by Peter Harris
Chapter Twenty-seven
At the Flying Unicorn
They were making for the inn which they were told was at the back of the Market Chambers, where the Traders congregated to sell their wares – bolts of dyed silk, raw amber, olive oil, dried fruits, root vegetables, iron implements, paper and ink and ground pigments, and beer and wine – and to haggle with the tailors, the icon-painters, the amber-carvers and the diamond cutters, the poets and the prophets, the fishmongers and the silversmiths of the Canyon.
When they passed through one especially ornate archway, they guessed at once that they had found the Market Chambers. The walls were lined with booths lit by olive-oil lamps, and under the lamps were the Traders, settling down for the night by charcoal fires in front of their booths, guarding their wares until morning. There were also Pagrathim, the Willow People from the marshy river valleys of the south-east beyond Baldrock. Shelley looked at their beautiful willow basketware, but Rilke had eyes only for the little coracle of wickerwork stopped with resin, its hull polished and gleaming, its little paddle stowed under the seat. He imagined paddling along the Bottomless Lake, fishing and exploring. Korman noticed that they had packets of willowbark powder, for headaches and other pains.
In the middle of the inner wall was a large doorway in a protruding foyer which rose all the way to the rocky roof, five storeys high, with lighted bay windows at each level overlooking the semicircular marketplace. A shroud of smoke drifted up the roof and out into the Canyon. The Gypsy-like music of the Traders filled the space with an exotic market atmosphere. Around some of the campfires dancers swayed as the strip of sky turned sunset colours and made the Canyon walls glow red and purple. The brightest stars of Aeden began to twinkle in the twilight.
‘Follow my lead, and do not speak of our mission,’ said Korman quietly. ‘We do not know if there are spies of the Aghmaath here. Not all of the Traders are to be trusted. They pass through places held by the Aghmaath, and pay tribute to them, sometimes in the form of information.’ Worriette peeked out from under Rilke’s tunic, and nervously sniffed the smoky air.
‘And keep the wurrier out of sight,’ Korman added. A knot of tough-looking children edged towards them, and Worriette disappeared into Rilke’s tunic again.
‘How much for the gagavala?’ said one of the children, a little boy with a grimy face.
‘What gagavala?’ said Rilke.
‘The one in your tunic,’ said another boy.
Worriette peered out as if on cue, and the boys guffawed.
‘She’s not for sale,’ said Rilke.
‘We could take her off you,’ said the first boy. But Korman turned and stared at the children, and waved them away. They scattered like leaves blown by a sudden wind. Rilke and Shelley felt pleased and safe to be walking next to Korman the Guardian. But one of the boys turned and called mockingly, ‘What happened to your arm, old man?’ Rilke made faces at him, but Korman ignored the boy. Rilke said, ‘Show them your sword, Korman – I mean Nimmath!’
‘It is not their fault. Traders’ children,’ he replied.
A thin, lanky man with an ill-favoured face which reminded Shelley of a starving wolf she had once seen on a nature programme, came sidling up to Korman. ‘Good sire, I couldn’t help but overhear the dear little boy,’ he said, ruffling Rilke’s hair in a way that made Shelley bristle and Rilke grimace, ‘mentioning the… y’know…’ He gestured furtively at the sword.
‘It is not for sale,’ said Korman.
‘Every man has his price… Korman… is it?’ said the wolf-man, a slight hint of menace in his voice.
‘I am Nimmath, a poor scholar and crystal-trader. Perhaps you heard the boy here call me Korman. It is a game he plays – a dangerous one, given that Korman the Outcast has a price on his head.’ Korman looked hard at Rilke as he said this. ‘But as to every man having his price, sire, that may be true of the agragathra-diggers, but not of Tímathians.’ Korman had noticed the man’s stall, piled high with nuggets of red amber. (Agragathra, or Blood-amber, came from the bled sap of the dying jeweltrees long ago. Some was buried and never recovered by the Jeweltree Bleeders, and now some of their descendants were mining for it, scarring the earth of the sacred sites with their tailings.)
