Sorcery Rising

by Jude Fisher

  ‘I . . . cannot—’ Tanto began, but his father had already turned his head away and was striding in the opposite direction.

  Erno lagged behind Aran Aranson and his sons, his feet weighing like lead. In truth, he had not wanted to attend the Gathering at all. Why come to such a public event just to see the woman you loved given away to another man? The hair amulet, dangling on its thong beneath his tunic, itched against his skin as if to remind him of the futility of it all. He had never believed in magic, and now here was his conclusive proof. Katla clearly had no thought of him at all – for there she was with Jenna Finnsen, laughing and drinking wine as if she had not a care in the world. It was hardly any consolation at all to see that she had bound her head in the scarf he had bought her. His eyes swept over the crimson dress, with its panels of lace and embroidery, its wide skirts and fashionably loose sleeves, and came to rest on the swell of brown flesh cresting the top of the tight bodice. A beautiful woman, he thought suddenly, for all her skinniness and her wicked eyes. Her beauty will now be as clear to other men as it always has been to me. The realisation came as something of a shock. Katla’s beauty – for him – had revealed itself in unconventional details: in the silver intensity of her gaze as she watched a mackerel line; the way bright sunlight softened the hard planes of her face, the way the lost red hair, tangled and threaded with pine needles, had bobbed like a horse’s mane when she ran. It revealed itself in the way she chewed her lip when examining a weld; or the sweat that sheened her upper arms in the orange fires of the smithy. He loved that she could make a sword, and wield it as well as any man; he loved her for her unpredictability, her sharp tongue and her savage delights: in short, for being so very different to the other women he knew. But this orthodox elegance made it clear that her old wildness was gone, put away so that she could follow the traditional path of every other young woman – to be packaged up and traded away by her family for what he could never offer: money, prestige, a useful clan alliance. To see her so made him want to weep; or to run mad through the crowds, dagger drawn, to carry her off into oblivion.

  And now she had seen them. He watched her smile fall away, her lips fold themselves grimly. As they approached, he noted, too, how her knuckles whitened from gripping the goblet.

  ‘Daughter.’

  ‘Father.’

  ‘Finn is a little delayed. He had some last-minute business to attend to.’

  Was it a flicker of relief Erno saw cross her face? When Aran turned to say something to Fent, Erno found Katla’s eyes upon him, bold and urgent. He returned her gaze as steadily as he could manage, but felt the telltale blood flushing up the fair skin of his neck. What did she want of him, now, when it was too late? He tried to order his scattered thoughts. Her eyes were huge, the pupils so dark they had almost eclipsed the irises. The silver-grey coronas blazed at him.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ Katla enunciated very clearly.

  ‘Ah, so am I,’ said Jenna, taking Katla’s arm.

  Katla shook her off. ‘Stay here, Jenna. I’ll bring something back for you. Erno, give me your arm and accompany me to the tables.’

  Jenna stared at them, speechless, then turned as Aran offered her a compliment on her dress. Erno mutely offered Katla his arm and her fingers settled upon it like a hawk’s talons into a rabbit, the nails digging into his flesh. He could feel her trembling, feel the pulse of her blood – fast and strong – through the pads of her fingers. Somehow, he managed to coordinate his feet and move away from the family group towards the provisions tables. Katla seemed to float beside him, the red dress gliding across the floor, all her weight, it seemed, in the electric touch of the fingers on his arm. When they were ten feet or so away from the trestles, she broke the contact and turned to face him.

  ‘Erno, I need your help.’

  ‘You have only to ask. Anything.’

  ‘I have to get away from here. Tonight. Now. Before they affiance me.’

  Erno looked around quickly, but Jenna and the Aransons were engaged in various conversations. No one seemed to have noticed that his heart had suddenly become such a beacon of hope that his whole body was aflame with it. He caught Katla by the elbow and ushered her quickly through the crowd towards the entrance. They paused to allow a tall woman go by, a woman wrapped so well in a long robe and silk shawl that only a glimpse of her pale face and a flash of green eyes was visible as she ducked past them, and then they were outside the grand pavilion in the darkening air.

