The Rose of the World

by Jude Fisher

  A woman started to wail in the background; rain began to fall. Pale light shafted down through the clagging clouds to illuminate what was left of the Lord of Forent as the sorcerer’s illusion failed at last. But without his eyes and with his face covered in a sheet of blood, not even his own mother would have been able to tell the difference between Rui Finco, and her other son, Ravn Asharson, now standing on the foredeck of Sur’s Raven, gazing in horror at the apparition twenty yards ahead of him.

  He had just given the order to his helmsman to ram the enemy flagship when the waters erupted beneath them, and, after three hundred years of confinement in the seithers’ bonds which chained it to the seabed beneath the towers, the Nemesis finally arose . . .

  Rahe fell back into the stern of the vessel, exhausted and grimacing. He clutched his withered ribs and rolled from side to side, wheezing.

  Aran Aranson shipped his oars and regarded the old man with some alarm. Was he dying? He looked as if he was suffering some kind of excruciating attack. Aran did not understand what had been happening around him: one moment they had been sailing blithely across the ocean, skimming the waves so that his oarstrokes seemed a mere adjunct to the magical propulsion emanating from the man he had learned to call ‘Rahay’, or ‘the Master’; then the smoke-filled haze above the cliffs of Halbo had come into view and the old man had started cursing and swearing and beating the boat with his bare fists, apparently furious. Some time after this excess of temper had finally subsided, Rahe had closed his eyes and begun a lot of muttering in a language Aran could not follow at all, a muttering which was sometimes accompanied by arm-waving and stamping feet and sometimes rose in volume to a bellow which made him clamp his hands over his ears.

  Now the old man opened his eyes and grinned maniacally at the one he had dubbed ‘the Fool’, his paroxysms of laughter giving way at last to a series of guffaws and an expression of utter craftiness.

  ‘What?’ asked Aran bitterly. ‘What is so funny?’ He was irritated that the old man was not dying; that he was enjoying himself quite so much seemed an affront, to him and the world in general. Somewhere under that pall of smoke, the men of Halbo were dying; the women, too, most like.

  ‘She has no idea how to control it!’ the Master chuckled. ‘She thinks it is her friend, her pet – but she has loosed a monster!’

  ‘What monster?’

  ‘The Nemesis! Oh, folk have made up all sorts of stories about the thing that is reputed to lurk beneath the waters of Halbo’s harbour, but they don’t know the half of it.’ He paused, suddenly delighted. ‘The half of it – oh, I am so witty, ha ha!’

  Aran Aranson knotted his fingers in his hair. It was as much as he could do not to belt the old man. ‘Half of what?’

  Rahe cocked his head. He looked, Aran thought, with that mane of white hair and those cold, pale eyes like Old Ma Hallasen’s goat. Then he remembered that Old Ma was in truth Old Ma no longer, and that was not a comforting thought either. ‘Ah, I forget how little you know, my fool. When the world was made, the gods gave it a threefold protector: the Warrior, the Woman and the Beast. When they are together, they are more than the sum of their parts – the Three who are More – but separated they are less than their singularities; and I managed to break them further apart still so that they could do me no harm. As a man may split an acorn with an axe-blow, so I split the Woman and the Warrior from themselves, body from soul, anima from animus; and the most brutish aspect of the Beast I banished here, chained with spells in Halbo’s sea.

  ‘The cat now wanders the desertlands, disconsolate; but its bestial self is rampaging monstrously free among Halbo’s invaders and defenders. Oh, the carnage it must be causing! I cannot wait to see the chaos.’

  Aran frowned. This was all too metaphysical for him. Never a particularly superstitious man, he had no liking for such abstract and fanciful meanderings. ‘I have heard the myths of the beast of Halbo, trapped in a great cage of iron locked by seither’s spells, but I had always thought such stories to be symbolic of the harbour’s chainwall,’ he said slowly. ‘But now you are telling me that the creature actually exists?’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ the mage said cheerfully. ‘And it has spawned offspring, too, for its appetites are mighty, albeit with lesser beasts which can slip through the bars of its cage.’

