Treason's Shore

by Sherwood Smith

  The iron weight of the chain thunked across her back. In the bitter air her wet clothing began to freeze, creaking faintly when she jerked. She nearly lost her balance, and fearful of falling on her bound hands and breaking a bone, she braced against the chain.

  Then, deep enough to vibrate through bone and stone, the enormous Campan Drak—the massive bell of alarm, of judgment—sounded thrice. Fashioned of iron plate dipped in melted bronze, it took nine men to set it in motion. The sonorous ring echoed from tower to tower all the way down the long road, announcing “Here passes an outcast.”

  The armored horse began pulling the cart.

  Only once in her life had Signi trod the King’s Road, with its fine pale stone fitted in the same pattern as the tablet-weave of formal clothing: when she had been accepted as a dag.

  The cart began to roll on its iron wheels, jigging and swaying past Anborc, toward the mighty egg-shape of Leofaborc, Tower of Concord on the west, with the Skalts’ Tower beyond it. Along the eastern side three smaller towers rose, still bearing the names of their original Houses.

  The low murmur of angry people sundered the cold air, both sides of the streets full of those who braved the impending weather to deliver verdict: a Blood Crowd.

  “Traitor!”

  “Treason!”

  “Cast her out!”

  “Let her fly the blood eagle!”

  “Put her on the tower for the death birds to pick her bones!”

  Signi fell to her knees on the splintery boards of the cart, face raised to the cloud-tumbled sky.

  Soft thuds hit her shoulder, her ear, her arm, releasing the sick-sweet smell of rot. The hurled chunks came fast and accurate, exploding over her with the sharp, stomach-scraping stink of ordure: dog, horse. Human, even: some there were so enraged they had deliberately squatted down to make waste just to fling at the traitor.

  Crack! Pain shot through her temple from the impact of a rock and from the solid wall of shouted hatred. Small warm gobs signified people who darted close enough to spit. Not people—crowds roused to riot laid aside humanity—see them as the dart of serpent, flicker of tongue and jet of venom, and there the raucous claws, spindle-stab beaks of death birds wheeling above the Tower of Transgressors . . .

  Tumultuous thunder kindled an outcry, and down came needles of hail.

  If I am blamed yet know myself blameless, then someone stands behind me, using me to shroud the truth.

  The cart jolted up: the King’s Bridge, between Skalts Tower and Saeborc, once her home. The clouds parted, just long enough for her to see the first of the emerging stars, a giddying gleam, then sharp as a flint strike it was gone, and a rock, larger than the others, knocked her head forward into the cart rail. Harsh rose the rallying cry; her eyes were blinded by splintered lightnings of pain, followed by a thin rain of blood.

  Past the remaining towers. Here thralls sent by Tower Families pressed forward to discharge their loads.

  What did the Great Sanbrigid of Sky-Drakan say? I will not leave life with my heart embered in rancor, though my body be iron-garner. Memory must be her armor, her shield. Brun Durasnir’s kiss of peace, Fulla Durasnir’s affection when both were young. And there, steadfast and tender, Inda smiles, tousled hair light-stranded.

  The cart jolted to a stop. Rough hands jerked her out, and guards walked her through the Traitor’s Gate and into the white walls of the Sinnaborc, the Tower of Transgressors, at the northernmost point of Twelve Towers.

  The Campan Drak again tolled thrice, the deep, harsh iron sound reverberating off cold rock and through her bones as they forced her up and up to Execution Cell.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  LATE the second of two sleepless nights, between two long, crashing cracks of thunder, Brun Durasnir heard her door open. She half rose, pulling her knife from under her pillow, sliding one foot to the rug of her sleeping platform. She’d begun sleeping with a knife since the days at the Port of Jaro when the Venn had been warned of the pirate Elgar the Fox sneaking into Ymar with assassination as intent.

  “It is I.”

  “Fulla?”

  They had to wait for another crash, and Brun wished (as she did every winter) that her position did not require sleeping in the Saeborc. She missed their comfortable underground home, with its warm flow of air, mosaic walls, the green things growing in each room under the all-color crystal lights. But above all the quiet.