  ‘This way.’ Now it was Katla who stepped in front of him, picking her way neatly between the guy-ropes to circle the pavilion and head towards the Eyran quarter. They walked silently like this, not touching, for some minutes until the sounds of voices became muted and distant. The moon sailed overhead, veiled by high cloud. Its silver light limned Katla’s face.

  ‘I have everything packed,’ she said breathlessly. What she had to ask was an enormity, she knew: and all she could think was to blurt it out: ‘Erno, will you help me escape? I thought to take one of the faerings, but I can’t manage it on my own. Will you come with me and defy my family?’

  ‘I will.’

  He gave it no more thought than that. It required no more.

  ‘It’ll mean a blood feud, you know.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We can never go back.’

  ‘This I know, too. Where will we go?’

  Katla hung her head. ‘I never got that far,’ she admitted. ‘All I could think of was rowing away, down the coast.’

  Erno nodded, silent. Two fugitives from Eyran law: her father was sure to declare him outcast, his goods – such as they were – forfeit. His life, too. He laughed.

  Katla stared at him. How could he laugh when she asked so much of him? He looked slightly mad, but wonderfully so, his skin so dark and his blond hair almost white in the moonlight, his sharp teeth gleaming like a wolf’s. And then she was laughing as well: it was a ridiculous situation – for here she was, in a dress dyed crimson with crushed lice, her hair shorn and blackened and her life at risk because she had climbed a rock, about to kiss a man she had known all her life, a man she had never till recently given any thought to, a man who was willing to risk everything for her . . .

  About to kiss—

  It was Erno who made the first move. He caught hold of Katla’s shoulders, tilted her head back and smothered her lips with his own. For a moment all she could feel was the blood pulsing between them and she surrendered to it as if there was nothing more in the night than their mouths, joined, and all else in the world fell away in a long, thin thread that spiralled down and down . . .

  And then she began to feel dizzy, disorientated.

  A vile, pungent scent rose into the air.

  Something was burning. Something was burning her, burning the exposed skin just above the low neck of her dress.

  ‘No!’

  She pushed Erno away. A patch of his tunic, in the middle of his chest, had begun to smoulder, turning the pale linen to a dull, rusty orange. Tendrils of smoke started to wisp from the neck of the tunic, sparse at first, then in a thick coil. Erno looked down, bemused, opened the neck of his tunic and stared in. Realising what was burning, he stepped quickly away from Katla, turning his shoulder from her as he did so to block her view. It was the amulet the nomad woman had made for him, glowing a dull ember-red as if it would suddenly take flame and burn them both to ashes. Magic! He drew in a hiss of breath. Damn it, that was why she had kissed him . . .

  He snapped the thong and drew the accursed thing out. As soon as it lost contact with the skin above his heart, the unnatural glow went out of it. Much of the hair had smouldered away and as he pulled at it the rest lost its form, the weave disentangled. Strands of burned hair floated to the ground.

  Katla stared down. Then she bent and snatched up some of the remnants. The burning had darkened it, but she knew her own hair. The implications of why Erno would wear a plaited round of her hair beneath his shirt, a weaving that would burst into flames
so, ate at her like acid, etching a course through her thoughts.

  ‘Magic,’ she whispered at last. A charm. A love charm?

  A trick . . .

  Even as she thought it she felt emptied out, hollow, all her emotions drained away. It was as if her skin had been stretched tightly about her ribs like hide across a drum. And after a few moments, when she looked at Erno again, she found she felt nothing for him at all, nothing but a terrible disappointment.

  Erno, however, could not meet her eye. He was gazing at his shoes as though they fascinated him, the knotted braids of his hair, with their remembrancing rags and shells swinging forward to obscure his darkening face.

  Katla forced the last shreds of magically-enhanced emotion out of her head, forced herself to think clearly. It changed nothing, she decided, nothing of the practical circumstances; whether Erno still wished to help her now, without his love reciprocated by artifice, was up to him. She smiled sadly.

  ‘If you’re coming, we’d best hurry, before they miss me.’

  He hesitated, as if trying to think of something to say that might improve the situation. Eventually he merely nodded and started to walk purposefully towards the Rockfall booth.

  ‘Two thousand cantari, Fortran. It’s all I ask.’

