Warhost of Vastmark

by Janny Wurts

  When Arithon at last set his instrument aside and arose to let himself out, no one stirred to deter him. The music had not lulled Dakar from subterfuge. Bound by knots of cold venom he lacked the subtlety to unwind, he chose to bide his time and revel in his stilled power. The day would arrive when he was not reamed to the marrow over the plight of a dead child. At his leisure, he could unpick his antagonist’s wily nature now the barriers between them were fretted thin. The hour would be carefully chosen, when he became the one to strike and rankle the Shadow Master’s sacrosanct poise.

  The triumph would be sweet, as he mined through defences and exposed the mean motives which had to exist behind Arithon’s deep layers of deceit. On that day, the Fellowship Sorcerers could surely be convinced to release Asandir’s geas of binding. The miserable spellbinder would see himself freed from a service he viciously detested.

  An hour passed before anyone sought to track the bard into the darkness. By then, the moon rode low in the west, a punched disc upon velvet. The stars had spun toward a dawn not far off, and the bowl of the valley lay under the huge silence of an upland Vastmark night. By contrast, the summers were alive with noise, the clicks of insects locked warp through weft with the thrum of swooping nighthawks.

  Winters were ruled by the frost. Against the broadvowelled whine of the winds, the yips of a herd dog after a strayed sheep and the restless bleats of the flock cut the vast air like fine spun scratches in crystal.

  Arithon stood with his back to the tent, his tight-knit shoulders hunched from the wind against the rough slab of a boulder. The miscast healing for Jilieth had torn his heart wide open. He felt as if his bones had been pulled through the skin, then replaced, one by one, in flawed glass. The slightest of taps would see him shatter. The ritual of manners chafed too thin for constraint. His bard’s gift of empathy and the compassion of his forebears had flung him too far out of balance. Should he go back inside to seek shelter, he would find no surcease. The lamentation of the tribesfolk for their lost child held sorrow enough to unstring him.

  If not for the tearing, brittle cold that slowed the dexterity of his fingers, he might have fetched his lyranthe and sought simple solace in melody. Lacking that, he made do with solitude and ached for the companionship of another winter night, spent over the rags of fanned flames and birch embers, brewing tea for his master, Halliron.

  ‘Oh, you’ll know times when the music you bring is a boon to everyone else but yourself,’ the old man had cautioned.

  Now, in full possession of his bardic powers, when Arithon could pick out the chime of the far, distant stars, he missed his mentor the most sorely.

  As many times as he had watched his predecessor play consolation for a death, Halliron had never taught him how to distance the racking grief afterward. No Fellowship Sorcerer lay at hand to advise whether the melancholy which clawed him now was inflicted by lingering exhaustion, or the unwanted burden of his ancestry.

  Whatever knotty tangle he had spun for himself, he was not to have quiet to unravel it. A wind-caught chime of bells invaded his haven, followed by the grate of a footfall on the shale.

  Arithon’s shoulders stiffened in apprehension under his loose linen shirt.

  No need to belabour his predicament, that the gullies were skinned over with glaze ice; as Dalwyn drew closer, she would see well enough. He was already violently shivering.

  ‘I brought your cloak,’ she ventured.

  He faced around, murmured his thanks, and claimed his garment from her, then bowed to inevitable demand. After all, the mourning that simmered in her should not be left to fester in silence.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she asked of the song he had made which precisely recaptured the departed spirit of a child. ‘Jilieth was exactly as you played her to be. How could you ever have known?’

  Arithon’s hands were numb from the cold. He fumbled with the oyster shell clasps to fasten his cloak at the collar, then gave up and settled for folding the fabric tightly around his crossed arms. ‘I saw her die. No one keeps their secrets through a passage such as that.’

  Her eyes regarded him, too wide and dark. Obligated still by his bard’s responsibility as well as the onus of being the bearer of ill news, Arithon sensed a desperation in her that went beyond a mere loss.

  As though attuned to the care in his listening presence, Dalwyn snapped all at once, like a stick bent back under pressure. ‘I tried so very hard to restrain that child! But ever since she lost her mother, no one could make her hear sense.’

