by Jude Fisher
Ravn looked over his shoulder to where a knot of courtiers were advancing along the corridor, their gossip suspended as they watched in fascination the King being denied entrance to his mother’s chamber. Determined now, he stuck a leg through the opening, pressed the door wider despite Auda’s resistance, forced himself inside and shut it again before the courtiers could snoop.
There was a scuffle of activity within the room and Lilja stood with her skirts spread to hide something on the bed. Ravn looked away, irritated. Let the old woman have her secrets, then: he had no time for such nonsense.
‘Don’t bleed on my carpet.’
He looked down and found that indeed blood was still dripping from a number of wounds on his arms and chest; he had not even noticed until now, such had been the concern for his family. He stepped onto the flagstones, noticing that the old woman made no move to attend to his injuries.
‘Where is my wife?’
Auda snorted. ‘You have mislaid her? How careless.’
Ravn glared at her. ‘Don’t play with me, Mother. You always know everything.’
‘Gone, my son, and good riddance, say I!’
‘Gone?’
Now the old woman cackled with unbridled glee. ‘You really didn’t know? Gone with the southern lords on their ships; taken the boy and the nurse with her, too, and sailed for Istria, whence she came. That’s how much she cares for you, my boy; but I can see that even though the witch is far away by now, you are still caught in her thrall!’
Ravn felt dizzy, then sick; and not from blood loss.
‘When?’ he croaked. ‘How long?’
The old woman shrugged. ‘If I know anything, she will have been on the first ship to flee, no doubt with its poor captain under her spell.’
The King of Eyra found many emotions battling within him; anger came foremost. He raised his hand as if to strike the old woman, but she matched it with a defiant face as if to will him to do it, and his rage subsided as swiftly as it had stirred, leaving him feeling empty and bereft. Then he turned on his heel, flung open the door so hard that the ironwork rang against the stones of the wall, and ran down the corridors bellowing for Stormway and Shepsey to attend him immediately.
The old king Ashar Stenson, the Grey Wolf, had been possessed of such towering rages that men had fled the country rather than bring him bad news; in his time he had killed messengers, roasted heralds, spitted emissaries and beheaded envoys. His captains and generals had learned to sweeten even the most evil tidings with carefully worded optimism and fair omens. His son, nevertheless, had always been a boy of a sunny disposition, given to easy laughter, casual banter and disarming charm; but when it took the best part of a week to clear the wreckage from Halbo’s harbour before the remnants of the northern fleet could begin its pursuit, Ravn Asharson displayed worse temper than even his legendary father had shown. News of abductions of women along the southern coast and from the outlying islands only served to heat it further.
The three hundred and seventeen Istrians who had been stranded in Halbo when the rest of their fleet sailed all perished by summary execution by hanging or, when the gibbets were full and no further trees could be spared to make more, simple stabbing – lords, officers or slaves, it made no difference: if they spoke no Eyran, Ravn had them killed with no recourse to the Were Law which had for centuries been invoked on behalf of all prisoners of war.
‘They came to steal my wife and your women,’ he declared. ‘This is not an act of war, but one of common thievery and thus shall they be punished.’
One evening while the King was pacing up and down the quays watching the ships being outfitted for the foray south, an old man and his companion, who seemed vaguely familiar, accosted him. Ravn was impatient, listless, uninterested in anything other than the pursuit. When the old man announced himself as a powerful mage who would offer his services to help the King regain the Rose of the World, he gave a sharp bark of a laugh and told him to be gone before he found a gibbet with some hanging-space left. The old man raised an eyebrow, then split the giant hawser-stone of the harbour mole in two. When the incinerated dust settled, it found Ravn Asharson stopped in his tracks, stroking his beard consideringly.
