by Jude Fisher
On board the mercenary ship Erno Hamson embraces the bundle in which the greatsword is wrapped and dreams he holds Katla Aransen in his arms. She is thinner than he remembers, and harder-muscled too, and when she turns to smile at him he sees his death shining in her eyes . . .
In his suite of rooms in the heart of the Eternal City, Saro Vingo twists and roars, his hands locked forever around his brother’s throat. Those wide black eyes gaze up at him unblinkingly, as trusting as a dog’s. ‘Beloved brother,’ the corpse whispers, ‘how can you do this to me?’ Despair erases all the reasons he thought he had; and suddenly he finds it is his own face staring back up at him, accusing and quite dead . . .
Virelai in his former life had never been accustomed to dreaming. When he slept it was without disturbance or delight. But now he shivers in his sleep. Looking down from far above he sees himself, a tiny white worm of a thing, a dark shadow falling over him, about to be devoured . . .
Tycho Issian, on the other hand, burning with desire in his silk sheets, dreams the same dream of rapture over and again, a pair of long pale legs scissoring open to admit him into the heart of a rose . . .
In far Eyra, the Rosa Eldi (who never truly sleeps, but lies as still as she may in the great royal bed so as not to disturb her beloved husband) listens with her preternatural hearing to the small sounds of Halbo Town – the soft breathing of its inhabitants, the whimper of its dogs, the footfalls of its cats, the crackle of hearth-fires burning down to the embers, the scratch and rustle of rat and pigeon in a thousand rafters; the coupling of sailors and whores in the alleys by the docks, the wind through the lines on the ships of Eyra’s fleet, anchored safely in the harbour, the susurrus of the sea; and, far below the wind-ruffled surface, the relentless stirrings of the Nemesis. She lies there, cocooned by these local sounds, and recalls the distant voices which have touched her consciousness that day, the voices beyond the sharp, snide conversations in the Great Hall, the rumble of the men in the war room, planning and counting, talking up a storm. She brings to mind the prayers that have been offered up to the god Sur during that long day – sometimes aloud, sometimes whispered secretly, or not uttered at all – from shepherds at watch on bare island hillsides, fishermen caught in a blow in the midst of the Northern Ocean, from men about to draw steel upon each other in the pursuit of an honour feud, now replayed in dream. Little do any of these folk realise they have had an audience for their prayers – which they consider more as superstitious gestures to ward off evil or to attract good luck than as a dialogue with a deity they believe long vanished from the world – nor who that listener is.
Stranger still, then, to eavesdrop upon the prayers that have drifted up to this enemy capital from the far southern continent, prayers made to a goddess she does not yet recognise herself to be, though one in particular has resounded ever since, repeating itself over and over like a mantra, a mournful plea from a lost soul, a voice which made her bones shiver and her neck prickle. For that voice had named her both as Rose of the World – a name which she knows to belong to her – and Falla; which until that moment, she did not know as her own. Taken by surprise by the personal impact that voice had made on her, she had answered that lone prayer – moreover, and without meaning to, had answered it aloud, her voice echoing out in her chambers so that those present stared and touched their foreheads knowingly. Save him! she had cried; Save him, even though to do so may be to destroy all I hold dear . . .
Even now she does not know why she answered so.
Now she lies, twined in a miasma of other people’s hopes and dreams and feels her own identity coming back to her, slowly, vaguely, a dark, dawning shape, just out of reach as through a fog . . .
Eighteen
Treason
He had stretched the map with some difficulty across his favourite Gilan oak desk and held it down at each rough corner with a weighty silver goblet. Absentmindedly, Rui Finco now filled one of these with wine from the flask he cradled, picked it up and drained it off. At once, the unruly map coiled up like a live thing, curling in on itself with a snapping sound as if to protect its secrets. He swore as he flattened it out again. It was not an Istrian map – that much was obvious, from the crude lettering and scratched-out errors – for any southern scribe worth his salt would have looked with shame on such an abominable piece of work and consigned it to the fires. Moreover, it had been fashioned out of some strange material which looked and he suspected, if he were to get close enough to discern it, smelled, of badly cured goatskin. A few stray hairs on the back of the thing attested to its barbaric provenance. Prodding it back into position with distaste etched in every line of his aristocratic face, the Lord of Forent perused it again.