  As soon as the roar juddered down to a rumble, he murmured, “Erkric believes I took the fleet to sea to ride out the storm. The ships are out there, right enough, but I am here. I’ve been hiding—never mind.” He parted the curtain and stepped up onto the platform to sink down on the bed beside her, pulling the curtains shut to keep in the slightly warmer air from the vents under the platform.

  He smelled of stale sweat, of tension, of a man who has not eaten in far too long. Desire and tenderness made her throat ache and her eyes burn.

  “Brun, all our earlier surmises are wrong. No. We were right, but not completely so. Ulaffa believes—and has convinced me—that Erkric’s real target is not Dag Signi at all, but Brit Valda.”

  “Brit Valda?” Brun controlled the urge to exclaim “Impossible!” She rapidly considered what little she knew. Brit Valda was the head of the Sea Dags, whom she had seen only once or twice. A small woman with a nest of untidy gray hair, she was almost as old as Erkric. “I thought she was dead.”

  “She vanished. With good reason. I wish I dared take the time to tell you everything that Ulaffa reported of events I had not known about during the invasion. It would take too long, and avails us nothing. Just know this. Valda did her very best to deflect Erkric’s attempts to make dags into warriors. Not only that, but she succeeded in tampering with his scroll case, and among her discoveries—she told me herself, the day of the surrender, but I’d forgotten it in the face of everything else—there were five missing doses of white kinthus the week the king died.”

  “Does Ulaffa know?”

  “Yes. But he cannot find proof. The king’s Yaga Krona sealed the king’s suite in Anborc, and of course the king’s death was investigated by Anborc House Dags. Dag Agel personally led the inspection. She reported to the Council of Elders convened at the time that she found everything as it should be. They might not believe Ulaffa now. He was not here in the homeland; he was with us.”

  “The king’s rooms were sealed by Nanni Balandir,” Brun whispered. Dag Balandir had been the king’s personal dag.

  “Exactly. Reputation for formidable magical knowledge, probity . . . and being Abyarn Erkric’s foremost student.”

  Durasnir could not see his wife in the curtained sleep alcove, but he guessed from the sound of her breathing the direction of her thoughts. “Ulaffa has to talk to Dag Agel,” he said. “The risk is that she will not only disbelieve, but will deem it correct to report such a conversation to Erkric.”

  Brun took his cold fingers into her warm hands and rubbed them. “Dag Agel is known for her honesty, but she is also a traditionalist. She wants to restore us to the good days of our foremothers and -fathers.”

  “Ulaffa says that the Frasadeng is not investigating a traitor so much as attempting—”

  “To blame Signi for everything, so her death will bury the problems. As you said before.”

  Thunder rolled, sudden and loud. The east windows flickered with manic purple light.

  “Brun, Erkric was using magic from Norsunder. Valda also discovered that he’d taught death magic to Dag Mekki. There is no proof of that either: Dag Mekki is under a stone spell for twice eighty years.”

  “So why blame Signi? Were Signi and Valda even together?”

  “Yes. That is, I only witnessed it once, that day on the tower top at Ala Larkadhe.”

  “Are you going to tell the council that?”

  “I will avoid it any way I can. Here is the third thing: Ulaffa says that Valda is the only one strong enough to fight Erkric. Erkric knows it.”

  “I don’
t understand. Erkric is older than we are! What good can such scheming do? It would make more sense if he were Rajnir’s age!”

  “You forget Norsunder lies beyond time. Its mages are ageless. Erkric seeks to gain that type of power. He will rule through Rajnir, who at times is like a ghost, without will or awareness. Erkric will rule through the next king, and the next—damnation.” He looked down; a knotwork ring on his forefinger glowed an evil, dull red. “I had better go.”

  “Fulla, are you plotting something?”

  His breath hissed out; before he could answer, she said steadily, “Tell me what I can do.”

  “There is little that we can do, at least now,” he whispered, a wraith against the pale stone walls. “But we watch and wait. Stand ready for anything.”

