TWOLAS - 02 - The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  A fortnight and four days passed.

  Dakar found the need for constant subterfuge as wearing as any despised rigour of travel. The posthorse he straddled to finish the journey was not the plug-lazy nag he had paid for. Possessed by a devil, determined to fray any tender patch of flesh that disagreed with a saddle, the creature jibbed, snorted and crabstepped in its ongoing effort to bolt. Dakar sawed its mouth and tried not to fall off in the scythed-down stubble of the hayfield where, masked from view by a hedge, Arithon had pulled off the thoroughfare to study the grim holdfast fastened like a barnacle to the crest of the hilltop ahead.

  'Alestron,' Dakar said in a note of bothered smugness. 'The brothers s'Brydionkeep their secrets like oysters, and their gates like a farmer's virgin daughters. Have you a plan yet?'

  'What, before I've set foot in the city?' Reduced to an outline against the fog which still pocketed the lowlands, Arithon leaned forward and settled on crossed wrists against his grey gelding's crest. Having milked every roadside taproom since Farsee, he came primed with hearsay about Alestron's ruling family. Their citadel at a glance looked formidably impregnable against a brightening corona of daylight, an eyrie clutched with bristling keeps that overhung the notch of the valley. The brothers s'Brydionheld aversion to sieges, any man could tell at a glance.

  The vale had been razed of timber to afford untrammelled visibility. Beyond the meshed fields with their late-season haystacks, walls and stone crenellations knitted like the clamped, mossy jaws of a trap around clusters of whitewashed outbuildings, craft compounds, and a limited common for grazing livestock. A steep, switched-back causeway led up to the stronghold itself. Mortar set with jagged ends of glass offered cruel reception to scaling ladders. A sapping team would need to bore through solid rock to undermine the high battlements, prinked now in light like sequins sewn onto a lady's veil, or ruled by hard shadows thrown off the barbazons, riddled like wormholes with arrowslits.

  Alone among cities on the continent, Alestron had not fallen in the uprising that dethroned the old high kings. Five centuries past, the merchant guilds' bid to overturn clan rule had been crushed by force of arms inside the rammed splinters of the south postern. The tenacious s'Brydiondukes had maintained their ancestral power ever since. They suckled their heirs on the rough arts of war, and skirmished with rapacious ingenuity when the rival cities that flanked the narrow inlet to the sea set blockades to jam their trade at the harbour mouth.

  In those rare intervals between wars, Alestron's ruling family nursed a maniacal distrust of their neighbours, then salved their fixated nerves by stockpiling weapons of every shape and description.

  Framed as casual conversation, Dakar said, 'You know we can't set foot through the upper city gate without proof of legitimate business.'

  'Well, I do have a plan for that.' Clever hands firm on his reins as a flock of blackbirds startled raucously from gleaning, Arithon stole a glance slantwise. 'You won't like the first part. I'll need you to squeeze into that dandy's pair of hose and fancy doublet.'

  Dakar rolled his eyes. 'Ath's pity! Whatever for?' The awful, ribbonned garments had been the insistent gift of an inn matron enraptured by Arithon's playing. The plain fact the clothing was tailored for the ox frame of a mercenary had given rise to ribald jokes since Tirans. Broad where the fit was cut slimmest, the Mad Prophet saw no humour in the prospect of being squeezed into slow suffocation. In case the idea was a crack at his expense, he added, 'You can't be serious.'

  Arithon nudged his gelding into stride back toward the road.

  'I don't see what choking to death in red velvet has to do with spying out a heavily-guarded keep.' Dakar wrestled through a pause as his mount jabbed its head down to buck. 'A man could turn grey while waiting for you to answer a simple question.'

  'I need you to pass for a merchant,' Arithon replied, oblique enough to fray a stone's patience. 'You didn't hear the rumour? Parrien s'Brydion needs a courting present to win a lady to the prospect of marrying into a war camp.'

  Dakar blinked, digested this, then sensed like the wave of pressed air that preceded a hit in the gut, intimations of a wider design. 'Ah, no!' He sneezed out the dusty smell of hay in distress. 'Not your kingdom's crown jewels. You can't mean to sell the duke's brother the emeralds of Rathain.'

  'Well, I hardly think the s'Brydion would waste their day over fakes,' Arithon said reasonably. 'Since we haven't the time for any better overture, the gems will have to suffice.'