Only Aran Aranson was privy to the fact that when the King had left the scene, the hawser-stone was back in place, apparently untouched, though the air around it smelled strange. And only Aran Aranson was privy to the effort even this trick had cost the Master, since he was the one who had to carry the old man up into the castle to their temporary quarters that night, the mage being too weak to make his own way. Privately, Aran was becoming less than impressed by the old man’s vaunted powers: raising the monster seemed to have drained him so thoroughly that he fell asleep and snored through the hubbub which followed, rather significantly, the departure of this ‘goddess’ he had come to reclaim.
Word carried fast in Eyra: by runner, raven or rowing boat. There was now talk of a great sorcerer who would join their effort, who might even be Sur himself come back to them in their time of need. Their victory over the old enemy was surely guaranteed. When the muster began in earnest, there was no shortage of men to fill the ships; for many of those involved in the fight for Halbo had survived the battle and swum to shore, or had rowed themselves expertly out of the way of the worst dangers. Many more had lost wives, daughters, wards, nieces and cousins in the raids by the southerners on their coastal towns.
Three hundred years of bad blood simmered to the surface. Not one man aboard the Eyran fleet was untainted by desire for revenge, the craving to regain family honour, to make a name which would resound for centuries to come, to scour the world of his enemy.
For three hundred years the men of Istria had warred with the men of Eyra. It was more than a pattern: it was a birthright, a belief system; a law of nature: it ran in the blood and the bones and the brains. And surely there was nothing in the world which could challenge or dispel such an ingrained, unquestioned, fundamental ideology, a way of life and death in which every man was complicit? It would be like trying to change the path of a tempest or a ranging torrent; like standing in the way of a charging bull or an eruption of lava; like casting chaff into a storm . . .
Thirty-one
Travelling south
They travelled by night to avoid attracting attention; by day they slept under hedgerows, behind rocks and in copses while one or other of the mercenary band stood watch. Slung over a mule with his hands tied and a gag in his mouth, Saro Vingo felt like the poor cargo he was in the eyes of this tough troop of men and women: produce which would be traded for the best price when they reached his home town. The ignominy shamed him; but worst of all was Katla Aransen’s refusal to accept his apology for the death of her friend.
When he had tried to explain it was his only recourse to prevent Erno from revealing more information about the deathstone which would enable the Lord of Cantara to scour his enemies from the face of the earth, Katla had fixed him with a look of unremitting scepticism and then gagged him with her own ungentle hands. ‘Do you think I am such a fool that I will stand by and listen to such nonsense?’ she had sneered. ‘If you were truly concerned that Tycho Issian was such a threat to the world, why then did you not strike him dead with your little ball of glass, rather than my brave cousin, who risked himself to save my life?’
Saro had no answer to that, for Katla or for himself. He felt stupid, lethal; irredeemably responsible.
He tried to let the sway of the mule stay his thoughts; but no matter how much he hated himself, he survived: he ate what food he was given, drank water, continued to breathe; and when he slept, the nightmares came. But despite it all, it seemed that the Goddess must have some requirement of him, that she was so stubborn in keeping his shade on this side of her fires.
One night the hillman came over to where their prisoner was tied and took the gag from Saro’s mouth.
‘Katla has just told me exactly why it was that you killed her kinsman,’ he said softly.
Persoa untied Saro’s bindings, then took the stopper from his waterskin and held it out to the lad. ‘Drink as much as you wish,’ he offered kindly, ‘there’s more where that came from.’
Saro swigged until his belly felt fit to burst. Then he looked about. ‘Not around here,’ he said, frowning. All that could be seen in any direction were thorn bushes silvered by moonlight, dry sand, gritty soil: a half-dead landscape rendered more lifeless still by night’s harsh monotones.
The hillman smiled.‘It’s further underground than it would usually run, but I can divine it. Like this.’ He squatted, laid the palm of one hand flat upon the ground and cocked his head consideringly. Then he came upright again, grinning, his teeth startlingly white in the darkness of his face. ‘Over there,’ he said, gesturing south and east, ‘maybe half a mile; there is a spring running below the limestone.’
Saro regarded him askance. ‘How can you know that?’
‘I am eldianna,’ the hillman explained, and watched as Saro’s eyes became round with surprise.
