Wild Magic

by Jude Fisher

  Jude Fisher is a pseudonym for Jane Johnson, publishing director of HarperCollins’ SF imprint, Voyager. She holds two literature degrees, specialising in Anglo Saxon and Old Icelandic texts, and is also a qualified lecturer. For the last seventeen years, Jane has been the publisher of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. She is the author of the official Visual Companions to Peter Jackson’s movie trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, and with M. John Harrison has had four novels published under the pseudonym of Gabriel King.

  Praise for SORCERY RISING, Book One of Fool’s Gold:

  ‘This tale of magic, mystery, intrigue and feud works well, and the characters are so convincing (including a strong and appealing female lead) that I can’t wait to read the next instalment.’ The Times

  ‘My, but Sorcery Rising has a plethora of characters. There’s Katla, the rock-climbing swordmaker; Saro, the unwanted younger son; the lusty, vengeful Tycho; and dozens of others. The amazing thing is that author Fisher manages to make each of them integral to the plot. Fisher ultimately pulls it all together to form a compelling and intriguing whole that will have readers eagerly awaiting the next volume.’ Starlog

  ‘A marvellous tapestry, deftly woven, with a masterfully colourful complexity. Sorcery Rising left me breathless and shouting for more’ Janny Wurts

  ‘I enjoyed Jude Fisher’s debut very much . . . a well-written work, leading the reader deftly on to fascinating scenes and unusual characters’ Anne McCaffrey

  ‘An impressive debut’ Roz Kaveney, AMAZON.CO.UK

  Also by Jude Fisher

  Sorcery Rising

  Book One of Fool’s Gold

  First published in Great Britain by Earthlight, 2003

  This edition first published by Pocket, 2004

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  A Viacom Company

  Copyright © Jude Fisher, 2003

  This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

  No reproduction without permission

  ® and © 1998 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved

  Earthlight & Design is a registered trademark of Simon & Schuster Inc

  The right of Jude Fisher to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  Simon & Schuster UK Ltd

  Africa House

  64–78 Kingsway

  London WC2B 6AH

  www.simonsays.co.uk

  Simon & Schuster Australia

  Sydney

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Paperback ISBN: 978-0-74344-041-7

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-47114-144-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Polmont, Stirlingshire

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berkshire

  Thanks are due to Emma and Fiona for their constant encouragement, to Darren, Jess and Neal for their unwavering support; to the wilds of New Zealand and the Mojave Desert and to the limestone cliffs of southern Spain for inspiration and escape. To Ian and the cats and Freddie the Parrot who made it so hard to concentrate; to Ariel, for the website; and to all those enthusiastic and impatient people who read Sorcery Rising and sent emails and letters urging me to get on with the sequel: here it is!

  Contents

  What Has Gone Before . . .

  Prologue

  One: Intrigues

  Two: Tanto

  Three: Halbo

  Four: Curse

  Five: The King’s Shipmaker

  Six: Exiles

  Seven: Illusions

  Eight: Messages

  Nine: Quietus

  Ten: The Three

  Eleven: From the Depths

  Twelve: The Master

  Thirteen: Ghosts

  Fourteen: The Eternal City

  Fifteen: Bindings

  Sixteen: Survivors

  Seventeen: Seers

  Eighteen: Covenants

  Nineteen: The Long Serpent

  Twenty: Flight

  Twenty-one: Signs and Portents

  Twenty-two: Beasts

  Twenty-three: Sailings

  Twenty-four: Ghosts

  Twenty-five: Among the Nomads

  Twenty-six: Wreckage

  Twenty-seven: Katla

  Twenty-eight: Seafarers

  Twenty-nine: Raiders

  Thirty: Pursuit

  Thirty-one: Sanctuary

  Epilogue

  What Has Gone Before . . .

