The Summon Stone Read online

  Karan shrank back in her chair. Could he see her? What would he do if he did? But his eyes did not move; he was looking down at an object dangling from his neck, a red cube on a fine steel chain. He touched the cube and a faint drumming sounded in her head.

  A burst of light from the cube illuminated his eyes, which were an alarming colour, indigo blue with flecks of carmine. Shivers ran across Karan’s shoulders, for the eyes alone were enough to tell her what Gergrig, and presumably the other Merdrun, were.

  They were Charon. And that was impossible.

  Gergrig rose abruptly. He had to be a foot and a half taller than her, and hard and lean. He reached out as if testing an invisible barrier and momentarily the scene went out of focus, then he dropped his hand and looked over his shoulder.

  His troops were gathered behind him. They were heavily armed, bandaged and battered and bruised, and many were red-handed as if they had come straight from the battlefield. All looked jubilant, and all had the jagged glyph on their foreheads. There were many thousands of them, a mighty force armed for war.

  An army that could not possibly exist.

  Karan cut off the seeing and scrambled to her feet, her heart thundering. How could this be? There were no Charon any more. After Rulke’s death, Yalkara and the few dozen survivors, all age-old, had been the last of their kind. She had said they were returning to the void to face their extinction with dignity.

  Had that been a lie?

  3

  THE DRUMMING

  How long would it take the magiz to locate Sulien? And when she did, could she attack from Cinnabar?

  Karan’s fear exploded into panic. She belted up the stairs and into Sulien’s room, gasping. It was dark now; the moon was on the other side of the manor and only the faintest glimmer of starlight came through the window. Her daughter lay still. Too still? Karan’s heart missed several beats.

  “Sulien?” she cried, clutching at her hand.

  “What’s the matter, Mummy?” Sulien said sleepily.

  The panic eased. Karan felt foolish. “I… was just worried, that’s all.”

  Sulien patted her hand. “It’s all right. Go to sleep now.”

  How could she ever sleep again, knowing the magiz could attack at any time? Though if she did, what could Karan do about it?

  “I want you to have this,” she said, taking off her braided silver chain. “It’ll help to keep you safe.” She put it around Sulien’s neck.

  “Mmm,” said Sulien.

  Karan sat there for hours, too exhausted to think clearly, just listening to Sulien’s steady breathing until, an hour before dawn, her own head began to throb and her belly churned and heaved. Aftersickness.

  Holding her stomach, she stumbled down and out into the garden, where she threw up. She scooped water from a barrel by the door, washed her face and looked out across the shadowed yard of Gothryme Manor.

  The ground was so dry she could smell it; dust, lifted by an autumn breeze, tickled the back of her nose. The coming harvest was going to be the smallest in her memory and she had no idea how she would feed her workers next year. One disaster after another had emptied Gothryme’s coffers and only one thing of value remained.

  But how could she ask that of Llian?

  What choice did she have? They might have to flee at a moment’s notice, and going on the run would take coin, lots of it. If only he hadn’t been so foolish. But he had, and the ban on Llian working, which had been in place for nine and a half years now, was eating him alive.

  He was not just a brilliant chronicler of the Histories of Santhenar. He was also the first tale-teller in hundreds of years to have written a new Great Tale, the twenty-third, the monumental Tale of the Mirror. The Great Tales were his life and his passion, and if he could not practise his art, what did he have left?

  The ban should have been lifted years ago but Wistan, the aged and obnoxious Master of the College of the Histories, had refused, and there were ominous signs that he was going to make it permanent. A lifetime ban would destroy Llian.

  Karan heard that faint drumming again. It felt like an alien heartbeat, freshly woken, and suddenly she could not bear the load any longer. She hauled herself up to her bedroom.

  “Llian, wake up.” She shook him by the shoulder.

  He groaned. “Wassamatta?”

  “There’s a problem and we’ve got to talk.”

  He rolled over. “It’s still dark.”

