Sorcery Rising

by Jude Fisher

  Katla ran her fingers through the sweat-streaked crop. ‘I quite like it, actually. It doesn’t get in my eyes when I’m running.’ She grabbed his arm. ‘Aren’t they fine, the nomads, I mean? I saw them arrive from the top of that hill back there – they came down over a mountain pass!’

  ‘Aye.’ Aran scanned the passing procession. ‘They’re remarkable people, the Footloose. True explorers. Nothing can stand in their way once they’ve decided on their route, not mountains, nor forests, nor deserts.’

  Katla watched as his eyes went misty with longing. He was a frustrated nomad himself, she thought then, remembering the tales he had told of his ancestors’ travel into the wild parts of the world as they sat around a winter fire, and seeing his yearning burn so clearly, she felt as close to him as she had ever done in her life. ‘Imagine – crossing a desert, on the back of a yeka, with the sun on your face and the hot wind at your back,’ she said. ‘Or climbing up into the mountains where the snows never melt and you can see across all the continents of Elda.’

  But her father was not to be drawn. He hunched his shoulders as if he felt the burdens of his life pressing down on him. ‘You’re a lass,’ he said unnecessarily. ‘You’re not for exploring.’

  Distracted by the unfairness of this, his daughter bridled. ‘Why not? There are many women among the nomads: riding yeka, driving carts and wagons; and up there—’ she indicated the stockades ‘—I saw a woman in leather armour who looked as tough as any man. Why cannot I choose such a life? I can run faster than a man; and climb and swim and break a horse; aye, and fight, too.’

  ‘The nomads are different to us, Katla. They live by different rules. And as for sell-swords: they live by no rule at all.’

  Katla’s eyes flashed. ‘That sounds like freedom, to me.’

  Aran turned to face his daughter. ‘Eyran women run farms and houses and raise families. What greater power is there than to make a haven for others, to cultivate the land and bring new life into the world?’

  ‘Power?’ Katla sneered. ‘Eyran women get traded by their menfolk to the most convenient partner and put a good face on it; they bear child after child, only to lose them to the cold, or the fever, or to evil spirits – and if they grow to men they’ll only lose them to blood-feuds or the oceans! Women drudge from dawn to dusk and then till midnight, and have never a moment to themselves. That’s not the sort of power I ever wish to claim.’

  ‘Brave words, little sister!’

  Fent threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘Perhaps you’d rather marry an Istrian lord, like the fellow who just caused our da to cut all your hair off?’

  ‘Fent!’ Aran’s voice was sharp, but his younger son took no notice.

  ‘Darling sister, I can just imagine you with your head all veiled and your body all trussed up in fine silks (pink? – purple? no, that would only clash with your hair, or what’s left of it; scarlet, then; or green) and allowed only the company of other women by day and your husband by night. If King Ravn’s going to choose himself an Istrian wife to take back to the Isles with him, I think the least we can do in exchange is to trade our Katla to one of their lords. She’d talk him to death! That, or wrestle him into submission. Just think, she could be Eyra’s greatest weapon! No Istrian is going to get a chance to wage war against us with Katla as his wife: not unless he gags her and shuts her in a cellar!’

  ‘Fent, be silent!’ This time, Aran’s voice held a dangerous note. ‘I’ll have no talk of war. There has been peace now for over twenty years, and I for one thank Sur for it.’

  ‘Peace!’ Fent said contemptuously. ‘Our true homeland of a thousand years and more lies within spitting distance of these mountains, and the sons of the sons of the sons of the bastards who took it from us walk this fairground with not a quiver of fear in their hearts; rather they treat us as barbarian fools – they ridicule our customs, insult our sister and demand we open our stalls early so they may buy our weapons – but, no, we must not speak of war!’

  Aran passed a hand across his face as if composing himself and when he spoke again it was in a lowered voice. ‘When you have lost your father in front of your own eyes to an Empire mercenary, and taken a sword-thrust through the side trying to save him; when you have seen ships aflame and all the men in them screaming as the fire ate them; or seen a man so mad with hunger he would try to eat his own arm; or women kill their children rather than give them up to captivity, to rape and slavery – you will not be so keen to speak of war.’

