The Shamer's War

DAVIN

My Name Is Davin

My name is Davin. My name is Davin. My name is Davin.

I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again. Trying to hold on to everything it meant: Dina’s brother. Melli’s brother. My mother’s son, and Nico’s friend. A human being. Not…

… your name is murderer…

… Not what the voices were saying. Not what they were whispering to me in the darkness when I was trying to go to sleep.

… your name is murderer… your name is coward…

I sat up in bed. My palms were sweaty and cold. I wrapped my arms around my head as though I was afraid someone would hit me, but I knew I couldn’t shut out the voices. They were inside me. They had sneaked in, burrowed in, the days and nights I had been locked in the Hall of the Whisperers, surrounded by stone faces with empty eyes and yawning mouths that kept whispering and whispering, over and over, hour after hour, until one would rather die than keep on listening.

The house was dark. Darker still here in my small enclosure. I couldn’t stand the darkness anymore because I kept seeing things that weren’t there. Faces. Dead eyes. Dark blood seeping from a half-cut throat….

I leaped to my feet and yanked the curtain aside. Bluish slivers of moonlight came in through the cracks in the shutters, like pale knives. As soundlessly as possible I opened the door and went out. The trampled grass of the yard was damp and hoar-cold against the soles of my bare feet, but I had no time for shoes. I ran. Slowly at first, then more quickly, along the path to Maudi’s farm, past the old black pear trees in her orchard, up the next hill, and on up into the naked heights that seemed so close to the sky it felt as if I could pick the stars like apples just by reaching for them. I didn’t stop. I just kept running, so that my breath came in deep jerks and I could feel my heartbeat in every last inch of my body. I wasn’t cold, despite my bare feet; my blood was pumping too hard, and pure sweat was running down my back and chest inside the nightshirt.

It took perhaps an hour before I had run the voices out of my head and the horror out of my body. Then I turned, trotting back to Yew Tree Cottage at a more leisurely pace. I stopped at the pump in the yard to wash the sweat from my cooling body, and to drink my fill.

The cottage door was open. In the dark doorway, Mama was waiting. She didn’t say anything; just held out a glass of elderberry juice and a woolly blanket. She knew I would start shaking the moment I stopped sweating. For the briefest of moments she rested her hand against my cheek. Then she went back to the end room where she and Melli slept, still without speaking a word.

It wasn’t every night I ran like this, but perhaps one out of two or three. It was the only thing that helped once the voices had hold of me. Mama woke up every time—not necessarily when I got up, but by the time I came back, she was always awake. It was as if she had some instinct telling her that one of her children was no longer in the house. I hadn’t told her about the voices, but she had probably guessed that my sleeplessness had something to do with the Sagisburg and the Hall of the Whisperers. In the beginning she had asked me if there was anything wrong, but I always said no, and now she had stopped asking. She was just there, waiting, with the blanket and the sweet elderberry juice, and then the two of us went back to bed.

I lay down on the cot in my enclosure and wrapped myself in the blankets. My feet were hurting me now, but that didn’t matter. In my head there was only silence, and I fell asleep almost at once.

DINA

The Flute

The flute rested in the grass next to me. I didn’t dare touch it. I hardly dared to look at it, and yet… and yet it was as if I couldn’t quite help myself.

My father was dead. The flute was all I had left of him.

Finally, I reached for it after all. Touched its shiny black surface. Picked it up.

There was a sound inside me that needed to get out. Wild as a bird’s cry, heavy as a thundercloud. A sound I couldn’t make myself. But the flute could.

The first note piped through the air and went chasing up the hillside, and it was as if everything around me fell silent, listening. I hesitated. Then I blew again, harder this time, with harsh, wild defiance.

My father was dead, and nobody cared. Most of them were probably relieved. But he was half of me. He had searched for me for twelve long years, and at last he had found me. And he might not be the greatest father in the world, and he might have given my mother good reason to be scared, and he might have done things in his life that were neither right nor nice nor fair, but he was still my father, and he had held me when I was most scared, and he had sung to me. And he was the one who had played open the gates of the Sagisburg so that Nico and Davin and the other prisoners could get out, and he was the one who had piped dreams of freedom and change into a hundred cowed and desperate children in the House of Teaching so that they found the courage to escape the Educators. So if I felt like mourning him, who had the right to stop me? If I wanted to play the flute he had given me, who could prevent me?