  From the ashy wastes of the Moonfell Plain, where the trading event known as the Allfair is held every year, there rises a great rock. The Istrians know it as Falla’s Rock and claim it as sacred ground, while the northerners call it Sur’s Castle in honour of their god. Katla Aransen, daughter of the Rockfall clan, has come to the Allfair for the first time. At home in the barren Westman Isles of Eyra she spends her time climbing the granite cliffs, running across the moors, forging weaponry in the steading’s smithy – her long red hair wild and tangled, her clothes torn and stained. Pigheaded and rebellious, she would probably have climbed it even if forbidden; but no one told her not to; and in the dawn light it looks magical and inviting. So she scales the sacred Rock and is spotted by two old Istrian men, whom she easily escapes, but the Allfair Guards may be a harder prospect. Sacrilege is a capital offence: in order to obscure her identity at the Fair, and thus save her life, her father hacks off her hair.

  The peoples of the north and south of the world of Elda have long been in conflict. In ancient days, the southerners drove their enemies steadily north out of the abundant farmlands of Istria until there was nowhere left for them but the rocky Eyran islands battered by the icy Northern Ocean. Since then, their customs and practices have become sharply delineated; the Istrians worshipping the cruel fire-goddess, Falla, and keeping their women shrouded; the northerners giving obeisance to the god Sur. The divergences between the two cultures have caused ever-increasing friction, resulting in raids and incursions, battles and full-blown wars: even in peace-time hostilities are close to the surface. Little does she know it, but by setting foot on the Rock, Katla is about to become the spark for a mighty conflagration – in a young man’s heart, and in a wider context, which may claim the lives of thousands.

  Meanwhile, from Sanctuary, an icy fastness at the top of the world, there has come to the Fair a strange, tall, pale man called Virelai, a mage’s apprentice who has stolen away from his master two of the three most powerful beings in Elda: the Rose of the World, a woman of perfect beauty whose merest glance fires men with desperate lust, and a cat called Bëte. By use of a powerful spell, Virelai has left the Master wrapped in sorcerous sleep; but if the mage awakes, his vengeance will surely be terrible. Already constrained by a geas which prevents him from dealing death to the mage in any direct manner, Virelai devises a cunning plot: at the Allfair he distributes a number of forged maps, each imbued with a little magic, to tempt adventurers to Sanctuary, where they are promised treasures beyond imagination. All they have to do in return is to promise to take the life of one old, sleeping man. Among the many so duped is Katla’s father, Aran Aranson, head of the Rockfall clan, a man in sore need of some excitement in his life. Now all he needs is to raise sufficient funds to have a hardy ice-breaker built which can brave the mighty arctic seas around Sanctuary.

  Elda was once a world filled with magic and wonders, a world in the guardianship of three benign deities: the Woman, the Man and the B
east. There remain legends of that lost age, and of the people of the Far West, with their vast jewelled ships and golden artefacts. For centuries now Elda has been a world bereft of magic; but with the arrival of the bizarre trio of Virelai, the Rosa Eldi and the cat, sorcery seems to have returned. It begins in small ways, as the charms and potions of the wandering folk known as the Footloose suddenly begin to take greater effect than they were ever designed to do, as Erno Hamson is about to find out. He buys a love-charm from the ancient nomad healer, Fezack Starsinger, and wears it under his tunic. The object of his desire? Katla Aransen, who has never shown any interest in him before. Love charms and potions may seem harmless enough; but sorcery is destined to erupt in a far more unsettling manner.

  The Vingo clan, a once-illustrious southern family now fallen on harder times, are at the Fair to trade horses, and their elder son – the arrogant, vicious Tanto – in marriage to the daughter of an equally arrogant and vicious nobleman: Tycho Issian, Lord of Cantara, a man well known for his religious fervour and fierce oratory. Their younger son Saro, already entranced on the very first day of the Fair by the vision of a bare-legged girl with long red hair shining in the dawn sun atop the forbidden Rock, is already finding his first visit to the Moonfell Plain an extraordinary experience; the more so as he makes his way through the wonders of the nomads’ quarter. But while he is buying a gift from the moodstone-seller for his absent mother, a fight breaks out nearby between some Istrian and Eyran youths. Violence escalates and before long the moodstone-seller, old Hiron Sea-Haar, lies dying in Saro’s arms, stabbed by Tanto. As the old man passes into the beyond he bestows upon Saro a gift: a moodstone with strange and perilous powers, and the ability to know another’s mind by the merest touch. Such empathy is soon to prove more of a burden than a blessing. By way of recompense for the murder, Tanto agrees, falsely and under duress, to donate half the winnings he takes from the Games to the old man’s family, but when his marriage settlement to Lord Tycho Issian’s daughter Selen falls short of the agreed sum, he reneges on the deal and it is left to Saro to take the money without his family’s leave and pay it over to Hiron’s family.

