The Collarbound, page 21
‘You’re a smart girl. Think about it.’ Sir Daegan gestured towards the crate. ‘You can work while you’re considering it.’
It was a disturbing task. Daegan stood beside her, never lowering himself to touch the bars, but sending her precise technical images of what she should be doing, and how. Following his mental instructions, she started building the cage. There was a mallet beside the crate, and she assembled the pieces before hammering them together so they would be difficult to unpick.
No sound but the scratch of bone against bone. She could hear the thump of her heart, smell her own sweat. Sir Daegan watched over her, breathing slowly, his hands knotted behind his back, his long robes sometimes shivering in the breeze, their shade of black shifting against the paler black of the stone. She tried to think of nothing. He would be studying her mind as closely as he was her handicraft.
When she had finished about a third of the structure, Sir Daegan interrupted her.
‘It is probably better if you place it where it should be. Otherwise it will be difficult to move.’
‘Why me?’ She felt relieved to hear her voice, even as it echoed in the silent, abandoned corridor.
‘Why do you think?’ Sir Daegan waved towards the device at the back of the room. ‘This way.’
Isha carried the partially-constructed cage. She had the four walls and the ceiling, but they weren’t linked together yet. When she dragged them across the floor, the polished horns caught in the cracks between the stones. She was scraping the surface of the bars, but Sir Daegan didn’t seem to mind. He didn’t offer to help her carry them.
‘It’s because of my kher tattoo,’ she said. It seemed obvious, now she thought about it. ‘You don’t want to touch this much kher horn.’
Sir Daegan didn’t smile, but she sensed his amusement. ‘It is commonly believed exposure to khers and kher horn can diminish mindlink powers.’ He glanced at her with his colourless eyes. ‘You must be immune, considering you can mindlink even with a kher tattoo.’
She bit her lips and didn’t answer. She carried the bars across the room. The contraption she’d spotted wasn’t that ominous seen up close – it was only a chimney. A human-made chimney, stuck against the giant-made wall. It stood out starkly, carved out of smaller stones. Each brick from the chimney was about a fifth of the size of the ones making up the wall. When she lowered the bars beside it, the hearth shone. She crouched closer. The inside of the chimney was bright as silver, even in the dim light.
‘Silver melts and darkens,’ said Sir Daegan. ‘Try again.’
Isha cursed her mind for being too easy to spy into. She tried to close it down. She extended her hand to touch the back of the chimney. Something moved inside the hearth, like a ghost reaching out – but she realised it was only her reflection.
‘A mirror,’ she breathed. Its surface was perfectly even.
‘Mirrors,’ corrected Sir Daegan. ‘Running all the way up.’ Isha peered further into the hearth, but the rare autumn light didn’t illuminate the funnel.
‘I trust you know what mirrors and kher horn have in common?’ asked Sir Daegan.
She forced herself to think fast.
‘Lightborns can’t fly through them,’ she said.
Stories told of men sealing lightborns into bottles and forcing them to grant their wishes. It usually ended badly for the person doing the wishing. But these folktales all involved mirrors. It was common knowledge that lightborns were attracted to mirrors, and sometimes tried to fly into them, only to find themselves bouncing off in the opposite direction. And khers blocked all minds – especially pure souls like the lightborns.
‘It’s a lightborn trap,’ she breathed. She was shocked, if only because she hadn’t anticipated that Sir Daegan was superstitious. Who could buy into these old legends of caught lightborns and unthinkable magic? He was too down-to-earth to believe a lightborn would bless him or grant him new powers.
‘There is a lot we don’t know about lightborns,’ said Sir Daegan. He was using his teaching voice; it boomed in the narrow space. ‘But we know enough. They are pure souls, but they can take on human shape, if it takes their fancy. They can mindlink, but it is impossible to step inside their minds, for if you enter a lightborn’s mind and they alight, you will be ripped from your body and die a gruesome death. They can fly. They are fast. They are arrogant. And they are beautiful.’
When she turned towards him, Sir Daegan was smiling, showing white-grey teeth and white-grey skin. He noticed her staring.
