‘So I should tell my man to wear gloves then?’ Wulfthram was unmoved.
‘You are glib but this poison needs but the barest contact to work on another. Say your man wipes his brow, scratches his ear. That is all it would take.’
‘Pah!’ said Ulian. ‘He is bluffing; no such substance exists.’
‘Maybe in your little world, but there are so many things out there you have never seen. Do you wish to take such a risk?’
The other black priest spoke again: ‘Will you give us the stone?’
Ceriana spoke in the most even voice she could manage. ‘If we do, you will use it to control a dragon, which may well be turned against our own people. Surely you can see that we could never agree to such a thing.’
‘Then we have nothing more to say to each other. We will take the stone for ourselves when you least expect it. However,’ – he reached behind his neck and unclasped a thin chain from which hung a small disc of black metal – ‘before I go I give you this.’ He handed it to Ceriana. ‘It is an amalgam of dull iron and sky metal, fallen from the heavens. Wear it under your clothes, close to your heart. While you have it your fusion with the creature will be held in abeyance. Nothing more will happen to you. We want the stone before it becomes irretrievably yours, so it is as much in our interest as yours to stop any further changes in your body. If you remove it at any time, though, what has been held in check will resume at some pace. So do not take it off. Ever! When we take the stone, then the intended fusion with the real dragonlord will begin.’
The priest behind the tall man smiled and Ceriana knew: he was to be the one to join with the dragon and, if he could take control of it, the first place he would come to, to judge the unworthy, would be here.
‘We have no real quarrel with you,’ the tall man resumed. ‘The circumstances of our meeting are unfortunate. The next time we meet things may be somewhat less civil. I, Luto, and my brother priests, Dravan and Melnikor, bid you farewell.’
He turned to leave, but as he did so the three of them were faced by a row of halberds, their cruel head spikes pointing at the men’s midriff.
‘It is all right; let them go.’ Wulfthram raised his hand to the guards, confirming his order. They sat down and watched as the three of them slowly left the room. After they had gone Wulfthram signalled to Bruan, who came over to him.
‘Follow them.’
As Bruan was about to leave with his men, Wulfthram called him back.
‘The Vesper of Kibil is in the harbour. It is a fast caravel with an experienced crew. If they take to sea, follow them at a safe distance. Do not engage them, unless you have to. Report back to me as soon as you are able.’
After Bruan had gone, he called for food for Ceriana who was pensively toying with the medallion.
‘It is a dull thing, is it not?’ she said absently, half to herself.
‘Are you going to put it on?’ he asked her gently.
‘I suppose I had better; it looks harmless enough, I suppose.’
He helped her fasten it around her neck. When that was done, she pushed the metal disc under the front of her dress so that it was both against her skin and obscured. Servants placed some bread and cheese before her, along with a couple of pies and a warm posset. She ate slowly, completely unaware of the others watching her.
‘What is the plan now, my Lord?’ Ulian asked.
‘It is unchanged. I will sail to Oxhagen within the next few days. Farnerun knows of my intentions, so hopefully he will have men at the town to assist when I arrive. I will engage one of the exiled fishermen to serve as a guide. ‘
‘And if you succeed in returning the stone to its place of rest, what is to stop the black priests from reclaiming it as they have already done once before?’
‘Guards. I have asked Farnerun to consider posting a garrison at the place – a matter I will pursue when I get there. I just want shot of the damned thing, so my wife can get back to a normal life.’
His wife was quietly nibbling at a large chunk of bread. ‘Wulf,’ she said.
‘What is it?’
‘You know I will be going with you when you sail, don’t you? And I don’t want any arguing to the contrary; no one is more involved in this matter than I.’
‘But you heard the fisherman’s story. This could be dangerous.’
‘And you heard the black priest. According to him, I am changing in some way and my life could be incredibly short. What more possible danger could I be in that I am not in already?’
‘The lady has a point,’ said Ulian with a wry smile.
