TWOLAS - 02 - The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  'You have to credit our spellbinder for originality.' Arithon pulled out the only available stool for her, then settled himself on an emptied beer keg. 'Dakar set all the windows in the roof.'

  Elaira sat. Her fine linen skirt rasped on the sawgrained wood of the bracing, and her foot bumped an ill-fitted peg. The room's split personality haunted: ramshackle joinery at silent war with the lone, level trestle, spread with parchments lined with fine chalk. Sketched in a hand unmistakably Arithon's lay the plans of his thirty-foot sloop.

  'Best keep your prophet's hands off the shipbuilding,' Elaira remarked with a dry smile.

  Arithon laughed. 'The twins won't let him come near. "Keep your fat hands off, y'old drunk!"' His incisive imitation of childish scorn cut off in sudden sobriety. 'Enchantress. Koriani. How did you find me?'

  Denied the easy, instinctive rapport of their first meeting, Elaira stayed still enough to mark the moisture that ticked off her soaked hem. She matched his gaze and gauged his reserve through her arts; and deduction implied the question pertained more to Lysaer s'Ilessid and his massed armies than to her, or any meddling of her order. 'I think,' she said, husky, 'you could guess.' Jaelot,' he surmised. Green eyes that threatened to dissect her heart like sharp knives turned down and fixed on the hands which had wrought a great and joyous miracle on the solstice: an artist's unfettered celebration of beauty that a fate cursed by geas had recast to invite his downfall.

  His guilt filled an unpleasant interval, that his passion for music had led him to careless betrayal of the very foundation of his principles. Then he said, 'Are you here to help or to hinder?'

  Elaira swallowed set back by his directness. 'You don't know?'

  That made him look up, pitched taut with an anger so virulent, she lost any footing to fathom its origin. 'What should I know?' His sarcasm raked her. 'Hasn't your order's prying interest in my affairs unearthed enough sorry facts?'

  'I couldn't guess, not being privy to the secrets of the Senior Circle,' Elaira said, too wise to give ground to his temper. Her trained eye had caught the minute change in tension as he braced for her condemnation.

  When she gave no reaction, he drew breath to say something less forgivable.

  But the wry, patient tilt to her eyebrows set him back, and the malice he used to defend his deepest feelings bled away. His attention combed over all of her then, from the heavy auburn hair spilled loose from the braid that constrained its unruly fall, to the three coins for luck a thief's superstition made her sew to the turnedback lining of her cuff, to the silly wet drape of her hem. Her eyes in the gloom were soft opal and mystery, and firmly determined in kindness.

  Disarmed, he laughed with the warmth she remembered. 'You won't be put off through ill manners, I see.' The compassion that kept his fate hurtful rasped through. 'I'm still in your debt for past service, but Dakar is forced company enough. Can you respect my flawed intentions and leave Merior?'

  'That's what you want?' Elaira asked, amazed to find herself steady. Let him answer, and she would have excuse to evade the entrapment set by Sethvir's prophecy and Morriel's invidious plots.

  'What I want hasn't merited much priority.' Arithon pushed to his feet. A gust raked the shed; the mirrored liquid in the pans shattered into rings touched off by fallen droplets. Outside, the plane lay silent, the twins fled off home as a barrage of fresh rain pocked the gapped shakes of the roof. 'Stay if you wish. I can't stop you. Once the sloop's fitted out, I will sail.'

  Fretted by currents too dreadful to fathom, he paced, his quick energy a challenge: should her Koriani arts attempt to finger the changes Desh-thiere's works and a masterbard's gifts had stamped in him, the insight was not offered freely.

  Elaira arose. On parting she gave him the two truths she had unentangled in her oathbound obligations: 'Merior has no one trained in herbals and healing. And the prophet you keep in your company would as soon put a knife in your ribs as offer you comfort or friendship.'

  That evening, tied by Morriel's immutable will, she unpacked her jars and her remedies and arranged room and rent for an extended stay.

  Dakar passed out senseless on the boarding house porch, while the fishermen who crossed the shell flats on return from their dories were arrested by a cascade of lyranthe notes. The melodies burned like sparks through the dusk, by turns exalted to a tingling joy, or else plangent with a sorrow to uproot the heartstrings and make the very stars seem to shimmer through the clouds like strewn tears.