  Arithon’s response was pure reflex. He unfurled his cloak in a driven, fast movement and caught her into his embrace. The scratch of the wool he drew over her shoulders smelled of gorse and sea salt; of the herbal compresses he had made to treat Ghedair and faintly, of the lye soap he had last used for shaving. While Dalwyn dissolved into racking, harsh tears, he cradled her against his shirt.

  Her warmth became an unpleasant reminder of how chilled he was, and how vulnerable. No matter how thin the ground he trod himself, the forced gifts of royal inheritance would not allow him to pull back; and so he did not try to unstring her remorse, but said only, ‘I know the girl was headstrong. Not even my music could hold her.’

  ‘Why should a man of your talent be wandering these hills?’ Dalwyn raised her chin to the chink of a bell as her braid slipped over his elbow. ‘Who are you? Why did you come here?’

  ‘Athera’s new Masterbard, and as you see, scarcely experienced with the arts that go with the title. I came for personal interests.’ His fingers burrowed under the hair at her nape, an instinctive gesture to ease the cold. Yet Dalwyn, pressed full-length against him, could scarcely suppress the light, startled tension that wound through her frame as she reacted in female awareness.

  Underneath her sheep-smelling woollens, she had a clean-limbed, athletic firmness that reminded him sharply of Elaira. Scorched through by unexpected desire, then a pain of loss so intense he could only gasp, he could do nothing to spare Dalwyn from the effort that followed, as he forced back his feeling and denied his response to crush her more tightly against him.

  ‘You have no wife,’ she whispered into the hollow of his throat. Her braid draped across his wrist and forearm, distinct as a brand against his skin.

  ‘No.’ He disengaged her hair in retreat to a petulant plink of disturbed bronze. ‘Don’t say any more.’

  But his shaken, rough whisper unveiled too much. All the sorrow that burdened him since the denial of his love; the humiliation and fear he carried from the raid at Minderl Bay, patched overtop of the abiding hurt which harrowed him still, for the cost exacted in guilt that left him deprived of his mage-sight. Never whole since Tal Quorin, he felt set under siege. Tonight’s effort to spare Jilieth had left him worn down and raggedly exposed.

  He had small will to trample down his response to Dalwyn’s need for human warmth.

  His hesitation warned her as he groped for the strength to let her down. A sob of sheer misery ripped from her. ‘Damn you to Sithaer, if you knew I was nandir, why ever did you touch me to begin with?’

  The term was not familiar; Arithon’s brows drew down in perplexity as his masterbard’s lore fell short. The closest equivalent in old-style Paravian translated to mean ‘without’. He dared not ask her to interpret; before Dalwyn’s baffling onslaught of pain, a wrongly put question could wound. He negated her rage in the only way possible: tightened his grip in helpless, trapped sympathy and soothed the belled end of her braid.

  The bronze gave off metallic shimmers of sound as she yanked the hair from his fingers, then hurled her fury into his teeth in a burst of embittered loneliness. ‘That means barren.’ Dalwyn shook the braid to a stinging clash of bells. ‘That’s what these are: a warning. Our tribes hold that to touch a woman who cannot bear is to curse a man’s sons to sour luck. But I thought you valley folk believed differently.’

  ‘We do.’ Arithon peeled her hard fingers off her honey hair, then snapped the yarn ties in one pull. He dr
opped the bells, squelched them in the frost-rimed grass underfoot, and feathered her plait loose between his fingers. ‘Whether you can bear children means nothing to me or the offspring I don’t have.’ Since the tremble in his touch betrayed his desire, she deserved the bared shreds of his honesty.

  ‘You should know. If I took you in my arms to offer comfort, I admit my mistake. You are comely enough to arouse, but it is another woman’s face that I see, and another’s love I bear in my heart.’

  Dalwyn gave a high, wild laugh for the flood of relief that washed through her. ‘Is that all? Why is your lady not with you?’

  ‘She can never be.’ Arithon released her then, his face turned unseeing toward the flinty wall of the boulder. ‘She took vows, you see. Her life is already dedicated as a Koriani enchantress.’

  Against the comprehending pity that yawned into silence between them, he changed the subject. ‘How can you be sure you are barren?’

