I unlaced the neck of my coat; a warm garment in the spring sunshine. My fingers caught in the thong of my medallion, the insignia I bore as a physical reminder of the oaths I had sworn to my Prince and he in turn to me. I had Aiten’s as well, the bronze disc sewn inside my sword-belt, waiting for me to exact a double reckoning in blood from the bastard responsible for his death. Was I going to shove it down the enchanter’s throat or ram it edgeways up his arse? I mused. Whichever, I’d sharpen the edges first, just to make a point. By rights that debt was our master’s to claim or remit, but I had made a private vow of vengeance and hammered a nail deep into the door of Dastennin’s shrine to affirm it. We make no formal vows as we do to our patron, but the loyalties between sworn men are no less strong.
No, it was time to move on, I told myself. After all but losing myself to the drowning sorrow of my sister’s death from fever in my youth, I had found new purpose in taking service with Messire, hadn’t I? My duty was to him, my sword his to command.
The usual rat-infested hovel that passes for an inn in Lescar came into view as I crested a rise in the road. I was still holding my sword at my side, sticky with bloody detritus, so I gave my horse his head at the water trough and took possession of a rickety bench where I spread out oil and rags to clean the solstice gift Messire D’Olbriot had given me in recognition of my trials in his service the previous year.
It says a lot about Lescar that it wasn’t the sight of a man cleaning a bloody weapon that startled the pinch-faced little maid coming out to empty her ash bucket, but my accent; my Lescari has all been learned on Messire’s business around the border with home. I couldn’t fathom her concern; she only had about ten words of Tormalin, though I doubt she could have counted them. Eventually I gathered there was no fresh roast, so I took the gritty bread and sour cheese offered but declined the grayish stew, congealed in the pot from the night before. Evidently exceeding the reckoning with good Tormalin pennies, I won a startled smile when I declined the halved and quartered coin pieces she tried to offer me. I have no use for Lescari coin, even when it’s whole.
As I ate I fished out the letter I carried, brought by the Imperial Despatch to rescue me from the taut emotions of Aiten’s sorrowing family and sending me to ride the empty roads of Lescar over the Equinox festival. Well, that at least had been preferable to lining up with my brothers to entertain the nicely eligible daughters of Mother’s sewing circle. I took up the letter and the description on the outside caught my eye again, still making me smile.
Ryshad Tathel. An armspan and four fingers tall, thinly built but muscular. Hair black and curly, eyes brown, dark complected, clean shaven. Softly spoken but with a determined manner.
My father would have phrased it rather differently: “stubborn as a mule and twice as hard to shift when he digs his heels in” is what he had said of me to Messire’s Sergeant-at-Arms. That last sentence was written in a different hand. So, Camarl was rising rapidly in Messire’s counsels if he was being allowed to add personal notes to the Sieur’s letters. Saedrin grant it will be many years before the men of the family have to gather to elect a new head for the House of D’Olbriot, but it was starting to look as if I could win a tidy sum with a wager on Camarl. Perhaps I should lay some coin soon, while the odds were still long on a sister’s younger son succeeding.
From Messire D’Olbriot, given at his Toremal residence, the 26th day of Tor-Spring, to Ryshad Tathel, sworn man.
I send my greetings and my wishes that your trip provides consolation both to yourself and the family bereaved by Aiten’s loss.
I take this opportunity to repeat my own sorrow at his fate as well as the esteem in which I held him. I ash you to communicate this to his parents once more.
You are no longer required to attend me in Toremal when your visit is concluded. I have received a request from the Archmage of Hadrumal, Planir the Black, that you travel to Caladhria and join with one Shivvalan Ralsere, mage. You will find him with a recluse called Viltred Sern who dwells in the forests to the north of Cote, seat of one Lord Adrin, on the highroad to Abray.
This mage requests your assistance in continuing the pursuit you shared in at the end of For-Winter past. At such time as the Wizard Ralsere no longer has need of you, return to Toremal with all best speed. In the interim, keep me apprised of your movements with letters by Imperial Despatch or such other discreet means as you judge secure.
