‘Yes,’ he said, but his eyes slid away to look at his mother. She was staring at the ground, her arms wrapped round herself as hard shivers racked her too-thin body.
‘We go on,’ In Su said with unusual decisiveness. ‘Behind we know what waits. Ahead?’ He shrugged.
The wagon creaked as it moved and the horse balked at the slightest obstacle. It was barely quicker than walking and certainly more conspicuous, but the wooden walls gave Nethmi the illusion of protection and of home.
The first day they journeyed across the plain they saw nothing but rabbits. In Su said that a fire was too great a risk, even in daytime. Jinn set his traps all the same, and when he started a blaze to cook the meat the tribesman stared disapprovingly but didn’t try to stop him. Nethmi hadn’t realised how ravenous she was until he handed her a roasted haunch. The fat scalded her fingers as it trickled through them but it didn’t slow down her eating. She tore the flesh from the small bones and smiled at Jinn when she was done.
He didn’t smile back. He’d barely spoken all day and he quickly disappeared with a second rabbit to take to his mother, who’d stayed wrapped up in the back of the wagon since dawn.
The next day they passed a copse of apple trees and Jinn made them halt so he could shinny up the broadest. She thought he might be looking for fruit, though it was too early in the season, but when he came down he was clutching only a narrow branch. He whittled it as he walked, his small fingers skilful. She assumed he meant to make more arrows for In Su, but gradually she recognised the figure he was carving into the wood.
‘The rune of safety,’ she said.
He smiled for the first time all day. ‘That’s right. Olufemi taught me how to shape it. She’s a mage, like I said. Reckon it can’t do any harm to get us a little extra help.’
‘The runes don’t work,’ she told him.
‘Of course the runes have power. Why else would the mages use them?’
‘My father thought the same, back when he was fighting his campaign in the Black Heights. He thought the rune of warmth might help to keep his soldiers safe, but he wasn’t a man to take anything on trust.’ She smiled, remembering the way he’d held her in his arms as he’d carved the runes himself. ‘He ordered knives marked with the rune of sharpness and compared them with the rest. They all cut just the same. Then he tested a storebox marked with freshness against an unmarked one and the food rotted in both. There was no difference.’
‘That’s because your papa made the runes. He didn’t know how to put the power in them. What the mages do is different.’
‘He thought that too, so he tested mage-made knives and tinderboxes and clothes against his own smith’s, and the result was just the same. The runes have no power. No doubt the mages claim they do to gain a higher price for their goods.’
When he slapped her, it was such a shock she laughed, and so he slapped her again. ‘You’re lying! You’re a liar!’ He glared at her for a moment and then turned and ran until his small form was lost in the tall grass.
She looked in consternation at In Su, hoping to understand what she’d said that was so wrong.
‘The moon made the runes,’ the tribesman said gravely. ‘You insult his god.’
‘His god? I thought you worshipped the moon too. If he’s not your god now, why did you come with us and leave your people behind?’
He looked away, a delicate red colouring his cheeks. ‘You needed me, lady. You would die without me.’
The boy returned later in the day and slipped straight into the wagon to sit beside his mother. The next morning, neither of them emerged. Nethmi was unsure what to do, but In Su hitched the decrepit horse to the shabby wagon as if nothing was amiss, and when he led the beast on she followed.
She wasn’t sure at first what she was hearing, but after a while she could no longer deny that the sound emerging from the wagon was sobs. In Su looked across at her, but why was their sorrow her problem? What did she know about crying children? She owed Jinn nothing – if it weren’t for him, she’d still be safe in Winter’s Hammer. In Su kept on looking at her, though, and after a while she gave in and pulled herself inside the wagon.
Jinn was turned away from her, his back hunched, round raised knees as he sat beside his mother. Her face was waxy pale and sheened with a sick sweat. It tangled her brown hair into knots and her body shivered convulsively with every breath. When Nethmi felt her forehead she expected heat and instead found icy cold. There was the residue of vomit around Vordanna’s mouth and the whites of her eyes were yellow.
