Sorcery Rising

by Jude Fisher

  Some time later a merchant train came through Altea town and Favio, in a sudden and uncharacteristic burst of hospitality, invited the visitors to the house. They too, it transpired, had been at the Allfair and had left early like the Vingos, making their slow path south on a roundabout route that meandered from town to town selling the wares they had come by there. As well as silver, they had gleaned a wealth of rumour on their passage.

  ‘There are a lot of angry people in Cera and Forent,’ said the leader of the caravan, one Gesto Ardum. He was a stout man in his middle fifties and liked to make it plain he had seen a lot of the world and knew well its workings. Every other sentence was peppered with famous names, as if he thought his perorations would somehow carry greater weight because of his passing acquaintance with these nobles and artists. Saro had taken a hearty dislike to the man. Even now he was citing another of them, punctuating his words by waving a half-chewed chicken leg in the air. ‘My friend, Lord Palto – who has a large castle, you know, on the outskirts of Cera – says Rui Finco was quite furious after the Fair; that he was storming around swearing the northerners had become far too confident, and that their new king is a dangerous man and needs taking down a peg or two. And of course the Dystras are quite distraught that he spurned the Swan in favour of a Footloose whore, though the poet Fano Cirio, who often passes his summers at the court at Jetra, told me in confidence that the lady herself is relieved not to be taking the trip north, for she was quite alarmed at the barbarous appearance of the Eyran men.’

  ‘And the Lord of Cantara has rather been inflaming the situation,’ one of the other merchants added, intent on parading his own subtle understanding of Istrian politics.

  Fabel laughed. ‘Bloody madman.’

  ‘Bloody rich madman,’ Gesto corrected. ‘We’ve done some fine business with Lord Tycho in the past month; I won’t have him maligned.’

  ‘His is not a name that is spoken lightly in this house,’ Favio Vingo said, tight-lipped.

  Gesto’s hand flew to his mouth. ‘My apologies, sir: I had forgotten the unpleasant matter between yourself and the Lord of Cantara at the Fair. Something about a marriage settlement, I believe?’

  Favio glared at him. ‘You should not listen to the gossip of fools,’ he said shortly. ‘The man is quite insane, and where you get the idea that he is rich, I do not know: he was clearly so desperate for funds at the Allfair that he insulted me and my family beyond point of forgiveness.’

  ‘With the greatest respect, I must beg to differ with you on this subject, for the Lord of Cantara paid for his purchases from us – some superb Jetran jewellery (very collectible) and an assortment of the finest gems – with ingots of pure silver. He didn’t once dicker over the price I quoted – a very fine gentleman I thought him – and he had great piles of the stuff in his revenue chests: I saw it with my own eyes.’

  Favio frowned and fell silent. After a moment he said: ‘I thought you had not travelled as far as Cantara yet.’

  Gesto Ardum laughed. ‘Ah, no: and with the lord away we probably shan’t venture that far south. No, it was in Cera that we met with him; and he was cutting quite a figure there. He travels with a nomad servant – a tall, strange, pale man with a black cat that he keeps on a lead: I never saw the like. Very striking.’

  Someone else cut in enthusiastically: ‘A very pious man, he is, Lord Tycho Issian. Pious and patriotic’

  ‘Aye,’ said another of the merchants bitterly. ‘Pious and patriotic, some might say; me, I’d say he was a bigoted zealot.’

  Gesto laughed politely and leaned across the table. ‘Lindo took a northern woman to wife, would you believe?’ he said softly, with an unpleasant grin. ‘He likes them a bit wild. Anyway, the Lord of Cantara arrived at court in a great whirlwind of fervour, paid off his Council debt with a flourish and has been whipping up all sorts of fury against the Eyrans ever since: says we should send ships north to “liberate” their women from the cruel yoke of their heretical religion and convert them to Falla.’

  ‘Liberate them into our brothels, most like!’

  An ironic round of applause and table-thumping greeted this statement.

  ‘And is anyone listening to this nonsense?’ Fabel asked.

  ‘It’s been twenty years and more since we last fought them; those that remember bear grudges, and those that weren’t old enough to fight last time around fancy a bit of sport, I dare say. The ones who favour war are in a minority now; but more are listening to Tycho Issian every day.’