I am confident that you will perform this commission with your usual capability.
It was smoothly written in the fluent hand of Messire’s personal scrivener. I could just picture the Sieur, sat with a pile of documents, disposing of each with terse commands. My spirits rose; I’ve worked for Messire long enough to read what wasn’t written into the letter. I was to be his eyes and ears, his link to the Archmage’s plans for foiling the Ice Islanders. This offered better prospects of vengeance for Aiten than chasing garbled reports of foreigners in the backwoods of the ocean coast, which is what I’d spent the latter half of winter doing.
I’d had no real dealing with wizards before getting caught up with Shiv the year before and we generally prefer to keep them at arm’s length in Formalin. I wondered what Shiv was up to; he and I owed each other a measure of our lives after that cursed trip to the Ice Islands. Still, his loyalties to his Archmage meant a different lodestone from mine governed his course, I reminded myself.
I ate and headed for the river. The false hope of the noonday sun faded, fine rain mizzling down like exhausted tears. I passed the remnants of a sacked village, reeking with the smell of burned wood rotting after the long winter and weeping black stains into the scorched earth. So much for the Dukedom of Marlier, where life was supposed to be safer than most. I found myself longing for the clean scent of salt on the wind from the ocean at home.
I looked across the valley with its coppices of hazel and ash, past the sprawl of a turf-roofed village amidst a striped patchwork of open fields and over the rough common grazing to the stark crag where the local Baron had his reddish stone castle. Formalin villages cluster close to the protections of their patron and have done since the Chaos when lordless and landless men ransacked the ruins of the Old Empire. Lescari peasants grub a living from the land as best they can and hope the battles pass them by. I noted the battlements were being raised, straw and clay that had protected the half-built fortifications from frosts stripped away; that could be useful intelligence for Messire. What threat did Marlier see waiting now the Equinox had opened the fighting season? I knew the Duke of Triolle had fouled his own nest comprehensively after heavy losses in the previous year’s fighting with Parnilesse. Did he have ambitions here?
Arriving at the river in the mid-afternoon, I found a silent line of grim-faced peasants waiting by the bridge, salvaged possessions in bundles and handcarts, little children all unknowing smiles, older ones wide-eyed and glancing at parents for reassurance seldom forthcoming. I’d been passing pitiful groups like this all through Lescar, trudging along, heads down, locals stopping their work to watch as the strangers passed, hoes and plow-staves in hand, ready to keep anyone moving who might be thinking about trying to stop. My own purse had lightened by a good measure on the road, common coin gone to those who would take it or else spent on as much bread as I could reasonably carry, so I had something I could casually offer those still clinging to the shreds of their dignity.
I rode to the head of the queue, not about to risk hanging about and getting drawn into the quarrels erupting here and there along the line.
“Rein it in.” A burly man-at-arms leveled his pike to bar my way and the rest of his troop stopped lounging on the parapet of the bridge.
“Good day to you.” I dismounted and nodded a precisely calculated half-salute. “Is there a fee for crossing the bridge?”
He eyed me a little uncertainly. “That depends on who you are.”
I bet it did; on whether one was a desperate peasant willing to give up a share of any hoarded coin worth having, or a
fleeing mercenary who could end up costing a lax border guard a flogging if he slipped past and was caught looting or worse. Caladhrian lords know full well the bloody chaos of Lescar would soon spill over to choke their lands if it were not for the depth and swirling current of the Rel, and they take guarding the few bridges suitably seriously.
“I am a Formalin prince’s sworn man.” I pulled my amulet from the neck of my shirt and held it out.
“What’s your business in Caladhria?” the man asked, open-mouthed.
“My Patron’s,” I replied crisply but politely.
He didn’t know what to say to that but he didn’t lower his pike either.
“Here.” I held out my hand and he closed his stained fingers on a couple of good Formalin Marks, not the flimsy leaded coin of Lescar. “Give some woman on her own with children a free passage, why don’t you?”
