Sorcery Rising

by Jude Fisher

  A trick, after all. The King sat back on his bench, irritated at the deception, the stagy histrionics of it all. A man as practical as Finn Larson should know better than this. He waved the tall woman away, but she did not go. Instead, she took a pace towards him. Her hand came up to touch his damaged face.

  ‘You’ve taken a wound,’ he heard her say, as if from a great distance.

  The dark shawl she had worn over her head had fallen back. Ravn’s gaze was drawn to her face. A perfect pale oval awaited him there, and a pair of sea-green eyes.

  Her cool fingers brushed his skin.

  He felt his heart stop.

  Somewhere, in the rafters of the tent, a lark sang.

  Fourteen

  Madness

  Tanto helped himself to another goblet of wine from a passing server’s tray. The good stuff had run out now, he noted, his thoughts as sour as the wine. Even so, he threw it down his throat and reached for another. His head had begun to take on the familiar dull ache that presaged an almighty hangover for the next morning, but right now he did not care.

  Damn his self-righteous little brother. Damn his stupid father and Uncle Fabel, too. And as for Lord Tycho Issian: he hoped the Goddess’s hottest flames would devour the man. But not until he’d accepted Tanto as his wed-son, whatever that might take. He drained the goblet in a single gulp, barely even aware of the tart, spicy liquid burning its way down his gullet.

  He was just about to find the serving-boy for another refill when he saw the Lord of Cantara making his way through the entrance to the pavilion. Beside him was a tall, thin man with almost no colour to him at all. Despite himself, Tanto stared. The man’s hair was so pale as to be white, and against the pallor of his face, his features were indistinct. He looked like a lamprey, Tanto thought, a sickly, slippery eel of a man. The two of them walked quickly into the midst of the throng, heads inclined towards one another as if they were deep in conversation.

  I will sell her to the first man who bids me well for her. Lord Tycho Issian had been true to his vile word: he had found his bidder. Tanto felt a fury rise in him. So he’d strike a deal for his daughter with this . . . this . . . slug, would he? He hurled down his empty goblet, and began to push his way through the crowd towards them, then changed his mind. What would he do: confront the Lord of Cantara; knock down the slug-man; have everyone here know his family didn’t have the money for the bride-price? No. He thought for a moment, his befuddled mind spinning. No, indeed. He smiled. He had a much better idea.

  Outside, the stars were burning brightly and the moon was mantled by drifting cloud. The cold air soon sobered him, but rather than deter him from his plan, it stiffened his resolve. He stared out at the canvas city that had spread itself across the barren black plain, and struck out for the Istrian quarter. He passed the great tents of Lord Prionan’s retinue, deliberately pitched close to the grand pavilion as if to gain authority from their very proximity. The coloured family pennants hung lax in the windless air.

  He walked past the pavilions belonging to the Qarans of Talsea, and the Duke of Cera’s huge complex of tents. As he went quickly by, a deep, rumbling growl rolled out through the darkness towards him. It was a sound like none he’d ever heard. For a moment, it stopped him in his tracks, thinking that the Goddess had seen his thoughts and had sent her great cats to rend him; but then he remembered the two mountain leopards the duke had presented to the northern King. Clearly the Duke of Cera’s bid had failed, and the big cats been sent away in disgrace. What cared the Goddess for his plan? He laughed and hurried on.

  Soon he found himself walking in the moonshadow cast by the great Rock, towering into the night like the Castle the northerners called it; and there, on the slopes below it, was his family’s own pavilion. No sconces were lit: the slaves must be abed, he thought, or enjoying themselves elsewhere in their masters’ absence. This was not his destination. He passed silently onward.