  Fortran Dystra regarded his friend curiously. ‘What on Elda do you want two thousand cantari for at this time of night?’ Then comprehension struck him. He grinned, punched Tanto on the arm. ‘It’s a woman, isn’t it?’

  Tanto forced a smile. ‘You might say that.’

  But Fortran shook his head. ‘Lost it all on the horses,’ he said affably. ‘Didn’t expect your runt of a brother to win at all. Put it all on Filial Duty, didn’t I?’

  Tanto’s face fell.

  ‘Never mind,’ Fortran said. ‘Tomorrow you’ll realise I’ve saved you a fortune. No woman’s worth two thousand cantari for the night.’ He laughed. ‘Have some more wine to clear your head!’

  Fortran had been Tanto’s last hope: not one of his so-called friends had been able – or willing – to lend him the money. He downed the goblet of warm Jetran wine Fortran had offered him in a single draught. And then he said: ‘Have you seen Lord Tycho Issian?’

  Fortran raised an eyebrow. ‘I wouldn’t go asking him for it,’ he said. ‘Came storming past some while back with his face as black as night.’

  ‘Did he have his daughter with him?’

  ‘Selen? Oho, what’s up there, Tanto?’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘No. I don’t believe she was here at all. What do you—’

  But Tanto had already turned rudely on his heel and was ploughing his way through the crowd.

  Bëte was being most uncooperative. Virelai had managed to trap the creature in the wagon, where after some panicked forays back and forth, searching for an exit, it had at last shot under the bunk. He could see it there now, its green eyes gleaming defiantly in the gloom. Reflexively, he licked the bleeding striations on the back of his hand. The blood was sharp and salty, the welted edges rough against his tongue. So much for the blasted calming spell he’d tried on it . . .

  His first thought on waking to find the Rosa Eldi missing had been to run after her, and indeed he’d gone as far as the end of the nomad quarter before giving up on his mission, for there had been an immense throng of folk coming and going at the twilight hour; packing up stalls, carrying goods, leading yeka back from the compound. He’d climbed onto an abandoned stall and searched across the heads of the crowd for her shining flag of hair for ten minutes at least before remembering that the dark green shawl that had been strewn across the bunk beneath them had gone and that his eyes might therefore have flicked over the disguised Rosa Eldi a dozen times as he stood there. Damn. He would have to use the cat to lure her back.

  Which was why he was down here now on all fours with his arse sticking out at an undignified angle, his head jammed under the low bunk and his hands all raked and smarting, trying to tempt the little demon out. Food and cajoling had failed utterly. Main force was all that remained. He rolled onto his belly and began to insert himself beneath the bunk. The cat, however, determined to maintain a safe distance between them, backed itself into the furthest corner. Its black lips peeled back – he could tell from the sudden gleam of pearly white fangs – and it started to hiss. The last time this had happened it had struck out, not wildly and in fear, but with the utmost calculation for maximum damage. Suddenly his exposed face felt horribly vulnerable. Slowly, Virelai withdrew again. There was an old cloak of his hanging on the back of the door. He took it down, wrapped it about his hands and went in after the cat again. It was a cloak of thick serge, but even so when he managed to get the thing in his hands he felt its claws – or its fangs – meet like hot needles in the soft webbing between the thumb and first finger of his left hand. He howled with pain and rage, and then his right came in hard over the top, found the cat’s head (ah, so those were its fangs, then) and clamped down on its neck. The loose skin there filled his fist, beneath the folds of cloth. He felt the little beast release its death-grip on him, unable to resist the kitten instinct, even though it was aware with the clever part of its head that what gripped its neck so tightly was not, in fact, its mother. If it had ever had one.

  Virelai squirmed backwards, came to his knees and held the thing at arm’s length. It hung there, unrepentant, ready to do more damage as soon as he let go.

  Able at last to focus his skills on it, he stared it squarely in the eyes and muttered an incantation. Against its will, the cat went lax. Virelai sat on the edge of the bed and, pressing his thumbs hard against the sides of its jaw, forced its mouth open. There was blood on its teeth, he saw. His blood. He felt abruptly like dashing its head against the side of the wagon. It was a peculiar sensation, this rage. Peculiar, and unaccustomed: he had never felt anything like it in his life. Even when poisoning the Master, there had been no hatred there, only a cool decision based on his best chance of escape with the Rosa Eldi and what was left of the magic. He felt the hot anger drain away.