  Lord Tycho Issian, meanwhile, has struck his own deal. Afflicted by the need to ‘worship the Goddess’ with a willing woman, he seeks for a whore, but glimpses instead the Rose of the World, and is lost utterly. Stricken with lust, he agrees to pay Virelai a fortune if he can take the Rosa Eldi as his own: if he can extend his debt to the Ruling Council of Istria and swiftly settle the marriage arrangement with the Vingos, he will have just enough to pay the sorcerer. But all goes awry.

  The Vingos do not have the sum agreed on the night of the Gathering – the event at which Ravn Asharson, King of the Northern Isles, will choose himself a wife. In the midst of the festivities, Tanto decides he will take his bride whether the marriage settlement is made or not and makes his way to her pavilion, where he kills her maid and takes Selen by force. Selen Issian fights back, stabbing Tanto in the groin. Covered with blood, she runs naked into the night.

  Meanwhile, Aran Aranson, consumed by the dream of Sanctuary’s gold, ‘sells’ his daughter to the shipwright who will build his ice-breaker. Trussed up in a red dress at the Gathering, Katla Aransen is due to be betrothed to the fat old shipmaker; until she persuades Erno Hamson to help her escape. Erno does not need much persuading: he has loved Katla since he was a child; but when he kisses her, the love charm he wears smoulders to the ground, and with it go his dreams. Katla is furious, but she still needs his help. The plan is to steal a boat and row away down the coast; but as they run across the plain, they encounter Selen Issian, and then a troop of guards. Katla insists that Erno rescues the terrified young Istrian woman, while she doubles back to confuse the soldiers; but this plan too, will go awry.

  At the Gathering, King Ravn is bored – bored with shrouded southern women whose beauty he cannot assess, bored with the machinations of the northern lords, all manoeuvring for their advancement – until he too is captured by the power of the Rosa Eldi. Forsaking all others, he claims her as his bride.

  The Gathering is already in turmoil as the Allfair Guards burst in with a captive: Katla Aransen – mistaken for a man with her hair cut all rough and short – is accused of murdering Selen Issian’s slavegirl and stabbing Tanto Vingo. Even when the error of her gender is resolved, there remains the matter of her climbing the Rock. The northerners claim it to be Sur’s Castle, but the Istrians insist it is sacred ground to the Goddess. There are calls for a burning: the traditional Istrian punishment for sacrilege. The Moonfell Plain is neutral ground; but Lord Rui Finco, a southern lord bearing more than passing resemblance to the northern king, quietly points out that the Rock was ceded to Istria in an agreement made by Ravn’s father, the Shadow Wolf himself, Ashar Stenson. Katla will be burned, according to Istrian law.

  Fights break out across the fairground. The nomads, who have seen omens of bloodshed and a return of their own persecution, flee the plain. Amidst the chaos, the northern king is abducted, revealing a plot by a number of Istrian lords to gain control of the northern fleet and thus the ocean ways, which will render them great power and wealth. But the plot is foiled and Ravn Asharson flees with his bride, leaving Katla Aransen to burn and his countrymen in fierce and furious conflict with the Istrians.

  Tied to a pyre, flames all around her, it seems nothing can save Katla. But young Saro Vingo, following a mystical encounter with the Rosa Eldi, wades into the fire to set her free, the moodstone he carries killing all in his path. Katla’s kin take her to safety; but even when the crisis has passed, cries for war fill the air.