Still it refused to yield up anything he did not already know, and rather less in some areas than he did. The southern continent, for example, was quite the wrong shape, extending far beyond the Dragon’s Backbone where any fool knew the world ended. Forent had, to add insult to injury, been misspelled as Firent; Cera marked with a cross but no name, and Jetra titled Ieldra in the old form, as if the mapmaker refused to admit Istrian sovereignty over the old country. But it was not the Istrian section of the map which interested him but the upper quartile, where the Northern Isles had been delineated in finer detail than one would have expected from such an inept hand. There lay the Westman Isles, complete with their fantastically fractured coastlines, their jagged headlands and reefs; farther east, the smaller islands of Sundey and Farsey, then – across a wide expanse of ocean marked with spouting whales, shoaling areas and seal breeding-grounds – came the mainland of Eyra. This had been minutely detailed in calligraphy so small and untidy as to be practically illegible. Rui sighed and squinted and reapplied himself to the area around the northern capital, searching for a weakness.
Out in the seas beyond the city the Deeps, the Flow, the Troll’s Teeth and the Suckingstone told one story. Inland, Long Marsh, Middlemarsh and Nethermarsh, Precipice Heights, Killing Tor, Black Ridge and Snowfell told another. He glanced at a place further up the coast enticingly called the Needle’s Eye, which appeared to mark a narrow channel between what might be high cliffs. Could one land a ship, or ships, beyond such a point and march an army overground from there to take Halbo from its less well-guarded northern side? But inland from the Needle’s Eye he found, after much eye-watering concentration, only Black Bog, Dead Man’s Marsh and Swallowing Sands.
You had to say that for the Eyrans: they didn’t ponce around with classical references and metaphor when referring to their geographical features. He had no doubt that each of these features would turn out exactly as promised by their names.
After another fifteen minutes of fruitless inspection, he straightened up. His back ached: he rubbed the base of his spine and cursed the chill which had this season settled on the northern coast of Istria. Forent winters were usually mild – albeit misty and damp, which also got into the joints – but for some reason this year was the worst he could remember. And he wasn’t getting any younger. There would hardly be any point in conquering the North at this rate: if an Istrian winter could afflict him so, how would he fare in Eyra?
When we take Halbo, he thought, I’ll have every damn rug, tapestry and brazier in Forent shipped north. That might warm up that draughty stone heap of a castle. And a couple of well-built Eyran women to warm the bed, too. How will I style myself? he mused. Lord of the Northern Isles had a good ring to it. But he preferred the sound of King Rui. The family resemblance between him and the Stallion might serve him well in that respect; though how the northerners were likely to react to the discovery that their young lord (swiftly and stealthily disposed of in the heat of battle) was less than the pure-blooded Eyran prince his lineage-fixated subjects believed him to be was hard to judge. Presumably, they would feel cheated when they found out that their precious royal bloodline was so thoroughly tainted, and with the blood of the old enemy, too. But he’d always found that money spoke louder than dissenters, and he believed
in paying for both loyalty and enforcement: one way or another, he’d make it work. It would be a costly affair, but once he had the Eyran fleet and its captains at his command, the seaways would be his. He would open up all the old trade routes – the Ravenway, the Whale’s Path and the Dragonsway – and the bountiful benefits thus generated would soon quell any doubts. Amber, furs, sealskins and ivory from the islands along the Whale’s Path; wine and fruit and spices and silk from the lands at the end of the Dragonsway; and from the Ravenway to the Far West – well, who knew what wonders were to be brought out of that region when that legendary route was navigated once more? Treasures of lost civilisations to be plundered at will from crumbled temples, abandoned palaces and collapsed tombs, jewellery of solid lapis and silver, the original sardonyx statues of Falla and her cat of which all of Istria’s representations of the Goddess were rumoured to be mere copies; and gold: rich, pure gold. That elusive yellow metal which men spoke of in hushed voices and saw only in tiny fragments of ancient artefacts reputed to have come out of the Far West millennia ago. It was rumoured there was a full-sized sceptre in Halbo made entirely of the stuff, which weighed so much no man could hold it for more than a few minutes before his muscles began to shake. Fished out of the mouldering wreck of a bizarrely styled vessel off the treacherous Troll’s Teeth by foolhardy divers, the sceptre was believed to be Eyra’s greatest treasure.