‘But the dangers we may face are unknown ones – spirits or worse.’
‘Then swords and force of arms are pretty much useless, don’t you think? You will be in as much danger as I, maybe even more so. Can swords defeat spirits? Or will they merely make the bearers targets? I am going; you cannot deny me this.’
‘I think I should go, too,’ interrupted Alys.
‘Artorus’s eyes, this is not a scenic cruise followed by a picnic on the beach. None of us may come back alive! Do you really think it wise for both baron and baroness to go and risk their lives simultaneously?’
‘Bruan will manage your lands, our lands, perfectly well on his own. He has done this many other times, including when you left here to come and marry me.’ She pouted at him in such a way and with such firmness of expression that he knew the argument was already lost. He had never seen such resolve in her eyes and had to admit he was quietly impressed by her.
‘Very well, Ceriana, I will cede to you just this once. But do not think I have become every inch the compliant husband.’
‘I will believe that when the Gods come down from the heavens and start playing tag in the courtyard. Anyhow, I would much prefer you stubborn and unyielding to being a scold’s lapdog. It makes our disagreements far more stimulating.’
All this time Alys looked like she wanted an opportunity to speak. Eventually Ceriana noticed her.
‘What is it, Alys? What are you trying to tell me? Do I need a bath?’
‘No, my Lady! I mean, well maybe, just a little. No, it was something that man said earlier.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, he said they had writings from the elves that they had been deciphering; he was a bit vague when saying exactly what these writings talked about, but it all seemed to revolve around these stones. He also said they knew how to drain the stones of power, so presumably that crops up in these writings somewhere.’
‘All fine and well,’ said Ulian. ‘But, unless we had these tomes in our possession, there is little we can do about it.’
‘But we have!’ Alys beamed. ‘Some of them, anyway. He said the unencrypted versions were written on dragons’ teeth and bound in gold. Well, when Professor Cedric uncovered that secret chamber of the elves on the coast here....’
‘...He found two of them!’ Ulian said quietly.
‘You are saying, we may know how to drain these stones? That we could already have this information?’ Ceriana looked hopeful.
‘Possibly,’ said Ulian. ‘But it is a remote chance. The language they were written in is so archaic it might as well be cypher. Cedric has taken one to the Aelthenwood to see if the Wych folk can fare better with it. The other resides in the Grand Duke’s treasury in Tanaren. I could write and request its release.’
‘No,’ said Ceriana, ‘I will do that. I will also write to Father so I can explain its importance. Maybe your Cedric will return with the knowledge required to translate such an artefact; we lose nothing by trying, surely.’
‘No, my Lady, we lose nothing at all, and thank you for remembering, Alys. The memory of an old man has even more holes than his socks.’
Ceriana walked over to the north wall, where the tall, mullioned windows overlooked the courtyard. The rain was coming down vertically; she watched it bouncing off the stone flags or splashing into the wide puddles that had formed on the uneven ground. The drainage channel looked like a miniature r
iver Erskon and sporadic gusts of high wind tore at the canvas sheeting of the covered supply wagons standing stoically against the outer wall. A solitary crow hopped mournfully over the mossy stones, its glossy feathers still pristine, and under one of the wagons she saw two of the manor’s cats, mousers both, who had abandoned their day’s work and had gone to seek shelter – too late, as both were soggy and bedraggled.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘we are not sailing anywhere with all this going on outside.’
Just as soon as she said those words, one of the doormen entered and approached Wulfthram. He had evidently been outside as his black-and-grey surcoat was stained with water.
‘My Lord, there are people here who wish to speak with you.’
Wulfthram groaned. ‘Do they wear black? Are they threatening to sweat and poison us all?’
The man looked confused. ‘No, my Lord, they say they have come in response to a messenger seeking out a Master Cedric.’
Alys looked up.
‘Send them in,’ Wulfthram said.
