by Jude Fisher
‘You’d better not go round saying that in public,’ the sergeant muttered, looking back uncomfortably in case any of the others had overheard. ‘People disappear around Tycho Issian, and not by magic, neither.’
‘Ah, no, I wasn’t thinking of saying it in public.’ The captain winked and rattled the coin-bag. Then he raised his voice. ‘I’ll bet my arse this was their meeting point,’ he said to the troop at large. ‘Those dainty little hoofprints back there belong to no yeka I ever saw, so I’d say our quarry have taken up with a band of nomads. Even if they haven’t, and they just happened to have crossed paths, the worst we can do if we follow these tracks is to find and roast some Footloose. And the best? Well, the Lady knows: but if you keep imagining what you might do with that reward money, it might take your mind off the heat and the flies.’
Travelling with the nomads was the most enjoyable experience of Saro Vingo’s young life. Almost, he forgot the context for their journey: for the tales the old women wove and the knowledge they possessed about everything they passed made him feel the world was a significantly different place to the one he had grown up in: that it was wider and purer and more mysterious and far, far more ancient than he had ever imagined. It made him a little less despairing than he had been since the empathic gift from Hiron had opened his eyes to the horrible true nature of much of humanity; at times he even felt optimistic.
They had been skirting the low foothills of the Golden Mountains for the last two days and were now taking a much-needed rest beside a small stream shaded by overhanging rowans.
‘This is lady’s smock,’ said Alisha, holding up a bunch of tender green stalks topped by delicate pink flowers. ‘It’s a moon-plant: good for the stomach. Good to eat, too.’ She peeled some out of the bunch and handed them to him.
It tasted pleasantly like watercress, if a little more bitter. Already he had learned the names and uses of a dozen fungi, and three dozen plants and herbs – lad’s love (for cramps in the muscles); thorn apple (for breathing problems); henbane (for swelling of the testicles); mullein (for bruising and for piles); rampion (for fevers and discoloration of the skin). He had learned that powdered willowherb would stop excessive bleeding, that a decoction of dove’s foot in wine could ease aching joints and that one of soapwort might fight those diseases contracted in unhealthy brothels. Such applications made the world seem more benevolent, as if the Three had provided all their folk might ever require, free for the picking.
It was from Virelai that he learned a parcel of rather more disturbing information: that potions made from the root of the salep orchid could harden the male genital organ for a day or more; that the pounded woody stems of the spurge could cause miscarriage and that fresh dog’s mercury could kill a mouse, a dog or a man in a most unpleasant manner, depending on how much was administered. He asked Alisha now whether any of this were true, blushing when he got to the bit about the orchid.
‘I do not know where he gets all this terrible stuff from,’ she said, laughing indulgently. ‘Books, he says, the old man’s books.’
‘Who is the old man?’ Saro asked softly. He remembered the vision he had had when he touched the sorcerer. For an elderly man he had not appeared kindly.
Alisha shrugged. ‘I believe he raised Virelai from a baby, but given all that, he will not talk much about him. I do not even know his name.’
‘I do,’ Saro said, surprised. ‘Rahe.’
The nomad woman’s eyes went wide. ‘Ra-hay?’ she asked, separating the sounds.
Saro nodded slowly. The way she said it reminded him of something.
‘King Rahay?’
‘I don’t think he was a king. He never mentioned a king,’ Saro frowned. ‘I touched him once, Virelai, I mean; to see if there was any malice in him and there was a torrent of images – I saw an old, old man, surrounded by parchments and scrolls, and bottles of all sorts, in a fortress made all out of ice. And there was a woman too, with long, long golden hair . . .’ He laughed nervously. ‘Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Like something out of a fairy story.’
Alisha nodded absent-mindedly. She looked towards where the sorcerer sat with the old women, helping them wring out the washing in the stream. Then she turned back to Saro, gazing deep into his eyes. ‘I do not know exactly who or what Virelai is,’ she said very quietly, ‘but I have more than suspicions about the old man. Long ago – hundreds of years maybe – in the time of my distant ancestors in the Far South of Elda, beyond the Dragon’s Backbone—’
‘But there isn’t anything beyond the Dragon’s Backbone,’ Saro laughed. ‘Everyone knows that.’
Alisha looked indignant. ‘But there certainly is: it is where my people came from. Yours too.’
‘My people come from Altea,’ Saro said stubbornly. ‘They’ve been the ruling family of the area for generations.’
‘Does having power over people mean so much?’ she asked gently.
Now it was Saro’s turn to be indignant. ‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant that because the family is considered important in the region, records of every birth and marriage and death have been noted down: we’re proud of our heritage – we know who we are, where we’ve come from.’
‘Apparently not! All the people of Elda came from the Far South, so long ago that stories of that time have passed into legend—’
‘Then why do the legends speak of the Far West, then?’ Saro asked mulishly, as if he might catch her out.