  Fent looked away. ‘I know all that, Father: but everything you say just makes the truth more evident, and here we are at the Allfair, doing business with our old enemy.’ There was contempt in that last phrase, but Aran decided to let it pass.

  Katla, however, would not. ‘Fent! You cannot speak to our father so.’

  Fent stared at her in surprise. Then he smiled. ‘Now that, I would say, is the pot calling the kettle black!’ He turned to Aran. ‘Father, I apologise. I will speak no more of enmity; but if I cannot kill the Istrians, then I will skin them in trade, and you will be proud of me. Besides, if Halli and I are to have the longship we have set our hearts upon, we will need to have a very successful Fair.’

  Aran raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  Katla became very still.

  ‘Halli and I have talked and talked about this. It’s time we struck out on our own. I’d like to ask your permission, Father, to take our share of the profits—’

  ‘If we make any—’

  ‘If we make any – and commission a ship from Finn Larson – a big ship: one hundred and twenty oars, no less: it’ll need to be a very substantial vessel if it’s to weather the big seas of the Ravensway—’

  ‘You’re going to the Far West?’ Katla was transfixed.

  Aran’s eyes gleamed with sudden interest.

  ‘To join the King’s call-up for the new expedition fleet.’

  ‘Can I come?’

  ‘Katla.’ Aran’s reprimand was gentle but firm. ‘You, of all people, are not sailing off into the sunset. I have other plans for you.’

  ‘What?’ she said with alarm. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ Aran said, dropping her a wink. He turned to his younger son. ‘I am not altogether sure that your and Haiti’s share of what we make on the sardonyx will buy you any sort of boat, let alone one of Finn’s.’

  Fent looked put out. ‘But Halli said—’

  Aran grinned wolfishly. ‘But I’ll make you a bargain, son. If your share won’t buy you your longship, I’ll throw in mine and your mother’s, and Katla’s, too.’

  ‘Father!’ Katla was scandalised. ‘You can’t do that, not without consulting us, at least. And what about our debts? There’s the new pighouse, and we owe Uncle Margan already for the shieling . . . And—’

  ‘Katla: the money you make from the weapons stall is all your own to keep, since it is your hard work’s earning; but the outlay on the tradegoods was mine, and thus the risk in the trading is all mine, so I shall make the decision as to how any profit from it shall be spent. Fent and Halli’s plan is a bold one, and I admire ambition in my sons: I know their mother would, too, and while there may be trinkets she hankers for from the Fair, I am sure she will see the sense in postponing her pleasure till it comes back a thousandfold from the Far West! Besides, daughter, I had not thought you would be wanting to have your bride-price in hand so soon!’

  ‘I – no.’ She tossed her head, was made aware again of the loss of her hair by the unexpected lightness of the movement. ‘I want no husband at all!’

  ‘Never say that, child.’

  ‘I’ll buy mother the silks and grains she wants out of my own pocket,’ Katla said fiercely. She turned to Fent. ‘But if you’d said I could come, you could have had my share from the sardonyx, and all I make from the swords, and welcome to it.’

  Fent punched her lightly on the arm. ‘Keep your pocket-money, small sister. Anyway, you’ll need all you can get to bribe a m
an to marry you with your hair shorn like an urchin’s!’

  And then he dodged.

  Aran watched the pair of them duck and dive their way through the growing throng until they had disappeared from view. Gradually, his eyes lost their focus.

  ‘The Ravenway,’ he breathed, staring into nothing. ‘Ah, the Far West!’

  ‘So, Halli: how did Jenna like her mirror?’

  ‘Rather better than she likes me,’ Halli replied ruefully. ‘I caught her whispering love-talk to it as if it were the King.’

  Erno laughed. ‘She’s a silly girl, Halli. I don’t know what you see in her.’

  Tor Leeson grinned. ‘When did you become an expert in such matters, Erno Hamson? A girl has only to look at you and you go bright red and run away.’

  Erno flushed now, and hung his head.

  ‘Besides,’ Tor carried on with a mischievous glint in his eye, ‘if you are so vehement as to Jenna’s failings, it must surely mean you have your heart set on another . . .’