  Favio laid aside his knife grimly. He had barely touched his food this night, or any other since the night they left the Allfair. His cheeks were haggard, the skin around his eyes dull and crinkled with new lines. ‘It pains me to agree with that upstart lord, but my son lies dying at the hands of Eyran brigands . . .’

  Gesto Ardum exchanged a glance with another of the merchants, a tall, dark man with closely set eyes and a thin mouth. This man, who had never, Saro thought, given his name, looked away now, applying himself instead to the delicious platter of saffron rice and fragrant baked lamb and apricots that was the local speciality.

  ‘Ah, well it’s only talk just now of course,’ Gesto went on. He leant forward conspiratorially. ‘It would be a most expensive undertaking, to storm the north. Lord Palto says we simply do not have the ships for it, nor the expertise either; and to engage the services of the necessary number of renegades to forge the passage to Halbo would be costly; and not just in terms of the money—’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Fabel drained his goblet and sat back in his chair, his hands folded over his neat little potbelly in a parody of satisfaction. ‘Surely we have had several good years from the mines and the fields? Certainly, we’ve paid enough taxes recently for their damn coffers to be overflowing in Cera! I wonder where the hell it all goes sometimes: for it’s certainly not coming back here: the damn bridge at Costia’s been down for near on five years now!’

  Gesto looked over his shoulder and around the room in the most melodramatic fashion. Then he leaned even closer to his hosts. ‘They say,’ and his eyes gleamed, ‘that there’s a significant sum missing from the treasury; that or the Lord Steward has failed to keep his records true, and he, of course, is adamant the shortfall is nothing to do with him. Threatened to resign when the books were questioned and then started ranting about some fire at the Duke of Gila’s palace last year, at which point a number of the lords all rushed around trying to mollify him. Something odd, there, Lord Palto reckons, though why anyone should bother to fire that old miser’s castle is beyond me. One way or another, though, the Supreme Council has been forced to call in debts all over the country well short of the agreed grace periods, and that’s certainly not pleased some people I could mention.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It’s been bad for business, that it has, and that’s without all the bizarre accidents.’

  ‘Accidents?’ Favio frowned.

  ‘One of the Duke of Galia’s barges was overturned in a flat sea off Pig Island. One minute the oarsmen were making good speed; next thing, some devil wind whipped up out of nowhere and capsized her. Damn nuisance for the Duke – lost over a hundred new slaves.’

  ‘Couldn’t they swim?’ Saro asked naively.

  There was a bellow of laughter from around the table. Gesto choked on the lamb shank he had just inserted whole into his mouth.

  ‘Swim! Ha, ha! Excellent, laddie!’ He coughed and banged the table with the flat of his hand, spluttering bits of lamb everywhere. ‘Swim!’

  Saro stared around bemusedly.

  Fabel leant across to him and said gently: ‘It’s the leg-irons they wear, Saro: no chance of escape, see – and if the ship turns turtle . . .’

  A sudden, horrible picture presented itself to him then: dozens upon dozens of terrified men and women trying to drag their limbs free of their shackles as the murky Southern Ocean claimed them amid an avalanche of broken timber and crashing water, their eyes bulging, their mouths open on silent screams, the sea rushing i
n to fill up every available void, whether living or inanimate . . .

  By the time he had rid himself of this nightmarish vision, one of the other merchants was deep into the tale of how a caravan bearing a consignment of carpets from Circesia had been trampled by a huge herd of wild horses that seemed to be running for their lives out of the Bone Quarter.

  ‘Finest rugs in the world – reduced to tattered scraps!’ was his indignant closing comment; but Saro shivered: horses, running out of the deathly Bone Quarter? That was bizarre indeed.

  ‘I heard how a huge serpent rose up out of the Southern Emptiness and swallowed a yeka entire—’

  ‘Serpent!’ laughed another. ‘Ridiculous nonsense!’