  ‘Now then, Bëte: give me the spell to draw back the Lost, and I’ll let you go. Do you hear me?’

  In response the cat’s eyes flickered with hatred. The fight might have gone out of its limbs, but it still knew its enemy. Virelai pressed his mouth against its silky muzzle, felt the warm air from its nose against his lip.

  There came a soft, whooshing sound, then he felt (rather than saw) bright lights in his head. The lights shattered and spun, then coalesced. He saw the Rosa Eldi enter a vast pavilion all candle-lit and stuffed with people. The Gathering. He watched her, thinking herself hidden, under the dark shawl, looking this way and that, the sea-green eyes darting around at all the humanity present, in its velvets and silks, its trinkets and jewels, all drinking and grazing like so much prey. She made a sudden half-turn and he saw her eyes widen in shock. Then she ducked her head away from his probing gaze and vanished into the throng.

  ‘What in fiery heaven are you doing with that animal?’

  Virelai’s head shot up. The cat, sensing a weakening in the holding spell, took its chance. Becoming a single hard, twisting muscle, it wrenched itself from the map-seller’s hands and tore around the vertical walls of the wagon like something whirled on a string. At last it dropped into the space between the ceramic stove and the clothes trunk and went to ground.

  Lord Tycho Issian filled the doorway. Virelai stood up slowly, smoothing his hands over his breeches. Little tufts of black fur drifted to the floor. The lord, he noticed, was making strange gestures with his hands, as if to ward off something unpleasant. The spell had left the slightest tang of sulphur in the air. That, or someone had farted.

  ‘Ah,’ said the map-seller, trying to appear unruffled. ‘You’ve come for the Rosa Eldi, I presume?’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She awaits us at the Gathering, my lord.’ He watched Tycho Issian’s gaze fall to the scratches on his pale hands, no doubt wondering, Virelai thought
, whether it had been the cat or the woman that had put them there. ‘Do you have my money?’ he said to distract him.

  ‘I do not. Yet. But I shall. Soon.’

  ‘Well, let us pursue our respective quarries then, my lord, and make our exchange at the Gathering.’ He ushered Lord Tycho Issian before him down the steps of the wagon, following close behind, and brought the latch down sharply to keep the cat at bay. Let the lord drag the Rosa Eldi away: from the light in his eyes and the colour of his face it looked as if he would brook little hindrance to his plans for the rest of the night.

  From his vantage point on the dais, Ravn watched all the folk come and go as if in a haze. It was true that he had fortified himself for the wretched occasion with as much good southern wine as he could lay his hands on, but even the wine could not take the edge off his restiveness. He watched his scribe desperately trying to keep track of all the tributes that had accumulated at his feet: enough Circesian rugs to carpet the entire great hall at Halbo, and lay a path three miles to the sea; urns and vases and goblets that in all probability would shatter at the first hint of a storm on the homeward passage; pots of spices and mounds of herbs from the southern plains and the eastern hills, which would at least mean that this winter’s food would taste of something other than salt and smoke; bales of silk, which also meant that his lady mother would be well catered for, if only he could persuade her to give up the drear greys she had affected ever since his father’s passing. The fine aquamarine would suit her well, he thought, bring out the blue lights in the still-black hair. It was Sur’s own colour, which might persuade her: the colour of sun on the god’s own sea. It would suit Ragna Fallsen, too, he thought suddenly, catching her eye across the room as she danced with Erol Bardson’s eldest son, Ham. Ham by name, and nature too: for the boy was as pink and fleshy as any pig’s haunch. Lord knew what Ragna thought she was doing by encouraging him so: for it was hardly going to spark a moment’s jealousy in her lover of a hundred tumbles to see her fondled by such a lout. And if truth be told, he was becoming rather bored with Ragna, for all her beauty and inventiveness. She had, he had found recently, a nagging tongue on her, having suddenly discovered in herself sufficient gall to complain if he came to bed unbathed, or in his cups. Insupportable, since both were frequently the case . . .