The Ryel Saga: A Tale of Love and Magic

by Carolyn Kephart

  *****

  His rai pulled together like scattered mercury, rolling bit by bit into wholeness. He felt bright light pressing on his eyelids like tormenting fingers, and groaned for the pain of it. But little by little it grew easier to bear, until eventually he could blink, and then see. Unfortunately, everything he saw was spinning crazily, a great whirling nowhere of gray and brown. Struggling to stand up—he had at some point crumpled to his knees—he felt a sick rising in his gorge, and sat down again lest he be wracked with retching.

  Slowly he looked about him—only with his eyes, for any movement of his head brought unbearable dizziness—and found Jinn nearby, as tranquil as if no spell had ever occurred. Beyond Jinn a great river flowed, murky brown and swift with snowmelt from the great mountains afar off—peaks far more massive and stern than the Gray Sisterhood, heavily mantled in white.

  Ryel shivered. He felt very cold. "So," he murmured through uncontrollably rattling teeth. "Where's that good spirit you told me of, Lady Srin?"

  At that question a sudden burst of song issued from nearby, making Ryel start. Turning about—he could now move without too much suffering—he saw a swirl of smoke issuing from behind a clump of tall reeds. The smoke thickened, and now and then the singing halted in favor of coughing, but then continued merrily as ever. It wasn't the kind of song Ryel expected from a spirit; far from it. And surely a spirit's voice would be sweeter, or at least more on key.

  Peering between the reeds, the wysard saw that the singer was of no apparent gender. It wore male garb in the Northern fashion, but its disordered beige curls fell nearly to its waist, and the timbre of its voice was sexlessly shrill and high. It crouched over a miserable excuse for a fire, trying to coax a pile of damp twigs into a blaze. Out of pity Ryel said a word, and the twigs leapt alight, to the singer's astonished pleasure. Deeply desirous of some of the heat he'd created, the wysard emerged from behind the reeds. At first the singer stared wide-eyed, but then it coughed a curse and snatched at its head.

  "Damnation take it, my wig's afire!"

  In the next moment the smoldering heap of unkempt curls was being energetically whacked against the grass, and the singer was revealed to be a balding ginger-haired man, closer to fifty than forty. Wig in hand, he squinted up at Ryel, his teeth—yellowing where they weren't missing—bared in either a grin or a grimace. "You're not a highwayman, I hope? No pistols?"

  Ryel had heard about pistols, and guns in general, around the Risma fires. From what he could gather, they were unreliable, inaccurate, clumsy and loud. The folk of the Steppes scorned them as newfangled and outlandish, sure to be discarded as worthless novelties. Remembering that scorn, Ryel shook his head emphatically enough that his new acquaintance seemed convinced. Blowing away the burnt hair, the highly unlikely agency of good clapped his wig back on his head and stretched out his hands to the blaze—hands with black-stained nail-bitten fingers laden with garish rings of dubious worth—and rubbed them gleefully.

  "Come near and get warm, by all means. I have a great knack for making fires—although of course when I'm at home my manservant makes 'em for me. I was just heating some shaving-water, so that I might look presentable when I enter Hallagh in triumph. Were you perchance listening to my song, sir?"

  Ryel nodded, likewise rubbing his hands back to life. "I couldn't help myself. May I use part of your fire to heat some water for myself?"

  "Certainly, if you'd be so kind as to hold my shaving-mirror." Ryel's new acquaintance produced that item and others needful from his horse's saddlepack as the wysard rested his chaltak on the blazing twigs, glad that he'd filled the vessel the night before with water from Kalima's clean streams.

  As the helpful spirit attended to his toilette with Ryel's help, he sang the song's concluding verses, which were ribald in the extreme. "So you like my little musical trifle, eh? 'The Rambling Trollop' it's called, and all the town will be singing it next week, but yours is the joy of its maidenhead. My last song, 'What The Chambermaid Saw,' was all the rage at court, but I much doubt you've heard it. I infer your ignorance from your aspect, which is most exotically Southern. You make for Hallagh, I suppose."

  "I do."

  "I'll bear you company—but let's drink first, by way of acquaintance."

  "I'd prefer my chal just now, for its warmth. Would you like some?" As he spoke, Ryel filled his cup, and as always, the drink was sheer comfort.

  "No tea for me, although I thank you." The musician drew a bottle from one of his capacious coat pockets, uncorked it, and took a long swig. "What might I call you, sir, should I be accorded the honor?"