  “It’s nearly dawn. Come downstairs.”

  She told him the story while she was cooking breakfast – egg-soaked bread fried with purple onions and small cubes of fatty bacon. He slumped at the table with his eyes closed, listening in silence.

  Further down the north wing a door banged. Cook and his assistant, young Benie, would soon be here, and Karan did not want to talk to them. She and Llian carried their plates out to the table on the rear terrace, which faced the snow-tipped mountains.

  “It was just a nightmare,” he said when she finished. He forked up another piece of fried bread, loaded it with bacon and onions, and carried it towards his mouth. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “My seeing proves it was real,” said Karan.

  An onion ring fell off his fork and slid down his shirt, unnoticed, until it caught on a button. It hung there, quivering with his every movement.

  “You’d just taken hrux,” he said.

  “Only a half dose.”

  “Maybe it was a hallucination.”

  The dangling onion ring was profoundly irritating. “I know what a hrux hallucination is like,” snapped Karan. “This was a true seeing. Thousands of armed troops, still bloody from battle, getting ready for war – on us. And they looked like Charon.”

  “The Charon are extinct,” he said in the I’m trying hard to be reasonable manner that was so annoying. “Their elders went back to the void to die.”

  “The ones I saw last night were young.”

  “Then they can’t have been Charon. Besides, they don’t have tattoos.”

  “Who else could they be, with those eyes? Rulke must have lied.”

  “Telling truth from lies is part of my training.”

  “And I know when to trust my seeings.”

  “Even when you’ve taken hrux?”

  Karan fought the urge to whack him. Stupid man! She picked off the onion ring and flicked it away. A crow caught it before it hit the ground, then hopped across the terrace, eyeing her malevolently. Karan imagined it pecking at their bodies… She shooed it away furiously.

  “I hadn’t taken anything when I lifted Sulien’s nightmare,” she hissed. “Or when I read it. Gergrig told the magiz to find Sulien, and kill her, and you’d better start taking it seriously, or… or…” She thumped her head down on her arms, on the table. “I’m terrified, Llian. I don’t know what to do.”

  He drew her to him and put his arms around her. “Sorry. I’m never any good early in the morning.”

  She suppressed a sarcastic retort. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “We don’t know how the magiz will attack, or when. What can we do except take Sulien and run?”

  “How can we run? We’re practically bankrupt.”

  He pulled away. “And that’s my fault,” he said bitterly. “I got myself banned.”

  “I know. I was there.”

  But Llian kept on, flogging himself, as if by doing so he could ease the burden of guilt. “I broke the chroniclers’ first law. I interfered in the Histories, and a hundred prisoners were burned to death in the citadel cells.” He looked around wildly. “I can still hear their screams.”

  “You didn’t kill them. Mendark set fire to the citadel, trying to kill you!”

  “But that wasn’t enough for me – oh, no! I provoked Tensor.”

  This was too much. “You bloody idiot!” Karan cried, shaking him by the shoulders. “You were trying to save my life!”

  “And because of my stupidity, Rulke was killed.” Llian looked down at his ha
nds as if expecting them to be clotted with blood. “That’s why I was banned… but being a chronicler and a teller is all I’m good for.”

  “I knew that when I chose you,” she murmured.

  “You couldn’t have known how bad it was going to get.”

  “I can put up with anything as long as I have Sulien and you.”

  But a barrier had grown between them and she did not know how to overcome it. Karan looked across the swan pond, now dry save for a brown, reeking pool in the middle.

  “Llian, we need money, fast. And the one valuable thing we have… you have—” The drumming was back, thundering in her head this time.

  Llian cried out and made for the axe standing in the woodpile near the door.

  “Ugh!” Karan yelped, clutching at her skull.

  He froze, right hand outstretched. His fingers closed and opened, then with an effort he drew back from the axe. “Karan?” He turned jerkily, like an automaton, and his eyes had a feral glint.

  The sound cut off. “I just heard the drumming again,” she said.

