by Jude Fisher
But lately it had begun to concern him. A mad wife: it would not do. Raik Horsehair had had a mad wife: it was said they had chained her in a dungeon at the foot of the Sentinel Towers and left her there to rot. Some said she was there still – in spirit at least – weeping and wailing and making dire predictions for the future of the world. No one walked the lower levels of the Towers after dark: Eyrans were a superstitious people. Ravn had always prided himself on his pragmatism and hard-headedness where such things were concerned. But now he found old wives’ tales and nonsense rhymes circling in his head like so many crows: ‘if the wife be mad, sons will be bad; if she be bad; she’ll drive all mad’; ‘a lackwit wife makes for halfwit children’; and clearest of all: ‘madness runs in the blood’.
It made him look harder at his son, and that was disturbing, too. When the child hurt himself, instead of crying as any normal babe would, seeking reassurance, releasing his pain, little Ulf would simply swell up until he was purple in the face and his eyes would bulge so that you thought he might choke. And then he would grab hold of whatever object lay closest to hand and beat, beat, beat it against whoever might be within range. And if no one was available to his rage, he would turn the weapon upon himself, thumping until bruises came. The first time he had done this, there had been a flurry of activity and much cosseting and attention; after that it had happened more frequently. This very afternoon he had thrown just such a silent tantrum, attacking Leta Gullwing in apparent fury with the silver spoon with which she had been trying to tempt him with solid food; but when his father had walked into the room, little Ulf had turned that riveting violet gaze upon him and then very calmly started to hit himself hard on the head with the spoon, raising welt after welt before Ravn himself had snatched the thing away in horror.
And yet the boy was hale and whole; and his. Seed of his body, heir to his throne, which made him quell whatever concerns he harboured. As he must now with his strange wife.
She laid her head upon his chest. Without those wondrous eyes upon him, he felt his mind clear. ‘Praying, my rose?’
‘Praying for their souls, some of them; praying for victory, others. Their women pray too, for their safe return.’
Ravn frowned. Praying for victory . . . for their safe return . . . Did she truly hear the voices of others? It was surely impossible. Perhaps a vision, a dream had come to her. It was not unknown, though rarely spoken of in the Isles. Seithers might be visited by such prophetic voices; but an ordinary woman? He knew, even as he framed the thought, that the Rosa Eldi was in no way ‘ordinary’. Questions crowded in on him. Could the enemy be planning their campaign so far ahead? Winter was a dangerous time for men not used to the changeable ways of the weather to put to sea, and the Istrians had never been known in all history to contemplate such a thing. They had no skills in the mastering of wind and tide, of navigating under fog or flood. Let alone of constructing vessels which would bear the brunt of the Northern Ocean at its least magnanimous. Though the climate had been unusually mild this year . . .
A sudden sharp thought jabbed at him. ‘Tell me, my dove, do they pray for fair seas?’
Her hand clutched his tunic convulsively.
‘They do,’ she whispered. ‘They do.’
Twenty-seven
To Steal a Rose
A tiny boat rocked on a dark sea. Inside it, two figures hunched over their oars while a third sat upright in the stern, his face hidden by a cowl. The prow was adorned with what appeared to be the figurehead of a raven.
Then the figurehead took flight and, skimming the moonlit waters, vanished into black night.
Charts had been spread over every available surface of the room. Three men pored over them by the guttering light of many candles. Two were old men with long grey beards and braided hair. One of these had only a single hand. He stabbed at the chart before him with a leather-wrapped stump.
‘I say they’ll probably head up the eastern coast, and try to find a way down through the Sharking Straits to land here, at Black Strand.’
Egg Forstson looked gloomy. ‘A shame Ness allowed the fortifications to fall into rack and ruin.’ He tugged his beard. ‘Remind me why it is you think they’re coming?’
Stormway and his king exchanged a glance over the Earl of Shepsey’s bowed head. Then Ravn said quickly, to steer the old man away from this difficult subject, ‘Actually, Egg, I’ve addressed the matter of the Sharking Straits.’
