The Rose of the World

by Jude Fisher

  And soon he would unfurl those precious petals and plunge himself into the heart of that tight bud. His fists clenched at the effort it required not to tear off every scrap of his clothing, to rip down the shelter which veiled her presence from him, and hurl himself upon her here and now. Breathing heavily, he took himself off to the bow, where the bucking sea and lashing spray would cleanse his skin, and his thoughts.

  Selen Issian rinsed out her bloodied linen in the pail, rubbing till her knuckles were raw. Nothing would shift the stains: it was as if the salt in the water was setting the blood there like a dye. Trying to remove it was as futile as trying to erase the memory of her past. Hidden from her for so long by some trick of the mind, or by some foul sorcery, her entire history had returned to her in vivid flashes following the shock of Ravn’s death. Yet again she cursed her lot. Better that she had died at Tanto Vingo’s hands; or if not during that assault, then in the waves when she had plunged into the sea after Erno Hamson.

  The child, as if aware of her negative thoughts, fixed its violet eyes upon her and wailed: a malevolent, baleful presence.

  She glared back at it, forcing a new hard-heartedness.‘Stop your noise,’ she said sharply, as the volume of its roar increased, though her breasts ached and she longed to pick him up. ‘Do not look to me to feed you: she has claimed you as her own, and she can have the care of you.’

  She wrung the cloths out with vicious hands, as if wringing the neck of one of the chickens she had never dared to kill when the Eyran had brought them to the beach.

  ‘What good can come of a child born of such a deed?’ she mourned. ‘You even look like him: you have his eyes.’

  The baby waved its fists at her and kicked its feet. It screwed its face up and let forth a howl of utmost rage.

  The Rosa Eldi, lying with her eyes closed and her hands crossed on her chest, like a stone statue in the Halls of the Dead, stirred. She brushed the tips of her fingers across her face like a woman emerging from the depths of a dream and sat up slowly. Her sea-green eyes, not yet quite focused, swept over the screaming child, the strewn clothing, the pail of water. At last they came to rest upon the woman she knew as her bodyservant, Leta Gullwing. Her gaze was infinitely sad, infinitely gentle. Selen looked aside, feeling the hatred she nursed so carefully slipping away.

  ‘Will you not feed the child, Leta?’ the Rose of the World asked.

  ‘I have no milk.’

  It was no less than the truth. Her milk had dried up abruptly; and just as that flow had ceased, so her moon-blood had returned for the first time since the birth, returned with griping aches which made her tense and wretched.

  ‘Ah.’ The first frown Selen had ever seen on the Queen’s face now creased her forehead. ‘I am sorry: I have been remiss. There have been too many other things to think about, too many requests for my aid.’

  It was Selen Issian’s turn to frown. All the woman had done was to lie silent and motionless on the couch for the past few days. She had not risen, even to wash or to use the pail; she had eaten not a morsel. She had thought her sick or dying. Now it seemed she was deluded.

  Anger made her blunt. ‘Why take my child if you cannot feed or care for him?’

  A cloud passed over the Rosa Eldi’s face and for a long time she spoke no word. Then, ‘For love,’ she said simply.

  Selen stared at her, feeling the bile rise up.

  ‘If you loved him so much, why not give him a child of your own, unless you feared to mar that perfect body, that pretty skin? If you loved him, how could you foist another man’s baby upon him?’

  The Queen’s eyes darkened, became misty. Her lower lip appeared to tremble for the briefest second, then firmed itself so swiftly Selen thought she might have been mistaken. Her voice was steady when she spoke again. ‘He needed a child. For his throne.’ Dully, she repeated the words she had heard so often. Still the ways of men seemed incomprehensible to her. Succession, inheritance, bloodlines: what mattered such things if there could be love and trust and comfort? ‘But I could not give him the baby he craved. There is no life in me. None at all.’ She looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap. Even though her skin was ivory-pale, the knuckles showed whiter than the rest.

  A barren woman, then: nothing more than that. Still Selen was not satisfied. ‘So you and that woman . . . that seither . . . cut my child out of me and you took it as your own, presented it to him as his heir?’

  The Rose of the World nodded slowly, but would not look up.