  Dispatch

  Captain Mayor Pesquil, commander of the northern league of headhunters, straightened up from his examination, knee-deep in grass rimed with frost. His expression stayed as closed as a steel trap as he surveyed the site of the latest massacre. The dead did not reek any less in the cold, nor for having been chewed on by predators. Neither was Pesquil inclined to waste effort in fits of useless swearing. 'This was barbarian work, for a surety,' he announced. Bland as a bust in a tea room, he regarded the hands left befouled from close-up study of corrupt flesh.

  The green-faced officer at his side swallowed noisily. 'But the wagons weren't robbed! Why should clan reivers slaughter bound men, then leave fine southland silks behind to moulder?'

  Pesquil's thin lips curled, dimpling the scars left gouged in his cheeks from a childhood infection of the pox. 'I recognize the knife work. You would as well, were you seasoned enough to have seen the barbarian brats under Arithon's command slitting the throats of our wounded beside the Tal Quorin.'

  Folded over by involuntary reaction, the city garrison officer crouched beneath the turned leaves of a hazel bush to retch.

  The headhunter captain's dry scorn pursued him. 'Better puke fast and be done. You're riding at once for Etarra.' A leathery, thin figure in a dust-drab surcoat, Pesquil moved off to mete out a round of brisk orders.

  His personal troop would remain and mount a stiff guard on the road, while the division of city garrison split off from patrol and returned at speed to the Mayor of the Northern Reaches.

  Propped back erect, blanched and shaking, the officer wiped his chin and waved toward the corpses rowed in bound bundles beyond the angular, rib-splayed skeletons of oxen still yoked in the mould-furred leather of rotting harness. 'My Lord, before we ride out, surely we should spare an hour and see the fallen are decently burned.'

  Paused beside his stocky, brush-scarred gelding, Pesquil reached for his saddlepack and freed a waterskin from its hide lacing. He yanked out the stopper with his teeth. While the officer attended him, diffident, he used the last, warm dregs to sluice the corruption from his fingers. At length, around the plug of moist cork, his thin lips pulled back in conclusion. 'Let the bodies stay as they lie.'

  Not too shaken to show outrage, the officer gathered himself. 'But -'

  Pesquil spun about, killed refutation with a glare like sheared iron, then ejected the cork into a horny palm. 'I said let them lie.' Unhurried, but efficient, he recapped the flask, gouged a shred of gristle from a thumbnail, then reached beneath his mail to blot his damp knuckles on his gambeson. 'Tactics before sentiment, always. I don't wish Red-beard's Companions warned off by any smoke. Let his barbarians stay encamped in this region, unaware. And when they raid again, we'll be prepared for them. My men will gain the bounties they merit. Better than last rites that yon murdered bones have no use for, your victims will be granted due vengeance.'

  Through narrowed, joyless eyes, Pesquil watched the shaken officer hasten to rejoin his troop. Then he set his boot in the stirrup, mounted, and dug in spurs and bit to rein his mount around and ride out. The time had come to act on his gnawing suspicion, that these late bloody raids were not done for spite, nor for revenge. In the unerring instinct that had won him his commission, the headhunter commander sensed this slaughtered caravan lay connected with the Shadow Master.

  * * *

  A fortnight later, the stench of corrupt flesh a memory that rankled no less, Captain Mayor Pesquil cast his jaundiced regard on the gold-bordered curtains, the ebony
and ivory inlaid footstools, and a sumptuous tasselled carpet which silenced his predatory tread, and clashed in evil virulence against green and purple tiles of fired enamel. The tastes of the city seneschal were typically Etarran. The embers in the hearth discharged enough heat to wilt a hothouse flower.

  Snake-still in his formal black and white surcoat and silver gauntlets, Pesquil parked his lean length before a massive, carved desk. He worked his jaw muscles in irritation as the bootlicking little secretary scurried to fetch the mayor's seneschal from his nap.

  The courtesy expected as that personage appeared, yawning and straightening his furred brocades and gold chains, was no custom Pesquil subscribed to. No bow did he give, no preamble in flowery language; he scorned men of pedigree and privilege as naturally as he hated barbarians.

  He presented his case with the ripping flat brusqueness of a slap dealt to shame an incompetent. When was the last time this city received any courier or message from the southcoast?'

