by Jude Fisher
‘There are indeed mysterious forces at work in the world,’ the seither whispered. She took her hands off the crystal and gazed in awe at the Rosa Eldi, a most bizarre stratagem already beginning to take shape in her mind.
‘Who are you, and why do you come to my door at such an hour?’
Rui Finco had just emerged from a lingering bath in water scented with rose petals, assisted by two veiled girls who had insisted on spending an hour and more rubbing aromatic oils into his back, which he fervently hoped was a prelude to rather more interesting and energetic pursuits. Jetran ways were not to his usual taste, which tended towards the pragmatic: a bath was for removing the day’s grime, and required hot water with no additives other than a loofah and a willing, and preferably naked, companion, and the time thus saved in bathing to be spent rather more productively between the sheets; but the slavegirls in Jetra were more exotically-minded than those in Forent, where they had got used to their lord’s rough and ready attitude to bathing as a preliminary to sex; and he was getting a little impatient. He wrapped his silk robe tighter around his muscular frame, which merely served to emphasise his impatience, and surveyed the man who had interrupted his evening with undisguised hostility.
The man – dark-skinned, tousle-haired and broken-nosed – looked like a hard bastard. Rui judged him to be around eight and thirty years, or possibly a little older: judging by the network of scars on his arms and face, he had seen a fair bit of action, though none of them looked fresh, which meant that he was either a veteran of the last war, or a mercenary so good with a blade that none had got close enough to mark him in recent times. Maybe both were true. Which could make him useful; unless he was here as an assassin, and one with sufficient gall to march up to his chambers and murder him where he stood. Rui’s eyes slid to the sword he kept propped by the door-jamb, wondering whether his reflexes would be fast enough to save his skin if this were the case, and knew that if the assassin was good he wouldn’t stand a chance. When he looked up again, he caught the man’s own gaze returning from the same spot. Rui stared him out, watching for a signal, but the visitor held his hands up. He was weaponless.
‘My apologies for disturbing you at this late hour, my lord. My name is Galo Bastido,’ he said gruffly, in the heavily-accented Istrian that marked him as a native of the northern coast.
The Lord of Forent waited.
‘Until recently I was the captain of the Altean militia.’
That was a surprise, given the accent. Rui thought quickly. Altea: capital of the Vingo lands in the far south of the country; the elder son of the family a cripple; the younger now posted, along with the men his family owned, to Tycho Issian’s command. Leaving this Galo Bastido positionless and mostly likely penniless, for he did not look like a man who would swallow his pride and accept a lesser rank under the auspices of some callow youth.
‘And you come seeking my favour?’
‘I have a proposition for you, my lord.’
The slavegirls were waiting. Their warm mouths and lithe bodies beckoned, demanded his attention. He pushed the thought aside. Another few minutes’ delay after all that damned massage would signify little. ‘Come in,’ the Lord of Forent said after barely a pause, and ushered Bastido into the anteroom. The girls, well-trained as they were, took one look at the newcomer, read the situation as one which did not require their immediate presence, slipped quickly into the bedchamber and took up their stations there, their veiled forms still visible through the gauzy drapes which separated the two rooms.
Rui Finco cast himself down on one of the long couches and waited.
‘Well?’ he said.
Galo Bastido dragged his eyes away from the doorway to the bedchamber. What it was to be a lord in the Eternal City. Was it just the money, he wondered; or did an inherited title make such a difference? If it was the latter, then he was cursed; if the former, perhaps there was still the possibility of him taking his destiny squarely into his own hands.
‘You will need ships, my lord, if you are to storm the North.’
‘Evidently. Our wrights have set to acquiring the necessary materials to construct a fleet. We are working on the plans.’
‘Aye, sir, plans; but no vessels.’
Rui regarded the man askance. ‘What are you saying?’
‘My father was a sea captain. I learned all he knew at his side on our own ship, trading with the Northern Isles, before the war. Then he died in battle and we lost what we had won. I ended up in Altea Town, peddling my soldiery skills; stayed there for twenty years, working my way through the ranks.’
