This didn't make any sense. 'You've got to get out of here quick,' he pointed out. 'Can't you see it's on fire?'

  But his friend shook his head. 'They rebuilt it,' he said, as if pointing out the painfully obvious. 'I ended up here as Father Prior, would you believe? Me, of all people. Truth is, there were so few of us left, anybody with any seniority got made an abbot or a prior. Still, when you think of what old Horse's-Arse used to say about me when we were novices—The day they make you an abbot, the world will come to an end. Bloody odd to think he got that right.'

  'Who are you?' the younger man asked.

  'But here's me,' his friend went on, 'boasting about landing a rotten little priorship. Look at you, though, talk about the novice most likely to succeed. They may have made me a prior; they've gone and made you a fucking god.' His eyebrows pulled together into a comic scowl. 'Actually,' he said, 'I think that was taking it a bit too far. I mean, how can I be expected to fall down and worship someone who still owes me the two quarters I won off you for long spitting?'

  'What's happening?' he demanded. 'Are you real, or is this a dream or something?'

  His friend laughed. 'Is this a dream, he asks,' he crowed. 'Oh for pity's sake, Ciartan, of course it's a dream, otherwise you'd be dead. What you should be asking yourself is, which dream am I in, now or later? Bet you don't know.'

  'You aren't real,' the younger man said accusingly. 'I'm hallucinating, and you don't exist.'

  'There's no need to be offensive,' his friend replied. 'Anyway, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried. Of course I'm here. I'm at least twice as much here as you are. I'm just not letting it get to me, that's all.'

  Suddenly he understood; about time, too. 'You're from years ahead in the future,' he said.

  'Took you long enough to figure that one out, didn't it?' his friend mocked him. 'And you still aren't there yet. When did you get to be so stupid, then? Back when we were novices, everybody said how bright you were.'

  'The future and the past,' he amended. 'You're from when we were both students, and you're from some time in the future where you've been made Father Prior. So, where am I, then?'

  His oldest friend clicked his tongue impatiently. 'Oh, come on,' he said. 'Don't be so bloody feeble. You never used to be like this, you know. I think maybe it was the bash on the head, did more than just make you lose your memory. All right, then, let's see if we can't figure this out from first principles. I'm not really here, but you can see me and you can talk to me, back here in this place where we first met when we were novices together. Now, do you want to take a wild guess, or do I have to spell it out for you?'

  'Spell it out for me,' he replied. 'I'm not proud.'

  'Fine.' His friend shrugged, and became—naturally enough—a huge crow, pinned to the floor by a fallen rafter, as the fire caught in its feathers. 'Let me tell you a few things about yourself. I always wanted to tell you, but you know, you aren't the sort of person who takes criticism well. You've never wanted to hear unpleasant truths about yourself, and you've always been a bit too quick on the draw, so to speak. There was always a remote chance that pointing out your little weaknesses and faults of character might earn your helpful friend a swift chop to the neck. But here I am.' The crow tried to flap its broken wings, but couldn't. 'Nothing you can do to me, I'm as good as dead already. So here goes.'

  The bird's feathers were full of fire and he couldn't bear its pain; but he couldn't move either, being trapped under the same rafter. 'No, please,' he said, but the crow didn't seem to hear him.

  'Once upon a time,' said the crow, 'there was a young man who lived in a far country, a huge island in the middle of the sea. Everything was very pleasant there, if you like that sort of thing, and the people who lived there were a single-minded lot, rather like a mob of crows. You know what I mean by that; birds of a feather who flock together, and just the one fairly straightforward mind between them. But then the young man did something very bad; and although his grandfather forgave him and nobody else who mattered knew about it, it seemed sensible for the young man to clear out for a while, just a year or so, until things could be put right. So the young man got on a ship that was bound for the great and practically defenceless empire on the other side of the world. While he was away, he might as well make himself useful; so he was given the job of finding out as much as he could about the place he was going to—you see, his people had a very helpful sideline in robbing and plundering the great and practically defenceless empire, but they were hampered a bit by not knowing an awful lot about it, and a little reliable fieldwork would make life a whole lot easier. Besides, they had a friend in the empire, a very bad man who helped them out in exchange for a cut of the takings, but they didn't know very much about him, either, and it seemed like a good idea to get rid of him and maybe put in someone of their own, who could be trusted implicitly' The crow's beak was starting to melt in the desperate heat, making it look faintly ridiculous. 'Are you with me so far, or do you want me to go back over all that?'