  Dalwyn stripped the bells from her other braid and let the wind tug that one loose also. ‘Ah well. Does it matter? Tribal law on the subject is most strict.’ Stiffened to wry strength by his private admission, she spoke in bald terms of her plight. ‘After marriage, if a woman fails to conceive within two years and a day, she may choose five partners to share her bed. Each lies with her for the span of four seasons. If she bears to none inside that given time, she wears the bells for the rest of her life.’ Her bravado wavered as she finished, ‘Jilieth was the daughter I can never have. There are no words to repay what you and Dakar tried to do for her.’

  Arithon let her come as she took a step forward, her hair fanned in waves across her shoulders and hood, spun silk against the coarse cloth. He regarded her face, fine-chiselled from hunger, and tipped up in entreaty, tinselled in tear tracks by moonlight. A queer thrill shocked through him, born out of clear truth and empathy. He saw that this once, he might indulge his raw need, and answer hers with the gift of his presence.

  She was barren and had lost an irreplaceable child; and her woman’s hurt ached for the ease of giving comfort forbidden within the circle of her people.

  What else could he do but gather her in and nestle a sigh against the soft weave of her crown.

  Her hands crept up and clasped behind his neck. As she began to worry out his harsh knots of tension, she murmured against the hollow of his throat. ‘For what you have done for Ghedair, and for the sake of Jilieth’s memory, I beg that you share what you know of your beloved. Can you bring yourself ease, I don’t mind if you whisper every detail you remember of her face. On the contrary, the night is most cold and sad. I believe we should be doing ourselves a kindness.’

  Crossroads

  The day after his failed inquiry at Ath’s hostel, Lysaer s’Ilessid releases Mearn’s galleys to begin thorough search of the coastline, then moves his camp from Merior to Southshire, to winter until the larger body of his troops can complete their march to rejoin him; and his nettled thoughts circle, that since his encounter with the adepts, the threat he has dedicated himself to eradicate will but grow the more dangerously entrenched through the wait while his war host musters …

  Far north, as the sun warms the ice on Avenor’s brick battlements, Princess Talith packs her trunks and bullies her captain-at-arms to provide her a small escort, her wish to embark on a trader southbound across stormy Westland waters, and her intent to rejoin her royal husband …

  In the water-worn cave of sandstone that serves as his winter headquarters, Erlien, caithdein of Shand, tosses aside a rolled sheaf of charts; over the scraping hiss as the parchment unfurls, he informs the man and the widow sent from Merior by the uncanny guidance of Ath’s Brotherhood, ‘Yes, my scouts can take you to Arithon, though I don’t mind saying straight. I dislike your mistrust of him. His integrity is sound. But if the adepts saw fit to act for you, how can I shirk my part …?’

  IV. THIRD INFAMY

  After the horror of the wyvern attack, Arithon recovered his aplomb in snapping fast form, his vicious verbal style grown the more barbed to drive back Dakar’s encroachment on his privacy. Whether he conspired in secret toward some grand, subtle subterfuge became a point of useless conjecture. He charted his days with the erratic abandon of a swallow flying zigzags, and through the course of three weeks made social acquaintance with half the tribes in Vastmark. To the Mad Prophet’s chagrin, his sojourn into obscurity included backbreaking labour as he helped work their vast flocks of sheep.

  Fed up with the rancid stink of wool beneath his nails, and strenuous hikes in thin air, Dakar might have wavered in his resolve not to drink. Except the herdsmen stocked no beer or whisky. Unhappy past experience kept him sober. The tribes brewed a spirit of unparalleled potency, a noisome, sticky liquid hoarded in leather flasks, fermented from wild honey and soured goat’s milk.

  There were reasons why the barren slopes of Vastmark were shunned by travellers and trade. A place of wind-burnished scree and frost-chiselled peaks, the site was only hospitable to wyverns and hawks, without roads or taverns or post stables. Since the nearest house of refined entertainments lay eighty leagues distant in Forthmark, the Mad Prophet dreamed at night of sweet-burning incense, and rouged doxies lounging in silk. By day, he bored himself silly, eating mutton stew and docking lambs’ tails and enduring exhaustive rounds of archery.