So he was older than he looked.
‘Go on.’
‘I can sail a ship and navigate as well as any Eyran, my lord.’
Rui sighed inwardly. ‘I am sure your talents will be put to good use in the time to come, Bastido; be sure to come to me again when we have our fleet.’
The conversation was not following the course Bastido had planned. He said, more quickly than was strictly polite when addressing a member of the nobility, ‘I have . . . friends, my lord . . . in your own city. I ran into some of them on the road to Jetra and they told me something which might be of interest to you.’
The Lord of Forent inclined his head and allowed a silence to fall between them which indicated his willingness to hear the man out.
Galo Bastido cleared his throat. ‘The Eyran king has a shipmaker,’ he said, ‘except he hasn’t any more.’
Rui’s eyes narrowed. ‘I know this,’ he said, remembering the mercenary woman’s glee in relating this news to him.
‘I know where he is. My cousin told me. He had it from a mercenary he met in a tavern. Rockfall, he said, the greatest of the Westman Isles. That’s where the shipmaker is now.’
‘I know this too,’ Rui said dangerously. ‘You’d better have something to add to this old news or I’ll have your feet burned for trespass.’
Galo Bastido looked unperturbed by this unpleasant threat. ‘My father’s ship is in dry dock in Lanison Bay, my lord; has been these many years since my elder brother died and it passed back to me, but I was earning too well in my post in Altea to be interested in taking to the sea again. Give me some men, my lord, and I will sail them to Rockfall and bring the northern king’s shipmaker back to Forent for you.’ He paused and lowered his voice. ‘And as many barbarian women as you could wish. I hear they are wild, my lord, quite wild.’
Galo Bastido watched Lord of Forent’s gaze flare with interest and then turn dreamy. Was it the prospect of an Eyran-designed fleet that so fired his imagination, or the thought of filling his seraglio with northern harlots? he wondered. Either way, his daring request seemed to have met with favour.
The next day, after spending some of the coin he had received as an advance against the success of his venture on a trio of skilful whores and a skinful of the finest wine he had ever tasted, the Bastard left the Eternal City with fifteen armed men and a promissory note entitling him to his pick of Forent’s militia. The ship might require a bit of work, he mused, and delay their departure for a while. It had been a ropy old vessel at the best of times, and the best of times had been more than twenty years ago; but there were surely men in Forent who could make it seaworthy enough. Besides, what could be better than having coin in his pouch and a new city to explore while waiting to set out on a quest financed by one of the great lords of the Empire? Feeling twice the man he had been in years, Galo Bastido set his spurs sharply to his horse so that the blood ran down its flanks, and urged his new squad into a gallop.
As the ship sailed into sight of Halbo’s great sentinel pillars, the crew took down the alarming carved stempost that gave the Ice Bear its name. ‘No point in making trouble for ourselves,’ Mam had said succinctly. It was, anyway, to be hoped that the King had forgotten the small matter of Dogo and Knobber making such a hash of stealing his own ship the last time they had been in town. Perhaps bringing in the vessel Rui Finco had thought to use as a template for the Istrian’s fl
eet might win him around, if worse came to worst: though she had more of a mind to keep the ship for their own use. Sailing rough seas was not something she would ever get used to; but it was by far the most efficient means of long-distance escape from an awkward situation yet to be devised. Mam and horses did not get along at all.
For his part, Persoa stared and stared at the towering cliffs with their carved stairways and minuscule windows. Nothing had prepared him for such massive architecture: even in rich Istria no one had had the vaunting ambition to so tamper with the natural landscape. He could not imagine being inside the living rock: it made the small hairs on his neck and back rise like a dog’s.
Selen drew the folds of Mam’s huge tunic across her belly and then donned Erno’s cloak as well. She wanted to judge for herself what type of place this was and what manner of people the Eyrans were before she disclosed her condition. Not all could be as honourable as Erno Hamson; nor as straightforward as the mercenary crew. Having little memory of her earlier life, she had not expected to be surprised to have such a thought: the Selen Issian she had left behind in the seas off her homeland would have been appalled to have taken ship with a band of rogues and cut-throats; but she had found them unfailingly good company. If a little coarse. And she liked her new name: Leta Gullwing.
