Sorcerers' Isle

by D. P. Prior

  He stamped on the train of thought as he stepped out of the wattle-and-daub cottage the clan had built for the Harrow family, on account of Snaith’s father surviving his twelfth battle. It was a reward many aspired to but few achieved. Clan wars were notoriously bloody, and you were doing well if you made it back at all, never mind the twelve times it took to earn something better than a goat-skin tent or a mud-brick hovel. Most returned from the fray less than they’d entered it—missing fingers or arms or legs; a cavity where once had been an eye. Not his mother and father, though. They’d always come back whole.

  He’d gone most of the way down the garden path when a tingle started at the base of his scalp, swiftly burgeoning into a hive of stinging hornets in his skull.

  The door!

  In his haste, he’d left without tapping three times. Once he’d jogged back and appeased the ritual, freed the bear-trap it had on his mind, he was hit by how different everything seemed since the clans had started arriving over night.

  It was the only time Snaith had seen so many clansfolk in one place without them hacking each other to bloody strips and ribbons.

  Not that he’d had ever been present at a clan war, but he’d heard a fair few in the distance—the ring and scrape of steel, screams muffled by the ancient earthworks that rimmed the settlement, battle cries skirling on the wind. His father had done his duty, same as every man hale enough to hold a sword, but he rarely spoke about it. His mother, too. She’d earned herself a name—the “Ear Collector”. As a child Snaith had searched high and low for her grisly trophies, but she did a good job of hiding them. Not like his father, with his displays of pinned and desiccated insects all over the house.

  He took a moment to take in the magnitude of the gathering that filled the Malogoi village snug in its circle of manmade hills. Clansfolk beyond counting had journeyed to the Proving from all over Branikdür. Their doeskin shelters were steeped halfway up the slopes that surrounded the homesteads and crop fields. Smoke plumed from a thousand campfires, backlit by the steely light of the cloud-choked sun. Drums beat a hundred separate rhythms, bagpipes yowled above the strumming of lutes, and there was a constant hubbub of chatter, punctuated by raucous barks of laughter. The bitter scent of hops was strong on the breeze, blended with the pungent aroma of weedsticks.

  Snaith inhaled deeply, hoping the peace and happiness contained in so much smoke would lend him courage for what he had to do. He gave it a fistful of heartbeats, then shrugged.

  Nothing. No different. Weak and ineffectual. Let’s hope their fighting is the same.

  He followed the dirt track through the heart of the village, blood afire with anticipation. It was really happening—not just Tey, but his first festival, and his time of Proving.

  Last festival had been in Dour, too far to travel for a lad not then across the bridge into manhood. The festivals always sounded so fantastical to Snaith, but attendance didn’t come without risk. How could it, when the clans were forever at each other’s throats? Month in, month out, there were raids and skirmishes, with more than enough death-pits dug on both sides so the fallen could be seeded for new growth in the Nethers. Snaith worried whenever the Malogoi sent a delegation to the annual gathering, but festival time was a time of truce, and his father always came home smiling, eyes dulled by mead or weed, or likely a touch of both.

  As he passed the frayed and weather-stained tents he’d grown up among, he nodded to Old Man Marly, seated outside one of them, and got the same vacant stare he always received in return. Marly was so gnarled and twisted, he was a useless lump, a mouth to be fed, and had been for some time. The only wonder was that he hadn’t been led out to the Copse yet, but it wouldn’t be long. Nothing against Marly. He’d always been kind when Snaith was a kid, but that was just the way things were.

  A scuffle broke out between four youths in front of the beer stall Jarik Glent had set up so he could grow even fatter on the back of the festival. They weren’t locals. The split tongues and bone necklaces kind of gave it away. Huatha, then. Ferocious killers, he’d heard. But they had limbs like everyone else. Joints that could be broken.

  One of them caught him watching, signaled to the others, and they ceased fighting and glared. Snaith glared back. He could have taken all four—he’d already pictured how, in every last detail, and made sure they knew so from his expression. By far the greatest part of a fight was won with the eyes, according to his father’s pig-skin book, and it had yet to be proved wrong.

