Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

The breath hissed from Caplo. ‘It seems you need no assassin to wield blades here, witch. Mother feared the risk you will take on this day, and charged me to protect you.’

Ruvera snorted. ‘She would know more of the power I have found. The company you will not name is one where trust lies strangled upon the threshold, and the gathering rustles like snakes in the straw.’

‘You invite unwelcome friends,’ said Caplo with a faint smile, ‘sleeping in barns. Rest your imagination, witch. I am but a guardian this day.’

‘With lies to protect,’ Ruvera said in a half-snarl, before turning away. ‘Follow, then. It is not far.’

Resh shrugged when Caplo cast him a bemused glance. ‘Some marriages aren’t worth consummating,’ the warlock said.

Ruvera barked a laugh at that, but did not look back at the two men.

‘By contemplation alone,’ said Caplo, ‘even I would flee into a man’s arms. I see at last the turn of your motivations, and indeed desires, friend Resh. Are we forever trapped in mockeries of family? Husband, wife, son, daughter – the titles assert, bold as spit in the face of the wind.’

‘I mistook them for tears,’ Resh said, grimacing. ‘Once upon a time.’

‘When you were no more than a child, yes?’

‘I will grant Ruvera this: she gave me confusion’s face, and every line made sharp its denial.’

The witch ahead of them laughed again. ‘A face, and a groping hand that awakened nothing. But that was my revelation, not his. Now,’ she added, drawing up on the edge of the rise, ‘observe this new consecrated ground.’

Resh and Caplo joined her and stood, silent, looking down.

The depression was oval-shaped, five paces across at its widest point, and eight in length. Its sides were undercut beneath the flowing curl of long-bladed grasses, making the lone step down uncertain, but the basin itself was level and free of stones.

The strange feature was situated on a flat stretch, part of which had been broken and planted by the nuns a few decades past – without much success – and beyond which rose low hummocks, many of which bore springs near the fissured rocks of their summits. The endless leak of water cut deep channels into the sides of those hills, converging into a single stream that only broke up again among the furrows of withered weeds. But the depression remained dry, and it was this peculiarity that made Caplo frown. ‘Consecrated? That blessing is not yours to make.’

Ruvera shrugged. ‘The river god is dead. Lost to the curse of Dark. Betrayed, in fact, but no matter. The woman on her throne in Kharkanas has no regard for us, and we would do well to shrink from her attention. Husband, seek out and tell me what answers you.’

‘Did you make this pit by your own hand?’ Resh asked.

‘Of course not.’

Caplo grunted and spoke before Resh could answer his wife. ‘Then let us ponder its creation, with cogent reason. See the drainage channels from the hills beyond. They reach a level to match the land around the basin, and if not for the irrigation scars would plunge into the ground and course onward, unseen. Yet here, below the crust of the surface, there was buried a lens of wind-blown sand and silts. So. The springs fed their water and the water found its hidden path, cutting through that lens, sweeping it away, thus yielding a depression of the crust.’ He turned to Ruvera. ‘Nothing sacred in its making. Nothing holy in its manifestation. It was the same hidden seepage that defeated the nuns who sought to grow crops here.’

‘I await you, husband,’ said the witch, her face set as if denying Caplo’s presence, and any words he might utter.

‘I am … uncertain,’ admitted Resh after a moment. ‘Caplo’s reason is sound, but it remains mundane, if not shallow. Something else thrives beneath the surface. No gift of the river god. Perhaps not holy at all.’

‘But powerful, husband! Tell me you can feel it!’

‘I wonder … is this Denul?’

‘If the sorcery here heals,’ Ruvera said in a low voice, ‘it is the cold kind. The hardening of scars, the marring of skin. It refutes sympathy.’

‘I sense nothing,’ said Caplo.

‘Husband?’

Resh shook his head. ‘Very well, Ruvera. Awaken it. Demonstrate.’

She drew a deep breath. ‘Let us take this expression of power, and make it into a god. We need only the will to do so, to choose to shape what waits in promise. We perch on a precipice here, but a ledge remains, enough to walk on, enough to stand upon. And from this narrow strand, we can reach out to both sides, both worlds.’

‘You invent from shadows,’ Caplo said. ‘I have never trusted imagination – or if I once did, no longer. Make your idol, then, witch, and show me it is worthy of a bow and scrape. Or palsied genuflection. Make me kneel abject and humbled. But if I see the impress of your palms and fingertips in the clay, woman, I will refuse worship and call you a charlatan.’

‘The hag you still call Mother shows her teeth at last.’

To that, Caplo simply shrugged.