  "My name is Ryel Mirai," the wysard answered.

  The poet seemed to reflect as he drank again. "Ah. Of Destimar, perchance?"

  "Of Almancar, not long ago."

  The songster's bleary eyes lit bright. "Indeed! Almancar! My lord of Gledrim visited its whore-quarter once, when a very young man. He said it cost a fortune and was worth every penny." He was about to drink again, but seemed to remember himself, and passed the bottle to Ryel, who thought it well to decline with thanks—a refusal cheerfully accepted, and commemorated with another deep swallow. "Well, Mr. Mirai, you're in luck. Your traveling companion is none other than Thomas Dulard, poet and musician to three successive sovereigns, and favorite of the highest nobility—in point of fact, I'm just returning to Hallagh after a week's stay at the Earl of Gledrim's country house. And a mad week it was, the quintessence of debauchery. My head aches like a bastard. Speaking of which, may I offer you a drink?"

  Ryel with thanks again declined the proferred bottle. "Has Hallagh many poets?"

  Dulard drank, coughed, and smirked. "Only one, sir, now returning in triumph. All the rest are false mercenary scribblers, twopenny hacks, novel-botchers. Were I not above such trash, it'd drive me mad." He donned his coat, buttoning it up to the neck to dissemble the less-than-pristine condition of his linen, and reassumed his hat after an unsuccessful effort to freshen its limp plumes, jauntily tilting the brim in compensation. "Well, let's ride." He untied his horse, a pale and unprosperous nag, and clambered into the saddle with a wince and a muttered curse at his aching head.

  "Three successive sovereigns is luck," Ryel remarked as they took to the road.

  "Not so much luck as sheer brilliance, I like to think," Dulard said, his nose pridefully uptilted. "But I have been fortunate, I admit. The Dominor Ogrian was first, and his son Regnier next and most generous; as for the Domina Bradamaine, I am more a favorite of her courtiers than of the lady herself. I suppose you are familiar with the history of the ruling family? No? Well, the reign of Regnier—a reign lamentably brief—was the great blossoming of the arts in the North, such a flowering never seen before or since. Not that I'm an unfaithful servant to the Domina Bradamaine; no poet who would prosper has ever been false to the crown. But I'll not pretend that the present reign is a paradise. You should have seen Hallagh in its glory, when Regnier ruled! Then were wits, sir! Then were minds! But cruel unfilial treachery brought it all to dust."

  "I don't understand."

  "Well, Mr. Mirai," the poet said, "the facts are these—but may I first say that you have a most persuasive pair of eyes? They seem to seduce one to confessions, which I've no doubt has helped you in your conquests of whichever sex you most favor. Are you perhaps a spy? You'll learn nothing of me that is not public knowledge, I assure you."

  "Please continue with your narrative," Ryel said. "I only seek to pass the time."

  "Gladly, sir," Dulard replied, taking another strengthening pull at the wine-bottle. "To continue, then. During much of his reign the Dominor Regnier kept his sister Bradamaine a virtual prisoner up in the mountains we call the Falcon Rocks, lest she contest his power. But as time passed, folk began to murmur at this unfeeling behavior, their resentment sharpened by Regnier's admittedly loose manner of living; and these developments led the Dominor to have his sister and her only too well-beloved lady-in-waiting the Countess of Fayal brought back to court, th
at he might quickly marry Bradamaine off to some hapless sycophant or other. But before any plans for marriage might be made, Regnier died, and Bradamaine took the throne."

  "What was the cause of the Dominor's death?"

  "Fever, sir; a pocky rotten fever that devoured him piecemeal," Dulard said with a shudder. "A terrible death, and he had only just turned of thirty. It's commonly supposed that Bradamaine contrived to have him infected, that she might rid herself of her tyrant and become tyranness herself." The poet realized he was speaking in somewhat too distinct a manner, and warily glanced about him. "But that's a stale story; let's speak of you awhile. If I don't trespass by inquiring, what manner of person are you, Mr. Mirai? A poet like myself, perhaps? Or, judging by your picturesque garb, a poetical subject?"

  "I'm a physician."

  Dulard met Ryel's nod with a wry leer. "Indeed! An honest one? I mean no insult, sir, but most of the doctors in Hallagh make their best money by curing claps, excising inconvenient conceptions, and sewing up sword-cuts."

