of what was happening on the page. Then he had felt the Caddoran displacing him, intruding into him effortlessly. He could offer no resistance. And when he had opened his eyes, he was Thyrn – choking on the young man’s teeming terrors – clutching desperately at flying reins – reaching out to protect his uncle – aware of a terrible purpose in the knife in his belt, a lesson just learned. His head was ringing with screams and cries. Swords and staves were rising and falling, hooves were flailing, there was a rushing like a malevolent wind. And then he was himself again, hand clamped across his face, thoughts incoherent with panic and flooding questions. Almost incongruously he noted through the turmoil that the word he had been writing was whole again.

  What had happened? Calmer now, the futile question pounded him mercilessly. As did the answer – the same as had happened before.

  Yet it was not the same. He had not been plunged into a timeless nothingness, a dreadful darkness where he was and was not, and which had wrapped itself about and through him like a myriad spiders’ webs. Even the memory of that still chilled him. And too there was no pain in his head. Nor a wretched, staining torrent from his nose. He examined his fingers again, then absently ran his thumb over his ring.

  Leaning back in his chair, he pushed the front legs off the floor and began rocking gently. He recalled Vellain’s remark that he and Thyrn might perhaps have to be in the same mood for such a… contact… to happen, but this patently was not the case here. He had been relaxed and at ease with himself, while Thyrn had been frantic with fear. The intensity of Thyrn’s fear returned, momentarily overwhelming him. In its wake came a fury at his own powerlessness in the face of Thyrn’s intrusion. It gathered inside him, twisting tighter and tighter, searching for an outlet. Then, running before it, like a fleeing straggler, came a simple question.

  How long? How long had he been… possessed?

  He dropped his chair forward and looked at the paper he had been writing on. The word – the word that had unwound itself and equally mysteriously become whole again – was untrammelled by any sign of careless penmanship. There was no errant line, no sprayed blot – nothing to indicate that his hand had been disturbed in the least.

  It must have lasted for less than a heartbeat. Far less. For a heartbeat could be a long time – long enough to scream and die in. Perhaps, it occurred to Vashnar, it had taken no time at all. Perhaps it had existed outside time.

  This bizarre conclusion seemed to unwind the growing rage and he became aware of other matters fluttering tantalizingly beneath his awareness – or was it Thyrn’s awareness? With an effort he forced all other questions aside and returned to the memory of the event again. He had no doubt that what he had experienced was true. He had once again touched and been touched by Thyrn. The how and the why of it he was reluctantly obliged to accept as being beyond his knowing, but there were certainties in it that surely precluded hallucination or self-deception?

  Thyrn and his companions had been under a violent attack… by Wardens, he thought he detected. Despite himself he felt a glow of satisfaction. Perhaps even now Aghrid and his men were finishing off their business and preparing to return. He shunned the notion. It was too premature and there was nothing in what he had seen and felt that encouraged such a conclusion. Of course, the linkage with Thyrn could have been broken by Thyrn’s death, but he sensed not. It would have to be sufficient for the moment that the fugitives had been found and engaged. That being the case, the matter was almost certainly finished but it was better that he did not anticipate it. A spasm of dark humour intruded. If his new Tervaidin couldn’t deal with such a motley group, that would leave him with far greater problems for his future plans than any damage that Thyrn could do in betraying them.

  He leaned forward and, resting his elbows on the desk, dropped his chin on to his interwoven fingers. An ill-formed idea floated into the confusion, What power would he be able to seize if this ability to see events so far away could be controlled? For an instant he regretted that he had insisted on Thyrn’s death, for what resource might he be destroying there? The idea shrivelled almost immediately in the light of colder, practical reasoning. However he had become linked with Thyrn in this way it was beyond his control and that was totally unacceptable. It could not be ended too soon. And the Caddoran Congress would definitely have to be dealt with in due course. There must be no chance of such an individual as Thyrn arising again.

  He returned to his memory of the encounter, closing his eyes and forcing himself into quietness. There was something important there, he was sure. Something hidden under the clamour.

  Horses, swords, staves – vivid but fleeting and confused images threaded around that frightening, hissing rush – whatwas that?

  Let it go.

  And beneath the images, what?

  Despite his terror, he – Thyrn, Vashnar – was changed. Though still bewildered and uncertain, he was more assured than he had been. Lessons had been learned. And there was a hint of determination there.

  Vashnar started.