  Painful memories of his son Halli’s death at sea assailed Aran now: they had said that wreck was caused by a sea monster; though that had been far away from the mainland. He shut the thought away, for it burned like gall. ‘Then who may have the power to loose such a beast?’ he asked, bemused. ‘Who is this “she” of whom you speak?’

  Rahe looked at him as if he were half-witted; then remembered he was only a mortal, and one without a hint of magic in his blood. ‘The Rosa Eldi, my boy. She who was once the goddess of this world.’

  Aran’s brows drew together in a single black line across his forehead. The Rose of the World. The woman their king had taken to wife at the ill-fated Allfair last year. But she was a nomad, a mere Footloose woman . . . wasn’t she? He remembered abruptly the glimpse of a green eye and a white hand on the coat of a black cat behind the mapmaker’s stall, and the way his heart had been set racing as he left that place with the scrap of parchment promising treasure and adventure clutched so tightly to his chest. Then he remembered how Ravn Asharson had been so entranced by that strange, pale woman that he would give no mind to saving his daughter Katla from the fires of their enemy. If this was a goddess, the response she demanded from the men around her was little short of tawdry: who could love or respect such a being?

  He made the sign of Sur’s anchor, in case he prompted that god to strike him down once for even entertaining the possibility of there being a rival deity.

  ‘And she has set this monster free?’ he said, his voice full of disbelief.

  ‘It seems she has tried, indeed, for her magic is in the air. But she is not strong enough yet: and so I have given her a little help.’ He dropped Aran Aranson a conspiratorial wink.

  The Rockfall man digested this slowly. Then: ‘Why would you do that?’ he asked.

  ‘A little chaos can only help our cause, my boy.’

  Freezing, blood-tinged water cascaded over them all. In the stern, Virelai screamed and clung to the gunwale as if his life depended on it, which was indeed the case. Selen Issian, her previous life slipping back to her in unpleasant little starts and flashes of memory, curled herself protectively about the only thing that still mattered in her world, and sought for the will to survive this new ordeal. Her father, Tycho Issian, wrapped one arm around the Rosa Eldi – who was, it seemed, too stunned by the sight of the terrible thing she had raised from the deep to object to this manhandling – and the other around the mast, crushing them both against the body of the dead man. Meanwhile, the captain of the vessel, Haro Orbia, caught hold of the massive mastfish and moulded himself around it, muttering prayers to the Lady of Fire.

  Others were neither so fortunate nor so galvanised by terror.

  Two of the big Galian mercenaries, who had been gawping at the monster with expressions of the utmost horror and the slow-wittedness of their inbred lineage, tumbled like mannequins dropped by a bored child and fell, shrieking, over the side and into the sea. Erol Bardson, riveted for long seconds by the sight of the royal ship bearing down upon them with his king and chief enemy at its prow, failed to recognise this new danger until it was upon him. As the deck tilted violently, he grasped desperately at a length of chain which hurtled past but only succeeded in diverting its passage so that it whacked into his face, rendering him half-insensible. By the time he had regained his senses sufficiently to review his situation, it was far too late. One moment he had left the deck and was airborne and everything was dreamlike, slow, surreal; the next, he was staring into what appeared to be a vast dark cave half full of water, weed and unidentifiably chewed dead things, a cave fringed with scimitar-like shards of pale bone, and time speeded up horribly so that he did not even ha
ve the opportunity to wonder what would happen to his pretty ward Finna, his wife or his home, before the sword-sharp teeth of the Nemesis pierced him in a dozen places, back and front, and his life was extinguished.

  If there had been tumult and confusion before, now there was pandemonium. Centuries-old enmity was forgotten in the face of common threat. Vessels beyond the immediate range of the monster turned tail and fled for the safety of the quays, or for the open sea. Those in its path slewed and stalled as men abandoned their posts and dived overboard. Some climbed the mast for a better view and hung gibbering from the yardarm, transfixed by the sight of this thing which was neither whale nor shark nor anything they had ever encountered in this world before, even in the worst of their night terrors!