Nethmi touched Jinn’s shoulder and his eyes met hers for a moment before flicking away. ‘Get out,’ he said, his voice hoarse from crying. ‘I didn’t invite you in.’
‘I don’t need your invitation. This is no more your wagon than mine.’ He glared at her, but she shook her head impatiently at him. ‘There’s no use trying to keep secrets among us. We’re bound too tightly to each other by what we’ve done. Tell me what’s wrong with her.’
His expression was mulish and she wasn’t sure her words had impressed him, but finally he said, ‘It’s not her fault. The Rah do like the mages, they feed their slaves bliss to keep them happy and obliging. When her master planted me inside her she still had enough will left to escape before he turned me into another slave. She couldn’t escape the bliss, though. Olufemi gives us a yellow powder that makes the craving go away, but since we got taken prisoner it’s all gone. Now Mamma’s dying for lack of it.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged. ‘Ain’t no point dwelling on the past.’
‘I’m also sorry that I offended you yesterday. I know the moon god is important to you. What I said about the runes … I’m probably wrong.’
‘But you ain’t,’ he said with sudden vehemence. ‘It’s all a crock. The runes have got no power, and the moon ain’t nothing but a light in the sky. Everything I was ever told and everything I ever told anyone else is a lie.’
‘Did you lie to me?’ she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer.
His eyes slid away from hers to rest on his mother’s pale face. ‘People want to believe and I tell ’em what they want to hear.’
‘But you spoke about Yron’s heir, and he’s real enough. He’s been found, or at least the lost prince of Ashanesland has.’
‘But I never knew it. I never felt it. All my life, Olufemi and Mamma told me I had some special link to him and I believed them. They played me for a cully and I didn’t even see it.’
‘Why would your mother deceive you?’
‘The greatest liar is the one who believes his own lies. I was so sure the moon god needed me, it didn’t matter what I said to get my own way. I told you things would get better because I could see your husband didn’t treat you right. We needed help escaping, so I told poor In Su that the moon god wanted him to help you. Any idiot could see what stirred in him when he looked at you. I sold you both a gilded coin and now I need it to be true gold. Because if the moon god ain’t real, who’ll save Mamma?’
‘She will not die,’ In Su said and they both turned, startled, to see him standing in the entrance.
‘How long …?’ Nethmi began, but his face had always been open and it showed that he’d heard everything that mattered. ‘How can she be saved?’ she asked instead.
He crouched beside the sick woman, stroking her filthy hair back from her face and cupping her cheek in his palm. ‘She is very sick, but Eom medicine can help. It is like bliss, but not so wicked. It will keep her well if she takes it every day.’
‘The Eom?’ Jinn asked. ‘They don’t let strangers into their lands. Not even Smiler’s Fair.’
‘The Spiral, north by the Moon Forest. The Eom go to trade there with the tribes and the folk. You will find the medicine there.’
‘But how do you know about this?’ Nethmi asked.
In Su looked down at his nails, suddenly bashful. ‘Before I was called to Winter’s Hammer, I wished to be a healer. My sister taught
me these things.’
‘We’ll go to the Spiral then,’ Jinn said. ‘It’s a good long way from Ashanesland, as safe as you can get on the plains. Maybe you can go and live in the Moon Forest among the folk and the monsters. Thank you, In Su.’
The tribesman nodded, unsmiling, and left the wagon as quietly as he’d entered it.
They turned north. Jinn stayed inside the wagon with his mother, and Nethmi walked beside In Su as he led the horse. It was strange. She’d always known that he felt more for her than her husband’s guardsman should. She’d used it herself, just as Jinn had, to get what she wanted. But hearing it spoken aloud and not denied changed things. She had begun to find her eyes drawn to him, to the shape of him, in a way that made her flush. They travelled in an awkward silence.
The plains yielded little in the way of landmarks to distract them. They crossed a shallow stream, wound through a copse of willows drinking the water with their roots and crested a small rise, the only break in the flatness of the landscape. Its sides were so perfectly smooth and its top so flat she wondered if men had made it.