  By maddening contrast, the Prince of Rathain embraced such bucolic splendour as if he had worn greasy woollens all his life.

  Wet snowfall and sheep leavings made a troublesome mix for a man in need of new boots. Dakar spent sullen hours by lamplight patching rotted leather and burst toe seams, while Arithon reeled out some vengefully cheerful dance tune from the strings of his lyranthe.

  More clannishly isolate than the fishing enclave at Merior, and more forthright with their trust, Vastmark tribesfolk saw no harm in the Shadow Master’s dry wit. They laughed when he bungled with the dogs and the sheep; their women chaffed him when he tangled the rough yarn they made with drop spindles while the talk circled the fires after dusk. His skill at the butts earned no chuckles at all, but only their sharp-eyed respect. For them, the bow was survival. Few outsiders could best their accuracy, acquired through lifelong practice.

  ‘If they were sporting enough to make wagers, we could win ourselves a fortune in fleece,’ Dakar said in ruffled petulance as they made breathless crossing over a ridge between settlements. ‘By the tone of their boasting, a man would think nobody beyond these mountains had ever in his life touched a bow.’

  Arithon paid no heed to the jaundiced glare sent his way.

  ‘We’re not staying on through the lambing season,’ Dakar nattered on in hopeful, one-sided conversation. ‘The herdsmen sleep in the meadows then. It’s a sure-fire way to catch aches in the joints, with the ice still fast in the ground.’

  The tail of Dakar’s thought was too bold to gripe out loud: that further assignations with the belled woman, Dalwyn, were going to be difficult to conduct with any decency. The liaison flouted tribal mores on fertility and no elder would condone the ill chance of inviting a bane on the flocks.

  On douce behaviour for the first time since puberty, the Mad Prophet gloated over each gleaned sign that his quips pricked Arithon to discomfort. For a man of self-contained habits, the close presence of an inimical observer had to rub like salt in a blister.

  No clear purpose suggested why the Master of Shadow should bury himself in tribal hospitality or linger in these stony plateaus tending sheep. The inhabitants led lives too straightforward for subterfuge. Their poor tents and their half-starving children offered no prospects for wealth. Dakar chewed his lip and pondered afresh whether Arithon might immerse himself in directionless pursuits as a smokescreen. All the best theories led nowhere. Hobnobbing with shepherds would not stop Lysaer’s war host. Nor would killing work defer the day of reckoning when the spellbinder bound to him by Asandir’s will at last came to expose the deceit at the root of his affairs.

  Yet the weeks stretched into a month. As
the sun rode higher and brought thaw to the south slopes, and springs loosened into freshets that ran loud beneath the ice, balked logic fretted itself thin. Dakar lay awake at night on a bed of rancid sheepskins, listening as the Masterbard talked for hours, and the crawling flare of tallow dips lit circles of herdsmen and elders. A frisson of chill dogged the Mad Prophet’s thoughts. It was easy to forget the plot he embarked on was dangerous: Arithon s’Ffalenn was many things, but never before this a man to shrink from confrontation.

  Just when Dakar despaired of getting free before the flocks were driven to higher pastures, Arithon announced his intent to depart. The shepherds decided his send-off deserved a celebration. Since notice came too late to hoard brush for a bonfire, every herdsman felt moved to ransack his family tent and donate a flask of strong drink.

  Dakar reaffirmed the fact he found the taste intolerable. ‘Worse than white lye. Reams a channel from your gullet straight through to your liver. I’ve knocked myself down on that stuff before. You’d have to be daft to do it twice. Trust me. You’ll bear the grandmother of all hurts come the morning.’

  Reclined and obliviously comfortable amid the flea-scratching pack of huge shepherd dogs, Arithon regarded him and laughed. He wore a tribal shirt, patched at the elbows and none too clean, and if he had shaved the past dawn, his hair ran wild for want of cutting. Raffish and bright-eyed, he relished another swig and passed the liquor flask on to the next herdsman. The next thing he said folded everyone else into shrieking fits of mirth.

  Convinced some ugly joke had been cracked at his expense, Dakar stalked off, disgusted.