  Beyond Falla’s Rock, the land rose more steeply. Tanto quickened his pace to compensate for the incline, his feet sinking into the dry volcanic ash. Up the hill he went, past the Sestrans’ tents and those belonging to Leonid Bakran and his family. A great cluster of pavilions came up before him now. Heedless of his trespass, Tanto pushed through the circle of tents and found himself in a quiet enclosure. It had been laid out in the form of a Jetran contemplation garden: all ornamental stones and terra cotta; alternating pots of water and scented powders; garlands of safflower around a little shrine – a brazier piled with still-glowing embers. Someone had sacrificed to the Goddess not many hours past: the rancid, sweet smell of burnt meat and hair invaded his nose as he went past. So much effort, and all for the stupid Allfair. Fancy carting all those pots and stones all the way from the Jetran Plain. They’d have done it for the Swan, he thought. To give her a last taste of her beloved south before she got carted off to the Eyran isles with the bastard northern king. This thought enraged him further. A noblewoman sold into barbarism by her greedy, scheming family, rather than saved for the deserving men of Istria. Men like himself. It was an insult to him and to every able-bodied southern male. He kicked out viciously at one of the terracotta pots and watched it smash with a satisfying clatter. Shards of fired clay skittered out across the garden. Then he kicked over the altar, too. The garlands of safflower broke apart, showering him with their fragrant petals, and the ochre pollen from their loaded stamens. Alesto, he thought. Alesto: the Goddess Falla’s lover, brought to her in just such a cloud: the fragrance of heaven, to bless the union between mortal and deity.

  It was all he needed to spur him on. With renewed determination, he took the last few hundred yards at a run, and the smell of safflower followed him all the way.

  The Lord of Cantara’s pavilion was in darkness, as he had expected. But the smaller tent annexed to it glowed from within with a faint rosy pink. From where he stood, Tanto could make out the silhouette of two forms inside the tent: a seated figure, and another, much smaller. One of these must surely be Selen. The other, probably a slavegirl. Tanto’s heart raced with anticipation.

  At the entrance to the pavilion, he stopped. There was a low murmur of voices – no, one voice – coming from within. Tanto took two big calming breaths. He ran his hands over his disordered hair, smoothed his fabulously-embroidered tunic, tugged up his wrinkled hose and adjusted his undergarments. What he would say to her, he did not know; but what he was about to do was so natural, so right, that he knew he could trust the words to come to him when he needed them. He hovered outside the doorflap and peered in.

  Selen Issian was seated on a low couch. A robed slavegirl sat at her feet. Selen’s head was bowed over a sheaf of parchment pages bound together with ribbon, and from this she read aloud to the girl. From the tilt of her head, the child was clearly enthralled by whatever it was Selen was reading – by the sound of it some ancient tale of gods and monsters, fair ladies and brave princes ready to battle through and carry them to safety. Tanto found himself smiling. It was such an idyllic scene. Tanto could imagine Selen sitting thus in a few years’ time, with their own child at her feet and himself with his feet up on a stool by the brazier, a flask of araque by his side. He could see all this so clearly that when he stepped through the doorflap and into the pavilion, he did so as if he were indeed walking into his own house.

  The sound of his entry was masked by the turning of a parchment page, but even so the slave’s head turned sharply. These hill girls, Tanto thought, amused: as jumpy as cats they are. The child said something he could not catch and Selen’s head shot up from her reading. She was not wearing the traditional sabatka, Tanto realised with a sudden thrill; just a flimsy silk shift and a shawl about her head and shoulders. His eyes devoured her face. His wife: this was his wife. And how blessed he was, for she was lovely, as he had known she would be, with her pale olive skin and those startled black eyes – as wide and dark as those of the doe he had brought down with his best crossbow on the hillside above their villa last year. The mout
h – oh, the mouth he remembered well from a dozen steamy dreams – though it was bare of paint now, and none the less appealing for it.

  She rose awkwardly, hampered by the slavegirl clinging to her legs. ‘Get out,’ she managed, her voice low with rage; but Tanto had already closed the distance between them, eyes blazing.

  And Alesto crossed the marble floors of the summer palace and called for his love to take her mortal shape that they might share their desire.

  ‘Selen, my love. Let us share our desire—’

  With a wordless cry of horror she thrust her arm out to keep him away; but all he could see was the pale flesh emerging from the golden shawl, the perfection of the limb foretelling the lovely sleekness of the rest of her smooth body.

  From between the pillar of flames she came walking with her cat, Bast, by her side, but Bast she dismissed, saying that she needed no protection now her love was come. And then she took him by the hand . . .