King, then, he thought again, imagining the huge golden sceptre lying in his lap across his robes of state. He could almost feel the weight and heft of it . . .
A loud knock at the outer door broke this pleasant reverie.
‘What is it?’ he yelled.
The door opened tentatively and his personal guard, Plano, stuck his head around it. ‘A visitor, my lor—’ he started, only to be elbowed rudely out of the way by the Lord of Ixta.
‘What the hell do you want, Varyx?’ Rui said sharply.
Varyx meandered over to the desk and glanced idly at the map stretched over it. ‘More use to the poor bloody goat than to us, that thing!’ he noted cheerfully.
Rui Finco glared at him.‘If you’ve nothing more constructive than that to offer you’d best leave now.’
‘Oh, I have something far more useful, something you’ll thank me for . . . in very tangible ways.’
Rui looked at his old friend askance. Varyx was a fool – an entertaining one, and very rich, but a fool nonetheless. He laughed. ‘I’ve girls aplenty, the best part of Jetra’s wine cellar now residing in my own and Eyra’s greatest shipmaker labouring by night and day to create the finest fleet ever to set sail from Istria. What more could complete my pleasure?’
Without being invited, Varyx took a leisurely seat on one of the couches and swung his feet up onto one of the gorgeously patterned tapestry cushions the Lord of Forent’s mother had embroidered with her own hands. Irritated, Rui Finco took three strides across the room and liberated the cushion from this indignity. ‘So come on, Varyx, what is so important that you feel compelled to interrupt my day?’
Varyx looked sly. ‘Promise me first that if you are pleased with what I bring you, you will reward me suitably.’
‘Suitably?’
‘My pick of your Eyran girls, for a start. We can talk about the rest after we achieve our goal.’
Rui Finco raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘Ah. You’ve heard about the girls, then.’
‘Who hasn’t? Little northern fighting cats, they say.’
‘What else do they say?’
Varyx rolled his eyes ceilingwards and thought about this. ‘Pale skin,’ he said appreciatively, ‘freckles, even, in the most unexpected places. Gold hair – or red – lean and well muscled, very wild and spirited. And can’t speak a word of Istrian.’
‘I promise you they can curse like troopers in the Old Tongue. And some of them would break you in two.’ He paused. ‘And enjoy it.’
Varyx grinned. ‘Lovely. Can’t wait.’
‘Whatever you have will need to be special indeed to warrant such a prize.’
‘Oh, it is.’ He rubbed his hands together, as if warming them before applying them to an expanse of the pale skin he could see in his mind’s eye. ‘My pick, you promise?’
With a sigh, the Lord of Forent nodded. ‘Out with it, then.’
Exhibiting considerably more energy than was his wont, the Lord of Ixta leapt to his feet and bounded to the door. ‘Bring in the visitor, Plano.’
The door guard, sword drawn and looking thoroughly mistrustful, ushered in a hooded figure. A large black bird perched on its shoulder.
‘Oh, do put the sword away, man,’ Varyx said testily. ‘If he was an assassin, he’d have spitted me by now.’
Plano looked to his master. Rui Finco waved him away, though Varyx’s logic irked him. What professional assassin would risk death to kill the rather stupid and ineffectual Lord of Ixta when the far more powerful and dangerous Lord of Forent was close at hand? He braced himself, hands on hips, ready to draw both concealed daggers if need be, and watched the hooded man with hooded eyes. The bird stared back at him, unblinking.
‘Who are you?’
With a flourish the figure threw back his cowl and the raven danced neatly sideways, then readjusted its position. Rui Finco frowned. The newcomer was a man with a fineboned face and dark chestnut hair. His grey eyes and pale skin made him a northerner, and this was confirmed when he spoke. ‘Welcome beg I, lord mine,’ he said in execrable Istrian.
‘Use the Old Tongue, man!’ Rui snapped.
The man bowed. ‘I thank you for your indulgence, my lord. I have come to offer you my services.’