  “What you looking at, Malogoi?” A brawny savage took a step toward him, checked to make sure the others followed. With a show of bravado, he said, “Rot got your hair?”

  “No rot,” Snaith said, touching his shaven scalp on one side of the spiny crest of black hair that ran down the center. “Just a knife.”

  Snaith pictured the kick that would break the Huatha’s kneecap, the thump to the soft patch on his chin. In his mind, he moved like a ghost, slid in between the others, cranked a neck, threw a well-timed elbow that split a nose.

  The trio faltered. They’d seen it on his face, read what he was going to do to them in his eyes. Snaith could smell fear a mile off. Recognize it in every careless movement.

  He unlaced his tunic, started to pull it over his head, but stopped when he heard the scuff of feet as the savages backed off, muttering to each other. He tugged his tunic down and watched them go, not one of them daring to cast even a swift look behind.

  When he reached the turnstile that led onto the Green, the stench of sweat hit his nostrils from the jostling bodies all around him. He had the impression most of the outlanders didn’t know what a bathtub was, let alone bother to use one. There were pale-skinned Valks in skimpy battle harnesses, teetering on thick-soled sandals. Men and women painted like skeletons. Others dressed in the skins of wolves, faces protruding between yellow-fanged jaws. Patchwork clothes and tall crooked hats. Kilted northerners, hairy all over, and that was just the women. One man had a crusty black patch where he’d lost an ear. Snaith looked away, in case his mother was responsible. Folk always said you could tell he was Jennika’s son.

  Snaith’s skin itched at the proximity of so many bodies. He dipped his head and muscled his way through, telling himself the physical contact was no different to a fight. But it was different, no matter how he tried to deny it. Proximity to others made him think of contagion. Always had, since he could remember. Somehow, punching them in the face or choking them into submission was bearable. Enjoyable, even.

  When he reached the stile, he vaulted over it. Mud squelched where he landed and flecked the legs of his britches. He cursed and stopped to brush them clean, but someone bumped into him and knocked him on his arse.

  “Oi, watch…” Snaith started, fingers clenching into a fist, but the retort died on his lips. “Elder Moonshine.” He got to his feet and dipped his head.

  “Elder” was a show of respect far above anything Tey’s pig of a father deserved, but it would do nothing to harm Snaith’s case. The bastard’s name was Khunt, which about summed him up.

  “Pillock,” Khunt said.

  He had a fresh gash along his forearm, as though he’d cut it with a knife or caught it coming through brambles. He clutched an iron spearhead in his other hand. His cheeks were flushed, nose bulbous and veined with purple. Snaith registered it all, but a driving need of his own barged to the fore. Things didn’t happen without reason. Maybe the Weyd had placed Tey’s father here at this very time. Maybe it had guided him to collide with Snaith so the question could be asked without Tey being present, man to man. It wasn’t as if she’d say anything if she’d been there. Snaith had never seen her speak in her father’s presence.

  “Elder—”

  “Answer’s no.”

  Before Snaith could close his gaping mouth, Khunt was off, bustling through the crowd toward the stalls around the Green. He looked angrier than usual, and drunker, too. But it wasn’t his normal cantankerousness. This was more purposeful, as if he were in the pro
cess of righting some wrong. Or, more likely, knowing Khunt, some perceived wrong.

  Snaith decided against giving chase. Had Tey told her father what he was going to ask, or had Khunt guessed it for himself? He knew from the churn of his guts that his chances of marrying Tey had just slopped into the village cesspit, but why? What had he ever done to Khunt, save for bumping into him just now? And he was hardly to blame for that. Suddenly, even winning the Proving didn’t seem enough to gain the prize he truly desired. What did he have to do? Khunt wasn’t saying, and it was so bloody unfair.

  Tey’s a grown woman! Why does she need her father’s permission to marry? Because the Weyd says so, that’s why. And who do you think told us that? Theurig, of course. Always bloody Theurig.