  The light faded from his eyes and he was the familiar Llian again. He lurched back to the table and took her hands. His fingers clenched around hers, and his breathing was ragged.

  “Llian, what is it?”

  “Just then I felt… I wanted to…”

  It was as if he were afraid to say it. No, ashamed to say it. He jerked his head sideways. She followed the direction of his gaze to the axe.

  He sat on his hands as if to keep them from misbehaving. “I felt a wild urge to… to run amok. Break windows, chop up the plates. Smash the wine bottles in the cellar.”

  “Given your prodigious appetite for red wine, that’s really worrying.”

  The joke fell on its face. “I’m afraid, Karan. Afraid of what I might have done.”

  She swallowed. Llian had many flaws, but violence was not one of them. With him anger turned inwards, not out.

  “How long have you been having these feelings?” she said delicately.

  “Never – until just then. It took all my willpower to pull back from the axe.”

  And it had happened when the drumming started. An ugly possibility reared, but before Karan could think it through there came a hoarse cry from the back door.

  “Karan, Llian! Come, quickly.”

  Rachis, their ancient steward, was hunched in the doorway, panting. Age had withered him; once tall and upright, now he was nothing but spindly, stooping bone and skin like wrinkled leather. In his eighty-two years Rachis had seen everything, and he was normally unflappable, but now his mouth was opening and closing, his watery eyes staring.

  “Benie,” he croaked. “Benie…”

  “What about him?” said Karan. The cook’s apprentice was a good-hearted lad of seventeen, though accident prone. “Has he cut himself again? Is it bad?”

  “He’s… he’s murdered Cook.”

  4

  STABBED HIM THROUGH THE HEART

  “Benie… killed Cook?” cried Karan. It was preposterous.

  “Stabbed him through the heart with the boning knife,” said Rachis.

  Karan ran into the kitchen. Fragments of a wide blue bowl and pieces of chopped cabbage, turnip and carrots were scattered across the flagstones. Cook lay on his back in front of the enormous cast-iron range, arms outstretched. Blood soaked the front of his apron and he was clearly dead.

  Her cranky, wonderful Cook, the centre of her household for the past seven years, was gone – from some moment of madness. Why?

  Benie, a stocky lad with untidy blonde hair and little scars all over his hands, was backed up against the door of the larder, a thin-bladed knife hanging from his left hand. A thick crimson drop of Cook’s blood, not yet congealed, hung from its tip. His teeth were chattering.

  Karan held out her hand. “Can I have the knife, Benie?”

  He handed it to her at once, dazedly. His hands were trembling, his prominent larynx bobbing up and down.

  “What happened?” said Karan. Her knees had gone wobbly. She clutched the edge of the kitchen table, looking from Cook to Benie, back to Cook. How could he be dead, just like that? She could not take it in.

  “I… killed… Cook,” said Benie, shaking his head as if he could not believe it.

  “Did he attack you?”

  “No… why would he?”

  “Cook’s got a sharp tongue,” said Rachis. “But he’s not… he wasn’t a hard man.”

  “Why did you do it, Benie?” said Llian.

  “I don’t know.”

  “There’s got to be a reason.”

  “No. None at all.”

  “Did you hear voices?” said Rachis. “Telling you to kill Cook?”

  Benie shook his head. “I was boning out a leg of mutton and suddenly I felt furiously angry.”

  “Why?” said Karan.

  “I don’t know. It came from nowhere and I couldn’t stop myself. I… just… stabbed him.” Benie looked down at Cook’s body, blanched, and Karan saw the little boy in him, bewildered and terrified. He began to shake. “Poor Cook,” he sobbed, his nose running. “He taught me so much. I just wanted to be as good as him.”

  Benie let out a howl that pierced her to the heart. “Did anything odd happen before you did it?” said Karan.

  “No,” said Benie. “Except for that thumping sound.”

  “What thumping sound?”