‘Another one,’ Rui Finco groaned. ‘I’ve had them all here, seeking money and advancement – chancers, opportunists and double-dealers. Which are you?’
‘A goodly mixture of all three,’ the Eyran returned without missing a beat. ‘Allow me to introduce myself before you dismiss me out of hand. My name is Erol Bardson, Earl of Broadfell, and . . . cousin to King Ravn Asharson.’ He paused then winked conspiratorially in a manner which caused the Lord of Forent to wince. ‘Though it’s possible that our relationship may be somewhat closer. The Grey Wolf spread his seed liberally, they say.’
An inward tremor of dismay roiled in Rui’s belly. Another one, indeed. Was the man aware of his own unsavoury connection with the tainted royal line? Likely not, he decided. No change of expression marred his handsome face. Instead, he said smoothly, ‘A defector, then, with information to offer?’
Bardson inclined his head.
‘And in exchange for this . . . information you want – what? Money? Men?’ He fixed the self-proclaimed earl with a gimlet stare. ‘Or our support in taking the northern throne for you?’
The Earl of Broadfell looked taken aback. Then he shrugged. ‘Actually, the King’s mother has her beady eyes set on that. However, if she were to be swept up in the horror which descends when her capital is sacked – mayhem, fire, sword, terror, panic and flight, friend turning against friend in the heat of battle, you know the chaos that is likely to ensue in such a situation – then, although it would be a terrible tragedy to lose both figureheads of the Eyran state in a single day, it would of course be my solemn duty to step forward to take the crown, as the nearest blood-relative.’
At this, the raven bobbed its head mightily and let out a raucous cry. Both men frowned.
‘I take your point,’ Rui Finco said tersely, after a moment’s pause. ‘But the northern throne is a considerable prize. What “service” are you offering that I can’t lay hands on elsewhere?’
‘I can help you to get one ship, maybe two, past the Sentinel Towers and into Halbo’s inner harbour, and lead a small number of men thence by secret ways into the castle.’
Now he had all of the Lord of Forent’s attention. ‘You can? And how might that be accomplished?’
Erol Bardson laughed. ‘I am not such a fool as you take me for. If I were to tell you that now, I doubt I’d be needing any other quarters for the night
than a hole in the ground or a sack in the sea!’
Rui Finco’s lips quirked. ‘True enough. But why should I believe you to be who you say you are and not some scurvy trickster?’
The man bent his head for a moment and rummaged in a leather pouch hanging from his belt. ‘I brought you this,’ he said, offering a small linen-wrapped object. ‘The Lady Auda retrieved it. She thought you might like to take it back.’
Rui Finco peeled back the linen. Inside, just as he had expected, was a small marquetry box. With knowing fingers he triggered the secret mechanism and watched as the concealed drawer shot out. Within lay a large ring sized to fit a man and worked in the form of a wolf biting its own tail. The Grey Wolf’s own ring. The last time he had seen it was in his booth at the Allfair the previous year when he had shown it to Ravn Asharson as a sign of his own secret knowledge. The Stallion had swiped it and run for his ship; to have laid hands on it, this man or his accomplice must surely have had close access to the King.
He took out the piece and held it in his palm. It was cold and weighty, solid silver. As if the connection of the metal with his skin released some kind of spell, he was suddenly thrown back twenty-odd years, to the day when they had brought his mother back from her abduction to the North. It was only the second time he had seen her face, for in Eyra she had abandoned the traditional sabatka, along with her religion, her family and all her morals. For a long time, all he had been able to do was stare once more upon that peculiarly naked visage, with its huge black eyes and proud nose, feeling at once repulsed and fascinated, and more abandoned than when she had first been stolen away. For there, on a chain around her neck, she had openly worn this very ring, marked out like the concubine she was as the chattel of the barbarian king. She was no longer big with child by then, for like a cuckoo in the nest, the baby Ravn had been installed in the nursery at Halbo and claimed as the royal pair’s own. Rui felt his heart contract. Now, he could remember the stench of the fires in which his father had burned his mother for her adultery: a spectacle which the old man had made him watch. It was not a sight – or a smell – he could ever forget.