  The flukes of the beast’s great tail thrashed the water and broke apart two skiffs which had desperately rowed away from its snapping jaws. Broken men and splintered wood shot into the air and then vanished beneath the bloody, frothing spume of its wake. When it rounded on one of the Istrian ships, many of the crew jumped overboard on the lee side, while their braver comrades smashed oars and spears against the monster’s giant slablike head. All this achieved was to add new wounds to the myriad scars etched across the beast’s blunt muzzle, scars gained from eons of battering itself against the spellbound bars of its cage; and to enrage it further. Rising out of the water, the Nemesis balanced precariously on its vast tail and hind fins to tower sixty feet in the air over the terrified crew, blotting out the sky and all light and hope; then it crashed down with murderous intent into the centre of the Southern Wayfarer. The beautifully crafted vessel, made from whippy green unseasoned oak that would flex and curve with the running seas and high rollers of the Northern Ocean, could offer no resistance to such a direct onslaught. With a dreadful groan, the timbers broke and scattered, while the keel, the chained rowers and two dozen men of Istria were carried down into the dark waters beneath the creature’s bulk.

  After that, the Nemesis did not rise again; and none knew its movements. Was it lurking, gathering its energies for another frenzied attack; had it been fatally injured by the wreckage of the Southern Wayfarer, or was it grazing the seabed far below them, feasting on the sumptuous pickings scattered across reefs and outcrops, tangled in the kelp beds, washed into sea caves and grottoes?

  The northern king’s flagship had been carried away from its quarry in the backwash from the monster’s dive. It smashed against the Maid of Ixta and sent her rocking and reeling into her sister ship, the Lady of Cera, which rolled dangerously, losing several members of her crew to the brine; then with dextrous handling from the steersman, the Sur’s Raven ploughed through a patch of blessedly open water and came to rest alongside the old Troll of Narth, whose blackwood strakes had seen worse battles than this in its hundred-and-thirty-year history.

  Ravn Asharson, still trembling from shock and adrenalin, gazed with a breaking heart upon the devastation in his harbour. He took in the foundered and sinking ships, the strewn timbers and dead men of two continents. Beside him, Stormway leaned on his sword, breathing heavily. The leather wrapping had come unfurled from his stump. New blood dripped from it.

  ‘Not so mythical, as you see, sire.’

  Ravn gave him a hard stare, then yelled with all his might, ‘Men of Eyra, back to the quays!’ The lust for battle had gone out of him, as it seemed to have from the other participants in this conflict, for everywhere men were sheathing their weapons, shaking their heads, binding up comrades’ wounds.

  The order was picked up and passed along to other friendly vessels until there was a general movement towards the port.

  Those Istrians not drowning or dying, or engaged with trying to right their own ships, watched them go with little regret. It had been a madman’s mission to bait the barbarian king in his own home; some resolved to pay more attention to the intuitions of their brethren from the Farem Hills in years to come.

  Of the southern nobles who had sailed north with the invasion force, the Dukes of Cera and Calastrina had been killed in the initial engagement; the lords of Santorinvo, Tagur and Gibeon had lost their lives in the course of the battle which ensued; the Duke of Sestria had been thrown into the bay when the beast first erupted to life and no one had seen him resurface or hung around to save him if he did. Varyx, Lord of Ixta, lay wounded and raving on the foredeck of his vessel. No one knew what fate had overtaken Rui Finco, the Lord of Forent, last seen on the damaged flagship, Falla’s Mystery. None, that is, except Tycho Issian, Lord of Cantara, who stared over the top of the bowed head of the woman he had come all this way to rescue at a certain silver circlet holding back the long dark hair of the ruined man chained to the mast and knew with a sudden awful certainty that the King of the Eyrans was not, after all, the man he had in his mindless fury blinded and disembowelled. Swiftly, he slipped the circlet from Rui Finco’s ruined head and into his tunic. He did not think anyone else had yet stumbled to the same conclusion, and it would not be helpful if they did.

  Then he stared back into the chaos of the harbour.