  He took another step forward. ‘Send the girl away, Selen. Now I am here, you need no other.’

  He reached out and pulled the shawl from her. It slithered down the silken shift, fell to a heap amongst the cushions on the floor. The slavegirl stared at it, then at the exposed shoulders of her mistress, her mouth open in shock. For a man to see a woman thus was sacrilege, a sin in the eyes of the Goddess; and she, Belina, would surely be punished for it. And not by the deity, either: no, she was far more worried about the lady’s father and his propensity for using the lash. She should call out, summon help from Sharo and Valer in the next chamber, or run for Tarn—

  She began to form the word ‘help’, but nothing came out except a tiny gasp. The man looked away from her mistress’s naked arms and fixed his eyes on her. She could feel the weight of his gaze on her, even through her veil. He is so handsome, she thought, wildly, disconnectedly. He smiled at her, and she found herself smiling back. How could anyone so handsome bring harm—

  Tanto stared at his dagger-hand in surprise. The beautiful northern blade glinted at him, its silver sheened with red. He hadn’t planned to stab the girl, but suddenly there she was crumpled among the bright cushions on the floor, her blood flowing out onto the golden shawl in a great, dark stream.

  Selen Issian began to tremble. She stared at the corpse of her body-slave in utter disbelief. Then she turned her face to Tanto Vingo. ‘No,’ she said, almost inaudibly. And: ‘No!’

  Committed now beyond retreat, Tanto kicked the body of the slavegirl out of his way. He dropped the dagger and pushed Selen roughly down onto the couch, his hands ripping at her shift. There was a shearing sound and the fabric parted at her neck, the tear following the line of the weft right down to the waist. Tanto stared at her breasts. The aureoles – dark and round – stared back at him accusingly. Suddenly, Tanto found he did not possess enough hands. His first thought was to cup both breasts in his palms; but he needed one to stop her mouth and another to free his cock. Brute instinct took over. He fell upon her, his mouth on hers, but his probing tongue met a bar of gritted teeth. With one hand he ripped the shift clean away from beneath them both, while with the other he eased himself from the constrictions of his hose and smallclothes. A couple of blind, desperate shoves and he was in and grunting like a hog.

  A storm of agony and outrage – furious, howling – rose up in Selen Issian. She wrested her head away from him in disgust. ‘Goddess help me!’ she cried. She flailed at her invader, but Tanto, glassy-eyed, ploughed on, heedless of the fists pummelling his back, his climax building.

  At last one hand fell away from him, to scrape upon the floor. Something chill met her warm skin. Her fingers closed upon it. The hilt of the dagger fit her palm like an answered prayer.

  Erno had insisted, with some odd and misplaced chivalry, Katla thought – or some sort of guilt – on carrying the bundle she had packed before the Gathering as well as his own bag.

  ‘I do not have much to my name,’ he said with a rueful grin as Katla looked sceptically at the largely empty leather sack with which he emerged from the booth.

  Even as he said this she realised his gaze had inadvertently gone to her fabulously-coloured headcloth, and then slid away again. She coloured. Most of what Erno had owned had gone into the purchase that now shielded her patchily-dyed hair from public view. ‘Here,’ she said quickly, starting to unwind the fabric; but: ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I bought it only with you in mind. There is no one else in my life to give it to, and I doubt it would suit me well.’

  So she wore it still, though it was oddly in contrast with the knocked-about leather jerkin she had retrieved from the tent, and slipped on over the linen tunic. The red brocade dress they had bundled up as best they could and stuffed into the top of Erno’s bag. ‘We can sell it down the coast,’ Katla said mulishly when Erno had suggested they might more honourably leave it folded neatly for Finn Larson as a apology, as well as a rebuttal of his offer. ‘Besides, if they find the dress, they’ll know for sure I’ve fled – and where would any good Eyran head for if not the sea? At least if they’re looking for a girl in a long red dress, they’re not necessarily searching for a fugitive. It may slow them down just long enough for us to round the first headland.’