  The city's chubby seneschal crumpled into his upholstered chair. A florid man with watery eyes, he rearranged his feathered hat, turned his knuckles to admire the sparkle of his rings, and raised his pencilled black eyebrows. He took his time answering; men arrived without appointment to make demands with crude manners well deserved to wait upon his pleasure. 'Summer, I should think. Why care?'

  Pesquil clamped his fists in forbearance. 'Lord Commander Harridene's still out on campaign?' A drawn pause; a languid nod; Pesquil's next question rapped back fast as a ricochet. 'Who's acting captain of the garrison?'

  Etarra's seneschal stiffened his spine, disdainful. 'You scarcely needed to disturb me to ask what any servant could tell you.'

  A moment of locked wills, while bleak, cold black eyes stared down the pompous official. At length the seneschal blotted moisture from his fashionablypowdered cheeks and gave in. 'Gharmag's sick with the cough. His senior staff sergeant holds the temporary command.'

  Another pale-cheeked puppy with pedigree whose father deemed he needed hardening, Pesquil remembered. No twitch of disgust crossed the raised bones of his features. Etarra's army had lost more than a skilled captain with Gnudsog's death in Strakewood; a strategist of unrefined tastes and no pretensions, he had at least kept a finger on the pulse of rumour in the drovers' dives and taverns.

  'Let me tell you what I learned in one hour from four caravan guards just in from North Ward,' Pesquil said. The seneschal bristled. 'But this is outrageous! To barge in and berate me for not consorting with riff-raff in the streets. For your insolence, I should demand a review of your competence.'

  'Try.' Pesquil bared yellowed teeth, his mailed fist at ease on the sword responsible for harvesting more clan scalps than any other blade in the northern reaches. 'This city's ignorant riff-raff, as you name them, have word of the Master of Shadow. They bandy tales in our taverns that every misbegotten sailor's told his grandmother since the traders' galleys berthed in winter dry dock!'

  The overbred smirk on the seneschal's face dissolved like wax left near a fire. 'What?'

  'On the night of summer solstice, the city of Jaelot was half torn to wreckage by a sorcerer who lived there for months in disguise, but left with black hair and green eyes.' Unmoved by the seneschal's pasty-faced shock, Pesquil inflected his next lines like the cut and riposte of lethal steel. 'Alestron, downcoast, suffered an explosion inside a locked armoury that killed seven men. Although the s'Brydion duke is no fool, and his best troops combed the countryside for a fugitive who bore the selfsame description, no culprit was found. Arithon s'Ffalenn has come out of hiding in Melhalla. If the guild minister's council has not paused to wonder, or take steps to see why no messengers came through from that region, somebody had better act now. Or I'll personally roust Lord Mayor Morfett away from counting jewels for his daughter's trousseau over this.'

  'Right away, right away!' The seneschal flurried a hand to dispatch his limp secretary on the errand.

  Pesquil watched the agitated hurry raised by his news in stone-faced, scalding ill-humour. Braced for days of political manoeuvring while Etarra's beribboned city governance primed in agitation to act, he decided, coldnerved, that he would arrange to carry the dispatches sent to Avenor himself. A hand-picked contingent of his headhunters would ensure information reached Prince Lysaer with all speed.

  Shakedown

  On the morn that Pesquil's company embarked from Etarra under dismal, sleeting skies for their arduous winter journey to Avenor, balmy southern winds flapped the pennons of a newly-launched sloop, moored amid a damascened circle of reflection in the distant, turquoise waters of Merior. The Shadow Master whose misdeeds were named in Mayor Morfett's sealed dispatches scarcely looked the mage-trained minion of evil. Clad in a plain linen shirt and loose trousers, he carried no weapon beyond a rigging knife. The tanned hands that drove the sweeping stroke of his oars as he rowed the sloop's tender ashore were innocent of spells or subterfuge.

  Certainly no villager knew him for the author of uncivil deeds as he leapt barefoot into the shallows, beached his dory, and strode through the dunes and shoulder-high oat grass to call at the whitewashed cottage of Mistress Jinesse. Two fishermen who idled on shore leave grinned in lewd interest, for the widow's battened windows gave clear indication that she wished no truck with any visitor.