Dina!

I gave a start, and my fingers slipped in the middle of a note. Pfffuuuiiiiihh, it said, a thin, off-key, and startled sound.

Mama was standing behind me. Her face was hard as stone.

I didn’t say anything. I just clenched my hands around the flute so tight that it whitened my knuckles.

It was Mama who finally broke the silence.

I think you should put it away, she said.

I still didn’t answer.

It’s not a toy.

I know that! Better than anyone. I had seen what it could do, good and bad. I had heard it save lives. And I had heard it take a life, too. Oh, I knew. I knew it was no toy. Better than she!

And so she finally spoke the words we both knew she had been thinking for weeks now:

I don’t want you to play that thing.

She had never mentioned it before. She had wanted me to understand on my own that it was wrong, and that it was harmful and dangerous to me. But now she had had to say the words out loud, and it felt almost like a victory to me. As if there had been some sort of contest between us, like when Davin and I used to see who could stare at the other the longest without blinking. That was before my Shamer’s gift kicked in. Now no one played games like that with me.

No one played that game with my mother either. She looked at me, and her gaze was rock hard and yet sharp enough to cut right through me. Cold and hot at the same time. A gaze that made you feel about three inches tall.

I clutched the flute defiantly. It’s not for you to decide, I thought, but silently.

I think she heard it all the same.

"Do you hear?" she said, this time in her Shamer’s voice. And images came crowding into my head, sights I would rather not have seen.

Sezuan was sitting with his back against a quince tree. Shadow’s head rested in his lap. But Shadow’s body was limp and lifeless, without a heartbeat, without breath….

No! No. I didn’t want to think of it. Didn’t want to think of the worst thing I had ever seen my father do.

Dina. Look at me.

It was hard to refuse. It was impossible. I looked into my mother’s eyes, and the images thrust themselves into my head even though I didn’t want them there.

Sezuan slowly rose. He came toward me and might have wanted to comfort me, to hold me. But I could only see his hands, his slender, beautiful flute player’s hands that had just killed a living human being….

It was wrong. I didn’t want it. And even though I couldn’t stop the images from coming, even though I couldn’t help thinking about those terrible minutes, I still knew that it wasn’t right.

She wanted me to be ashamed of being Sezuan’s daughter.

And I wouldn’t.

It wasn’t right.

I don’t know how I did it. When my mother used her voice and her eyes, no one got away until she was finished. And yet I was no longer standing still. I backed away from her, stumbled, righted myself. And turned to run.

Dina!

But I wouldn’t listen. I stopped my ears with two fingers and ran, eyes half shut, so that I could barely see where I was going. I ran as hard as I could, up the hill, down the other side, across the brook.

Dina. Dina, stop!

I could hear Mama calling behind me. Her voice was no longer the Shamer’s, just Mama’s, and she sounded completely desperate. But I couldn’t turn back. I kept going until I couldn’t run another step.

The sky was darkening. My fingers were stiff with cold. Every single bit of me was stiff with cold. I was sitting with my back against one of the stone Giants of the Dance, looking down at our little cottage. Someone had lit the lamp, and the windows had been left unshuttered, so that the light made yellow squares in the yard. I knew this was so that I would be able to find my way home more easily. I knew Mama was down there, in the kitchen probably, and beside herself with worry. Melli would have asked for me. About a thousand times, I imagined. And Rose, and Davin… it would not be easy for her to explain.

Mama was terrified that I would turn into someone like my father. She knew I had the serpent gift—his gift—just as I had her Shamer’s gift. But she didn’t want me to become a Blackmaster.

I didn’t either. But… but… I didn’t know what else I could be. I didn’t know what sort of a being I was: Mama’s daughter, Papa’s daughter, or some other thing completely.

The chill was spreading through my body. There was a sheen of hoarfrost on the grass. If I stayed here all night, there might be no need to think of Shamer’s eyes or serpent gifts, or indeed a future of any kind at all. If I didn’t get up soon and try to get some life back into my numbed legs… the Highland cold could kill you, I knew. Callan had said it over and over: Find shelter. Light a fire. And if ye cannot keep warm in any other fashion, walk. Move. Sitting still can kill ye.