  Flames licked beneath Snaith’s scalp. He should have seen this coming, should have prepared something to say in protest. But where would that have gotten him, other than a punch in the face, or maybe worse?

  Not that he was afraid of being hit. Khunt was a big man, but it was mostly fat. It was the other thing he needed to be wary of. Striking an elder was forbidden, even a shabby gob-shite like Khunt. The Weyd had cursed Vrom Mowry for far less than that.

  “Snaith!”

  He glanced around but was so pressed in by stinking outlanders, he couldn’t see his mother at first. A gap opened up, and he glimpsed her and his father between a couple of cussing fishwives—if that’s what they were. With the stench coming off them, he didn’t want to think what else they might be.

  “We’re doing the round of the stalls,” his mother said. Her shirt was open more than seemed decent, revealing the tusked head of the warthog tattoo that poked up above her ample breasts.

  Snaith felt the prickle of heat in his cheeks, and he shifted his gaze to her tawny eyes, which glittered with a combination of sternness and amusement.

  Before he could chasten her about knocking over the carved warriors, his father held up a desiccated insect the size of a bird.

  “From across the sea, they says. Granygg, on the Oropan mainland, or maybe even as far as Hélum. Two farthings, without a lie. Bloody bargain.”

  It was a passion of Bas Harrow’s: cutting up and studying anything exotic to see if he could find the mysteries of the Weyd inside. Theurig mocked him for it. Such knowledge was for the initiated, and would always remain shrouded from the profane; but it never stopped Bas from trying.

  “Want to come?” Snaith’s mother asked.

  Oh, please, can I?

  “No, Jennika,” his father said, sweeping his long locks out of his face. “Lad’s looking for his girl. He don’t want us playing gooseberry.” He shot Snaith a wink.

  Yes, about that… Snaith wanted to say, but the fishwives had reached an understanding and came back together in a squelching embrace that took his parents from view.

  With the distraction gone, there was nothing to keep his guts from twisting. It was the thought of losing Tey messing him up, and Snaith had no qualms admitting it. Most Malogoi men were too proud or thick-headed to own up to wants and needs, but Snaith had no time for self-deception. Be honest about what you wish for, picture it in your head, and it will come. See it. Will it. Achieve it. It was how Snaith’s grandfather had risen to be chief, how he’d led the Malogoi to victory over the Wolvers Clan. Of course, it did nothing to stop the hatchet in his back, nor the rumors about who put it there. But that wasn’t the point. It was the same secret that won Snaith his fights in the circle, no matter how big or fast his opponent. He visualized what he knew they would do, moved to anticipate it, and placed his own blows precisely where he’d rehearsed landing them in his mind.

  Deflated by the encounter with Khunt Moonshine, Snaith sliced up his thoughts with the keen edge of discipline. Their cloven halves coiled into serpents and slithered away. He breathed deeply, once, twice, then restored the image that would get him what he wanted: Tey’s hollow eyes, pallid face, brittle frame, the gap in her front teeth she tried so hard to hide. The simulacrum was his anchor to the world as it ought to be, as opposed to the one that ground him down and got in his way.

  He slipped and slid through the crowd now, subtle as a spirit with no need to barge and bustle. Khunt Moonshine be damned. He was going to find his Tey and take her for himself. And he’d kill any man who tried to stop him.

  THE BEAR

  Weyd sorcerers were gathered in clutches around the fringes of the Green, eyeing the clansfolk aloofly, drawing on pipes, and sharing private jokes. Most of them were strangers to Snaith, outland thaumaturges not to be trusted. To be feared. They were all marred by some imperfection, be it a twisted spine like Theurig’s, a deformed limb, a milky eye. One was legless, held aloft by a kilted northerner on either side—wild men, painted with swirling script that could only have been arcane. And all of them were watching. Always watching. Everything. Everyone. Never quite belonging. Sticking to the edges, looking in.