‘Now get on with it,’ he said sharply.
Sir Daegan wanted the cage to cover the front of the chimney. If a lightborn did fly down, attracted by the mirrors, it wouldn’t be able to leave with kher horn all around. If a lightborn had been drawn to the chimney before the cage was in place, it would have slipped harmlessly through the walls – the giants built thick structures, but not thick enough to prevent a lightborn from crossing them. They could fly through gates, through houses, through people.
‘Couldn’t it fly back up the chimney?’ Isha asked.
‘Not with the way the mirrors are angled.’ Sir Daegan was proud of his creation, she could tell. ‘A lightborn trying to fly up this would be reflected back down.’ Despite his distaste at the idea of touching kher horn, he helped her lift the makeshift ceiling of the cage, so she could finish building it.
‘The funnel behind is not a chimney,’ he explained. ‘It’s a lightlure.’
Hinges and a lock for a door had to be assembled at the front of the cage. It was excellent craftsmanship, but confusing. Isha put it together wrongly the first time, then spent time-consuming minutes undoing and rebuilding it. Once the structure was complete, placed against the wall, she still had to nail it through the cracks in the stones, with metal nails as long as her hand, which riveted the whole piece to the ground. By the end, her palms were dark with powdery metal.
They took a step back to admire the result. The cage was a sinister thing. It made Isha think of a kher buried under the stone, their horns still growing after their death, curving in on themselves to shape this prison. The bars were dark; the hearth the colour of moonlight.
She didn’t want to be a part of this, of making cages, of desecrating dead khers, carrying baina, treating people like currency. She didn’t want to be a part of the Nest. Yet here I am. This is what I have done.
If Sir Daegan heard her thoughts, he didn’t answer them. On the contrary, he sighed with satisfaction. He patted Isha’s shoulder with a heavy, ring-laden hand.
‘One last touch, and the lightlure will be complete,’ he said.
They went back inside the living-room. Here the atmosphere was warm and cosy, with none of the black-and-white bleakness of the side-room.
Isha helped him heave a rolled carpet up from underneath his bed. They carried it back to the cage and unfurled it there, revealing shards of mirrors that had been woven into the carpet’s threads, at regular intervals, presumably so it would be impossible for a lightborn to go through it. This too had to be nailed to the ground. Isha knelt on the hard stone to work. The task was all the more challenging because she could only drive the nails between the flagstones, and so she had to stretch the rug in awkward places to make it fit. The threads were coarse, the fabric was undyed – but the mirrors must have been expensive, and the weaving was exquisite. When she took a step back, the mirrors shimmered, drawing patterns of silver-light and shadow against the floor.
‘Dealing with lightborns is dealing with beauty,’ said Sir Daegan. ‘All in all, a very satisfying business.’
Dealing with the Nest is dealing with ugliness, she thought, but she did her best to stifle the words before Sir Daegan could hear them.
When they left the side-room, he locked it behind them.
‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked, amiably enough.
He poured her a glass of wine while she stood, uneasy, beside one of the armchairs. The tapestries on the walls showed the Nest hanging above the Edge, with mages gathered around it, stars and the sun and lightborns flying beyond the cliff. Another tapestry was a hunting scene, with horses, deer, dogs, and trees. These mundane items, the musty smell of books, the crunch of hay inside the chair when she sat down, couldn’t quite dispel the eeriness of the side-room they had just left.
Sir Daegan handed her a glass. It was real glass, not wood, with wine as dark as blood inside it. He had served himself one too.
‘You understand,’ he said, as he sipped his drink, ‘that this will remain between us.’
He licked the corners of his mouth as he watched her closely. She brought the wine to her lips, although she didn’t feel like drinking.
‘Do you know why I picked you, aside from the obvious kher tattoo?’ he asked.
He didn’t sit down, but stood beside his chair, one hand against the headrest, the other playing at swirling the wine inside its glass.
Isha shook her head.
Sir Daegan stared at her with unflinching eyes. ‘Because you have more to lose.’