The old retainer’s head shot up again. ‘You have?’
‘I’ve brought it back under Crown rule.’
‘But the last I heard, it was overrun with brigands. Pirates and corsairs, using it as a base for their nefarious activities.’
Ravn laughed. ‘Careful what you say, old man. That’s my navy you’re talking about.’
‘Navy?’ The Earl of Shepsey’s voice rose by an octave.
‘Where else have all those ships at Fairwater come from? Did you think I’d doubled my fleet in the blink of an eye, and with no master shipbuilder at hand?’
‘But they’re completely untrustworthy, sire. They’ll turn and run at the first sign of trouble.’
Ravn shrugged. ‘That remains to be seen. So,’ he reapplied himself to the charts, ‘if the Istrians do make it into the straits, they should lose a goodly number before they realise a trap’s been set.’ He chuckled. ‘We left the ruins to stand, Egg, rather than rebuild. Could afford neither the time nor the manpower required to overhaul the towers, so rather than waste either, we decided to turn dereliction to advantage. Their intelligence may have told them the fortifications are run down, and that the straits are unguarded. But I’ve sent a hundred good men north with ballistas and pitch: if ships try to make a passage between the towers, they’ll burn half their fleet before they know what’s hit them. And the other half—’ He grinned. ‘We’ll know about them before they get a chance to cross Blackfell. Ness has his ravens and two fast ships. So if exposure doesn’t get them as they cross the hags, then I will, coming up here, across Sursmere – ’ he pointed out the track on another map, then swept his finger around in an arc – ‘while Stormway takes his troops to circle around them from Trollsfoot.’
Ravn stood back and swept his hair out of his eyes. Beneath that dark mane, his face was flushed, his eyes shining. He had not, Egg thought, looked so . . . well . . . himself in months.
Egg Forstson, irritated at not having been consulted about any of these plans, thrust out his jaw pugnaciously. ‘And if they come straight for Halbo?’
Even Stormway laughed at that ridiculous notion. Everyone knew the city was impregnable.
As the little boat bumped softly into the rocks below the Sentinel Tower, the sound of its landing muffled by the cork buffers slung from its gunwales, it started to snow. It came lightly at first, tiny flakes which melted on contact with skin or sea; then in great, soft swathes. The two rowers shipped their oars and the three of them sat there silently, waiting. Water slapped the hull. More water trickled down the rock beneath the tower, its hulking mass looming higher than any headland. Tiny lights showed at intervals up its great length, some flickering, others stationary.
Virelai gazed upwards, feeling cold dread envelope him like a mist. It wasn’t just the passage from the great ship to this freezing cliff which assailed him so, he was sure, but something else, something unnatural. The tower itself? Certainly it looked too tall and adamantine to have been raised by mortal hands. Perhaps the old tales were true and giants had dwelled in this land before the men of Eyra. A larger wave came and the boat rocked unsteadily; and then Virelai knew that whatever horrors the tower might contain, he had rather a thousand times meet them than be at the mercy of the black water and whatever lurked beneath it.
A new light appeared through the haze of the blizzard, closer than any of the lights in the Sentinel. It wavered and bobbed with the rhythm that suggested it was being carried by someone walking towards them. All three of them watched it coming, fascinated, though the sorcerer noti
ced that both his companions had pulled their cloaks back the better to reach their swords. It did not fill him with confidence. What use were swords in a little boat like this? One poorly judged move and they’d be in the sea, and all a good heavy blade would do was to carry you down to a watery grave like a well-flung anchor.