  ‘I heard the same tale,’ piped up another of the merchants. ‘And worse.’ He regaled them with the unlikely details of how an eagle had carried off a child on the Tilsen Plain, bearing it off on vast wings to its eyrie deep in the Golden Mountains. ‘Snatched it right out of the arms of its poor mother!’ he cried. ‘Had wings as wide as this room!’

  ‘I saw no giant eagles when I was in the mountains; but I do know there are gouts of steam coming up out of the Red Peak,’ the unnamed dark man interrupted softly, and across the table all other conversation fell away as everyone strained to listen to him, even though a mountain emitting vapour seemed a lesser wonder than colossal serpents or immense raptors. ‘I saw such a sight myself but five days ago.’

  The Red Peak was deep down in the great southern mountains. Saro wondered what the man had been doing in that strange, remote region; and how he had come to join a merchant train that had travelled from the north of the country.

  ‘But the Red Peak hasn’t erupted for over two hundred years!’ Fabel exclaimed.

  The dark man cast a sardonic eye at him. ‘Maybe not –but I felt the ground move beneath my feet and I didn’t stay around to find out more. Rode my horse till its knees broke and had to buy a new nag from hillmen in the Farem Heights.’

  Favio Vingo raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised they’d do business with you: there’s little kindness between our people and the hill tribes.’

  The dark man smiled. He reached under his cloak and drew out a pouch, which he then upended onto the table. A shower of bright stones tumbled out, the candlelight sparking off the rough crystal facets of gems as large as eyeballs.

  Saro shivered. Moodstones. Even uncut and unpolished, he would recognise them anywhere.

  ‘Pick one up,’ the man said to Favio.

  Favio reached out and selected the largest, a lump the size of a hen’s egg. Upon contact with his skin, the stone flared a deep, unnatural blue shot through with darker veins of purple. The stone in the pouch Saro wore around his neck, concealed beneath his tunic, began to throb as if in sympathy; or was it just that his heart had begun to beat loudly?

  Favio dropped the stone as if it had burned him. ‘What in Falla’s fiery halls is it?’

  The dark man laughed and retrieved the stone. In his palm it became a warm, rich orange that glowed like an ember. ‘The nomads call them moodstones,’ he said. ‘They cut them till they’re pretty and make them into trinkets that you can buy for your lady and judge her mood – very popular at court, I’ve heard: a powerful aid to seduction! But the hillmen around the Farem Heights call them “the Goddess’s Tears” – some tale about her weeping over a lost brother or lover or such – and say they channel her power. He went on at interminable length about their miraculous properties, the chap I got the horse from, but he gave me his finest nag for a pair of these things, so I’m not complaining.’

  ‘May I?’ Fabel extended his hand and the man dropped the stone into it, whereupon it lost its fire and took on a duller, ochre hue. Fabel made a face. ‘Doesn’t seem to like me much.’

  The man laughed. ‘A worry on your mind, I’d say.’

  Fabel gave him a sharp look and tossed the stone back to him. In the dark man’s hand it flared to life again. Then, feeling Saro’s intent gaze upon him, the man turned. ‘Here: you take it, son: see what pretty colours you can coax from it.’

  Saro pushed away from the table. ‘I fear I must excuse myself!’ he said quickly, and ran from the room, clutching his mouth as if he might vomit. Behind him, he heard catcalls: ‘Make some space, lad: plenty more wine to get through yet!’ one man laughed; ‘Better get the lad in training!’ and: ‘Do you raise girls here in Altea, then, Favio?’

  Out in the corridor, Saro pressed his forehead against the cool plaster on the wall and waited for his racing pulse to slow. He remembered the old nomad healer’s terror of the mood-stone he carried, how she had called it a ‘death-stone’ and how he had seen it in her mind’s eye as a white, glowing thing, quite unlike the innocuous object the dark man had them toying with at the feast-table. I’m being a fool, he thought. I should have just touched the stone, watched it change colour; passed it back again and let them have their joke.