The two men that entered looked as though they had just taken a fully clothed bath. Water plastered their hair and their weathered cloaks and boots were sopping. They both laboured under heavy packs and, as the smaller man threw back his hood, Alys gave a small squeal of delight.
‘My Lords, Ladies and Professors of the court,’ said Haelward, ‘you would not believe the journey we have had to get here. Talk about the god of storms!’
Willem smiled beside him. Soaked he may have been, but suddenly he had never felt warmer.
37
The river coiled ever southward like a menacing black snake, its surface mottled with green and brown leaves fallen from the many trees overhanging its darkly sinuous form. It was silent, powerful, respected. Everyone knew the river; everyone deferred to it. It wasn’t even given a name round here; it was just ‘The River’ such was its silent omnipotence.
Which, ruminated Whitey from his perch on the walkway overlooking it, was just exactly how he wanted to be. His entire life he had been shunned by his peers – from the moment he left his mother’s womb, his pink eyes sending the midwife screaming, through his childhood spent cutting purses on the streets of Sketta, to his adulthood as a thug for hire, serving every erstwhile crime lord in the south at some point or another. The Book of Artorus had a famous passage referring to Keth’s pale demons rising from the bowels of the earth to plague mankind for a thousand years, and so, being an albino, things were never going to be easy for him. He had spent his entire life avoiding the authorities, constantly fighting hunger or manacled to the walls of a cell or sleeping on excrement-covered stone floors, only waking sporadically to kick away the rats as they nibbled at his toes and fingers.
Now, however, things were different; now he was on the right side of the law for the first time in his life. Well, in a manner of speaking anyway. It had all come about through his meeting with Gorton. Meeting was perhaps not the right word; he was actually caught cutting his purse. As he sat in the stocks for the thousandth time covered in the refuse donated by the locals, Gorton, a merchant with a large round belly barely concealed under his green tunic, its gold buttons straining hard against the forces of nature opposing it, had come up to him with a member of the local watch.
‘I am looking for a business partner,’ he had said, as the watchman released the lock on the stocks. ‘And I imagine you, sir, will be happy with employment of any kind, judging from your present predicament.’
And that’s how it had started. The nature of the ‘partnership’ was unclear but he would have agreed with almost anything to get away from that village. It turned out that Gorton was a well-connected man who knew a large number of well-to-do merchants and minor nobility covering an area of hundreds of miles close to the war zone. He also knew when these people would be away from home and that’s where Whitey came in. Armed with a map of the property, and cloaked in black, he would break in, steal a few key items selected by Gorton, and make good his escape. Whitey knew the right fences to use and the two men pocketed a fortune; to cap it all, Gorton had made him a junior partner in his legitimate import–export business. Whitey had started to call himself a merchant.
There were numerous side-lines to get involved in, too, and this was why he was here, staring at the river in a remote part of the country. It involved buying up a lot of cheap tat, glass beads, dull knives, coarse linen garments, soft metal arrowheads, and trading them with the strange Marsh Men that came here about once a week. In return, they would receive spices, herbs, drugs and poisons worth over a hundred times their initial outlay. The Marsh Men in their mud huts had no Artoran tongue in their head and were as easy to fleece as a six-year-old child. Until meeting Gorton, Whitey had no idea how many ways there were to make easy money. Now he wore an expensive silk shirt, fine leather breeches and a ring studded with small pearls, and he received unlimited attention from the whores in Sketta, women who just two years ago used to spit on him as he walked past them.
Anyway, to business – Tath Wernig, the trading post they had lived in for the last week or so, was not a place to linger long in the memory. The long road from Sketta ended here; there was nowhere else to go for to the south, the land was too boggy for anybody but the peat diggers. Just over a dozen buildings were built either side of this half forgotten cul-de-sac, including a sad little inn, all fleas and straw pallets, where they had the misfortune to be staying at the moment, and a decrepit house of Artorus bereft of windows, whose priest spent most of the time comatose with an empty flagon in his hand and vomit down his smock. There was a blacksmith-cum-cooper-cum-wheelwright and a building euphemistically called the manor house on account that it had a couple of extra rooms and housed four or five soldiers and a magistrate all in the pay of Baron Eburg, who was fortunate enough, or maybe unfortunate enough, to hold suzerainty over the town.