  Now was scarcely the moment to lend credence to a notion Arithon more than likely angled to disclose: that to Fellowship concerns, Rathain's crown jewels held far more than sentimental value. The emeralds in fact formed a matched set of focus stones whose arcane properties were held in trust for future generations. Wary of the power and training already at Arithon's disposal, the sorcerers had set painstaking wards to preserve the gems' secrets from the prince.

  Dakar cursed afresh for the touchy complication to his plans while the sweat rolled in drops down his spine. 'You have no appreciation for the legacy your ploy could set at risk. Not one of those stones can be replaced.'

  'Then you'd better charge for them dearly.' Arithon set off at a brisk canter.

  While Dakar stewed in silenced dread and wrestled with rein and heel to curb his headstrong mount, the Master of Shadow met the morning with mettlesome insouciance, whistling a set of jaunty jigs.

  Warp and Weft

  In autumn, within the city of Etarra, a headhunter endures in fretful stillness, the velvets required for state audience an uneasy substitute for his weapons and mail; while, trampling like a bull over sumptuous carpets, his lace collar crumpled beneath double chins, the Lord Governor Supreme takes issue with his complaint: 'How should I know why the couriers from the east are delayed? It could be the weather. It could be the air. More likely, it's the marauding of barbarians, and isn't that your captain's vaunted duty to determine ... ?'

  Evening darkens Rockfell Vale, and though frost rims the oak leaves as it would on any other autumn night, the fox, the lynx, and the night-grazing hare do not stir from their lairs; for the summit of the peak looming over the valley is drenched in an uncanny glare of power, as the sorcerers Asandir and Luhaine labour to restore the wards which confine Desh-thiere . . .

  In the citadel of Alestron, a sandy-haired captain appoints the day's sentries to guard the keep that houses the duke's armoury; while in the grand hall, the burly lord himself pushes the muzzle of his favourite mastiff off his knee, then calls for his brothers to admit the fat merchant who had arrived to peddle emeralds the day before ...

  IX. SECOND INFAMY

  The chamber the s'Brydion heirs used for close business was situated like an eyrie in a drumtower deep within Alestron's inner citadel. In keeping with most things undertaken by the family, all three siblings attended Parrien's decision to examine the rare emeralds for his bridegift.

  Ascending four storeys of narrow, turnpike stairwells made the Mad Prophet sweat and gasp. His round cheeks purpled to beet from the squeeze of his beribboned red doublet. By the time he staggered through the upper doorway the manservant swung open to admit him, he was snatching each breath in jerks like a gill-netted fish. To an impostor afflicted with swimming senses, the sumptuous, gold-fringed Narms carpet on the floor felt deep and treacherous as a mire. No better haven, the vast oaken table offered an unaccommodating surface upon which to drop due to faintness. Dakar glanced from side to side, desperate. But in poses that ranged from straight attention to slouched ease, the brothers s'Brydionoccupied all the available chairs.

  Committed irrevocably to Arithon's demise, Dakar plonked his strongbox down, unlatched the lid, and smiled through clamped teeth as the bearded giant who sat nearest raised battle-scarred fingers to rifle through its priceless contents.

  Despite the neat stool and desk framed with square cupboards for parchments, and library walls lined with a scholar's collection of books, the chamber was misleading in its air of harmless gentility. Stabbe
d through the mild scents of papers and ink, a miasma of metal and oil gave warning that weapons were scoured clean of rust in this place more often than scribes penned new manuscript.

  Across the wide table, the tawny-maned earl expelled a whistle through his teeth. 'Sithaer's damned, will you look at these!' He tipped the little coffer. The chilly patch of sky through an arrowloop raised glints of live fire in the heart of Rathain's crown jewels. Tinged biliously viridian, four heads bent to closer inspection.

  His complexion no less green, Dakar wrung dampened palms on limp sleeves a handspan too long. 'I'm sorry.'

  'Sorry?' Lord Bransian s'Brydion, Duke of Alestron, straightened up, by a head the largest man present. He wore his barbarous, wheatshock hair hacked short to accommodate a mail coif. The beard underneath grew untamed as bristled wire, and the surcoat that mantled his massive breadth of shoulder would have engulfed a lesser frame like a tent. Except for a linked chain of office as old and weighty as his title, he looked every inch the hard-bitten mercenary. His two brows met, scraped iron over eyes flecked like grit stuck in ice. 'No need to apologize, merchant. Your wares are as true as your promise. Never have I seen emeralds of such quality, even through the traders out of Shand.'