‘I thought they existed only in the old tales,’ he said. ‘The legends of the south.’
Persoa shrugged. ‘It is an ancient skill, that is true.’ He lifted his head for a moment as if listening to something far away, then came and sat down close to Saro, his long legs folded neatly. ‘I understand why you killed poor Erno,’ he said at last. ‘To stop him speaking of a great and dangerous mystery.’
‘I should have killed the Lord of Cantara,’ Saro said, his jaw clenched with shame. ‘But I panicked.’
‘You killed him to stop him speaking of a deathstone.’
Saro nodded. ‘Katla thinks me mad. She will not listen to me.’
Persoa took one of the lad’s hands and pressed it between his own and Saro felt a jolt of energy fly up his arm, followed by a suffusion of heat and a strong sense of well-being. The touch of the hillman, instead of filling him with the usual torrent of intrusive images and unpleasant insights, offered him the vision of a still pond, clear and calm, an oasis in a troubled world. ‘I do not think you mad,’ the eldianna said, ‘for my people know of the existence of deathstones and what they may do. Tell me what you know and I promise I will listen to every word and then trade you my own knowledge.’
And so, with the cool night breeze whispering through the thorns, Saro Vingo told the hillman of all he knew – of the moodstone which had come to him in such violent circumstances at the Allfair; of the unwanted gift of empathy which had accompanied it; how the thing had come to lethal life in his hands when the pale woman had touched it and how he had killed without thought by wielding the stone; how he had discovered the real identity of the pale woman from the nomads with whom he travelled; how one of those nomads had taken the stone when it had fallen in the skirmish and used it on his friend, the sorcerer Virelai, who was now such a changed man. Then he told him how the Lord of Cantara was so wrapped by lustful obsession that he sought to take the Goddess as his own; how he had engineered a holy war to steal her back from the North, which was ironic in the extreme, given that the man had no knowledge of her true nature; and then, with his eyes averted and his voice hoarse with horror, he told the eldianna of the terrible vision which had overtaken him in Jetra’s Star Chamber when the lord had clutched his shoulder – of Tycho Issian wielding the murderous rays of the deathstone against a milling, screaming horde; and how he knew that this devastation was but a beginning, for the man was deathly and mad, and would suffer no living thing to survive if it stood in his way.
Through all this, the hillman said not a word. His dark eyes scanned Saro’s face earnestly and with such an expression of acceptance and understanding that by the end of his account, Saro could not help but sob like a child forgiven an all-consuming misdemeanour.
‘Not all such visions are true sight, my friend; some show the worst possible future. But I understand why you did what you did.’
‘When Erno offered to tell him where it might be found, all I could think was to shut him up—’
‘And so you bashed his head in with a paperweight.’
Katla Aransen materialised between the stunted trees as if detaching herself seamlessly from one of their gnarled branches.
‘Katla, Katla,’ the eldianna said admonishingly.‘You are too rigid, too judgemental: you should acquire some tolerance.’
‘Tolerance! Tolerance is what allows our enemies to murder our own and get away with it. Tolerance lets them take our land and enslave our women.’ She thrust out a belligerent jaw. ‘You say I should be tolerant; but the Empire has no understanding of tolerance – it burns those who disagree with its stupid religion or any who don’t fit in with its laws or its society. Cold iron is all that Istrians understand, and that I can provide them with.’
Her sword was halfway out of its sheath. Saro cringed.
Instead of leaping to his feet to ward off whatever unpredictable violence might flare up, Persoa offered Katla his angular, lopsided grin. Then he reached out and touched her arm, gestured for her to sit down. Remarkably, she released the sword’s hilt and sat, though she watched them both with suspicious eyes.
‘I know what you are thinking,’ Persoa said easily. ‘That in truth we are both Istrians, Saro Vingo and myself; both tainted by centuries of bloody warfare with your people and by the worship of a deity very different to your own. You think we may be in league, no?’
Katla shrugged. She looked sullen, a girl bored by a school lesson. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
The hillman inclined his head.‘That is always a good place to start.’