‘I’ve got a living to make, same as you. Times are tough. And oikor talks. Especially gold oikor. So, is that a… y’know… firesword by any chance?’ The wolfish man licked his thin lips.
‘If it was, it would be beyond your purse. Go back to your stall.’
‘Twenty shiny golden Tazzers say it’s not.’ (A Tazzer is short for Tazrashti, one hundred silver enrath.)
‘Your oikor money does not talk to me. The sword is not for sale, especially to an amber-digger with that kind of money. Only if you had bribed the Aghmaath and dug in the ancient groves deep in the thornfields would you have such wealth.’
‘By Oinkapag the Great, now you’re really twisting my arm! All right, fifty. Come on, that’s five Loonlith – a Maker’s ransom!’ The man’s eyes glowed with a red light like the blood-amber he mined. Korman appeared to hesitate. His eyes narrowed.
‘Those who swear by Oikorpaggith may find themselves dying for him. But show me the coins.’
‘Korman! Don’t sell the…’ Rilke spoke his name before Shelley clapped her hand over his mouth.
The digger gave a wolfish grin, but made no comment as he opened a filthy leather purse hidden under his tattered cloak. Gold glinted pure as sunlight within. He poured out the coins into his big, gnarled, grimy hand, where they gleamed enticingly in the lamplight. There were heavy Tazzers with the Tree of Life on one side and the head of Oinkapag (the Trader who had first instituted the currency) on the other, and shiny golden Loonliths stamped with the Loom of Destiny; and a few smaller coins – silver avapads, avlits, avlasts and enraths – and one golden pharit with an image of what looked to Shelley like a cicada with hands, but which she knew to be a Maker. Rilke was mesmerised; he reached out to touch the precious coins. ‘Ah-ah,’ snapped the digger, grabbing Rilke’s wrist and moving it away from the money. ‘Get your own!’
Bootnip poked his head over the edge of Korman’s pack and sniffed the air. He had heard gold; now he smelt it.
At that moment, a strangled growling noise came from the digger. ‘As if his wolfy stomach is demanding meat,’ thought Shelley with disgust. Ignoring the growling in his stomach, the digger picked up one of the golden Tazzers and bit it, then caressed it with his fingers. ‘Pure as the driven snow,’ he said, winking at Shelley and showing Korman the dent his teeth had made. Shelley noticed the saliva on it with disgust.
‘I will meet you at your stall tomorrow night at this time,’ said Korman, quietly. ‘I will think about your offer.’ Shelley looked at him to see if he was joking, but his face was impassive. Bootnip was beside himself now, growling ferociously at the digger’s stomach. A small bristly head had appeared from under the man’s cloak, growling back at Bootnip and baring long yellow teeth. Its snout was rubbed bare from grubbing for amber, making it look more like a large rat than an anklebiter. Its beady eyes glowed dull red as it stared first at Bootnip (now scrabbling to get out of Korman’s pack) then at the gold coins as the man jingled them back into the moneybag.
‘Your anklebiter looks hungry,’ said Korman. Worriette cringed down even lower in Rilke’s tunic, shivering. She did not trust Bootnip; two anklebiters was more than she could cope with.
‘My Ratty’d eat yours for dinner, Nimmath,’ smirked the wolf-man. ‘Best fighting gathrag this side of Raiderville. Want to put them in the pit and wager?’ Shelley now saw that the poor anklebiter was imprisoned in a tiny cage attached to the man’s broad leather belt, and that it had gnawed two of the bars and stuck its head through the gap.
‘I suppose you feed him blood-amber, too,’ put in Rilke indignantly. ‘Meany!’ He looked ready to launch himself at the man, who was stuffing the anklebiter’s head back through the bars with a filthy handkerchief as padding. But the man leered and winke
d at Shelley, who glared back at him.
‘I feed Ratty some when he digs it up; and why not, little master? That agragathra’s good stuff! One little piece of it keeps him digging all night. Why not come with us, boy, and find out how much you can earn in one night on the amberfields?’