  Dakar cleared his throat and eyed the other heads still huddled over the jewel cache. Each had the same mink-brown hair, two tied alike with worn leather, and braided in the antiquated style the old clans once wore for battle. The last crown was cropped as a shearling, except for the lovelock curled in solitary splendour between neat and tapered shoulderblades. If young Mearn looked least imposing in the bull-muscled company of his brothers, his volatile, jumpy reflexes made his presence no whit less dangerous.

  Parrien and Keldmar, who could have passed for twins, tossed the priceless gemstones between them like playdice, engrossed in irreverent bickering over which of them should break an intractable colt they both fancied. They insulted each other's horsemanship. With cheerful bad grace, they elbowed Mearn, but failed to convince him to arbitrate. Aligned cheek by jowl, their faces were alike as a matched set of carpenter's mauls; the knuckles, chisel-cut from one mould.

  Dakar mustered ebbing courage. As if he reached into a nest full of asps, he clapped down the lid of the strongbox. 'Regretfully, these emeralds aren't for sale.'

  Like puppets entangled in the same jerked string, the four brothers rounded to face him.

  Parrien's broad knuckles bunched bloodlessly white, while Mearn shot off his stool in a fiery, incredulous burst of temper. 'What's this? Some jape?'

  Above the commotion as Bransian crashed erect to slam and lock the chamber door, Keldmar said, 'Did you take us for imbeciles?'

  Dakar braced his nerve and owned up. 'The gems were my ploy to gain a private audience, and for an urgent reason. I came to give warning. At this very moment, a spy has breached the security of your secret armoury.'

  There followed the barest clash of locked glances. Then the family s'Brydion reacted in voiceless concert. Parrien seized the coffer with the emeralds. 'Surety,' he insisted as Dakar howled in dismay. 'You've lied to us once. We'll just impound these until we've made certain you're not an impostor, too.'

  Caught unarmed in the crisis, Keldmar flicked back his battle-braid, vaulted his chairback, and wrenched open a gryphon-bossed chest. A taint of oiled metal arose from the linen he ripped away to reach the longswords stored inside.

  Fluid as fanned flame, Mearn skirted the table. Before Dakar could retreat to a defensive position against the wall, the point of a stiletto pricked his back between the looped and braided ribbons of his doublet.

  Parrien whipped off his studded belt. Berating his weaponless brother's lack of foresight, he plunged in and strapped the erstwhile gem dealer's fat wrists.

  'Ath,' Dakar gasped as his captor jerked the leather tight. 'Is this how you treat guests who volunteer friendly advice?'

  Mearn twitched his dagger tip into the nap of the over-tight scarlet velvet. 'A breach in security's not friendly.'

  Across the chamber, stripped of his state collar and muffled under the half-shucked folds of the alizarin and gold ducal surcoat, Bransian launched into interrogation. 'A spy? Which city sent him?' He yanked his head clear of fine cloth and tossed the wadded mass across a chair seat. 'Was it Tirans this time? Kalesh? Or that interfering Mayor of Dim?' justly afraid of getting skewered, Dakar hedged, 'Does it matter?'

  'Not really.' Keldmar straightened, a sword in each hand, his laugh slick as snow-melt chilled to ice. 'Whoever he is, he'll tell us before he dies.'

  'I'll wait here in the meantime.' Dakar edged a hopeful step sideways and stopped, stung first by the knife point, and then by two blades at his breast.

  'No.' Mearn leaned close, keyed to the fervour of a starved acetic. 'I say you'll come.'

  Bransian flung wide the chamber door. Parrien bowed, extravagant as a gallant giving way before a rival. His look-alike brother put up his swords, curled his lip, and pushed by. Then Parrien shed his mummery for main strength and dragged Dakar toward the throat of the stairwell.

  The Mad Prophet dug in his heels, to no avail. Towed like a spaniel on a leash, he had no chance to see where Rathain's emeralds had been stashed. No one answered when he pleaded. Instead, he found himself manhandled into a pounding descent of steep stairs by four wrathful brothers who cared not a whit for his safety. Between cursing the fancy hose that slithered down his ankles, Dakar prayed in frantic entreaty. If Mearn with his diligent stiletto chanced to trip, one innocent prisoner was going to die skewered like a sausage on a turnspit.