He mindlinked as he spoke, his mind like a whip. She flinched despite herself. It wasn’t much, if anything at all – a brief image of Passerine striding down a corridor, Tatters sitting on the floor inside the Temple. But the images cut through her sharply. He hadn’t meant for it to be a pleasant experience.
‘I have not questioned you about this. You will not question me, either.’ Sir Daegan’s voice was affable, unthreatening. If it hadn’t been for the fierceness of his mindlink, she could have believed he didn’t really mind either way, that this was only a pleasant conversation between friends.
‘I will ask again. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
The sky was clear and white, with the smell of snow in the air. The square hummed with voices. Tatters didn’t try to get a good view of the pillories; that would have been too much of a struggle. The children would be at the front, sitting on the ground, or holding onto their mothers’ aprons, as the women paused in their morning duties to enjoy the show. Adults of all ages crammed around the square, leaving a respectful circle for the lawmage to do his work.
Tatters headed for a stall laden with vegetables, fruit, cheese, different ingredients picked from the farm early the same morning, or maybe the previous day, and collected in miscellaneous piles. The wares were autumnal – pumpkins, late apples, walnuts. At the foot of the stall were rotting gourds of various shapes and sizes, which the shopkeeper gave away for free, to throw at the criminals. It attracted passers-by to his stand.
Brushing the midges aside, Tatters went to stand beside the stall. The shopkeeper waved at his gourds, but Tatters only shook his head. He tucked himself at the mouth of the narrow alley running alongside the shop. It was impossible to find a quiet corner in the square when it was this full, but hopefully the busy shop would distract anyone looking this way. He crossed his arms, in part to fend off the cold, in part to brace himself.
There’s still time not to do this, said Lal.
First the town crier gave the news for the day. It was the usual: there were refugees in all of the Meddyns now, choking the towns huddled between forest-covered hills, slowly pooling down the Sunpath towards the Nest. A skirmish had taken place with a small retinue of bandits who had red banners and might or might not have been Renegades.
Tatters tried to ignore the twist of fear in his gut. The town crier reassured everyone they had been dealt with by the local mages, earning Lady Siobhan some ‘praise be’ and ‘long may the Nest stand’.
After the crier, a bored, sniffling lawmage announced the punishments for the day and how many whip lashes each petty villain would receive. He also listed their crimes for the crowd, who shouted ‘shame!’ with delight, especially when it came to thieves. Ka got a lacklustre response – impeding a lawmage in his duty wasn’t a wrongdoing anyone cared for.
The executioner will hit him harder, warned Lal. The popular belief was that khers felt less pain than humans.
Tatters wasn’t looking forward to it. But he had told Ka he would be there.
Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a flogging, he answered Lal. We’ve had worse.
You’ve become soft.
Well, this is a good way to find out, isn’t it?
The hangman, whose duties included beating, cracked his whip above his head. The crowd muttered in excitement, whilst Tatters clenched his teeth. He could see, in the distance, the red smudged shape of Ka, leaning into the pillory. There wasn’t another kher in sight.
Tatters fleshbound. Suddenly his neck was stiff from a night of sleeping in an uncomfortable position, his spine ached. His knees kept wanting to buckle, but when they did, the pull on his shoulders became acute. Wincing, Tatters rubbed the nape of his neck, trying to keep the movement natural. Lal was right. He had become soft.
What is it? Do you feel that guilty about being a mage? Lal was growing angry. Maybe she hadn’t thought he would stay true to his word. Is that what this is about? Do you think suffering with Ka makes up for everything else you’ve done?
She was furious but faint – the fleshbinding muffled her voice. She spoke as if from far away.
It’s not about suffering, said Tatters. It’s about sharing the load.
The first person to be beaten was one of the thieves. Tatters supposed Ka would be second or third. He listened to the sharp sound of the whip and the screams of the pilloried man. The crowd thumped its feet in time with the lashes.
When the hangman stepped up to Ka, a few people cheered.
Tatters let himself slide to a crouch on the floor, as if it were more comfortable. He tensed his shoulders, pressing his back into the stone. He was so focused he lost Lal entirely. He held his breath.