  Now they ran swiftly and quietly through the Eyran quarter, heading east towards the Istrian sector and the strand on which the boats were pulled up. There was, it seemed, no one about, as if every living soul was ensconced in the great pavilion. Even in the usually more populous southern quarter, they came upon no other folk. They passed a group of southern-style tents clustered about the foot of Sur’s Castle, and here, Katla stopped. She cocked her head, staring up at its great dark mass, silhouetted against the starry sky. She wet her lips.

  ‘If we had the time, I’d climb the Rock again, now,’ she said with a grin.

  Erno gave her a peculiar glance. ‘So it was you?’

  Katla laughed. ‘Of course.’

  ‘When he cut off all your hair, I thought your father cruel and unfair.’

  Katla shrugged. ‘When he took Halli and Fent’s money and gave it to Finn Larson I thought so, too. To lose your dreams, as my brothers did, is surely worse than to lose your hair.’

  ‘But he traded you to the shipmaker.’

  ‘Aye. But not for long, eh?’ Katla was gleeful. She looked around, then up at the Rock again. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. For a moment she looked as fey as a changeling; then, before Erno could say anything more, she undid her sword belt and sprinted to the foot of it, located the crack system she had ascended before, and started to climb. The white charge of energy she got from the rock was stronger this time, if anything. Perhaps it was the peril of the situation that enhanced it.

  Erno flung down the bags in exasperation. ‘What in seven hells do you think you’re doing? Have you gone mad? One minute you’re concerned about buying time for your escape, and now you’re climbing the thing that got you into trouble in the first place!’ He paused, as if expecting a response. When he got none, he called up, as loud as he dared, ‘If the Istrians don’t kill you for it, I bloody well will.’

  A low chuckle floated down to him, followed by: ‘It’s such a nice crack-line, Erno: how can I resist?’

  All he could do was to stand there, helpless, his hands balled into fists, his eyes flicking constantly back and forth from the quiet fairground behind them to the nimble figure ascending the Castle. He watched her moving with quiet intensity, saw how she placed each foot with careful precision before putting her weight on it, how she tested the rock above her head with her reaching hand before pulling up on it. Where the crack became choked and bulged outward near the top he watched with his heart in his mouth as she swung herself up with both feet in the air for a second or two before making the move that took her over the obstruction. Moments stretched into what seemed hours. He heard a dog howl, its eerie sound oscillating through the still air. A horse whinnied somewhere to the west, then fell silent again. No folk appeared. A single gull, defying its natural sleep pat
terns, ghosted overhead to wheel above the Rock, saw Katla up there and banked sharply away.

  At last she reached the summit. He saw her running about on top of its flat surface, waving her arms in the air in some private paroxysm of celebration and his heart swelled with a perverse pride. The wildness was back with a vengeance, he thought, and he loved her all the more for it.

  Then, abruptly, she dropped her arms and ran to the western edge of the Rock. She peered down towards the landward side, then vanished from his view. The next moment she was back, gesturing furiously. Erno’s heart skipped a beat. Had she been seen? Had pursuers come after them already? He cursed the wasted minutes of the climb, the sheer, mindless stupidity of it: for there was Katla, marooned upon Sur’s Castle like a treed cat, with nowhere to hide or run to. Katla, for her part, looked not panicked, but galvanised. He saw her begin her descent, hand over hand, down some rope contraption set up for the less nimble on the far side of the Rock, and in a remarkably short space of time she was safely on the ground and running towards him.

  ‘Erno, Erno, quickly!’ She bent down and grabbed up her swordbelt and pack and started running uphill past the western side of the Castle.

  He had no choice but to follow her, even though they were now heading in the opposite direction to the faerings and their planned escape. Even with the pack, running uphill on shifting ash, she was fleeter than him. Head down and puffing, he did not see what Katla had espied from the top of the Rock until they were upon it.

  Katla threw herself down beside a kneeling, naked figure, a figure covered in blood, with a dagger in its hand. Long tangles of black hair spilled across narrow shoulders but did little to disguise the swell of breasts. A woman . . .

  ‘Are you all right?’ Katla asked her in Eyran, and when this received no response other than a bewildered frown, she repeated the question in the Old Tongue. The woman nodded slowly. Runnels of tears had left pale channels through the gore on her face. Sobbing, she tried ineffectually to cover herself with her hands.