  Keldmar redoubled that concern. Around the first landing, down the spiralling turn of the next storey, he launched into a series of energetic flourishes to test which blade was better balanced. Steel whickered and whined to his cuts, while Parrien offered unhelpful criticism.

  'If you reach the spy first, be my guest.' Braid flying behind and foot extended, Keldmar sallied into a classic stop-thrust across the breadth of a landing. 'Dissect his guts with all the pretty style you like. But should I find the wretch, he'll just get butchered.'

  'Not before we've pried out who's sent him,' Duke Bransian interjected through a flurried torrent of echoes. To Dakar, he added, 'Better tell us how you came to know of this spy.'

  They reached the base of the keep. About to keel over from dizziness, jabbed in prevention by Mearn's knife, Dakar grasped to find a creditable reply. 'I'm a craftsman. Quite often great men neglect to guard their tongues in my presence.'

  'Great fools, more like.' Bransian lowered a mailed shoulder and bashed through the outside door. 'Why warn us? You could as easily have kept silent.'

  'Money,' Dakar managed between his piteous, whistling effort to suck breath. 'Wars play havoc with honest trade. Armourers demand pay, and jewels get requisitioned as taxes.'

  Keldmar bared his teeth. His partial emergence into sunshine kissed his restless steel like the flash of strayed lightning against the deeper shade in the bailey. 'Won't be spit for peace now.' He sounded cheerful. 'Whichever mayor sent this spy has bought himself a thumping bloody fight.'

  Mearn worried the knife against the small of Dakar's back. 'By Ath, you'd better run instead of chatter. Or we won't catch the slinking rat at all.'

  The prisoner had yet to recover his wind. Unable to match the s'Brydionbrothers' long-strided sprint, he bobbed against his bonds like a flounder dragged on a trawl-line, while a dairymaid burdened with pails and settling pans dashed clear of their path in dismay. Bransian kicked through a flock of loose hens and scattered them into squawking flight. Feathers flew like torn leaves in a scirocco. Dakar, flushed purple, inhaled one and sneezed. The damnable red doublet throttled him, armpits to groin, until his guts felt crimped in a barrelhoop. Had Mearn owned a shred of natural pity, he could have used his nasty dagger to slit the back seam and relieve an undue share of human suffering.

  But the s'Brydionwould slacken pace for no man while the secret in their armoury stood in jeopardy.

  The keep
set aside for their weapon-stores loomed above a spiked ring of battlements, its lichened crenellations notched into sky. Panting, limp as sloshed cream in a bowl, Dakar expected to expire of exertion long before his captors could herd him to the top. Even Bransian's ox thews would suffer from the strain to haul him up stairwells like deadweight. Firm in his plan to faint and gain a rest, then slip off the moment he was abandoned, Dakar groaned and lurched to his knees.

  Two pairs of hands latched his armpits like meathooks and slung him wrenchingly onward; apparently Parrien and Keldmar could ignore their bickering differences when presented with sufficient provocation. While a muleteer freighting beer kegs to the lower district market jerked his team short of collision, Mearn's chilling chuckle pierced through the clatter of sliding hooves. 'Now, why should I have a strange feeling this pigeon we've caught isn't quite pleased to come along?'

  Nobody answered. Teeth latched tight in winded misery, propelled in a headlong dash across the noisome runoff from the butcher's alley, hoisted over loose bricks to whacked shins and the howls of the infuriated mason left ankle-deep in the mortar upset from his handcart, Dakar wished the worst of s'Brydionill temper upon the head of Arithon s'Ffalenn.

  Ahead, in a bellow fit to split rock, Duke Bransian questioned the sentries posted by the arched upper postern. Dakar scarcely followed their round of emphatic denial. 'We've seen nothing, my lord Duke. No intruders have passed in our watch.'

  Four stares accusatory enough to scald skin, and a knife on the trembling edge of murder impelled Dakar clear of his muddle. 'The spy's mage-trained,' he managed between gasps. 'He'll have ways to slip past unseen.'

  'Through six guards and twelve locked posterns?' Bransian's brows knotted in fierce disbelief. His pale eyes fastened on Keldmar, who responded and jammed the sword he liked least through his belt.

  Bransian hooked the ring that jangled at his hip, twisted off a key and tossed it into his brother's freed hand. 'The captain on duty is Tharrick. Let him into the keep through the guardroom and take a dozen men armed for skirmish. If the rest of us sally by way of the lower passage, we can flank this spy in the dungeon.'