One hundred and sixty-three coins.
Udinaas wiped sweat from his eyes then rose and walked, limbs aching, over to the cauldron containing the melted wax. He had no idea how much time had passed. The stench kept his appetite at bay, but he had filled the hollow in his stomach a half-dozen times with cool water. Outside, the rain had continued, battering on the roof, swirling over the ground beyond the walls. A village in mourning – none would disturb him until he emerged.
He would have preferred a half-dozen Edur widows conducting the laying of coins, with him at his usual station tending to the fire. The last time he had done this in solitude had been with Uruth’s father, killed in battle by the Arapay. He had been younger then, awed by the spectacle and his role in its making.
Attaching the handle to the cauldron, Udinaas lifted it from the hearth and carefully carried it back to the corpse. A thick coating over the front and sides of the corpse. A short time for the wax to cool – not too much, so that it cracked when he turned over the body – then he would return to the gold coins.
Udinaas paused for a moment, standing over the dead Tiste Edur. ‘Ah, Rhulad,’ he sighed. ‘You could surely strut before the women now, couldn’t you?’
‘The mourning has begun.’
Trull started, then turned to find Fear standing at his shoulder. ‘What? Oh. Then what has been decided?’
‘Nothing.’ His brother swung away and walked to the hearth. His face twisted as he regarded the low flames. ‘The Warlock King proclaims our efforts a failure. Worse, he believes we betrayed him. He would hide that suspicion, but I see it none the less.’
Trull was silent a moment, then he murmured, ‘I wonder when the betrayal began. And with whom.’
‘You doubted this “gift”, from the very first.’
‘I doubt it even more now. A sword that will not relinquish its grip on a dead warrior. What sort of weapon is this, Fear? What sorcery rages on within it?’ He faced his brother. ‘Did you look closely at that blade? Oh, skilfully done, but there are… shards, trapped in the iron. Of some other metal, which resisted the forging. Any apprentice sword-smith could tell you that such a blade will shatter at first blow.’
‘No doubt the sorcery invested would have prevented that,’ Fear replied.
‘So,’ Trull sighed, ‘Rhulad’s body is being prepared.’
‘Yes, it has begun. The Warlock King has drawn our parents into the privacy of his longhouse. All others are forbidden to enter. There will be… negotiations.’
‘The severing of their youngest son’s hands, in exchange for what?’
‘I don’t know. The decision will be publicly announced, of course. In the meantime, we are left to our own.’
‘Where is Binadas?’
Fear shrugged. ‘The healers have taken him. It will be days before we see him again. Mages are difficult to heal, especially when it’s broken bone. The Arapay who tended to him said there were over twenty pieces loose in the flesh of his hip. All need to be drawn back into place and mended. Muscle and tendons to knit, vessels to be sealed and dead blood expunged.’
Trull walked over to a bench alongside a wall and sat down, settling his head in his hands. The whole journey seemed unreal now, barring the battle-scars on flesh and armour, and the brutal evidence of a wrapped corpse now being dressed for burial.
The Jheck had been Soletaken. He had not realized. Those wolves…
To be Soletaken was a gift belonging to Father Shadow and his kin. It belonged to the skies, to creatures of immense power. That primitive, ignorant barbarians should possess a gift of such prodigious, holy power made no sense.
Soletaken. It now seemed… sordid. A weapon as savage and as mundane as a raw-edged axe. He did not understand how such a thing could be.
‘A grave test awaits us, brother.’
Trull blinked up at Fear. ‘You sense it as well. Something’s coming, isn’t it?’
‘I am unused to this… to this feeling. Of helplessness. Of… not knowing.’ He rubbed at his face, as if seeking to awaken the right words from muscle, blood and bone. As if all that waited within him ever struggled, futile and frustrated, to find a voice that others could hear.
A pang of sympathy struck Trull, and he dropped his gaze, no longer wanting to witness his brother’s discomfort. ‘It is the same with me,’ he said although the admission was not entirely true. He was not unused to helplessness; some feelings one learned to live with. He had none of Fear’s natural, physical talents, none of his brother’s ease. It seemed his only true skill was that of relentless observation, fettered to a dark imagination. ‘We should get some sleep,’ he added. ‘Exhaustion ill fits these moments. Nothing will be announced without us.’