  Arithon s'Ffalenn stood braced in the sun-washed sand of her yard, a crooked grin on his lips. Then he drew his rigging knife, pried the blade between the shutters, and slit the loop of cord that hooked the inside fastening pegs. As the loosened panels creaked wide, he laid a hand flat on the sill, saluted the watchers, and neatly vaulted through.

  A dauntless shriek and a fishwife's imprecations drifted through the cracked boards. A mockingbird settled on the rooftree startled in a flash of barred wings. Then the bolt grated back and the widow's painted door crashed open, not to eject an impecunious male caller, but to liberate her towheaded twins, who bounded through, yelling their excitement, an overstuffed duffel slung between them. The panel flapped agape in the seabreeze. Something suspiciously like crockery crashed and broke against an inside wall. Moments later, Arithon emerged, the widow held in tow by her wrists.

  'Really!' She tried to plant her feet, overbalanced, and stumbled into him.

  Not about to waste the opportunity, Arithon grinned and snaked an arm around her waist. She pounded his shoulder with the fist just freed, and fingers pulled untimely from the mixing of bread dough shed small puffs of blown flour.

  Jinesse shrieked, 'It's the woman who brews simples you should be dragging to your lair, not I, and certainly not my two children!'

  'I do have nicer manners than to haul you unwilling to the shell flats,' Arithon admonished. His smile only widened, and she realized: they were bound due east for the beach. She turned her red face, and through disarranged hair, saw the little sloop perched like a gull on jewelled waters.

  Her cheeks drained to ghastly white. 'Fiends and devils take your interfering spirit. I don't like boats. Let me be.'

  'Quite the contrary,' Arithon demurred, his smooth voice jarred by her struggles, 'I've decided the first lady to board Talliarthe should be one afraid of the sea.'

  Jinesse howled. 'You named your blighted vessel Talliarthe!' Her terror now spurred by indignation, she emphasized with a chop that glanced scatheless off the hard-knit muscles of his chest. 'How fitting!'

  'Well, yes,' said Arithon, agreeably pleased; his sloop's namesake was the legendary sea sprite reputed to spirit off maidens who wandered inside the tidemark. 'Don't be angry. Your girl Feylind made the suggestion.' Staggered as a woman two fingers taller than his height thrashed and battered at his composure, he tucked his chin, changed grip, and hoisted.

  Jinesse gave a pealing yell that all but deafened his right ear, then found herself tossed belly-down over his shoulder. A flock of feeding rails scattered and took wing like thrown birch chips. The twins ignored her cries and launched the dory, while Arithon made a gallant's apology and waded undaunted th
rough the surf.

  'You know I don't swim!' The widow's plea cut off on a racked jolt of breath as he ducked. The horizon spun through a sickening circle. Through the dishevelled locks ripped loose from lost pins, Jinesse saw herself deposited with the duffel on the stem seat. Panic overwhelmed her. She grabbed an oar and slashed to beat off her kidnapper, now waist-deep in green water with both hands clamped on the thwart to hold the dory against an onrushing comber.

  Arithon dodged the whistling attack. The oar blade smacked short in necklaced foam. Gouged spray sheeted skyward and left him drenched and still laughing. 'Don't say,' he gasped, breathless, 'if you could swim, you'd jump ship. It's Ath's own blessing you don't.'

  Jinesse spat out the taste of brine. She mopped a plastered swathe of hair from her neck, her glare fully spoiled by the trickling sting of saltwater. Then his firm push shot the dory ahead through the froth, and fright ripped a scream from her throat.

  Arithon breasted the crest. Sleeked in wet clothes and lean as an otter, he vaulted the gunwale. Diamond streams of runoff spattered from his hair, no impediment as he twisted his purloined loom out of the widow's locked grasp. While shrieks that would credit a wild harpy shredded the mid-morning quiet, he proceeded with his abduction. Watching from shore, Merior's idle villagers absorbed every nuance and chuckled theme selves into stitches.

  'Well, it's fitting!' declared the boarding house landlady, drawn to her porch with her broom still in hand to oversee the outcome of the fracas. 'That Jinesse has been too straitlaced for health since the sea took her husband. Yon's a comely enough young man, for an outsider. His company just might lend a bloom to her cheeks. Mayhap then she'll stop fussing. To hear her carry on, you'd swear those poor twins were like to drown in Garth's pond!'