‘My anklebiter does not fight, and Rilke is not going to be apprenticed to a blood-amber digger for any money,’ said Korman politely but firmly. Rilke had been entranced by the golden coins; now he looked almost tempted by the digger’s offer. ‘Come, children, we had better be going.’ Korman pushed the snarling Bootnip back down into his pack, put a firm hand on Rilke and guided him away from the man, who seemed to have taken a liking to the boy.
‘He’d eat your little rogga for supper, too,’ the man grinned as he loped off. ‘Get yourself a gathrag, and I’ll show you how to train it. Make your fortune!’
‘Worriette is NOT a werewurrier!’ yelled Rilke. But he heard the suggestion, and was already imagining himself and his anklebiter digging up an amber fortune.
‘Just joking, son,’ said the digger over his shoulder. ‘See you later.’ Korman felt Rilke quivering with indignation – and perhaps with something else.
‘How could you be so polite?’ he asked Korman as they walked away. ‘Why didn’t you cut his head off and rescue the poor thing?’ Shelley thought privately that one anklebiter was more than enough for them, but she had the good sense not to say so in front of Rilke.
‘“Respect all, even the misguided. Choose your battles well. Talk twice, then if need be, strike once,”’ Korman quoted the Tímathian sage.
‘So you’ll see him tomorrow and talk, and then you’ll cut his head off?’ asked Rilke excitedly.
‘Rilke!’ Shelley scolded.
‘That is not exactly what I had in mind, Rilke,’ said Korman. ‘I cannot rescue all the mistreated anklebiters of Aeden, and we must keep out of trouble, for all Aeden’s sake. And remember, I am Nimmath!’
They were now approaching the inn. Above the doorway hung its sign:
The Flying Unicorn
On the oaken sign was a silver winged unicorn, with a long spiralling ivory horn and eyes of amber and pearl. Shelley was reminded of the unicorn which brought her to Aeden, and she felt a stab of homesickness. ‘At least we should get a comfortable bed and breakfast here,’ she thought.
And the inn did seem very homely. While the children settled into their upstairs rooms (which looked out into the marketplace and of course beyond that the Canyon, which from that height looked even deeper), Korman went down to the dimly-lit bar. He walked to the long polished counter. He saw by the rich glow of gold and silver flecks in the grain that it was made from jeweltree timber, heartwood of the highest grade. He thought sadly of the history of Aeden under the influence of the Tenth-worlders, and the felling of the dead jeweltrees after the Bleeders had done their work. And on a shelf between the bottles of apple whisky was a large piece of red amber with an encapsulated hopemoth in it. He felt his anger rise, but reminded himself, ‘Choose your battles!’ He struck up a conversation with the barman, Ted, a rough but cheery Aedenite, a Trader’s son from Applegate, as he soon told Korman.
‘Ah, it’s a bad business, Nimmath, it is! Those so-called missionaries comin’ in everywhere. First they come, then it’s them Apples of Peace, so called, then it’s the Black Rock. Then the Deathwagon comes for all them as won’t eat the apples and worship the black rock. That’s why I came here, to get away from all o’ that. They took my old man away, they did.
‘Nah, it’s no good on top any more. Anyway, the Flying Unicorn’s got as good a beer as any up top. This is my ’ome now. If they want me, they’ll have to come down and get me, and then I’ll give ’em Bertha here.’ He pulled out a heavy object from under the counter and showed it to Korman. It was a gun like the old blunderbuss of Earth, with a polished wooden stock and a huge dark oiled steel barrel ending in a wide trumpet-like mouth.
‘Where did you get that?’ asked Korman.
‘It fell off the back of a supply wagon those monsters were driving east from the Nered factories. It’s a new kind of weapon they got the Edarthan boys to make for ’em. Some of the amber-diggers got ’em too – in their trade, they’d need ’em. My dad bought it on the black market, showed me how to fire it. Cost ’im his life – they found out he had it. I escaped with it when they came for us. Shot one of ’em, too.’ Korman shook his head grimly.
‘That is unfortunate. May you not live to meet his avengers! They will be tracking you. I would not show the weapon here again. I would throw it into the Lake this very night. Weapons like that will not save you, only draw them to you the sooner.’
‘Thanks, but I’ll keep it all the same.’
‘Then at least keep it hidden.’ Ted just shrugged, and put the gun back under the counter. ‘There, out of sight out of mind.’