  A proud fleet had left Forent the best part of a month before; now, only a ramshackle collection of battered, burned and broken vessels remained. But he had his prize; and the northerners had retreated.

  When all was said and done, it was the most glorious victory.

  Thirty

  Aftermath

  Falla’s Mystery and the remnant of the Istrian fleet fled for home across the Northern Ocean, and with great good luck – for them – the weather held fair. In weeks to come, men would talk about the unseasonable calms that stilled those normally turbulent waters, and the stiff northerly wind which followed, filling the sails by day and by night, and many would give up their thanks to the Goddess, who had clearly intervened with the elements of the world on their behalf. Even so, the Sea Lord and the White Lion never made it home to any port in Istria, and none knew what had befallen them: whether they had foundered due to damage taken in the battle for Halbo, from construction defects which had not been apparent on the voyage out, or poor seamanship; none could say. There were later rumours of mutiny and a slave uprising, and some said ships similar to the two missing vessels had been sighted in the south of the continent, as far away as Gila and even Circesia, with new names and a motley crew; but by then greater events had overtaken all and no one had time to be concerned about the whereabouts of a handful of rich men and their officers.

  The Maid of Ixta limped into Cera with a poorly repaired mast and half her crew; and still Varyx lived; but only because of the swift action of his chirurgeon in severing the arm that would otherwise have festered and killed him.

  Many of the surviving vessels had found themselves masterless; of these, a number fell beneath the command of mercenary soldiers engaged by the Lord of Forent, and these men, seeing an opportunity, went harrying along the coast of the Eyran mainland. From Longfell and Langey they stole fifty-five women and girls; from Sharpnose and Blackness a further thirty-eight, for their husbands and sons had been called to Ravn Asharson’s muster in Halbo, and many of them now lay dead at the bottom of the sea, or wounded in the makeshift infirmaries set up in the fish sheds and warehouses on that city’s quays.

  The Man of Oak, under the command of a black-coaster called Peto Iron-Arm, raided along the shores of Berthey and brought away the wives and daughters of Long Marsh, Hawkridge and Haddocks Chair; but not without a fight, for they were tough women and resourceful, and had no wish to be traded in the Istrian slavemarkets and made whores to their enemies. Many of Peto Iron-Arm’s crew came away from these violent sackings with broken bones, stab wounds and bruised faces; and not all of them survived their injuries.

  The Golden Lady of Skarn met with a worse fate; for she was wrecked on the treacherous reefs off Oxfirth, and there the old men, women and children came out into the shallows and instead of rescuing the survivors, battered them to death with whatever farm implements had come to hand when the wrecking call went out.

&nbs
p; Of those vessels still afloat, eleven of the invasion fleet were unable to make their way out of Halbo’s harbour as a result of broken rudders and burned masts; or because their crew had, in the heat of battle, smashed through their shackles with stolen swords and deserted. But Ravn Asharson, having discovered his wife and child gone, was in no mood for clemency.

  When a search of the castle and grounds rendered no clue to the Rosa Eldi’s whereabouts, he questioned servants, retainers and courtiers – all to no avail. In the end, he went to seek advice from his mother, the Lady Auda, as to where his wife had hidden with little Ulf for the duration of the battle, for she had an information network concerning the comings and goings of all in the castle and its vicinity which was second to none.

  But when he rapped on the door of her chamber there was a moment’s pregnant silence within as if the occupants had stopped whatever they were doing and held their breath; then the door creaked open a hand’s width and Lilja Mersen, his mother’s ancient bodyservant, stuck her nose through the gap.

  When she saw who was knocking for admittance, she shut it again with a clang. Ravn stood there, mystified. It was true that he and his mother had not been on the best of terms these past months, but she had never shunned his company, however aggrieved she had been by his choice of wife. Besides, he was king! He rapped again, more loudly.

  This time it was Auda herself who came to the door.

  ‘What do you want?’

  It was not a friendly greeting. Ravn frowned. ‘Let me in, Mother, and I will tell you.’

  The door inched open, but still the old woman blocked his way. ‘You may tell me here.’