  ‘I do not!’

  Halli, ever the peacemaker, intervened. ‘She’ll grow out of her fantasies once the King’s picked his bride and she has a man of her own. And she comes from a good family.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have your eye on one of her father’s longships, would you, Halli?’ Tor asked shrewdly.

  Halli held his look steadily. ‘It would not be the sole reason for my interest.’

  Tor laughed. ‘It’s not a bad one, though. I swear I could almost tup plump little Jenna myself to get my hands on one of those beauties!’

  ‘You’re each as bad as the other!’ Erno declared furiously. He stood up awkwardly, his arms wrapped around his chest as though to keep something in place, and regarded his cousins with burning eyes. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

  He clambered over the piled blocks of sardonyx, each piece weighed, registered and certified that long afternoon by the Fairmaster and his assistants, and pushed his way out through the doorflap.

  Tor watched him go with a strange light in his eye. ‘He’s got it bad for Katla,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm.’ Halli shrugged. ‘She won’t have him, you know.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Tor laughed easily. ‘She’ll have me.’

  Erno walked unsteadily past the Eyran booths, his heart hammering in his ears. ‘Idiot!’ he said to himself repeatedly. ‘Idiot!’ If Halli suspected he loved his sister, he’d be sure to tell Katla, and that Erno could not bear. Katla Aransen was not, he had to admit to himself, a kind girl: no, she’d laugh at him, tell her friends and then go on ignoring him as she always had; except that from then on it would be worse, for he would know for certain she had no interest in him.

  He passed Falko and Gordi Livson, who nodded and smiled and went back to building up the walls of their enclosure; then the Edelsons and their sister, Marin, a thin girl of seventeen with eyes as dark and wary as a seal’s.

  ‘Hello, Erno.’

  He bobbed his head, but could think of nothing to say. Tor was right: he was a dolt with girls.

  Despite this, Marin fell into step with him. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Oh, just walking, you know.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘Surely.’

  They walked together in an uncomfortable silence until they reached the stockades. A crowd had gathered there to lean up against the fences and watch the travellers arrive, but this was Erno’s third Allfair and the advent of the exotic nomads cast less of a spell over him this time than it did over others. Marin, of course, was entranced.

  ‘I’ve heard they have the gift of magic, the Footloose,’ she breathed excitedly.

  Erno stared out into the dust and noise. ‘They certainly give the appearance of it,’ he said. ‘But how much of that is tricks and sham, I wouldn’t care to reckon.’

  Marin looked disappointed. ‘I’ve been saving my coins,’ she said, opening the leather pouch that hung at her neck and tilting it towards him. Inside, Erno could see the glint of coins. ‘There’s a potion I’ve heard about that I want to buy.’

  ‘What is it?’ Erno asked, his curiosity overcoming his embarrassment.

  Marin blushed. ‘I can’t tell you that.’ She ran her hands nervously down her overdress.

  ‘Why not?’

  In reply she gave him a steady look. ‘You’re a man. It’s a woman’s thing.’

  Now it was Erno’s turn to go red. No one had ever called him a man before.

  They leaned up against the stockade and watched the last of the nomad caravan roll past. Once it had, the crowd started to disperse and Erno thought, with a sudden electric jolt, that he saw Katla Aransen running towards him through its thickest part, but when he looked again, he realised it was Fent, his long red hair swinging free and his sharp teeth gleaming, and then he was gone. Beyond the stockades, the black dust began to settle again.

  ‘Let’s go and have a look at the Footloose encampment,’ Marin suggested.

  ‘I’m not sure your father—’ Erno started, but she was already dragging him by the arm.

  ‘Come on!’

  The quarter designated by the Fairmaster for the nomads’ use was at the far eastern end of the fairground, where there was no fresh running water. In the tall cliffs that overhung this part of the campsite, seabirds shrieked all day and all night: great colonies of gulls and razorbills and guillemots and oystercatchers, clinging precariously to the narrow ledges, before launching off over the sea in search of more food for their incessantly ravenous young. The gulls, of course, made a nuisance of themselves all over the fairground – mobbing the foodstalls, dive-bombing the livestock, rummaging through the midden heaps and trash; it was said that Allfair gulls would even steal the food from out of your hand if you did not keep an eye on them. The nomads, however, seemed entirely untroubled by them, even collecting the guano from the rocks and the feathers that drifted down from the nests; for what purpose, Erno had no idea.