  He tapped it on the bench, the rhythm that Karan had heard. The drumming. “I heard it just before…”

  Karan exchanged glances with Llian, who seemed to be thinking the same thing as her.

  “What’s going to happen to me?” Benie said plaintively. “They won’t hang me, will they?”

  Karan swallowed. He had been a mischievous little boy, always getting into scrapes and coming to her to say sorry afterwards, but there was nothing she could do about murder.

  “I’ll put him in the old cellar,” Rachis said heavily. “And send for the bailiff. Come with me, lad.” He led Benie away.

  “I didn’t want to hurt him,” Benie wailed. “Cook was good to me. Karan, please help me!”

  Karan stood there, fists clenched by her sides, utterly helpless. Why was everything falling apart?

  “Sulien will be down soon,” Llian said in a low voice. “We’d better do something about the body.”

  They carried Cook down to an empty coolroom, locked the door and cleaned up the mess and the blood – there wasn’t much. Out in the stone-walled orangery, they sat on a granite bench spotted with circular grey patches of lichen, among the orange and kumquat trees. The small green oranges were sparse and the leaves hung down, badly wilted. Everything was wilted this year, Llian most of all.

  “Is there anything we can do for him?” he said.

  Benie had been part of Gothryme all his life and more than half of Karan’s. His mother had died in childbirth and his father was unknown. He had simply been taken in; it was what people did around here.

  “It’s got to be the drumming,” said Karan. “It affected you too.”

  “But not you.”

  She shrugged. “Nor Rachis.”

  “Why not?”

  “Maybe only certain people are susceptible.”

  “Benie’s a good lad,” said Llian, getting up like a worn-out old man. “He’s worked hard these past years… and we have a duty to him. Do you think we should…”

  “Let him escape?” said Karan bleakly.

  He pressed his forehead against a horizontal branch. “Yes.”

  “He killed an innocent man, for no reason. Will he kill again, the next time the drumming sounds? And the time after that? We can’t take the risk, Llian.”

  “What if we hide him somewhere? Lock him up where he’ll be safe.”

  “For ever? No, we can’t. Cook’s poor wife is now a widow, his three children are fatherless, and without his earnings they’ll starve. I’ll have to take them in, and they have to know what happened, and why. And know that justice has been
done for their father.” Karan shook her head. “How am I going to tell them?”

  Llian paced in figure eights between the orange trees. “Benie will be convicted of murder.”

  “I’ll plead for him,” said Karan. “I’ll do everything I can…”

  “But he’ll still be put to death.”

  She covered her face with her hands. There was no solution; the drumming had made sure of that. She could see the rest of Benie’s brief life, all the way to the rope.

  Llian came back and put his arms around her. She scrunched herself against the comforting solidity of his chest.

  “Do you think they’re connected?” he said after a long pause.

  “What?”

  “Sulien’s nightmare and your seeing – and the drumming.”

  “I first heard it after Gergrig touched the red cube,” said Karan. “Yes, I do.”

  “Is he trying to wake the summon stone with it?”

  “He must be, though why does that come at such a cost in power? And what’s the summon stone meant to do? What’s the drumming for, anyway? And when do the Merdrun plan to invade us?”

  “The Magister has to be told, urgently.”

  The Magister led the Council of Santhenar, which for many cen­turies had been an alliance of the most powerful mancers in the world. It had been formed for the protection of Santhenar fifteen centuries ago and for most of that time it had been headed by Mendark, a ruthless mancer who had renewed his life many times. On his death ten years ago Karan’s friend Tallia had taken his place. Though the council was in decline now, its greatest members dead and its influence waning, she was Karan’s best hope.

  “I’ll courier a letter to her this morning. And to Shand – he knows everyone.” Couriers were expensive; another bite out of their almost empty coffers.

  “What do you want me to do?” said Llian.

  It warmed her; she felt as though they were working as a team at last. “What you’re brilliant at – finding answers to the vital questions.”

  “Like what?”