‘Not out of the Mindprobers’ sight,’ said Korman.
Then, seeing he was wasting his time warning Ted, he asked concerning Goldheart.
‘Oh, ’er, nice girl, poor thing keeps to herself since her man left, crazy idealist he was! Tried courtin’ her, but nothin’ doing. Her ’ouse is just two chambers down the line, by the caves of the Icon Painters. Why?’
‘I have a message for her from her husband,’ said Korman.
‘Well, what about a beer now? As I say, it’s the best. Keeps me ’comin’ back for more!’
‘Maybe later. Cider’s better for an old Tímathian.’ Korman ordered a tankard of last year’s Applegate cider (Perhaps the last, he thought sadly) and sat in a dark corner where he could listen to the gossip unobserved. The atmosphere was subdued, he felt. There was a shadow on the hearts of the Traders who were drinking there, and the Canyon people talked together quietly in twos and threes, pausing often to look around, as if afraid of being overheard. A poet, who had been drowning his sorrows in cider, got up and began to recite a ballad of the Golden Age, but few cheered him. Some sneered.
‘There’ll be no more of your ‘golden ages’ here on Aeden,’ said one. ‘More likely the dark ages!’ The poet, discouraged, slumped back on his bench and resumed his drinking.
Korman listened and thought some more, remaining in his dark corner of the bar, brooding over the likelihood of an attack on the Canyon. What worried him most was the heedless prosperity he had seen; the undefended accumulation of wealth from trades and skills which few others on Aeden still practised or even knew: diamond-cutting, icon-painting, silversmithing, lamp-making, papermaking, manuscript copying and illuminating, and many other arts. The people seemed to almost completely ignore the world above, though they traded with it every day. But they put all their faith in the Gates and the gatekeepers. ‘The Aghmaath will have heard of their wealth,’ Korman mused, ‘and will want to seize it, to add the carrot of bribery and corruption to the stick of fear and despair, the sooner to turn the good people of Aeden to the Void. For the roots of the old Order go deep, here in the ancient Hub. And the Ürxura have not yet been conquered; or the Boy Raiders. And Ürak Tara remains, a hidden source of power, as does the Lady…’ He ordered a tankard of Flying Unicorn beer, to celebrate that thought. ‘Just one,’ he said to himself. ‘It could be the last for a long time.’
True to his intention, he finished the beer (Ted was right; it was excellent) and retired to his room next to the children’s. The market outside was silent. The only sound was a dog howling in the distance, a lonely sound that echoed down the starlit Canyon. Bootnip was fast asleep after his ferocious encounter with the stranger. Korman lit a candle, tapped his singing bowl and to its peaceful vibrations recited the Chant of the Concept. Then he blew out the candle and meditated upon the Lady, sitting upright with his hand on his knees like a statue of some ancient king.
But he could not concentrate, and began anxiously pondering the path ahead. He felt a tension in the air, and a familiar tension building in his head and shoulders. Now there was a dull pain beginn
ing. It had been a long time since he had had a migraine. Sometime it was brought on by a mindprobe from the enemy, sometimes (he thought) by beer, but usually, he knew, it had been his own inner tensions, as the Guardian part of him fought with the worshipper of the Goddess, and his doubts and self-blame formed a nasty knot just below the surface of his mind. ‘But now I have done penance, I am single-minded, (almost) and I follow the Way of the Lady in harmony with the Concept. Best of all, I have found the Kortana, and she goes with me according to the will of the Lady. So, why this tension?’ he wondered. Then he remembered the unpleasant haggling with the amber-digger. ‘Why did I make an appointment with the knave?’ he groaned. ‘Just to get away from him without a confrontation. But was it worth it?’ He hated having something like that hanging over him; it was one cause of the headache, he knew. He wondered how much the information the man had gleaned would be worth to the Aghmaath. ‘We will have to be long gone before tomorrow night. ‘But no, I promised to meet the man again…’ Anxious thoughts flew into his head like bats to amber. But he made himself lie back and let his thoughts flit out again to chase insects in the dark, and soon he was asleep.