Persoa had offered her the first: it was his sister’s name he told her, very seriously, for she reminded him of her. But when she had asked him where she lived now, what her life was like, he had gone quiet and changed the subject. ‘Gullwing’ had come from Mam; and when she had asked a reason, the mercenary leader had shrugged. ‘There was one passing overhead as we picked you up,’ was all she said.
A new identity was a little more problematic. Dark hair and dark eyes were a rare combination in Eyra: they had settled on the Galian Isles as her place of origin, especially after Erno had privately explained to Mam what he knew of Selen’s heritage. ‘Her father is a deeply unpleasant man,’ Mam had concurred. ‘I’d heard of him even before the Gathering. A bigot, a fanatic and a bully. She’s well out of his hands and I’d do much to keep it that way.’
Erno had mixed feelings about returning to his homeland. On the one hand, he would be amongst his own kind, and could no doubt find himself a way to eke out a living in Halbo; but he yearned for Rockfall, if only to walk once more on the ground Katla Aransen had walked upon; to enter the hall where she had been born, to remember her laughing in the meadow and splashing across the strand. But he knew he could never set foot on the island where he had been raised ever again: his life would surely be forfeit to the Rockfall clan for the part he had played in Katla’s death. And at the very least, he knew he could not look the fearsome Aran Aranson in the eye.
The password had changed since the last time they had come into Halbo; but Joz struck up a cheerful conversation with the men on watch and they were soon waved through. It would never have been so easy in Ashar Stenson’s day, Mam thought darkly, remembering the dour old king. One sight of a bunch of Istrians on an unknown vessel and the whole royal guard would have been aboard the ship before you could say ‘Sur’s prick’. Even so, they anchored the Ice Bear in the outer harbour and waited until the sun went down before going ashore: cover of dark was always the best cloak.
A few curious folk had gathered on the dock, and although impatience carried most of them away by the time Mam gave the order to lower the boats, a knot of twenty or so onlookers remained. In large part they were idlers and touts: hawkers of dodgy goods and women of dubious virtue. Mam pushed past them without a second glance. But as Selen and Erno disembarked from the faering, a very tall, hooded figure detached itself from the crowd and followed them into the quiet backstreets.
‘Try harder, damn you! How difficult can it be, for Falla’s sake? She’s in Halbo – it’s not even as if you have to search for her!’
Virelai sighed. There was little point in attempting to explain to the Lord of Cantara that crystals did not work in such a geographical manner: it was all about the power of concentration, guiding the vibrations that were focused in the rock with one’s will and clarity of vision. He bent his head over the globe again and thought hard about the Rosa Eldi.
Ever since Rui Finco had put an end to the counterfeiting of the slavegirls to slake Tycho Issian’s obsessive desires, the Lord of Cantara had been gradually going out of his mind, it seemed to Virelai. Unable to find surcease from the torments of flesh and imagination, he had taken to pacing the corridors of Jetra’s castle at all times of the day and night, and usually ended up in Virelai’s chambers demanding some new potion or sight of his love in the great rock. Sometimes he merely sat on the bed and stroked the cat which, tethered as it was to the bedpost, was forced to suffer his attentions with bad grace. Twice, Virelai had glimpsed the Rosa Eldi – but on both occasions she had been locked in a passionate naked embrace with the northern king, and rather than endure one of Tycho’s violent, jealous rages, Virelai had desperately sought another distracting image. The first time, he had managed to palm the Lord of Cantara off with the sight of a rabble gathered in the agora of his city around a vast, blazing pyre on which half a dozen nomad women were being immolated while the priests threw safflowers into the flames to consecrate the burning. Tycho had become quite excited by this vision and had insisted that Virelai spend the rest of the night searching the land for other such events. It had not been difficult to find his master many more scenes such as this to salivate over, for a fanatical fever had the Empire in its grip: strangers and heretics were no longer welcome within its borders; men were put to the sword, and those women who would not accept the Way of the Goddess (and thus give themselves freely to every Falla-fearing man in the vicinity) were passed into her mercy through the holy fires.