There was a whirring sound and something brushed the back of his head, then his cheek as he turned – too quickly – in his panic. Now the skiff rocked with a vengeance, making Rui Finco curse him in urgent, horrid whispers. Virelai had no doubt he meant what he threatened. He blinked away tears, and as he blinked them away the darkness in front of him coalesced into the shape of a bird: the northman’s raven, returned to his shoulder. Moonlit licked palely off the eye that regarded him askance. Then the white light turned to flame, and the sorcerer looked back to find a dark figure on the rocks above them, a small lantern held aloft. It was a woman, he was surprised to note. An old woman, the lamplight illuminating a nest of crowsfeet round her dark eyes and a sag of jowls which suggested an embittered nature.
‘Well, get up here where I can see you, then,’ Auda said softly, and her voice was not welcoming.
Virelai went first, scuttling sideways like a crab and clutching onto weed, crag, limpets, anything, he was so desperate to be out of the boat. Erol Bardson followed with a single athletic bound, his raven extending its wings for balance. Last came the Lord of Forent.
Auda held the lantern to his face, then drew sharply back, her face a mask of repulsion. ‘You,’ she hissed. ‘I should have known it would be you who took the traitor’s bait. You look just like her, god damn you. Promise me now that you’ll say nothing of his provenance. Just kill him quick and quiet if you must. Promise me that or you’ll regret it.’
Rui smiled, but not with his eyes. ‘Why,’ he said lightly in the Eyran he had so carefully practised these many slow weeks, ‘you must be the Lady Auda. I fear my mother did you a grave wrong. Is the cuckoo in his nest?’
‘He’s with his lords in the map room at the top of the castle’s west tower.’
‘And the lady?’
Auda gave him a narrow look. ‘You’d spit her, too?’
It was one way of putting it, he supposed. He nodded. ‘Ah yes, we’ll take her as well.’
She shook her head.‘In her chambers. Erol knows where.’ She thought for a moment. ‘And you can slit the throat of that troll-child while you’re at it,’ she added viciously. She looked to the bird, and without a word spoken it flew from Erol Bardson’s shoulder to her own. Then she turned away and the arc of golden light went with her so that they were left feeling their way with nervous feet and hands along freezing rock now slick with new snow, while the sucking sea gushed and churned below them. ‘I hope you’ve got reinforcements,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘It’ll take more than a turncoat, a renegade lord and a sickly boy to take Halbo.’
The Rose of Elda felt them approaching before they even entered the keep. She felt the sorcery that took place in the chambers at the foot of the Sentinel Tower and it made her shiver. Rahay . . . Something of the old man’s had penetrated her domain: his signature was in the magic, she knew it too well. There was something beyond the trace of that spellcraft, though, something more familiar and yet entirely alien. Bëte? She sent the enquiry questing out through the castle walls, but no response came back. Not the cat, then . . . She steadied herself against the pillars of the bed.
‘My lady?’ Leta Gullwing watched the Queen of the Northern Isles curiously, but with little liking, as she swayed where she stood, her eyes closed and that perfect face just a little pinched, as if in pain or concentration.‘Are you well?’
Now she could hear their voices with that preternatural sense of hers, sharper than a cat’s, sharper than a bat’s. She heard, too, the voices of the guards as they stood down and let the men pass without challenge. She knew they were not who they seemed, though she could not blame the soldiers for their error. Illusion was a simple magic, obvious to the initiated; but to a soldier it might as well be as powerful as the sorcery which bound a goddess into slavery. She clenched her fists.
‘I am quite well,’ she said softly, though her mind was racing. What to do? Raise a hue and cry and bring violence crashing about them all? It was the third of the men that made her keep her counsel, the one from whom sorcery leaked like water from a sieve. The closer he came, the more powerful was her sense of him: afraid but compelled, and more dangerous than either of his companions could know. They were coming for her: of that she was sure. ‘Take little Ulf into the nursery,’ she said aloud. ‘Go in there with him and close the door, be quiet as mice. Do not come out no matter what you may see or hear. Do you understand me?’
She used the Voice. Blank-eyed, the girl gathered up the child, who swivelled in her arms and fixed his supposed mother with a dark and venemous stare. Then Leta opened the door to the nursery and took him away.