  ‘And then you hazed my mind, took away my memories and all that made me who I was?’

  Again, the barest of nods.

  ‘A second theft, just as heinous as the first! What made you think you had the right to do such a thing? I had been poorly enough treated before ever I met you, but thought I had found some place of safety in the northern court; and yet when I came to you, you stole my child and my mind!’ Selen Issian stormed on, and there was no stopping the torrent of her fury now. ‘And all for something you call “love”. You, who have no idea what the word means! If you loved him, as you claim, why have you come unresisting to the Lord Tycho Issian, a terrible man: a cruel man, as I too well know, for he is my father! If you loved Ravn, as you claim, why have you not wept at the loss of him?’

  And at this a single fat tear dropped onto the back of the Rosa Eldi’s hands and slid off onto her silk under-robe, leaving a dark, wet mark like a wound.

  Her face, when she lifted it, was ragged with emotion. She moved her mouth as if to form words, then threw her head back and that mouth became a maw, a sea-cave into darkness. The wail that issued from it enveloped Selen with such force that she subsided with a thud onto the floor. So powerful was it that it shocked even the child to quietness.

  It was a cry like the wail of death itself, and it spread swiftly across the entire ship.

  Beyond the leather shelter, men stopped coiling ropes, bailing bilgewater, stowing gear, gutting fish. The lookout, a thin dark boy, balancing precariously on the rakki above the sail, abruptly lost his grip and came plummeting down to hit the deck with a crash and a cry of his own. Virelai, crouching unhappily amidst the wounded men, wrapped his arms about his head in a vain attempt to shut out the noise. At the helm, Tycho Issian, spun around with a curse halfformed on his lips and stared down the length of his ship, bewildered, his ears painful, an echo of the noise hurtling around the inside of his skull.

  Seabirds in the vicinity veered sharply from their onshore course. And beneath the waves, where no normal sound travels, the basking sharks of the pelagic waters dived into colder, darker zones than was their wonted habitat, and found there shoals of pollock and mackerel, sardine and ling fleeing away into the regions frequented by deep-sea fish – the redfish and rabbitfish and halibut – which rarely crossed their paths.

  The Rosa Eldi’s sorrowful cry travelled on like a seismic wave.

  North, it flew, whipping the sea to a frenzy in its path. By the time it reached the ships of the pursuing fleet, the waves it brought were almost sixty feet high.

  In the leading vessel a man sat amidships in a gimballed chair he had fashioned for himself to reduce the worst effects of the passage. He wore a vast robe which repelled all weather; his wild hair and beard were trimmed, and in his hand he held an ivory staff. Rahe had decided to make a certain effort with his appearance in the eyes of the king, investing himself with might and nobility, which should at least dissuade Ravn from tipping him overboard if the going got rough and he failed to live up to expectations. But even he was not prepared for this.

  As they closed with the southern fleet he had been feeling his magic deserting him moment by moment. She was doing this to him: he knew it. She was draining his magic out of him, drawing it back to herself. He felt weaker with every day that passed: he was beginning to wish he had never left the safety of the place he had for good reason named Sanctuary.

  As the unearthly cry flew over him, every hair on his ancient body rose at the soun
d of it, an instinctive reaction, like that of a wild dog suddenly alerted to the presence of a predator. And then the first of the giant rollers came sweeping down upon them and even as the ship mounted its steep bank he was engulfed; not by chill water, but by a terrible despair, and while he knew it not his own, still he could not withstand it, but opened his own mouth in turn and wailed with all his might, a wail that was echoed by that of Ravn Asharson and Aran Aranson and of every other mortal aboard, a sound which was then buried by the breaking of the first massive wave.

  As the last echoes of her scream died away, the Goddess emerged into the light. The sun, which till that moment had been blanketed by a heavy white layer of mist, now burned its way clear, striking incandescent rays down upon the ship and the surrounding sea. Blinded by this sudden brightness, men shielded their eyes and gazed upon the woman they thought of as the Queen of the Northern Isles.