  Execution Cell in Sinnaborc tower was empty of furnishings and made entirely of stone except for the iron of the doors and manacles. They’d left Signi shackled to the wall with her arms apart so that she could not perform magic.

  She lost all sense of time. Meals were a humiliation involving her head being yanked back and plate scrapings poured in her face to swallow, choke on, or dribble out. The first couple of times she tried to retain a modicum of personal dignity by refusing, but by the third time hunger forced her to gulp and gobble as best she could.

  She felt the brush of magic keeping the air just warm enough so that she was not in danger of freezing. There was nothing to be done about her squalid clothing, but she could work her shoes and stockings off, a task that used up time. For a while she just rubbed her bare feet over the stone, over and over, trying to get that sensation to mute the itching, crackling, rancorous stench on the rest of her. The chain’s chastising length permitted neither a full stance nor lying on the floor.

  Her path had narrowed to survival. She sensed Erkric’s will behind the cruelty; even if her body finally failed, as flesh must, she was determined that her will would remain a pole star to his: he had wrenched all meaning from Drenskar, he had spat upon the Tree with his false words, he had flung filth upon its leaves with his ambitions. And he had taken light from the path with his actions. Her light must come from opposition: she would not rail with hate, she would not fight and destroy, and above all, she would not betray her own vows.

  If the truth requires my death, so be it. Surely, surely, for my own soul, Ydrasal’s light will shine the way beyond the world.

  At long last the door rattled and creaked open.

  She kept her eyes closed as her arms were loosed from the wall to fall as dead weights to her sides. But only for moments; just as the painful tingles of returning circulation began, her hands were yanked behind her and shackled, to prevent her from doing magic. She was taken down and down and fastened into the cart.

  Again the crowds were gathered in the frigid air under low clouds. This time most watched in eerie silence. Fewer objects hit her.

  She did not look up at all, even when the cart stopped.

  She opened her eyes half a heartbeat before a bucket of ice melt pitched squarely into her face. She fell backward onto her bound arms, gasping; the chain on the iron collar was yanked short, snapping her head back. She struggled to draw her trembling legs under her, but they had gone numb below the knees.

  Another bucket sluiced over her, and yet another. Three more, until the surface filth and grime had been dislodged enough so she would not foul the air of the Hall of Judgment in Anborc.

  Once again she had to wear the wooden clogs of the thrall and was chain-led to the Hall of Judgment.

  Dag Erkric came in through the king’s door just after she was brought to the center of the dais. He halted, staring down at her, and terror shocked her nerves. His parted lips, the wide eyes, dark pupils, the fast breathing of bitter triumph: here was a desperately angry man.

  “You lie, traitor. The dishonor you brought upon all dags can only be expiated on Sinnaborc’s roof.”

  “Dag Erkric,” the old king admonished.

  Dag Erkric pressed his hands together and bowed. “Forgive me for speaking to the accused. It is not just the Venn who have been betrayed, but me personally, as the sea dags were under my eye, and I failed to see the rot at the root of the Great Tree.”

  He returned to his bench, and the Losveg Skalt rose, papers on her slate. She turned toward the old king, who raised a hand. The Losveg Skalt’s masked face lifted as she surveyed the packed, silent hall, then she said, “We shall begin with testimony from witnesses. Then the accused will be examined so that the council may compare the witnesses’ testimony to the claims of the accused.”

  Silence.

  “We call forth Dag Ulaffa.”

  The old dag shuffled forward, looking old, tired, and frail.

  “You will state your name and place before the Frasadeng.”

  “I am Fulk Ulaffa, raised in House Brac. I am Chief of Prince Rajnir’s Yaga Krona.”

  “You were under direct orders from Prince Rajnir to aid the warriors’ preparations in breaking the siege at the northern castle at Andahi Pass?”

  “I was.”

  “You also made a transfer token so that Stalna Hyarl Durasnir could witness the progress of the battle?”

  “I did.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “The Stalna requested it from me. I conveyed his wish through Dag Erkric, who obtained the prince’s permission. I fashioned the token and sent it to the Stalna to use.”