He cracked a gap-toothed smile at that. “I reckon I could.”
He planted his pike on its butt and my horse’s hooves rang on the planks of the broad bridge. Formalin-built Old Empire foundations were still solidly defying the murky flow of the mighty Rel, as you would expect, and the intermittently renewed woodwork above was dark from a fresh coat of pitch. More men with pikes lined the sides, ready for any threat of trouble. I stopped by one who looked barely old enough to use a blade for shaving, let alone for defending his Lord’s domains.
I noted the colors and badge on his overlarge livery. “Are you Lord Adrin’s men?”
He nodded cautious agreement. “That’s right.”
“I’m heading for a place called Cote. Which road do I take?”
He frowned at me. “Which Cote would that be, then, mester?”
I frowned in turn, perplexed. “How do you mean?”
“Well, for Upper Cote, Spring Cote, Cote in the Clay and Small Cote you go upstream, Cotinwood and Hill Cote are downstream, and you’d want the west high road for Nether Cote and Cote Fane.” This being Caladhria, the lad was genuinely trying to be helpful, not just tweaking my nose.
“Where’s Lord Adrin’s main residence?”
“He’m visiting Duryea, his wife’s people, been there since the Equinox.”
“And where does he live when he’s not visiting?”
“All over.”
The lad’s painstaking Formalin, doubtless learned from some local scholar, was oddly accented and I wasn’t at all sure he was understanding me fully. The Caladhrian I know best is the coastal dialect and this far up country could well confuse things further.
“Thank you,” I said, belatedly recalling why Caladhrian was a byword for lackwit back home. This lad couldn’t poke a dead dog with a sharp stick.
Once off the bridge, I spurred the horse clear of the peasants milling about. A knot of lime-washed, timber-framed houses with wood-shingled roofs clustered around the meeting of the roads; it could have been any small hamlet between the ocean coast and western Ensaimin, the most distant province, where the Empire’s grip had never really taken hold and slipped loose first. I looked vainly for way-stones that might give me some heading and finally drew my lucky rune-stick from my pocket. I rolled it between my palms, the Drum came out upright and I headed North on that result.
The house of Viltred Sern,
west of Cote in the Clay,
Caladhria,
9th of Aft-Spring
A sturdily built hut of logs and wooden shingles stood under a shallow crag in a forest clearing, a knot of figures gathered on the smooth turf before it. Their prisoner was an old man, withered with age, hair and beard frosted with white. Bound on his back to a freshly felled log, twigs and splinters pierced him not by deliberate design but through simple carelessness. Manacles were tight around wrists blackened with old blood, drawn by repeated writhing against the cruel restraints. His captors stood in a loose half circle, black-clad in leather and metal, faces flat with disinterest, men with unvarying blond hair and stocky builds. Their leader stood at the head of the hapless victim, calm as his irons reheated in the small wood fire. The smoke rose and coiled away into the clear blue sky, the first leaves of the new season green and fresh on the trees. Blood dripped slowly from ruined hands, fingers broken, jagged edges of bone jutting through skin, nails ripped out with calculated brutality. The victim’s ribs heaved in sudden spasm, skin stark white through the smears of blood as his chest fluttered like a half-killed bird and abruptly stilled. Gory pits where eyes should have been wept tears of anguished blood.
“That’s a grim prospect, I grant you, Viltred.” The speaker swallowed hard as he stared at this stark picture. It hovered within a gleaming diamond hanging from the upper point of a crescent of hammered copper set before him on the table, a tongue of flame licking upwards from a candle at the bottom of the arc.
“When did you first see this fate in your augury spell?” He cleared his throat and looked around the homely clutter of the small cabin as if to reassure himself the vision of anguish and malice was no more than foul illusion.