As the sun crested its own midday rise, she noticed something building in the west. At first she thought it was another mountain range, its top lost in clouds. But she soon realised that no mountain moved closer so quickly. And the colour, that pale yellow …
‘It’s sand,’ she said to In Su. ‘A cloud of sand.’
‘Yes, lady. West lies the Rune Waste. I think it reaches out for us.’
She shivered, even though it was an absurd thought. ‘Can we outrun it?’ But that was an absurd question. It had already crossed half the distance between them.
‘We must shelter in the wagon.’ He eyed it uneasily and she shared his doubts. The power required to move that much sand would surely overwhelm the half-wrecked thing. She could feel the wind reaching out for her now, stroking her cheek with rough, grit-filled fingers. The storm filled the entire sky to their left.
‘Jinn!’ she called, already having to shout over the howling air.
His head poked through the wagon’s door, looking puzzled for a second and then horrified. ‘We have to –’ he began, but she never knew what he meant to say next. The horse had also seen the storm and, with an animal’s blind instinct, it bolted.
Nethmi sprinted in pursuit but, old and sway-backed as it was, the horse was terrified and terror made it fast. A few more paces and she tripped and fell to her knees. As In Su hauled her upright, she realised that she could no longer see the wagon. She could barely see her own feet. She had no idea what had tripped her and if she ran on she knew she’d fall again. Besides, there was nowhere to run to. The sandstorm had already reached them.
The sand cut like knives. She felt it score her face before In Su threw his arms round her and pressed her cheek against his chest. The wind was too strong to resist. They ceased trying and fell to their knees, clinging to each other as the storm raged.
19
When he was a young boy, Seonu Sang Ki had still been thin enough to ride a horse. He remembered the way it had felt between his thighs, the painful jarring at the trot and the terror of a full gallop. At this moment, though, he’d have spent all the gold his father Thilak hadn’t quite left him for that skittish white gelding. The hill mammoth smelled appalling, and that was the best thing about it. On even ground, it walked as if each leg was controlled by an entirely different animal. Descending the foothills of the White Heights as it now was, it seemed absolutely intent on shaking its riders from their palanquin. Sang Ki’s men, to his shame, had roped his ungainly body in place, and the thick cords bit into his thighs and chafed the rolls of fat at his waist. Only the reddening sun gave him hope that this day might finally end.
Beside him, his mother seemed supremely unconcerned, sitting upright and unsmiling as if the noble blood ran in her veins and not his. This journey had been her idea. After the mourning period for Lord Thilak had ended and he’d been sent to the bottom of the lake with a ceremonial anchor roped to his foot as befitted a shipborn lord, she’d told her son that if he wanted to hold his father’s lands, he must act and not wait for them to be handed to him. He must petition King Nayan in person.
Sang Ki had never surrendered to false modesty, but he couldn’t help doubting his capacity to charm such a great concession out of a man who would surely rather award the shipfort and its lands to a loyal minion than promote the mixed-blood son of a savage. Still, for the cost of a few bruises it seemed a gamble worth taking. And the search for his father’s murderers had led nowhere. His mother had forbidden him to join the hunt; now at least he might stumble across the trail himself. He’d schooled himself to feel few things strongly, but he burned with the desire to see Lady Nethmi brought to justice. He’d liked her, that was the problem. He’d failed to see what she truly was, for all his trust in his own judgement, and his father had died because of it.
They were only a few hours’ journey now from the pass that led through the mountains, from the grasslands of the tribes to the hills and fields of the Ashane. Sang Ki had never visited his father’s homeland. There had been plans, but the larger he’d grown, the harder he’d resisted making the journey. He liked his comforts – Winter’s Hammer and its library had been all he wanted – but now, to keep his home it seemed he had to leave it. The air was warmer down here, the snow just a dusting like sugar on the cinnamon cakes he loved so much, and his furs were sticky with sweat.
‘It will be worth it,’ his mother said suddenly. She always knew what he was thinking. It had blighted his childhood.