  But in that sudden brilliant sunshine she seemed more than any woman; more than a mere queen. In that sudden brilliant sunshine she stood tall and proud, and her long hair shone silver-white like a waterfall. So, too, did her pale skin shine, luminous and flawless. And every man among them longed to reach out and touch her, just to lay his fingers against her arm, to cup her face in a gentle palm, to pin back that fall of hair to the nape of her delicate neck, to kiss a fraction of that extraordinary skin. But none could look for long upon her, for her visage was too bright, too perfect, and the gaze which fell upon them from those sea-green eyes lanced them like quarrels shot from a bow. They had to look aside, and as they did so, each felt a hot wash of shame overcome them: shame not for looking upon this perfect woman, but shame for every cruel or wanton deed they had in this life performed. Shame for every man they had struck, whether in bar brawl or in war; shame for every woman they had wronged. She walked to the nearest man – a northcoast fisherman with the weatherbeaten skin and white crowsfeet of a man who spent his time squinting into the sun – and placed the tips of her fingers on his brow. At once, he closed his eyes, his senses assailed. Images tumbled around his skull: the time he had hit his small sister, blackening her eye; how he had lied to his mother and the way her pale mouth, exposed by the unadorned slit in her plain blue sabatka, had pursed with disappointment, but she had said nothing: for no Istrian woman was ever allowed to criticise any man; the baker he had struck in an alley after an argument about a game of stones; the knife he had stolen from a fellow crew member; the whore he had used before making this voyage, the way she had moaned when he pushed her down on the bed; the coldness he had shown his wife when she dared to ask where he had been; the man he had killed in the battle for Halbo, stabbing him through the eye as he waved for help in the churning waters . . .

  When she withdrew her hand, he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face. She passed to the next man, a Jetran who had spent eight years in the Eternal City’s militia, then a further six as a bountyman. The lightest touch of her fingers sent his eyes rolling back in his head.

  Inside this man’s mind she saw: the sister he had sold to a man from Galia who gave him a good horse and a pair of boots in return; the knees of a nomad girl forced apart, how he had thrown a rag over that defiant face to stop her looking at him; Footloose men slung, beaten and bloodied, across a string of mules like so much baggage; stoking the fires in a chambered room filled with choking smoke and screaming people.

  ‘Forgive me, Lady, forgive me!’ he cried.

  The Rose of the World found that she did not wish to grant such easy absolution: inside her soul a vein of iron stood fast and cold. Let them suffer, she thought, as those they have harmed have suffered. Let them feel torment and distress.

  This thought came to her with a small start of surprise: for all those who had sent their prayers to her had prayed to one who was gentle and forever merciful, one who would pardon and forgive their every wrongdoing. Was it her time back in this world which had hardened her so; or had they always been deceived as to the nature of this goddess they so blindly worshipped?

  She left him moaning and moved on.

  The third man had been a priest for a time, had called the observances and strewn the safflower in the fires. He had made new prayers for the worshippers from Ixta and Cera; he had blessed children in the name of Falla and presided over marriages. But when she laid her fingers on his brow she saw no pacific benevolence there, but the rolling eyes of a ewe as the sacrificial knife bit into her bared throat; the way a booted foot kicked an unconscious Footloose man into the pyres; how he bound three nomads and their children to the stakes as the other men built up the stacks of wood and oil around them.

  The next man she touched was a slave at his oar, a man captured in the southern hills. She saw: a girl-child put out on a moonlit mountainside to live or die, as pleased the Goddess; a man brained with a rock, silver coins spilling from his hand; a weeping woman, a bawling child; an old tribesman trampled underfoot in a headlong escape.

  On she went, touching a slave here, a crewman there.

  She saw children neglected and abused; women consigned to no life but chores, to brothels and hard service, to death in childbed or from exhaustion and despair. She saw all manner of animals sacrificed in the name of religion – to appease her! She saw men killing other men, raping women, enslaving tribesfolk; sending Wandering Folk to the pyres to ‘cleanse’ their souls.

  And each man she touched knew for the first time the wrong he had done.

  So this is Elda, she thought. This is my world: a place in which greed and power and ill-intent brings suffering and death to the poor, the weak and the oppressed. This is the world from which I was stolen: but it is a world I do not recognise or recall. Is it my memory which is at fault, I wonder; or have I been absent for so long that all the good in it has drained away?