“Four days past,” the old wizard grunted, face dour as he looked at the image of his agonized death, scant paces from his own threshold. “So what do you make of it, Shivvalan? What has this to do with you turning up after the mighty wizards of Hadrumal have ignored me for close on a generation, believing me to be either liar or fool? When I was Azazir’s apprentice and we made our voyage, no one believed us when we said we had found islands in the far Ocean.” He gestured toward the gem with one gnarled hand. “Islands where a race of fair-haired men lived, as like to these as hounds bred from the same pack. Now you come to tell me that the wise and noble wizards of Hadrumal have discovered these islands for themselves and deign to believe me at last. Is it coincidence that I now see these curs hunting me? What trouble is Planir stirring up for us all now?” He huddled back into the worn and faded cushions that lined his heavy oak chair.
Shiv rubbed a hand over his sallow chin, dark eyes thoughtful. “Well, certainly the Archmage must be told at once. Believe me, Viltred, I told you the truth. Planir sent me to find out what you could recall of your own voyage to the Ice Islands with Azazir. I’m sorry, I should have explained; it seems these unknown islanders, Elietimm they call themselves, have some means of enchantment that we know nothing of in Hadrumal. Worse, they had some role to play in the fall of the Formalin Empire, most likely by means of magic, but you know how much lore was lost in the Chaos. Planir is hoping to recover some of that knowledge. We had no idea that these men would be seeking you out as well, I swear, but that must be what this means.” He paused for a moment before continuing briskly. “Still, now that we have this warning we can make sure none of this comes to pass. How often is an augury fulfilled in all its particulars? Not above one time in a handful, less maybe.”
“I’d prefer longer odds of seeing the Solstice than four chances in five.” Viltred drew a shuddering breath, and as he did so the vision in the crystal shook and dissolved. With evident effort to regain his composure, the old wizard leaned forward to rest his hands on the table once more and slowly turned the stone with the shimmering fingers of azure light that revealed the mage’s elemental link with the air that surrounded him. The answering amber glow rising within the heart of the gem spoke of magic born of the earth as slowly a shimmering haze cleared and new pictures focused on the bright surface.
The image sharpened; a knot of figures standing in a large airy room, framed in an open window behind them, masts and rigging moving gently with the motion of unseen waves, sails square-set on stubby spars.
“There you are, Viltred, and showing no signs of ill treatment.” Shiv sighed with relief.
“I’ll allow being caked to my eyebrows in the filth of the road and looking nigh on exhausted is preferable to dying spitted like a festival hog,” muttered Viltred.
“Those galleys, they’re the kind that ply the Caladhrian Gulf,” continued Shiv thoughtfully.
“What I want to know is who are all these other people,” the old man snapped.
“That sounds dishonest as well as disreputable,” snorted Viltred.
Shiv stifled a sudden smile before continuing. “The tall man at the back is the sworn man to Messire D’Olbriot—Ryshad, the one who should be here any day now. You recall me telling you about him?”
“I am not yet in my dotage. I can generally remember things I have been told the same day,” the old wizard replied acidly. “Who’s the plain-faced piece with shoulders like a farm hand?”
“That’s Halice,” said Shiv slowly. “She’s a friend of Livak’s who’s been laid up over the last few seasons with a broken leg.”
“And what possible reason could I have for being with such an ill-assorted crew, down in Relshaz?” demanded Viltred, his sunken eyes flashing with annoyance. “And before you ask, I recognize that beacon tower. I knew the city well enough in my youth.”
“That other man’s face is weathered like sailcloth and with those rope scars on his hand, I think it’s safe to assume he’s a sailor,” Shiv murmured, more to himself than to the old man. “Those parchments that Livak’s weighting with tankards would probably be charts, don’t you think? Are we taking ship somewhere? Relshaz is certainly the biggest port on the western side of the Gulf, but in a city that size a lot of other things could be going on. We could be looking to meet a ship?”
Viltred shrugged wordlessly, his lined face grim under his straggly gray brows. Shiv sat motionless at the dark oaken table, deep in thought, before suddenly slapping his hands down on the scarred wood. “There’s no point trying to second-guess these things, is there? Still, contrasting visions like these generally mean achieving one outcome precludes the other, doesn’t it? We can make a good start down that route by getting everyone we’re seeing together, and Ryshad’s already on his way.”
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