And it had, of course, a trading post, a long, low building built on a platform overhanging the river and with a jetty pointing out into the gently churning waters. Whitey (he was never called by his real name; he barely could remember it himself) was standing on it now, looking southwards, waiting. They had already seen two Marsh Men this week; one more and all their goods would be gone and it would be back to Sketta to sell on what they had received in trade and so fill their purses.
He heard Gorton’s heavy tread on the planking.
‘Anything?’
‘Nothing, Master Gorton, what do you think? Shall we give it one more day?’
Gorton broke wind loudly; he did this quite often. Whitey reckoned it was something to do with his weight; even the planking on the jetty creaked under it.
‘Actually, I am rather tempted to leave now. There will hardly be any traffic up here what with winter coming, and there are some good opportunities coming up in Sketta. Filton Ottermore of the Vintners’ Guild is taking his family to Tanaren City till the spring; his house will be guarded but I know of a side entrance that they won’t be watching. Also the house of Meriel needs some torinbalm; they use it as a soporific and we have got plenty here.’
‘Why don’t we come here in the summer?’
‘It is full of merchants then; they all compete with each other and the Marshies get a far better deal. This time of year they are much more desperate; if you can stand Tath Wernig for a week you can clean up here. Come, let us go; there will be nothing more here this year.’
‘Wait,’ said Whitey, pointing downriver. ‘I can see something.’
Both men shielded their eyes against the glare of the river and slowly Gorton could see that Whitey had been correct. There it was, blacker against black, a tiny speck heading their way. ‘By all the Gods, Pink-eye, you have a demon’s vision.’
‘Years of practice in avoiding the town watch,’ Whitey said with a smile. ‘Are you armed? Can’t trust these Marshies not to cut up rough if they think they are being done over.’ He lifted his faithful purse-cutter up for Gorton to see.
‘I lack your abili
ty with the blade but, yes, I am prepared.’ He opened his cloak to show Whitey a stiletto that he had strapped to his waist. A woman’s weapon, Whitey thought. Gorton rarely had to do his own dirty work; he hired lackeys for that – lackeys or Whitey. Whitey grinned at the thought.
The boat came closer. It was a small circular boat with a single occupant; the Marsh Folk usually came in twos or threes, so both men were further encouraged. This will be easy, Whitey thought.
They watched the man pull up to the jetty, clamber out and secure his boat. Once this was done, Gorton approached him, smiling broadly, trade goods carried in a large leather satchel. Whitey thought the man was a typical Marshy, dark, weather-beaten, and wearing a woollen tunic and leather breeches. He had a metal knife, which wasn’t such a good thing, and there was something about the way he looked at them that made the albino think that perhaps this wasn’t going to be as easy as he thought.
‘Hail, friend from the marsh,’ Gorton effused. ‘I take it you have come to trade. If this is so, you are a lucky man indeed. Please look at the goods I have to offer.’ He opened the satchel and started to lay the various pieces of junk out on to the jetty.
Whitey looked into the man’s boat. In it was a covered basket far larger than the others he had seen before. Was it full of merchandise? Getting the man’s attention, he pointed to the basket attempting through improvised sign language that he would like to see inside it.
‘I am not here to trade with you. I am here to see your elder.’
Gorton was open-mouthed. ‘You speak our language! Artorus above, I have never heard of such a thing. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Gorton the merchant and this strange fellow beside me is Master Whitey, my partner in business. Please, peruse our goods at your leisure.’
‘As I have said, I am not here to trade. I would like to know who is in charge here; my elder wishes me to converse with him. The matter is very important.’
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