  And then, at last, she came to Tycho Issian.

  They stood there face to face, the Rose of the World and the Lord of Cantara; but he gazed upon her boldly with shameless eyes, eyes which burned with heat and lust, and this time it was she who turned away. This man she could not touch: there was something about him which terrified her still, Goddess or no. When he reached out to put his hands on her, she gave herself up to a dead faint and she crumpled at his feet.

  When the great waves and the howl of wind passed over them without taking their ships into the depths of the Northern Ocean, King Ravn Asharson sank to his knees and gave up his thanks to Sur.

  ‘Surely he is watching us and willing on our pursuit,’ he cried triumphantly to Rahe, never noticing that the old man was white with exhaustion and terror, nor that his knobbly hands had acquired a new tremor.

  The mage roused himself with an effort and looked Ravn squarely in the eye.

  ‘Summon no gods,’ he said sternly. ‘Put your trust instead in the good oak of your ships, the strength of your men, and in my good offices, for powerful sorcery will stand you in better stead by far than calling on some unpredictable and wanton being.’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Ravn nodded enthusiastically. ‘Now tell me, Lord Rahe, can you not make our ships go any faster? We must gain upon them and overtake them before they make landfall, or we shall have a hard time of it.’

  But the mage shook his weary head. ‘Have I not given you fair passage so far, young man?’ he demanded, claiming good weather that had never been his to bestow. ‘There is only so much I can do for you without attracting unwanted attention.’

  Ravn narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  Rahe extricated himself from the gimballed chair and leaned in close to the barbarian king. ‘The use of magic permeates far beyond its intended sphere, young man,’ he said softly. ‘Every time I use my powers on your behalf, it leaks down through the waves to the very seafloor. You cannot imagine what lurks down there, unseen except by those whom disaster takes. Monstrous creatures, many-limbed horrors with beaks and teeth; tentacled terrors as large as the greatest whale. If the magic touches them, they feel compelled to seek it out; and wh
en they do, it is not gently.’

  The King of Eyra regarded him sceptically, though he well remembered the eruption of the creature which had caused such havoc in his own harbour. Monsters he cared nothing for: monsters could be despatched or evaded; but if the Istrians made safe landfall he would lose his advantage, and lose his best chance to reclaim his beloved wife and child. He felt the urge to take the old man by his scrawny chicken neck and force the magic out of him. But instead, taking a deep breath, he said with the diplomacy he had learned so hard these past months. ‘Very well, lord mage. Let us reserve the best of your abilities for the battle ahead.’ And if you fail me then, I shall personally feed you to whatever monsters inhabit the Istrian home waters.

  Then he turned and walked away to speak with his steersman: if the mage would not help him then he must indeed trust to good men and good oak.

  Rahe, watching after him smiled in his turn, congratulating himself yet again on his own quick-wittedness and subtlety.

  A sea battle would not suit his own plan well at all. No, let the Istrians make land and then he would have them all: Goddess and apprentice, beast and brother.

  When the Rose of the World came back to consciousness, she was no longer on a ship, that much was clear. Her eyes swept her surroundings with curiosity. She was in a chamber like none she had ever known, in this life at least. The walls shone silver as if by some magic men had managed to make a paint from metal and sheathe stone within it. Bright tapestries hung from carved wooden poles, replicating all manner of wonders. Tumbles of red and pink roses cascading over the forms of naked women, each breast another flower among so many, each areola a swelling bud. Gryphons and unicorns battled one another; serpents and knights were bound in unholy congress; a many-legged creature rose up from a churning ocean to claim a pale ship. A fire blazed in a vast inglenooked hearth; sconces bore a hundred candles; pots of burning incense and bowls of safflower stood on every table. Across each massive piece of furniture – of which there were many – lay the hide of some poor dead beast. She looked upon each one and recognised them all: spotted cats and striped horses, minks and ermines and fox pelts. From the centre of the polished stone floor the head of a snowbear stared back at her, its intelligent black eyes replaced by balls of silver which mirrored blankly the dancing candlelight. Its claws had been removed, but its ivory fangs gleamed in an eternal humourless grin.