  He took this thought with him out to the privies where he relieved himself, then washed his hands and face at the ewer. Across the enclosure, an owl hooted, the sound carrying on the night air with extraordinary clarity. A moment later, the call was met by another sound – a wild, distant ululation that made the hairs rise on the back of his neck. He listened, but the noise was not repeated, and he wondered whether he might have imagined it. There had been no wolves in the hills around Altea for generations for they had been hunted into extinction in his great-grandfather’s time, and the nearest he had ever come to one was peering at the stuffed head adorning the wall of his father’s chamber, a trophy now so moth-eaten and dusty that it bore little relation to the proud living creature it had once been.

  He stood out there for a few minutes, feeling jittery and out of sorts, listening to the horses whicker and shuffle in the stables, to the breeze in the poplars, and the crickets in the bushes. A short while later he heard voices and turned to see two of the merchants stumbling out of the door. Unable to make it as far as the privies, they pissed into the flowerbeds, clutching one another and laughing raucously. Mother’s poor marigolds, Saro thought, and felt a desperate urge to yell with laughter. He watched them stagger back inside, completely unaware of his presence, and then turned and followed them back into the house.

  Inside, the noise from the hall was loud and boisterous and suddenly Saro found he did not have the stomach to return to the drinking games and lewd jokes which had undoubtedly started up in his absence. Such activities had never been his forte, and since Tanto loved to show off in the company of men as much as he did with women, it usually proved possible for Saro to slip into the background, his hands cupped around the goblet of wine he had nursed for the past hour, smiling and nodding and pretending to share the coarse humour, while he longed for the solitude of his room. Even without Tanto present, he doubted he’d be much missed. He could always say he’d passed out in the enclosure, and provide them with another laugh in the morning.

  He walked quickly past the door to the feast-hall and along the cool corridor beyond, passing the solar where his mother entertained any women accompanying their guests; but it was already quiet and dark. The candles had been extinguished; though not so long ago, for he could smell the hot wax from them as he walked by. Beyond lay the guest quarters, and his brother’s chamber. He was about to set foot on the stairs when he was distracted by a sound. Someone was in Tanto’s room: he could hear the murmur of a voice rising and falling. He frowned. His mother had forbidden any but herself and her women access to her unconscious son; but the sound he could hear was a low drone – a man.

  Saro crept to the doorway and hovered outside. Here, the words became more distinct.

  ‘Oh, Tanto, Tanto, to see you lying like this, dead to the world . . . I do not even know if you can hear me. I look for signs of life in your eyes, but they are as black and empty as the Poisoned Pools of Beria.’

  A sob. It was his father, Saro realised, which caused him no great surprise.

  ‘When I remember you as a boy, s
o swift both with feet and tongue, so handsome, everyone charmed by your beauty and your energy, and now . . .’

  There came a brief rustling noise, then Favio went on: ‘I must know if you are still alive in this rotting shell, my boy; I must know if you are aware of me, or even if you dream, for I do not think I can bear to watch you dying before my eyes much longer. Forgive me for disturbing this long rest, Tanto, if disturb it I do. They say the soul carries on living for long after the body has failed; but they say nothing about this living death, and I must know . . .’

  Saro twitched the curtain that draped the door and saw how Favio Vingo was bending over his brother’s still form. Something in his hand throbbed out light the colour of a deep bruise.

  ‘Let the stone tell me what goes on beneath this cold, white brow—’

  ‘No, Father!’

  Without a second’s thought, Saro took two strides forward to stop him, just as Favio Vingo pressed the moodstone to his son’s forehead. For a moment as it made contact with Tanto’s sweating skin, the stone pulsed a pale and sickly greyish blue; then as Saro caught his father by the shoulder, it flared to a white so brilliant it hurt the eyes; then to a powerful, coruscating gold. A bolt of pure energy coursed through Saro’s right hand, making him tighten his grasp on Favio’s shoulder until it felt as if their bones might melt together. It raged up his arm and into his head, so that he shrieked with the pain of it – a deep, scouring pain that burned as mercilessly as any pyre – and his father’s howl rose in counterpoint, agonised and terrified. It ignited the stone in the pouch around his neck so that Saro felt both moodstones like two vast, external hearts and himself a tiny seed trapped between them, filled with so much life he might just burst apart and spill it all out into the night in an incandescent rain; and a moment later their shared cry took on a third, higher note that rang and echoed off the chamber walls like a trapped animal.