  'It's all right,' he replied. 'It's coming back to me. Go on.'

  'Ah well,' the crow said, 'in that case you don't need me to tell you about how you and I got to know each other. But just in case there's still a gap or two in your memory, there was a time when we were the very best of friends—really and truly, it wasn't just some part you were playing in the course of your research, or anything like that. Odd,' the crow continued, 'because after you left, I ended up making a career of sorts out of doing what you'd been sent over to do—spying, gathering information, always in and out of disguises, being a whole range of very plausible people, which I could always do because I never much enjoyed being myself. And now look at you.' Contempt and compassion in equal measure. 'You know, there were times when being one of my various personas was so much more bearable than being me that I nearly found the strength to run away, turn the deceit into truth, start again as someone else, crawling new-born out of a muddy river. But I didn't,' the crow added, with a palpable hint of superiority. 'People were depending on me, and I never forgot my flock, if you'll pardon the ecclesiastical metaphor.'

  'I'm sorry,' the younger man said. 'About what I did to you in the forge. I don't know what came over me. You were flying around screaming and I guess I panicked.'

  The crow laughed, a harsh, painful noise. 'Oh, that,' it said. 'Please, think nothing of it. You'd done it before and you'll do it again. You never could abide us when you were a kid, you'd sit out with your slingshot and your pile of stones and kill us by the dozen. And then you helped burn Deymeson, which was no better and no worse. You've been punished for that, of course. In fact, I'm not sure which tends to come first in your case, the punishment or the crime. If you will insist on being reborn every five minutes, it makes it bloody hard to keep track. Most people are content to live in a straight line, but you've always been a dog with a burning tail, running round in frantic circles trying to bite off your own arse. Of course, from here I can see it all so much more clearly—a bird's-eye view, if you like—and what really saddens me is the hopelessness of it all. Why bother? I ask myself; but that's hindsight for you. Did you know that we birds have all-round vision? Comes of having little round eyes on the sides of our heads, instead of oval ones in the front. You can't see what's beside you or behind you; we can. Very useful attribute, almost makes up for not having minds of our own. A bit like a religious order, with its centuries of tradition, its prophetic insights into the future, its access to additional dimensions of perception. And that, in case you're wondering, is why we wear the crow-black dressing gowns. I say "we", because of course you're one of us; just as much right to this livery as I have, if not better. Am I still making something vaguely approaching sense, or did I leave you behind some time ago?'

  He shook his head. 'I think I can see what you're getting at,' he said. 'I just don't get the relevance, that's all.'

  'Oh. Damn.' The crow's wings dissolved into black ash, which drifted up in a spiral as the hot air rose. 'And yet you were always top of the class in textual interpretation. Used to do my homework for me, or I'd never have got past fourth grade. All right, here it is in baby language. You killed me in the forge, and the mountain stopped puking up fire. You killed me in the fields, and you found true love—twice, actually, but that was a dirty trick, not my idea. You killed me here, and you shot to the top of the tree. You killed me at Deymeson, and that's how you came to be the heir apparent of Haldersness. Next time you kill me—or maybe the time after that, I'm a bit hazy about details—you'll usurp the imperial throne, get the girl, find out what you really wanted to know all along. Do you see a pattern emerging here, or what?'

  'I see,' he said. 'You're my enemy.'

  The fire turned to glowing cinders around the crow's skull. 'Absolutely not,' it said. 'I'm the best friend you ever had, even though you're going to burn me alive in your own house—and if you think this mess we're in now is rough, you just wait till then, it'll hurt you a whole lot more than it hurts me. But that's a given, because—'

  The scorched and charred remains of the crow vanished and became Poldarn, holding the rake that was crushing him down into the forge fire. He screamed, flapped his wings desperately, but the weight of the rake pinned him down like a fallen rafter as the fire ran up his feathers into his flesh and bone. 'That's who you really are, you see,' the voice went on, 'just who you've always been. It's a cliché, your own worst enemy, but in your case it's absolutely appropriate. When you're pinned down in Poldarn's forge and everything around you is burning—but you won't remember a word of this when you wake up, which is a real shame. Life can be so cruel.'