  They continued their progress into the city, with Dulard offering various reflections on the town and its denizens. Hallagh had outgrown its gates many years before, and the wysard and his companion traversed a sprawl of ill-built houses that lined the great road and grew ever more tightly packed as they neared the river Lorn. On the other side of the river the old city of Hallagh crowded onto a jutting wedge of promontory, while on the opposite bank were great houses built around Grotherek Palace for the Domina's court and the most prosperous merchant gentry, so Ryel learned of Dulard. Wide well-built bridges linked the promontory and other points on the south bank of the Lorn to the northern shore, but as the poet warned, one had to beware of the bullies and cutpurses who thronged and jostled there.

  Ryel listened with all attention as he looked about him. A sharper difference between the bright paradise of Destimar and this Northern capital he could never have envisioned. Here were no delicate radiant spires, wafted perfumes, suave civilities. Hallagh was a city of squat-built dull gray stone, somber sooty brick and half-timber; of cobbled streets asplash with mud and excrement, of teeming pushing jostling traffic; of cursing drunkards, strolling doxies, screeching fishwives, whining beggars, howling brats; of red-coated arrogant soldiers, and grim gray-clad clerics; of fiddlers, jugglers, rope-dancers, ballad-singers, zanies; of dark overhung alleys, riotous ale-houses, stark stately temples. Street vendors cried their wares at the tops of cracked lungs, offering ribbons, laces, almanacs, lanterns, pins, sealing-wax, gingerbread, combs, eels and onions, their hoarse yells vying with citizen's contentious racket of politics, new plays, and court-scandal. Constantly the peal of bells overcame the general pandemonium, clanging out from steeples and towers that stood out in sharp relief against the flat cold gray of the sky. The wysard drank in the turbulent energy like Dryven whisky, wincing yet thrilling to all those pungently mingled sounds and smells, so many of them entirely new to his rattled senses.

  "A lively place, this," he said to Dulard above the din.

  The poet shrugged, but with some pride. "Well, it's not as subtle as Almancar, nor as peaceable; but at least it buys and sells no slaves, nor displays its whores' quarter as a source of national pride. And despite its rough edges, Hallagh possesses a rare briskness. The dour puritans of the Unseen persuasion do what they can to squelch the brothels and the taverns and the theatres and the booksellers, but never to any great avail, I'm glad to say, else my songs and my plays would perish. My latest comedy still holds the stage at the Bone Lane Theatre, by the way—Love At A Price , a biting satire on the town's most notable bawds."

  Seeking some kind of orientation, the wysard singled out faces in the crowd, as a dancer fixes on a single point to keep from dizzying during a spin. Unlike Almancar, Hallagh's citizenry had no distinct stamp of feature save for a prevalent fairness of hair and ruddiness of complexion, but now and again Ryel observed men and women seemingly a race apart from the rest, conspicuously tall and well-made and pale-skinned, with hair of silvery gold and faces stern and strong. Remembering what he'd read long ago, Ryel turned to Dulard.

  "Are those Hralwi?"

  Dulard gave a sour nod. "Snow-folk we call them; White Barbarians, to better name 'em. It used to be they kept where they belonged, up in the ice-regions, but ever since the peace they've been swarming to the capital to gape and marvel—and cause trouble. They're good for little else than as door-guards and paramours. The late Dominor Regnier was fully as fair in color, as is his sister Bradamaine—rumor has it that their grandmother was in her youth carried off, willingly enough I'll dare swear, by some Snow-folk braves, and when finally ransomed returned home big-bellied with barbarian get."

  At that moment Ryel heard the measured gait of harnessed horses, and turned to find a richly-gilded open coach and four making deliberate progress down the broad avenue, its driver and outriders clearing the way with whip-crackings and oaths. Crowded into the vehicle was a group of young men and women, most of them still in their teens, brilliantly and strangely robed and bejeweled, their gorgeous finery jarring with their pasty blank faces crowned with hair clipped and stiffened and colored in the most strikingly strange of ways. They sprawled languidly, yet with an air of restless expectation in their far-away eyes. The wysard observed that all of these persons were either tattooed or scarred on the cheeks and forehead with the device of a star within a circle—not a star of five points or of six, but like the spokes of a wheel, the spokes adding to eight. Some had the marks on their hands, arms, necks; one of them apparently had his entire body thus gouged and burnt. Such deep and pervasive markings must have indeed been painful, Ryel reflected with a shudder. Dulard noted Ryel's disgust, and nodded in sympathy.