‘What I do know is that he killed my cousin, for no good reason.’
‘I am sorry—’ Saro started, but Persoa waved a hand to curtail the apology.
‘What is a “good” reason to kill, Katla Aransen?’
Katla laughed. ‘You, a paid assassin, ask me this?’
The hillman grimaced. ‘I am good at killing, that is true; but I am not proud of that skill. Maybe my long proximity to death has made me more aware of the cost of taking a life. Tell me, Katla, how many have you killed?’
‘Twelve men,’ Katla said proudly and without hesitation. She’d kept count. ‘If you include the guard whose arm I took off in the lord’s chamber. Can’t imagine he survived that.’
‘Twelve men. And what have you learned from those deaths?’
‘That a dead enemy does not rise. And the more of them you kill, the fewer of them there are to do you or your family harm.’
Persoa’s mouth pursed, but he made no retort. Instead, he turned to Saro. ‘And you, Saro Vingo. How many deaths are there to your name?’
Saro paled. Tears sprang to his eyes. He bowed his head, ashamed that the bold northern girl should see him so affected. ‘Six men,’ he said quietly. ‘Including my own brother.’
Katla’s eyebrows shot up. She remembered his braggart brother mauling her knives at her stall. ‘Well, that’s no great loss,’ she snorted. ‘Still, six men, that’s not bad for a milksop like you. What did you use, poison?’
Saro’s head came up sharply. Eyes which glittered silver in the moonlight fixed her with a fierce, if damp, stare. ‘One you saw me kill with iron; one, I will not speak of; four died from the power of the deathstone I told you about, three of those as I tried to save you from the pyres.’
‘What?’
‘They got in the way. I thrust the stone at them unthinking. I had no idea it would kill them: all I could think was that they were going to burn you unless I could reach you first.’
Katla looked away now, not knowing how to respond to this new information, which ran so contrary to her own memory of events; besides, how could you kill anyone by touching them with a little stone? Sharp iron was another matter. How she itched to be away from all this, in her own forge, doing what she knew best.
Persoa stared intently at the lad. ‘
You risked your soul,’ he said.
‘And how many have you killed?’ Saro asked bitterly.
‘One hundred and ninety-three men, and four women.’
‘So how’s your soul, then?’
‘I have killed for many reasons: in self-defence, in hatred and out of compassion,’ the hillman admitted. ‘But mainly I have killed for money, for the skill I have in taking a life swiftly. I dedicate each death to Elda. The Lady must weigh my soul when I walk through her fires. I think it is feather-light by now and I am not proud of that.
‘But you are two young people whose souls are not yet beyond redemption.’ Persoa glanced at Saro and then at Katla: both looked thoroughly unconvinced. He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘I am no orator or bard,’ he said at last. ‘And people are happier to listen to a song of war than a song of peace; but I ask you to hear me out.
‘For centuries your people have fought one another, northman against southerner, each time heaping aggravation upon aggravation. But in all that time, their weapons have been crude and limited in effect. Now a new element has entered Elda, and it is growing in strength day by day; for a deathstone draws its power not only from the hand which wields it, but also from the life-force it takes, or that which it drags back; and someone has been wielding it often of late: soon its power will be devastating. Already, the balance of the world is out of kilter, for hate far outweighs compassion as its people prepare to go to war again. If the Lord of Cantara lays hands upon this stone and uses it as a weapon, the destruction will be unimaginable, and soon there will be nothing left on Elda but hatred and despair.
‘So I ask you, Katla Aransen, not to add to the burden of hatred which drags us all down into darkness. Saro did not kill your kinsman for no reason: he did it in an excess of terror, not for himself, but for the world, and though his aim may have been displaced, his intention was not. Katla, forgive him for this death.’
Several seconds of silence stretched awkwardly between them. Then, instead of answering the hillman’s plea, the Eyran girl looked squarely at Saro. ‘Did you really try to save me at the Allfair? I thought you were ploughing your way through the mob to kill me.’