  He sat up. He was in a cart, and Copis was beside him on the box, her face hidden by the cowl of her riding cloak. He lifted it away and saw her face, but the voice remained the same. It sounded like his own, but he was hardly qualified to be sure about that.

  'It's what I was born for,' Copis said, 'to drive you around, round and round in circles, from this mountain to the next and back again, year after bloody year.' She sighed melodramatically. 'Always a priestess, never a god, just my rotten luck. I get the blame, you get all the burnt offerings. I really wish you could remember at least some of this when you wake up, it'd save me a great deal of physical pain, not to mention the emotional shit. But there we go. I think we're here,' she added, as the mountain, belching fire, appeared in the background. 'You're on. Break a leg.'

  He opened his eyes.

  'So there you are.' The older man's face: Feron Amathy, staring at him as if he'd seen a rather unsatisfactory ghost, not the one he'd been waiting for. 'You kept on dying and we were all set to bury you, and then you'd start breathing again, you bugger. God, you've cost me a lot of money.'

  He tried to sit up, but that proved to be a very bad idea. Everything hurt, very badly.

  'The good news is,' Feron Amathy went on (and behind his head was the peak of a tent, with other faces peering over his shoulder), 'apart from a broken leg and some scratches and singes, you're all right, you'll live.' He frowned. 'Did I say that was the good news? Matter of viewpoint, I guess. The bad news is, you fucked up and cost the lives of three good men, as well as buggering up my plans and ruining six months' work. If I didn't love you like my own son, I'd rip your stomach open and peg you out for the crows.'

  He remembered what had happened. 'Sergeant Bofor—'

  Feron Amathy shook his head. 'Make that three good men and one buffoon, though I'm not holding Fat Bofor against you. I'm assuming that it was his own stupidity that got him killed. Is that right?'

  He tried to nod, but it hurt too much. 'He pulled a bookcase down on his head,' he croaked, 'I think it must have knocked him out.'

  'Figures. But the other three are your fault, for rushing into a burning building to save a dead idiot. Different for them, of course; they rushed into a burning building too, but there was a slight chance their idiot was still alive. Since they were proved to be correct, I'm calling them heroes rather than irresponsible arseholes. Benefit of the doubt, and all that.'

  He closed his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I was only trying to do the right thing.'

  'I know,' Feron Amathy said tenderly. 'That's what makes you such a fucking menace. In case you're remotely interested, the men you killed—not too strong a word, in my opinion—were Has Gilla, Cuon Borilec and Fern Ilzen. Tully Galac got out alive—dragged you out with him—but he's burnt to hell and he's lost one eye, it's touch and go whether he'll make it or not. If this is what you achieve when you're trying to be good, Poldarn help us all if you ever decide to be bad.'

  He could feel tears forming in his eyes. 'The library,' he said.

  'Oh, that. You failed. I have no idea how you managed it, but only about half the books actually got burned; a wall fell in and cut the rest off from the fire—it's a bloody miracle, if you ask me. Anyway, who gives a shit about a load of old books? The point is, with you hovering on death's door like a hummingbird, we had to call off the attack on Josequin and hole up here; and now the bloody rain's set in, we haven't got a hope in hell of getting back down the mountain with the roads all turned to mud, so it looks like we're stuck here for a month at the very least. If the food holds out it'll be another bloody miracle. Can you do miracles? Apart from coming back from the dead, I mean. If so, now would be a really good time.'

  A sharp pain shot up his leg and paralysed him for a very long moment. 'I don't think I can,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Oh, great,' Feron Amathy sighed. 'A fat lot of use you turned out to be, then.'

  He opened his eyes.

  'Wake up, for crying out loud.' Colsceg was leaning over him, shaking him by the shoulder. 'We need you to tell us what to do.'

  There was something in his mind, something incredibly important; but the light—and the sound of Colsceg's voice—washed it away, like a flood dissolving snow. 'What's the matter?' he asked sleepily.