I could go down and sneak Silky out of the stables. Ride off. Go. Go to Loclain, perhaps, where they didn’t know I had the powers of a Blackmaster. Or to the Aurelius family in Sagisloc who would surely take me in, what with being so grateful because we had brought Mira back to them. They would welcome me, I knew.

Rose. Melli. Davin. Mama.

I couldn’t do it.

Slowly, I got up. My legs were so numb I had to lean against the dark dappled granite behind me. My feet were two lumps of ice. Could there be frostbite already? I began tottering around the giant stone, one hand against the rock so as not to fall. Slowly, life seeped back into my lower legs, and then my feet, though I still couldn’t feel my toes.

It was a long way down the hill to Yew Tree Cottage and the windows and their warm yellow light. When I finally pushed open the door, Rose’s dog, Belle, was the only one to welcome me in her usual manner, with eager little yaps and a furiously waving tail. Rose and Davin were staring at me as if they thought I might be ill. Melli had long since been put to bed. Mama sat by the fire, her back turned, saying nothing. She didn’t look at me at all. And I was just as careful not to look at her.

DAVIN

Planning a Murder

Ziiiiing. Hwiiisssj. Hwiissj-ziing-swok.

Damn. Another hit.

The steel blade hissed through the air, in long sweeping arcs, in short brutal stabs. Whenever it found its target, there was a wet, rather disgusting sound, and in Maudi’s empty sheep shed there was by now a penetrating smell of beet juice and sweat.

I was breathing in short, deep gasps now, and my side stung so hard I could barely stand upright. But I wasn’t about to give in, not now. Not as long as there was even the tiniest hope left.

Hwiissj-ziing… swok.

My parry failed completely, and another beet bit the dust, in two uneven halves. I had only one left now, perched on its stick like the head of a scarecrow, defenseless except for me. Some defense I had been so far. If Nico managed to hit the last beet, I was done for, and he had won.

Come on, Davin, he said, and yes, he was breathing hard, but not as hard as I was. I could probably run longer and faster than he could, but when it came to fencing, Nico moved more easily and spent his strength more wisely. You can do better than that! He egged me on with his free hand.

Easy for him to say. His dark hair was black with sweat, but there was no uncertainty in his movements. Considering that he didn’t even like swords—

I saw the attack coming at the last moment and blocked the blow with a lightning parry.

Claaang.

I felt an involuntary smile pull at the corners of my mouth. Not this time, Nico. This time I was too quick for you!

But where—

No!

Oh damn. If only he’d stay in one place.

Swockkk! The last beet tumbled to the ground. And I stood there, arms shaking and sides heaving, and had to face the fact that I had lost.

Nico wasn’t the sort to rub my nose in it. He merely wiped the beet juice off his blade with a rag and gave me a brief nod, like a kind of salute.

Again? he asked. This time I’ll defend, and you can attack.

He knew very well that I liked to attack. But my arms were hanging from my shoulders like two leaded weights and I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to lift them again.

No thank you, I said. I think I’ve had enough for one day.

He nodded once more. Tomorrow, then.

Are you coming back in with me?

I think I’ll just run through a couple of exercises.

Nico, don’t you think you’ve had enough? He might be less reckless with his strength than I was, but I could hear his breathing even through the sound of the rain drumming against the shed’s turfed roof, and glistening trails of sweat ran down his bare chest.

Just one more time, he said, his jaw clenched. As he raised his sword, I could see his arm tremble. Yet he still began a series of lunges and parries, now with an invisible opponent instead of me.

I shook my head, but he didn’t see.

I’ll get us some water, I said, pulling on my shirt.

Nico?

He had finally put down the sword and was standing in the doorway, gazing at the autumn rain. His shoulders slumped, and I was pretty sure his legs must be shaking. Mine certainly were.

Yes?

I passed him the bucket and the ladle, and he drank greedily of the cold water.

Why… why the rush? I had never seen anyone train as doggedly as Nico did. Day in, day out. With the sword or the knife in the mornings, with the bow in the afternoon. Sometimes he saddled his brown mare and trained mounted combat with a long wooden lance he had carved for himself, but it was clearly the knife and the sword that held his main interest.