‘Oh, I’m sure it will,’ Sang Ki said breezily. ‘For the moment, however, my poor posterior would beg to differ.’
She didn’t smile. She had little sense of humour, though his father had been able to make her laugh. Sang Ki had often wondered what his father saw in her that made him so devoted, but he’d not had the courage to ask and now he never could.
He’d wanted to bring only a few of their people with him, his closest friends among the Seonu youths of his own age and a few Ashane retainers and armsmen. Here again his mother had overruled him. She’d forbidden him all Seonu followers, though Winter’s Hammer was filled with them. Thilak had long since come to trust them above his own countrymen, but San Ki’s mother felt there was no need to remind the King of his foreign roots. If she’d trusted Sang Ki to handle matters, he was sure she herself would also have remained behind. Instead she’d gathered 200 Ashane armsmen and retainers from the scattered corners of their holding: a suitable retinue for the lord of one of the great shipforts.
The mountains hulked at their back but the path, such as it was, was beginning to level and broaden. It seemed they were finally approaching the pass. A few days’ further riding and they’d be in Ashanesland proper. Sang Ki had heard the country was a riot of green, a garden kingdom, but he couldn’t imagine it. All his life, he’d known only black rocks and white snow and, when it melted, black ash and greyish moss growing above it. Even the hill mammoths lacked the colour of their lowland kin.
He was trying to call to mind the exact text of Canut’s Bestiary of the Mountains when he became aware of the noise ahead of him. His mother rose in the palanquin, gesturing to the leader of Sang Ki’s guard, who drew his men’s mammoths and mules protectively around. The sound, now Sang Ki paid attention to it, was clearly the clatter of a large group of men.
He looked a question to his mother but she shrugged and gestured on. The King’s peace extended the length of the pass and there should be no enemies here. Sang Ki’s heart beat fast all the same and a cold sweat soaked those few areas of his clothing still dry. He’d never cultivated courage as a virtue and it was too late to start now.
When the gulley they were following turned sharply left, the soldiers were suddenly ahead of him and there was no possible escape.
It seemed almost a small army that was gathered between the rock walls of the pass. They were Ashane; that was immediately clear. Most looked like landborn levies, u
narmoured and clutching flint knives or hardwood scythes, but a few were shipfort men armed with metal. They outnumbered Sang Ki’s followers by two to one and their expressions were more curious than hostile as the groups drew closer to one another.
When they were only twenty paces apart, a thin old man stepped forward from among the Ashane, a ragged carrion mount pacing beside him. Sang Ki had never seen one of the creatures in the flesh before – they couldn’t thrive at the altitude of Winter’s Hammer – but he’d studied enough pictures to know this was no bird in its prime. Its beady black eyes looked unlovingly at Sang Ki as he urged his own mount forward.
‘Well met, fellow traveller,’ Sang Ki said expansively. His mother stiffened. She understood politics but not people. One never impressed the powerful with one’s humility. At least, not until after one had firmly established one’s own strength.
The carrion rider raised an eyebrow, making no gesture of respect but signalling his men to no violence, either. ‘Greetings, in King Nayan’s name.’
Neither group moved. There was only the jingle of harness, the huffing of the horses and the strange high hoots of the mammoths. Clearly, more would be required. ‘I am Seonu Sang Ki, son of Lord Thilak of Winter’s Hammer, may the Five remember him kindly. And you, sir?’
The carrion rider’s tension seemed little abated, but at least now he bowed. His cloak swirled behind him in blue and green waves. ‘I am Gurjot, formerly of Ashfall. Our king’s carrion rider once, and now his justice.’
Well, that explained the state of his bird, retired from active service. It didn’t, however, explain Gurjot’s presence here with a small army at his back. There had been no major conflict in Ashanesland since the Fool’s War of 185, and that had been against the Eternal Empire. The kingdom had skirmished with the Seonu before their conquest but had always kept a wary peace with the rest of the Fourteen Tribes.
‘Two forces of Ashane on the lonely road, the sun near setting,’ Sang Ki said. ‘What say we make camp and share a drink and our stories?’
Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods Page 23