The shopkeeper misunderstood his change of posture. ‘Khers always give a good show, don’t they?’ he said. He was trying to be friendly. Tatters tried to smile.
The whip cut through the cloud-white sky. When it landed, Tatters felt the burn of it from his shoulders to his hips. The shock of the hit, and the sound of it, shuddered through his teeth. Despite himself, he gasped. He hadn’t felt pain in a long time. He remembered when he could take it; now he wondered how he’d done it. What had numbed him? Habit? Disgust? Why didn’t it matter then, how hard they tried to break him, and why did it matter now, one blow across someone else’s back?
By the second strike he wanted it to be over. It could be, if he wanted it to – he could drop the fleshbinding. He doubted Ka would force his agony onto him, although it was possible, of course, to share your feelings with someone against their will.
The third strike. The fourth. The crowd was whistling and shouting abuse. Because of his position, Ka’s blood was rising to his face, drumming inside his ears. Tatters shared every heartbeat. He hugged his knees against his chest to hide that he was flinching; he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. Ka didn’t shout out. The fifth strike was harder. Tatters could sense hot liquid crawling down his back.
He wouldn’t be able to keep this up.
Shuffling further into the alley, Tatters closed his eyes. It wasn’t discreet, but it would help. He detached his mind from his body, visualising himself elsewhere, with other thoughts, other fears. The skin off his back was cut in thin, bloody stripes. But he wasn’t there to feel it. He wasn’t under this pale autumn sky, but enjoying the warmth of a summer afternoon. The excited voices were insects buzzing around the overripe fruit. It wasn’t blood he could smell, but pollen, drifting in the hot, heavy air.
At first his mind resisted. Fleshbinding and mindrambling together was like trying to draw squares with one hand and circles with the other. But Tatters had practiced. Slowly the city faded away. The wall against which he was resting became bark; the hard pavement he could feel through the soles of his shoes melted into soft earth and thick grass.
He was sitting in the shade of a tree, in the Rohit Pattra, the Forest of Red Leaves. Where his bare feet poked out of the protection of the branches, the sun scorched his skin. The colours were bright – green grass, blue sky, bright red leaves from the maple trees. His eyes half-closed, he listened to the lazy drone of bumblebees. Lal was sleeping at the back of his mind, curled in a corner like a cat.
Mezyan was lying on his stomach beside him. He plucked idly at the maples’ winged fruit, splitting them in half, or tossing them in the air for the pleasure of watching them spin to the ground. Other Renegades were scattered across the grove. It was too hot for training; they had done most of the day’s work this morning, at dawn, and would finish the remainder at dusk. Hawk herself was sitting, cross-legged, a few feet away. She didn’t seem to mind the sun beating down on her.
She was beautiful. Coarse, certainly, like a roughly hewn piece of wood, but beautiful still. She wore the mantle of leadership better than most women wore dresses. Her black hair shone in the sun. Her dark skin shone darker still, tanned by a summer of training outside.
They had discovered humans could fleshbind, if taught. They were excited like children before snow.
‘I think we’ll use fleshbinding to resist pain, rather than inflict it,’ said Hawk. ‘If one of us is tortured, but twenty people share the pain, it should be manageable for everyone involved.’
These were the early days, with only about fifteen Renegades, most of whom didn’t live at the camp, and couldn’t be called upon if there was an emergency. They were hiding in the Rohit Pattra because it was a sacred forest, which stayed empty outside of festival weeks.
‘They can make torture last a very long time,’ Tatters said doubtfully. ‘I don’t think it’ll work.’
Her gaze was hard as iron; it was a hardness that didn’t come naturally, but had been hammered through fire. ‘Maybe we need to find a way to kill the person being tortured, to shorten the ordeal,’ she said.
No-one could answer that. Hawk had suffered, and she was intent on never suffering again. Everyone in the encampment assumed the mages had harmed her, although what had happened wasn’t clear – but she hadn’t renounced her convent for nothing.
‘There is a story that fits this situation,’ Mezyan said. ‘Once, this king negotiated peace with another tribe. The two kings met, and they shared blood, so the deal would be sealed with fleshbinding.’