Something moved in his eyes, something bitter and dark.

I suppose you think we have plenty of time? he said.

What do you mean?

He looked away. Nothing.

Nico—

Wasn’t it your idea anyway? That we should train, I mean?

He had a point. It had been me, a long time ago, before Valdracu, before the Educators and the Hall of the Whisperers.

Yes, but there’s no need to half kill yourself. What’s your hurry?

Weren’t you listening? That letter. Your mother read it out to us. Surely you haven’t forgotten.

The one from the Widow?

Yes, that. He said it in a what-else tone of voice, and it wasn’t as if we had letters coming in every week, I had to admit. And of course I remembered what the letter said. Arkmeira had fallen, by treason it was said. It had been the only city in the coastlands not under Drakan’s fist, and now he had Arkmeira too. But there had been resistance, and Drakan did not let resistance go unpunished. He had had every fifth man in the city executed, wrote the Widow. Not necessarily those who had resisted the most, just every fifth. One, two, three, four, you die. There was a sickening lurch inside me every time I thought of it, as if it was somehow worse for being so calculated.

People die, Nico said in a strange voice I couldn’t remember having heard him use before. People die every day.

I didn’t like the new voice. I didn’t like the look on Nico’s face—his eyes so unnaturally dark they hardly looked blue anymore, and his skin so pale under the sweat.

And what exactly are you planning to do about it? I asked.

There is one obvious and sensible solution, isn’t there? Logically speaking.

Which is?

But he was suddenly done talking.

Forget it, he said. Just the rain getting to me, I suppose. You can’t really go out, and yet sitting indoors drives you crazy, doesn’t it?

Nico—

No, forget it. I’ll be along in a minute. You go on ahead.

I went. But I didn’t forget. He had some plan, I thought, some plan he didn’t want me to know about. But I knew Nico very well by now. You can’t spend several days and nights together in the Hall of the Whisperers without learning a thing or two about each other. And when someone who hated swords suddenly began to practice fencing with such dogged persistence, it had to be because he figured he would need a weapon soon. And all that talk of an obvious solution… I suddenly halted. Killing Drakan. That was the obvious solution, simple and logical if one didn’t consider the fact that Drakan was surrounded by thousands of Dragon soldiers and anyway was no slouch with a blade himself.

It would have been easy for Nico to gather a rebel army around himself. The Weapons Master and the Widow had often talked to him about it, and Master Maunus, who had once been Nico’s tutor, missed no opportunity to point out to Nico that it was his duty as the rightful heir to Dunark. But Nico kept refusing. Just the other day, the day the letter came, they had had a row about it. It offended Master Maunus’s sense of proprieties horribly, but Nico said only that he was no warlord, and that he had no intention of asking hundreds of people to die in his name.

I knew what he didn’t want. But what was it he wanted?

I had to keep an eye on him. Because if Nico had some plan to get close to Drakan, I wasn’t about to let him do it without me.

The rain had almost stopped, but my trousers were soaked to the knee from walking through the wet heather. Dina and Rose were picking juniper berries on the hillside between our cottage and Maudi’s farm, and both of them had kilted up their skirts to avoid the mud. Rose had very nice legs, I noticed. A pity they were rarely on show. And then I suddenly felt embarrassed. Rose was… Rose was a sort of foster sister, wasn’t she, and it wasn’t right to look at your foster sister’s legs in that way. Was it?

Where have you been? asked Dina.

Training with Nico.

You do that all the time now.

I was beginning to think so too, but I didn’t say so.

Dina, you sometimes talk to Nico, don’t you?

Sometimes. So do you.

Couldn’t you keep an eye on him?

What do you mean?

Just keep an eye on what he’s doing. And then tell me.

Dina gave me a look that was close to being the old Shamer’s look, very straight and with the punch of a mule kick. Spy on him, you mean?

Not spy, exactly. I just… if he behaves any differently from the way he usually does, I’d like to know.

Why?

I squirmed. I hadn’t intended to say even as much as I had, but I had forgotten Dina’s gift for prying the truth from people. Only so that he doesn’t do something stupid.

Stupid? Nico is one of the most sensible people I know.

I thought of the things Nico had said about an obvious and sensible solution. I was pretty sure that that wasn’t what my sister meant by sensible.