  He was just telling Marin this, and she seemed interested in a way most girls would not be, though whether she was just being polite, he could not tell, when he felt something hit him on the back, and at once a tall woman in a striped turban and bronze earrings called out something in an incomprehensible language, while her two companions – a man with two silver rings through his eyebrow and another through his lip, and a boy with half his face painted black – began to laugh and point at them.

  ‘What?’ asked Marin, staring around. ‘What are they laughing at? Why are they looking at us?’

  Erno frowned. ‘I don’t know.’

  The woman chattered again and pointed repeatedly at Erno. Then she pushed the boy, who rose good-naturedly and came over to them.

  ‘Ma-na, eech-an-jee-nay? he said, his head cocked to one side like a little monkey’s.

  ‘What?’

  The boy smiled. He had enormous black eyes and very white teeth. ‘Eyr-ran?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My mother say, “You are receiver of great good fortune.”’ He grinned.

  Erno’s frown deepened.

  The boy dodged behind him and ran a finger across the back of his tunic. Holding it up for inspection, he said again, ‘Good fortune, see!’

  Marin began to laugh.

  It was a gull’s dropping. The offending bird circled still overhead, calling raucously. The child grabbed Erno by the arm and pulled him towards the wagon where the woman in the turban and her friend were getting to their feet. The woman came forward, her hand extended. Bronze bangles ran the length of her forearm from wrist to elbow. They must, thought Erno, weigh a ton, but if they did, she did not move as though she noticed it.

  In the Old Tongue she said, ‘Welcome, young man. It seems you have been blessed!’

  ‘Blessed?’ Erno shook his head. ‘This was my second best tunic, so I’m not so sure about that.’

  The woman turned to Marin. ‘Your – sister?’

  ‘No,’ Marin said, smiling.

  ‘Sweetheart, then,’ the wo
man winked.

  Erno shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no, just friends. We came here to find a potion-seller for Marin.’

  The woman regarded Marin enquiringly. ‘Fezack Starsinger?’

  Marin nodded. ‘Yes – that was the name!’

  The woman turned and said something to her companion. He clicked his tongue against his teeth and whistled, then disappeared into the wagon. A moment later he returned with an old woman propped on his arm. She was completely bald except for a crown of brightly-coloured feathers and a single top-knot of white hair. A necklace of twenty or thirty thin silver chains lay around her meagre brown throat.

  ‘I am Fezack,’ she said in a birdlike voice. ‘Rajeesh.’ Placing the palms of her hands together, she bobbed her head just like a bird plucking a worm from the ground.

  ‘G-good day, lady,’ Marin stammered, amazed.

  ‘Go on, then,’ urged Erno. ‘Ask her for the potion.’

  Marin stared at him wide-eyed. ‘I can’t, not with you here.’

  Suddenly the old woman was at her elbow. ‘Come with me, child, come in the wagon and tell me what it is you wish me to mix for you.’

  Erno gave her a little push. ‘Go on,’ he grinned. ‘Have an adventure.’

  Marin looked uncertain. ‘Don’t leave without me.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  He watched as Marin and Fezack Starsinger disappeared into the wagon together. The other woman smiled at him. ‘No danger: no worry.’ She held up her hand. In it she clutched a spotted cloth. ‘I clean your back.’ When she grinned, Erno could see that she had little jewels inset into her teeth and a tiny silver ring through the tip of her tongue. She turned him around and rubbed the bird shit off his tunic as roughly as his mother might have done, had she still been alive.

  ‘Arms out.’

  Erno did as he was told.

  ‘Eee-kor-ni! What this?’

  He looked down to find the turbaned woman kneeling at his feet with her hands full of golden-red hair. His heart thumped: Katla’s, fallen from beneath his tunic where he had been holding it in. She held it up beside his own, her grin widening.

  ‘Not yours?’