  He was not fleeing any longer. He was going to return! Return to the life that was his.

  Vashnar stiffened, his eyes wide. Thyrn’s memories were abru
ptly flushed from him by a surging fear of his own as he felt the edifice of his long-laid plans falter and shake under this simple but direct assault.

  ‘No!’ he gasped. But he was trembling, his body giving the lie to his words.

  It was some time before he began to calm down sufficiently to tell himself that this response was wholly disproportionate. So Thyrn had ambitions to return. What would that avail him. Even if by some miracle he survived the encounter with Aghrid it would only be as a more demented fugitive than before. At best he had only days left. But even as Vashnar pieced together these reassurances, faint tremors still shook him. And he knew that they would not go away. Thyrn had suddenly become an obstacle which wouldhave to be destroyed before he could move on.

  He had to know for sure what had happened to him!

  But how? How was he to find out where he and his protectors were? He presumed they were somewhere in the uncharted north of the country. That was where rumours about them had pointed and where he had sent Aghrid, seemingly successfully, but…

  He banged his fist on the table. He had to know!

  But he couldn’t go charging over the country like a crazed thing. Yet equally he could not do nothing.

  He became aware of an urgent knocking.

  ‘Enter,’ he called out, hastily composing himself and checking his nose again.

  The door was opened by a man wearing the black uniform of the Tervaidin. Although the Tervaidin were his chosen men and had been secretly preparing for their new role for a long time, Vashnar had introduced them into the Warding by affecting to appoint an Emergency Command in order to deal with the fugitives. That had always been the intention, only the pretext being left to circumstance. Now, it fitted well with the many rumours that Vashnar had encouraged following the proclamation of the Death Cry. At the same time he had taken the opportunity to place them in useful administrative positions as well.

  The man was agitated. He saluted and held out a stained travelling wallet.

  ‘This just arrived, sir. A rider from Commander Aghrid.’

  Vashnar motioned him to place the wallet on his desk. He was loath to reach out for it for fear that his hand might begin to tremble again. ‘Is he here, now?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir. He’s unconscious – exhausted. Both he and his horse could hardly stand when he arrived. Said he’d ridden one horse to death already before he passed out.’

  Vashnar nodded and dismissed the man.

  Only when the door clicked to did he pick up the wallet. His handswere shaking as he broke the seal and fumbled with the buckles. Inside was a solitary and badly creased sheet of paper. He flattened it on the desk before trying to read it. The writing was small and untidy and had obviously been written at speed and on an uneven surface. Nevertheless it was legible and Vashnar scanned through it quickly before returning to the beginning to read it more carefully.

  It was a report of the progress that the patrol had made. Vashnar glanced at the map on the wall as he read. Aghrid had been heading into unknown territory when he wrote it and he had been making fearsome progress. Vashnar was impressed, though he was a little uneasy about the number of men who had failed to keep up with the killing pace and had been abandoned along the way. Still, that was a detail. More important was the fact that Aghrid had obtained clear evidence about the route the fugitives had taken and was gaining on them rapidly.

  It concluded:We are told that they will run into the sea within a day or so if they continue north and that they can then turn only westward along the coast, all other ways returning them south eventually. From thence the sea becomes a river which they may seek to cross if they are intending to continue northwards. Wherever they go, we shall find them in accordance with your orders. Our resolve and loyalty is undiminished. We draw nearer to them by the hour.

  Vashnar looked at the map again. North into the sea, then westward? In common with most of the Arvens, he had little or no idea what lay to the north of Arvenstaat. There had never been any trade in that direction and he had never met anyone who had travelled there. In so far as he had thought about it, he presumed that progress northwards could be made uninterrupted. There were supposed to be other countries up there – somewhere. He deduced from Aghrid’s report however, that the sea must turn inland. One day he would attend to the proper determining of the country’s borders, he decided.

  He continued staring at the map. Where were they now? Where had they come together in that violent confrontation that he had just been drawn into? He turned again to Aghrid’s report then tried to estimate the position of the sea and how far he might have travelled along the coast had he maintained the same progress. He placed them well on their way towards the Karpas Mountains which, he presumed, continued north off the map. But the calculation merely unsettled him.

  ‘You’re becoming too preoccupied with Thyrn and the others,’ Vellain told him later. Her tone was stern. ‘All that matters is that he’s out of the way and being pursued. Think about the Tervaidin – they’ve been introduced into the Warding with a minimum of opposition. Certainly much less opposition than had Hyrald still been here. He was always going to be a serious obstacle. You forget how we fretted and planned about that, and now it’s happened almost without comment. And, for the most part, the people are taking to them, which is an unexpected advantage.’