If you see him packing stuff. Or something, I finally said. Tell me. Please.

Now I had her worried too, I could tell.

Davin. Tell me what it is you think he’ll do.

I didn’t mean to. But I suddenly found myself telling her the whole thing, about the too-hard training, about Drakan and the sensible solution, about the plans I was almost certain Nico had. Plans for murder.

Both of them were staring at me now.

Alone? said Rose finally. You think he’ll go alone?

I’m afraid he might.

But we won’t let him! Rose’s eyes were glittering with a very familiar stubbornness, and I remembered how hard it could be to get rid of her when she had her mind set on something. It might not be such a bad idea to sic the girls on Nico. Let’s see you get away from them, I thought with some satisfaction.

Mama called from the cottage door. Dinner was ready, and the same could certainly be said for my growling belly.

I took two of the baskets from the girls, and we walked down the hill together.

Should we tell Mama? asked Dina.

I shook my head. Not yet, I said. She has enough to worry about.

DAVIN

A Knife in the Dark

It wasn’t long before Nico made his first move. It probably began with Katlin the Peddler’s visit. She came by with her handcart, complaining to anyone who would listen that trade was bad these days, people had nothing to sell or buy. And it was certainly true that her store had shrunk to a bit of woolen yarn and some badly crafted pots. We had no need for any of that—it was no better than what we could make ourselves. But she must have had something for Nico, after all, because I saw him give her a coin before she traveled on.

Keep an eye on him, I told Dina. He’s up to something.

And lo and behold. The very next day, Nico suddenly wanted to go on a shopping trip, or so he said. To Farness.

Farness? said Mama. Why Farness?

It’s about the only place left where you can get proper goods, said Nico. And we’re short of about a hundred things.

True. Iron nails were hard to come by now, and there seemed to be a shortage of rope as well. And the salted herring that Maudi usually bought by the barrel for winter stores had been impossible to get. Worst of all, though, was the lack of decent flour. It had been months since we had seen a proper trader’s cart, and the Highlanders were beginning to realize that this was no coincidence.

It can’t go on like this, said Mama. Drakan can’t decide who is allowed to trade with us on both sides of the mountains!

Nico grimaced. Apparently, he has succeeded in scaring Sagisloc and Loclain into cutting off our trade.

Drakan had tightened his fist so hard that barely a jar of preserves got through, let alone a herring barrel. It hadn’t been a huge problem as long as we could still get goods from Loclain, but if Nico was right, it could mean a very hungry winter in the Highlands.

It made good sense to go to Farness to get herring and nails and suchlike while it was still possible. Farness was a seaport, one of the few the Highlanders had, and some of the ships that put in there came from afar, from Belsognia or Colmonte or places even farther away. Towns that had not yet felt the pinch of Drakan’s long fingers and did not know that they were supposed to be afraid of him. It made sense, yes, but I didn’t think it was a coincidence that Nico was so keen to go himself.

I caught Dina’s eye across the table. She nodded almost imperceptibly—she was on to Nico too.

Maybe we should all go, she said. We need the cart anyway, for the herring barrels and the rest, and if we brought some herbs and things to trade, it might not be so expensive.

Mama’s eyes went to Dina briefly, and then to me. She had a sense that something was going on, I think, but she wasn’t certain what it was. And she was being extremely careful not to look at Dina for too long, I had noticed. Something was wrong between my mother and my sister, I needed no magic to see that. And I was almost certain it had something to do with Sezuan Puff-Adder. Dina hadn’t been the same since she found out about her father and what he could do.

It would be nice to get away for a bit, I said. Have something to do.

Mama’s glance softened. She was probably thinking of all the nights I went running because I couldn’t stand lying still, listening to the Whisperers.

Go, then, she said. I’ll stay here with Melli. That’s best, I think.

Melli still wasn’t quite her old self after our headlong flight from Sezuan that summer. She clung to Mama more, and often seemed younger than her six years.

But Callan will go with you! Mama added.

I frowned. Who would look after you, then? I asked, because Callan Kensie had been my mother’s bodyguard during all the time we had been with the Kensie clan.

"Killian or one of the others. You can choose, Davin. You can go with Callan, or