  “Did you prepare your token to send Stalna Hyarl Durasnir to the tower at Ala Larkadhe?”

  “I did not. I prepared it for the ancient observation platform called by the Sartorans an atan, there at the heights. I assumed that that would be the best place from which to observe the progress of the invasion. As I know little about military matters, I was not aware that it was not in fact a good placement; it was far too high.”

  “Did you ever see the accused?”

  “Only once. After the battle had ended.”

  “Did you personally witness the accused performing magic?”

  “I did not.”

  “Did you ever transfer to the white tower at Ala Larkadhe?”

  “The day after we received orders to cease and retreat. Dag Erkric conveyed orders from the prince to investigate while our forces were withdrawing from the pass.”

  Signi braced herself. Now was the time for Dag Ulaffa to mention Brit Valda. But Ulaffa remained silent, awaiting the next question.

  The Losveg Skalt looked down, rattled her papers, then said, “When you investigated the tower, you were able to discover the accused’s identity through magical tracers, which enabled you to determine that the accused had committed treason via magic, raising a great water spout.”

  Signi gripped her fingers together behind her.

  Ulaffa bent his head, then finally said, “No.”

  “No, the Dag Signi did not magically raise a water spout?”

  The old dag raised his head. The only sign of emotion was a slight quiver in his jowl, and the gleam of moisture in his eyes, but his voice was strong. “She did. According to the tracers.”

  “Will you explain your contradiction, Dag Ulaffa?”

  “Yes. My understanding is that treason is an action that jeopardizes the kingdom.”

  “Treason,” Dag Erkric spoke up from the bench behind the throne, “is an action in aid of one’s enemies. It is an act that violates one’s allegiance. It is an action against the will of the king.”

  Ulaffa looked up. “To the Erama Krona the king said, Bring the Marolo-Venn, the lost ones, back to us with their lands. He did not actually order us to conquer them. That was Prince Rajnir’s desire. Furthermore, the oath of allegiance we dags make requires us to perform magic to the protection and service of the Venn. By her action, Dag Signi saved Venn lives as well as Marlovan, for subsequent questioning of the Battle Chief furnished the fact that no one died in the flood.”

  Signi scarcely dared breathe. She was certain that Valda had said something about Ulaffa as an a
lly, but she could no longer remember. That might only have been a dream.

  Noise rustled through the hall. One of the Erama Krona struck the floor with a spear butt until silence fell.

  “Did you witness Dag Signi giving succor to Marlovans after the battle?”

  “After the battle, yes,” Ulaffa said. “I did so see, when the prince ordered me to investigate, the day after the battle.” Beads of sweat glittered in his grizzled hair.

  “This action does not constitute treason? Giving aid and comfort to enemies?”

  “We dags are sworn to protect life. Not just Venn life, but all life. This vow is the reason we do not learn the skills of war.”

  A whisper, but a ring of the spear butt from the Erama Krona again caused silence.

  “The aid was given after the horns of retreat were blown, and no sword was raised by either side. No warrior aided by Dag Signi rose to attack our men.”

  “Why did she not offer aid to our fallen?”

  “I do not know, but I observed that among the Marlovans there was no healer mage at all. For our men, we had one per Battlegroup, plus their assistants. The greater human need was among the Marlovans, by ninefold times nine. And the halt had been called, so it could not endanger our men to aid the fallen among the Marlovans.”

  “We are finished with you for now, Dag Ulaffa. We call forth Southern Fleet Commander Hyarl Durasnir.”

  The southern fleet commander rose from his seat beside Dag Erkric as whispers again rustled through the hall. Durasnir wore full battle gear, his face far more lined than Signi remembered. He did not once look her way.

  “As you are well known to all assembled here, you may be brief in stating identity and place,” the Losveg Skalt said.

  She might have meant that as an obscure compliment, or maybe only to save time, but Durasnir used his deck command-in-a-thunderstorm voice to roll out his name, title, and Oneli rank. It was impressive; most sensed his righteous anger and wanted to speculate about the cause.