  (The main hall at Colscegsford; he could see the joists and cross-beams of the roof behind the old man's head. For some reason they seemed horribly threatening, as if they could fall in on him at any moment. Why? he wondered; I must have been dreaming.)

  'What's the matter, he says.' Colsceg scowled at him. 'You bloody fool, can't you hear it?'

  He could hear something; it was a gentle, familiar noise, one that he rather liked, because of pleasant associations he could no longer quite remember. 'Please,' he said, 'tell me. What's going on?'

  (And then he recognised the sound—)

  'I'll tell you what's going on,' Colsceg shouted, as if it was all his fault. 'It's raining.'

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  Poldarn pushed past Colsceg and burst through the door.

  The rain was hard, each drop hitting his face like a slingstone, and so thick that he could only just make out the shapes of the encircling mountains. But he didn't need to see them. In his mind's eye, he had a clear vision of what was happening. The ash was dissolving into mud, slithering off the rocky slopes, following the channels and contours like sheep herded by a well-trained dog. Soon it would form its lines and columns, its ranks and files, ready to march; then it would move with terrifying speed (like the raiders, his people, swooping down on Josequin or Deymeson), gathering strength and pace as it went, before cascading in a black river into the valley, and filling it like molten metal poured into a mould. It would be here very soon, too soon to put together a coherent plan of action, organise the household, allocate duties and responsibilities, establish an effective chain of command—all the things that needed to be seen to if anything was ever to get done.

  'Well,' Colsceg shouted at him, 'so what do we do?'

  He thought about it for a whole second. 'Run,' he said.

  'Fine. Where to?'

  Ah, Poldarn thought, now there you have me. He looked round, more with his mind and memory than with his eyes. The valley plain was out of the question. He thought of Rook's account of the mudslides at Lyatsbridge; if they ran out onto the flat, there was every chance they'd be swamped and buried before they went more than a few hundred yards. Going up the slopes was no better, they ran the risk of being in the way of a mudslide coming down; it'd be quicker, though not by much, and that was the best to be said for it. Bloody hell, he thought, why's it got to be up to me, this isn't even my house. Why can't someone else tell me what to do, for a change?

  'Up the hillside,' he said, and as he said it he knew perfectly well that he was only saying the first thing that came into his head, because there wasn't time to reach a considered decision. 'Keep to the high ground, away from the dips and trenches. You'll be just fine.'

  Colsceg nodded and ran off; Poldarn could see people hurrying towards him. Of course, he and he alone was at liberty to please himself, he didn't have to go with the rest of them or allow his mind to be swamped by theirs. He could stay where he was, observe, collate more data, drown in mud, because he wasn't a part of this community. He only had himself to think about.

  Not true. The hell with this, he thought; where's Boarci? Damn him to hell, Boarci was his responsibility now, and of course he was nowhere to be seen. Suppose it took him three minutes to find him, that'd use up his little allowance of grace and then it'd be too late to save either of them, even if he knew how to go about it. Waiting for him, looking for him would be an act of monumental stupidity, like running back into a burning house to try and save someone who was probably dead already. Only an imbecile would even consider doing something like that.

  'Boarci,' he yelled, but he could only just hear himself over the hammering of the rain.

  This would be a good time to be a mind-reader, Poldarn thought as he splashed and skidded across the yard. Already the rain had created pools in every bump and dip; it was flooding down off the eaves and gathering in miniature rivers, scuttling down the slight incline towards the edge of the plateau. The stables, he told himself; if I were Boarci, I'd try and get a horse, see if I could outrun the mud on the flat. Now that wasn't a bad idea, though needless to say it wasn't applicable to the Colscegsford household; there weren't enough horses to go round, and if they couldn't all go, none of them would even consider trying. But Boarci wasn't a part of this house, not even remotely, by betrothal; he could clear out and leave them all to die, and nobody would know he'd even been here. Now if only he could be trusted to think that way for himself, Poldarn would be relieved of the obligation of thinking for him, and that'd be one less thing to waste time on. But it wouldn't be safe to assume that Boarci would do that, and so Poldarn had no choice but to keep looking for him (and that'd be comical, if Poldarn died trying to save the one man in the place who managed to get away).

 

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