  "Servants of the Master," he said. "On their way to worship, so it looks. Often they're a great deal more noisy, but from the looks of them now they're drugged to the roots of their hideous hair. All of them are sons and daughters of great lords and ladies, but here in the North marriages are as cold and bleak as the weather, meant only to join fortunes, and whatever progeny results is left to the care of servants and other ignorant folk, and brought up very carelessly for the most part. The priests of the Unseen are continually inveighing against them, to no effect. Not even the thundering denouncements of the Lord Prelate Derain Meschante can stamp out the cult, so strong it's grown."

  Ryel's memory leapt at the name Dulard spoke. "Meschante? I've heard of him."

  Dulard made a face. "I doubt you heard much good. He's a scolding lout, Ralnahrian to judge from his accent. For some years he's held great sway among the Unseen's believers—dull sober citizens without exception. If you're curious for a sample of his rant, he can always be heard during services at the great church on Crown Street. He's no friend of mine, as you might guess. Aha, we've reached the Owl and Ivy. Time for a glass of ale and some breakfast—which thanks to your present company will cost you nothing."

  To Ryel's more than mild surprise, the poet was as good as his word. Dulard seemed to know a great many people on a boozily familiar footing. Hardly had he entered the tavern and taken the first of many complimentary gulps and bites than the poet was asked to sing, and he obliged with some of the rankest smut Ryel had ever heard set to rhyme and music, which the clearly delighted audience chorused at the top of their lungs. None of his admirers' good cheer seemed to make Dulard much drunker than he already was, or diminished his cormorant voracity.

  "You've many friends," Ryel remarked, as he and the poet left the tavern well-fed and possibly too well-drunken, and began again to ride.

  Dulard coughed away a belch. "They love me for my art. All the folk in Hallagh—in the entire realm, I would say—sing my songs and know my plays, except that puritan Meschante and his glum followers, and a few other haters of wit. And now that we speak of the latter, here's an enchanted castle I'm sure I'll never enter."

  The poet jerked an exasperated ink-stained thumb at a great walled keep of granite that overlooked the river. Ryel observe
d red-uniformed armed sentries stationed at the gates and atop the walls. "What is it?" he asked. "A fortress?"

  Dulard squinted assent. "An ogre's lair, where the grim Count Palatine of Roskerrek has his residence."

  Ryel smiled. "I take it he's not a patron of the arts, then?"

  "One of the most open-handed," Dulard replied. "Unfortunately his taste is deadly dull, running to grave music and heroical tragedy and metaphysical verse and the like trash. He has no sense of humor whatsoever, a failing which infects his generosity—but that's a theme too dismal for conversation."

  "There seem to be a great many soldiers lounging about the courtyard," Ryel said, obligingly changing the subject.

  The poet regarded those soldiers contemptuously. "They've nothing to do, the scum, what with the wars over. Many a regiment's been disbanded, but Hallagh still has plenty of idlers in uniform. Those with the red coats are common infantry footsloggers; they that look so haughty in their black and silver, horse soldiers—long coats indicating regular cavalry, close jackets meaning special forces, dragoons or hussars or whatever; they in the blue, the city guard. They fight amongst themselves like cat and dog, murdering each other up on a regular basis. You'd think Redbane would do something to stop it, but…"

  Ryel heard only one word that made his blood jolt, and he replied numbly over his heart's sudden uproar. "Redbane? Redbane is the Count Palatine of Roskerrek?"

  "It's an odd enough sobriquet, I grant you," Dulard said, only half noting Ryel's amazement. "But believe me, everyone in this land knows it well. His true name's Yvain Essern with many a middle name else, and his office the general of Bradamaine's forces, in especial the cavalry. He has his soldiers whipped skinless at his merest whim, and loves war and carnage the way others less savage and more sane love women and drink. It's a common saying that the reason his skin's so ghastly pallid and cold is because he has no heart in his body and only ice in his veins, and his hair's so freakishly red because he washes it in his enemies' blood. Were I him—which I'm heartily glad I'm not—I'd wear a wig, but soldiers scorn 'em, no matter how high their rank. He's fanatically devoted to the Domina, although she makes no secret of despising him—which I call wisdom on her part, not that she ever shows much in her other dealings."