  Meanwhile, Erno Hamson has done as Katla told him – rowed away with Selen Issian: his heart is broken, and she is now a refugee who can never return to her home. Tanto Vingo, his wound poisoned, is saved only by drastic surgery. Tycho Issian, obsessed by the loss of the woman who has enslaved his soul, devotes all his efforts to fanning the flames of war: under the pretence of rescuing his daughter from her barbarian abductors and liberating all the women of Eyra from the sacrilegious lives their menfolk have forced them to lead, he calls for the south to carry fire and sword to the Northern Isles until they have laid it waste (and he can claim the Rosa Eldi for himself). He has the sorcerer, Virelai, and his magical cat to aid his cause; as well as Lord Rui Finco and his conspirators, for whom war with Eyra would suit many of their purposes.

  Katla Aransen, carried unconscious from the Moonfell Plain, recovers slowly at home in Rockfall; disfigured and damaged by the fire, her precious right hand fused into a clublike lump of scar tissue. She fears she will never climb another cliff, never forge another blade. Disconsolate, she wanders the island, trying to avoid doing household tasks. At Winterfest the mummers, under the charismatic leadership of Tam Fox, arrive; and with them comes a seither, one of the mysterious ancient folk who have but a single eye, which sees more than mortals’ two. The seither sees in Katla an adept, a channeller of earth-magic. To Katla, despite her great skill with rock and metal, this comes as a shock. The healer lays hands upon her and together they begin to work on Katla’s burned arm; but this act is tragically misinterpreted by Katla’s twin brother Fent, who attacks the seither, running her through with the Red Sword, Katla’s finest blade. Appalled, Katla attempts to turn her newfound abilities to the aid of the seither, but strength fails her and she feels herself ebbing away into the darkness, a darkness in which a distant and infinitely powerful voice calls to her . . .

  Prologue

  The Rose of the World hovered over her sleeping husband and the ends of her pale hair grazed his cheek. Wrapped in the strangest of dreams after his night’s exertions, King Ravn Asharson – known, confidingly, by the women of Eyra and, enviously, by the men, as ‘the Stallion of the North’ – stirred briefly as those silky fibres brushed him, his eyelashes fluttering like the lift of a crow’s wings.

  The Rosa Eldi smiled. It was an expression she had been practising each day in the privacy of these chambers, with th
e aid of one of her husband’s many gifts to her – a mirror of polished silver, glass and mercury, bought from traders from the Galian Isles: a miraculous thing in itself; but all the more so to the Rose of the World, who had never seen her own face, except as a reflection in the eyes of enraptured men.

  They told her she was beautiful and rare, the most perfect of women: but she had no means to judge if they meant what they said: she had spent all of the life that she could recall cloistered away in Sanctuary, that remote icy stronghold, whose only inhabitants had been a black cat, Bëte, the mage, Rahe; and Virelai, the Master’s apprentice. Rahe had told her she was beautiful over and again: but since he had also given her to believe that he had created her in an image most pleasing to his own eyes, it seemed a subjective judgement.

  Then, when Virelai had stolen her away and they had travelled out into the world she had had the opportunity to assess for herself the concepts of beauty and perfection; but in the beginning the assault on her starved senses had been so overwhelming that she had found everything – from the commonest dungfly to the mightiest tree – beautiful and perfect as and of itself. And yet, at the same time, everything she saw had seemed oddly familiar to her, as if the images that had populated her dreams had suddenly slipped from her head to swarm around her in all their myriad forms and colours.

  But people were the most disconcerting. She had no idea of how to react to them; and so usually she said nothing and just drank in their images to recall later in the darkness of the wagon in which she, the cat and the apprentice lived while they travelled; but what struck her repeatedly was how women recoiled from her, smiling with their mouths, but rarely with their eyes, as if they mistook her silent gaze for insolence, or a threat. Men, on the other hand, appeared to fall in love with her in an instant and become so helplessly enraptured that they wanted to have congress with her there and then, no matter how inappropriate the time, place or circumstances. The women did not like that, either. It seemed that in the making of her, the Master had invested her with sufficient magic to seduce every man on Elda (though that had clearly not been his intention, which was surely to keep her to himself alone) and from what she now understood about such matters, it seemed that Virelai had understood her power early in their journey and had made himself a considerable sum of money from these men and their use of her as they travelled across the world.