  Any other time, Theurig would have been frantically warding the village against magical attack from these rival sorcerers, but Snaith saw him among them, chatting and laughing, exchanging leather-wrapped bundles that were hastily secreted in the voluminous pockets of their robes.

  But there was no sign of Tey.

  The muffled thud of fists hitting flesh reached his ears, then the ring of steel. Cheers went up amid cries of encouragement. The circle bouts had begun, and Snaith wormed his way in that direction. He wasn’t scheduled to fight till later, but it always paid to observe potential opponents, mark the way they moved, the combinations they threw. Once you had their patterns, it was just a matter of timing.

  A low growl rumbled beneath the clamor; it sent a twinge of foreboding along his spine that threatened to unnerve him. He swiftly dispelled it with more affirmations.

  And then he located the source of the growl.

  Set back from the fight crowd was the stump of the ancient yew tree he’d helped Uncle Tubal cut down last winter—it wasn’t just folk who were prone to rot and decay. An iron band encircled the stump, and attached to it was a hefty length of chain. At the end of the chain was a black bear. It looked a sorry beast, half-starved, bitchy with hunger. Thick ropes of drool hanging from its jaws. Fur mottled with grey, and bald patches on its flanks speckled dark with blood. It must have sensed him looking, for it reared up and glared at him with feral eyes. Snaith grew lost in its pupils—specks of void that read him, knew him, called to him…

  A hand clamped down on his shoulder, and he snatched his gaze away.

  “You feel it, then? The tug of fate? Deny it all you like, but the Weyd will have you, young Snaith. It always wins. Always.”

  Snaith met Theurig’s narrowed eyes, then dipped his head before they could plumb his depths.

  “The Weyd does not give its gifts lightly,” Theurig said for the umpteenth time.

  “I know.”

  “They come with—”

  “Responsibility. I know.”

  Theurig blew out a breath and lifted his hand from Snaith’s shoulder. “Your sharpness of mind, Snaith, your attention to detail, your obsessive—”

  “It’s not abnormal to practice till perfect,” Snaith said. Though it might have been to scrub his hands so hard they chafed and often bled, and to organize his scant possessions in neat columns and rows and scream a seething hissy fit if anyone so much as breathed on them. Even Bas Harrow, with all his dead insects pinned in order of size and species, wasn’t quite so… meticulous.

  “It is a talent,” Theurig observed.

  “A fighting talent,” Snaith said.

  “You’re too clever to waste on fighting, Snaith. Too clever by half. I’ve said it since you were knee-high, and I’ll say it again: Most of your peers can’t string two syllables together, and they wouldn’t know a preposition if they sat on it; but you have a genius for words, and words are a gateway to the Weyd.”

  “And images,” Snaith said, tapping his head and summoning his simulacrum of Tey. He had to regain his focus. Theurig was playing mi
nd games. Distracting him. Hoping to make him lose in the circle.

  The sorcerer’s eyes sparkled, flitting back and forth, as if scrutinizing every last detail of the picture in Snaith’s mind. Was that disapproval in his expression? Or was it something else? Heat prickled across Snaith’s skin. Blood pounded in his ears, and he had to bite down on his lip to stop himself from lashing out. He studied Theurig’s face for anything that might have betrayed lust for Tey’s likeness. But there was nothing. No clue. Had the sorcerer really seen anything?

  Theurig suddenly cocked his head, listening. A sly smile curled his mouth.

  Snaith heard it then: the muted protests as the circle crowd parted and two enormous warriors clad in patched and rusty mail barged through.

  Behind them came an even bigger man wearing a cuirass of gold—painted (Snaith could tell by the tarnished silver showing through from where it flaked away). He was bull-necked and barrel-chested, hair platinum, not grey—for he couldn’t have been more than thirty summers old. There were studded leather vambraces on his wrists, and an iron crown encircled his head.

  “You know how you’re always telling me you will become a great warrior?” Theurig said in a conspiratorial whisper. “Well, now’s your opportunity to make the High King aware of your ambitions. Who knows, he may ask you to serve him, should you prove triumphant today.”