‘Can’t you hear them?’
They shook their heads. One of them said, ‘Hear what, brother?’
Carding smiled, and it was a wide, mad smile. Even Coin took a step backwards.
‘You’ll hear them soon enough,’ he said. ‘You’ve made a beacon. You’ll all hear them. But you won’t hear them for long.’ He pushed aside the younger wizards who were holding his arms and advanced on Coin.
‘You’re pouring sourcery into the world and other things are coming with it,’ he said. ‘Others have given them a pathway but you’ve given them an avenue!’
He sprang forward and snatched the black staff out of Coin’s hands and swung it up in the air to smash it against the wall.
Carding went rigid as the staff struck back. Then his skin began to blister … >Nijel, on the other hand, felt no such pounding. All he had to drive him onwards was imagination, but he did have enough of that to float a medium-sized war galley. He looked towards the city with what would have been, but for his lack of chin, an expression of setjawed determination.
Creosote realised that he was outnumbered.
‘Do they have any drink down there?’ he said.
‘Lots,’ said Nijel.
‘That might do for a start,’ the Seriph conceded. ‘All right, lead on, O peach-breasted daughter of-’
And no poetry.’
They untangled themselves from the thicket and walked down the hillside until they reached the road which, before very long, went past the aforementioned tavern or, as Creosote persisted in calling it, caravanserai.
They hesitated about going in. It didn’t seem to welcome visitors. But Conina, who by breeding and upbringing tended to skulk around the back of buildings, found four horses tethered in the yard.
They considered them carefully.
‘It would be stealing,’ said Nijel, slowly.
Conina opened her mouth to agree and the words ‘Why not?’ slid past her lips. She shrugged.
‘Perhaps we should leave some money-’ Nijel suggested.
‘Don’t look at me,’ said Creosote.
‘- or maybe write a note and leave it under the bridle. Or something. Don’t you think?’
By way of an answer Conina vaulted up on to the largest horse, which by the look of it belonged to a soldier. Weaponry was slung all over it.
Creosote hoisted himself uneasily on to the second horse, a rather skittish bay, and sighed.
‘She’s got that letter-box look,’ he said. ‘I should do what she says.’
Nijel regarded the other two horses suspiciously. One of them was very large and extremely white, not the off-white which was all that most horses could manage, but a translucent, ivory white tone which Nijel felt an unconscious urge to describe as ’shroud’. It also gave him a distinct impression that it was more intelligent than he was.
He selected the other one. It was a bit thin, but docile, and he managed to get on after only two tries.
They set off.
The sound of their hoofbeats barely penetrated the gloom inside the tavern. The innkeeper moved like someone in a dream. He knew he had customers, he’d even spoken to them, he could even see them sitting round a table by the fire, but if asked to describe who he’d talked to and what he had seen he’d have been at a loss. This is because the human brain is remarkably good at shutting out things it doesn’t want to know. His could currently have shielded a bank vault.
And the drinks! Most of them he’d never heard of, but strange bottles kept appearing on the shelves above the beer barrels. The trouble was that whenever he tried to think about it, his thoughts just slid away …
The figures around the table looked up from their cards.
One of them raised a hand. It’s stuck on the end of his arm and it’s got five fingers, the innkeeper’s mind said. It must be a hand.