The Rosa Eldi let out a sigh, but whether it was of relief or fear, or a determined centring of all her power, it would have been impossible for any observer to know.
Moments later, the door to her chamber opened and two men entered.
Tycho gripped the stempost of the ship and gazed into the blizzard as if by the very power of his will he could burn light into the scene he so desperately wished to view. Damn Rui Finco for leaving him behind. The man was a libertine, a sensualist; a sinner of the first order. How could he possibly be trusted to keep his hands off such a rose? He pushed the thought away irritably before too disturbing an image could form. Even though each breath he exhaled clouded visibly before him, he found that he had begun to sweat, a runnel of salty liquid running down his temple into the corner of his eye. It stung like hell. Furiously, he wiped it away. His tunic was sticking to him, too. He had not washed properly in the best part of a month. When he raised an arm to catch hold of a line as the ship pitched forward on a roller, the pit stank like an old dog.
Disgusted, he staggered back to his flapping canvas shelter, grabbing a pail of seawater on the way, and despite the freezing air stripped naked and scrubbed his skin till it was red and raw. He could not present himself to the Rose in this foul state: he must purify himself. Easier said than done. Glancing down, he found his erection standing out from his belly, stiff and ruby-tight. Where other men complained of their balls withering in the cold and their pricks entirely vanishing from sight, still he was afflicted as he had been since first laying eyes on the Rosa Eldi.
Again the thought insinuated itself: how can Rui fail to be affected? He left me behind because he thought I would lose my head; but I have been dealing with this desire for the better part of a year, and he has no experience of her seductive gift, no expectation, no defences: it will knock him flat.
The image came, no matter how hard he tried to block it: the Rose of the World spread-eagled on a fur-strewn bed beneath the taut, pumping buttocks of the Lord of Forent.
No!
The force of his denial made the word echo out around the ship so that men stopped what they were doing and stared at the candlelit tent, wherein the Lord of Cantara was clearly silhouetted in all his priapic glory. Already amazed by the falling snow – for some their first experience of this strange northern phenomenon – they stared; and then they shook their heads and carried on their tasks – bailing, mainly: the timber had not had sufficient time to soak and swell its seams full shut – and muttered to each other.
‘Nutter,’ declared one of the Farem slaves to his oar-partner, who nodded in agreement.
‘Pulling his daisy again,’ observed the man behind sagely.
‘Got to be mad to be bollock-naked in this weather,’ said a north-coaster, shaking his head. ‘Though you have to admire his resilience. Mine’s the size of a walnut.’
‘An acorn, more like!’
Tycho heard them laughing and clenched his jaw. He took a new length of clean linen and began the laborious job of binding himself flat. The piece he had removed reeked. Having to pis
s over the side in a high wind was a messy business at the best of times. He resolved to curb his appetite for the woman until they were safely back on Istrian soil. It would be too sordid to consummate their passion here, amid all this filth and discomfort, and with only a thin sheet of fabric between them and the prying eyes and ears of the bawdy crew. He had survived these many months; he could surely last another two weeks.
Or could he? The thought of the barbarian king rutting with her, constantly, productively, planting his filthy seed in her was more than he could bear. The urge to claim her, to scour Ravn’s memory and his presence from her was aching-hot. Stallion of the North! Even the monicker was an insult, a slur upon her, and all women. That such a savage had stolen a vision and made her his mare was revolting, beyond words.
Now it was Ravn Asharson’s face which sprang up before him. Young and handsome and chiselled, with a triumphant, laughing light in his eye. The whelp! Loathing rose in him like bile.
How dared Rui deny him his due revenge! He had purchased the woman fair and square. Or if not purchased, exactly, he had certainly agreed a deal for her, only to lose her to a barbarian’s whim. It was insupportable that he should not sever the thief’s head from his strutting, lustful body. Instead here he was, bobbing uselessly on the waves with the rest of the fleet, waiting, waiting, waiting.