  However, she could not keep the concern from her voice when he reminded her of his second contact with Thyrn. ‘Nothing’s to be done about it,’ she decided unhappily after she had interrogated him at some length. ‘It’s beyond any understanding and there’s no point struggling with it. As you say, it’s probably over and done with by now. Even with his reduced numbers, Aghrid will have had no difficulty in dealing with four men and a boy.’

  ‘Three men, one woman and a young man,’ Vashnar corrected her off-handedly, prompting a head-shaking smile. But he was not sanguine. ‘I think I’d know if Thyrn was dead. Don’t ask me how, but I’ve got the feeling that there’s a part of him with me all the time. And when he dies, I’ll know.’

  Vellain looked at him. Though she controlled them, tiny flickering doubts about her husband’s sanity persisted in making themselves felt despite the crushing weight of reason and instinct she buried them under.

  Beyond understanding – no point struggling with it, she repeated inwardly to herself until they were gone again. But it was not easy.

  She put her arm around his neck. ‘All’s well here, isn’t it,’ she said. ‘Nothing needs your immediate attention. Why don’t we take a little time to ourselves? Break the routine – relax. A rest will be good for both of us.’ She tightened her arm promisingly. ‘We could go north. See for ourselves how the Tervaidin were accepted. Check on our old allies and find out what new ones the appearance of the Tervaidin has brought to light. Who knows, we might meet Aghrid on his return!’

  Normally Vashnar was reluctant to be away from Arvenshelm, but Vellain’s suggestion attracted him. If nothing else it would help to satisfy his irrational desire to mount up and charge after Aghrid to discover Thyrn’s fate. It troubled him that for all Aghrid should have swept aside Hyrald and the others effortlessly, he had had no inner sign that Thyrn was gone. Also, though he made no mention of this, should he find himself touched again by Thyrn, he would be in the presence only of his wife.

  That evening, the Senior Warden Commander’s coach with an escort and a small retinue of servants left Arvenshelm and headed north. As was the tradition, many of the people doffed their hats as the coach passed. Many did not.

  * * * *

  Thyrn was suddenly the focus of the group. ‘What do you mean, you told him we were going back?’ Rhavvan demanded. Thyrn shifted uncomfortably then told them of his brief contact with Vashnar in the middle of the skirmish with Aghrid’s men.

  It was greeted with silence at first then Nordath spoke. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t just imagination? You didn’t pass out like before. I was watching you all the time.’

  ‘It was
different,’ Thyrn admitted. ‘Just a strange kind of dizziness, then I was Vashnar – in his office – looking down at that damned immaculate desk of his. And then I was back here, scrambling for the horses.’ He looked round at the three Wardens. ‘I know it’s hard for you to believe, but that’s what happened. For an instant, both of us were in the other’s place, each knowing what the other knew – sharing thoughts somehow.’

  As before, Hyrald found himself struggling to accept what Thyrn was telling them, but also as before he found he had little alternative. Vashnar’s proclamation of the Death Cry was no less crazy than anything that Thyrn had said, and as the young man’s strange linkage with Vashnar indisputably lay at the root of this whole business it behoved him to keep as open a mind as possible. But it was not easy, and he did not know whether it helped or hindered that the Thyrn now speaking was subtly different – more mature – than the one with whom they had set out.

  ‘Did you have any visions of the city burning – of the destruction you saw when this all started?’ he asked, as much for something to say as for any other reason.

  Thyrn shook his head. ‘No. Just humdrum thoughts. Stuff I don’t understand. A quarterly report to the Moot. A request for more money, and more…’ He paused, before querying, ‘Delegated authority?’ with a shrug. Then he closed his eyes tightly as though he were listening for a distant sound. ‘In the background, the flames – the destruction – are still there somewhere; I can feel them. But I don’t think he’s even aware of them. Nearer the forefront there are confused images of the Tervaidin – or what the Tervaidin will be – spreading across the country, setting aside and replacing the old order of Wardens.’ He opened his eyes. ‘Vashnar’s pleased with what’s happened so far, with the ones he’s sent out. They’ve been well received, apparently.’

  ‘You said you told him we were going back,’ Rhavvan prompted.