But on the last of these occasions he had stumbled upon something rather curious. It made the hairs rise on the back of his neck, though he could not have said why, for ostensibly it was far less disturbing a vista than the majority of what he had viewed in past days. It was a city of golden stone, upon which late afternoon sunlight fell in great warm pools and stripes, even though here, in Jetra, it was dead of night, which was hard to understand, for the rock rarely showed him scenes that were not of the here and now. Fascinated, he tilted the crystal this way and that and marvelled at the graceful spires and minarets its facets offered up to him, the wide lakes and fabulous gardens filled with elegant statuary and exotic flowering plants. Jetra was a beautiful city; but it had nothing to compare with this. Squinting till his eyes hurt, Virelai peered and peered, until by sheer force of concentration he wrested the rock to his will and made it scan the city in finer detail. But this closer inspection, instead of repaying his efforts with more bounties and wonders instead revealed disappointments: the architecture was in disrepair; the lakes were green with scum and choked with reeds, and horsetails and briars had run rampant through the gardens. In the air above the ruined skyline, lammergeyers cruised the warm winds on their wide wings, their primary feathers spread like fingers; ravens roosted in the tops of crumbling towers; wild cats as thin as rails patrolled the streets and squares in search of vermin. But of the human inhabitants of the city there was no sign.
Eighteen
Covenants
‘Who are you and why have you brought me here?’
Selen Issian gazed into the mesmeric green eyes of the woman before her and felt all her anger and fear begin to ebb away. On the docks, when the shrouded figure had stepped into their path, and with a single touch had made Erno – that brave, protective and powerful man – crumple to the stones with a bare murmur of protest, she had been overcome first by terror, and then, as she was marched swiftly through deserted streets towards an unknown destination, by a growing and unaccustomed fury. The tall figure whose grasp on her upper arm felt like the chill grasp of death itself said not a word all the way, which served to make Selen – or Leta, as she determined to call herself now – incandescently enraged. By the time she had been ushered unceremonious
ly into these elegant chambers, she was ready to fly at the author of this abduction with hooked nails and barbed words; but one look at the quiet, beautiful woman sitting small as a child in the great wooden chair had drained her of all but curiosity.
Behind her, the door closed with a soft thud and someone latched it shut. She could sense the tall figure who had brought her here; could feel its compelling stare on the back of her neck like a cold breath; but she would not turn around, for the presence of the woman in the chair – for all her apparent fragility and harmlessness – was even more commanding.
‘My name is the Rosa Eldi, and I am the Rose of the World,’ said the pale woman softly, and the words washed over Selen like words in a dream: she knew them to carry greater import than their surface meaning, but could make no true sense of them.
‘She is the Queen of the Northern Isles; wife to King Ravn Asharson,’ said the voice from behind her and she realised with sudden shock that the tall, hooded figure was also a woman. She had been quite sure until now – from its height, and the power of its grip – that it was a man.
‘And what do you want of me?’ she asked again, even more perplexed now that she knew who the pale woman was.
For answer, the Rosa Eldi leaned forward in her chair and parted Selen’s veiling robes. Abruptly, Selen felt naked, vulnerable. An overwhelming desire to hide her state rushed over her, but her hands hung limp and volitionless at her sides. The Queen of the North spread her long, pale fingers across the pregnant swell.
‘Ah,’ she said. And, ‘Ah.’
Warmth burgeoned in Selen’s belly, infusing every vein and artery, every muscle and inch of skin. She felt the child inside move for the first time – the briefest, the lightest of flutterings, like the flick of a tiny bird’s wings in the hollow of her womb, and even she, who knew nothing of babies and the journey they took towards life, knew this movement to be early, bizarre; unnatural.