Alisha laughed. ‘That has always amused us. Have you never wondered why both your people and the Eyrans hold dear tales of the Far West?’
Saro looked thoughtful. ‘The Eyrans came from here – from Istria – originally. We drove them north, and then out of the southern continent altogether. So I suppose that’s why some of the stories are shared. And why Sirio and Sur are similar in sound. But Far West and Far South – well, you couldn’t get that wrong – all those Eyran navigators and adventurers planning to find the Ravenway to the Far West – they could hardly sail across the mountains, could they?’
‘You wouldn’t think so, would you?’ Alisha said. ‘Since my mother died – you’d have loved her, I think: she was quite a character, wore her hair in a little white topknot, and about a hundred silver chains around her neck, and she was just the kindest of women – I’ve been trying to remember all she told me; what her mother told her, and her mother before her. And I’ve talked with Elida and Jana: they know much, too. One thing I do know is that Far West is a corruption of “farvasti”, which means “the elder folk” in the Old Tongue. And the elder folk come from beyond the mountains to the south of here.’
Saro closed his eyes. Things were going on in his head, things over which he had no control. Little bits of information were marshalling themselves like the pieces of a puzzle, realigning themselves, coming to the fore of his memory. His eyelids flew open. ‘Rahay – he was King of the West – just like in Guaya’s puppet-play – but he wasn’t, he was King of the South, and his name is Rahe, and he is Virelai’s mentor, the Master: he was the one who found the Goddess hundreds of years ago and stole her away!’ He stopped and stared at her, aware of what he had just said. ‘But no one lives for hundreds of years—’ He regarded her, waiting for her to interject or agree, but she just watched him magnanimously and said nothing, so he went on with his thought process, letting it spill from him like a waterfall. ‘And your people – the nomads, the Wandering Folk – are the People, just like in the old books: the ones with the earth-magic, the ones who channel the powers of Elda. Except—’
‘Except we have little of the Craft left to us – indeed, until the Rosa Eldi came back to the world, we had very nearly lost our magic altogether. Yes,’ replied Alisha. ‘And you are of the People, too – all of you, both Istrians and Eyrans: but you are of those members of the People who marched away into the world determined to make a different kind of life, who turned their backs on magic and the old ways and went to war with one another instead, and made power and money and la
nd more important than love and truth and the heart of Elda.’
‘But if the Goddess is returned to the world, and we have the Beast with us, then if we can find Sirio, all will be restored?’
Alisha smiled at him. ‘It seems so simple, doesn’t it?’
There came a cry from somewhere on the hillside above them, where the path wove down through the rocks. Saro came upright as if he were on a spring, but he could see nothing. The cry was followed by a deep-throated roar, then by screaming.
‘We do indeed have the Beast with us; and it sounds as if she has company,’ Alisha said grimly. She ran downstream towards the rest of the caravan. ‘Visitors!’ she called, waving her arms. ‘Let us pack up and away.’
At once the nomads were on their feet, moving quickly. Saro was impressed by how calmly and purposefully they reacted and wondered if this was because they were by nature a phlegmatic folk, or whether such attacks had become common experience to them. Virelai and the men began to herd the yeka together; the women slung the still-wet washing into the backs of the wagons, gathering up their utensils and belongings as they ran. Saro untethered the stallion and stared behind him, up into the hills where the sound of Bëte’s roar had thundered. For a moment he could see nothing; then there was a movement amidst the bracken and birches: horsemen, with cloaks of deepest blue. His mind raced. Not a roving band of marauders or brigands, then . . .
‘Leave the wagons!’ he yelled. ‘Leave everything and run!’
Alisha, pushing Falo up into their cart, stared at him.
‘Soldiers!’ Saro cried, grabbing the boy down again, and watched her face go white. ‘It’s us they’re after,’ he added, knowing this suddenly to be the truth. ‘Virelai and me.’ He could imagine how his brother might have inflamed the Lord of Cantara into taking this swift action. It was as well Tanto could not ride, he thought, or he’d be leading the troop, and then no one would be safe. He looked past the nomad woman to where the sorcerer stood, swaying slightly like a pale aspen in a breeze. ‘Virelai!’ he called. ‘They’ve come for us – soldiers from Jetra. You and I must face them, hold them at bay for as long as we can, let these folk make their escape.’
‘We need our wagons,’ one of the old men said quietly, leading his pair of yeka forward and harnessing them with slow, sure hands. ‘Our lives are in our wagons.’
Saro felt hot frustration scour through him. ‘You will have no lives if you do not leave your wagons!’ But still the old man persisted with his task until he had the animals yoked.
A moment later, the first of the soldiers came crashing down through the trees, his sword waving wildly. The tip of it was reddened. Then another appeared behind him. His sword was sheathed: he needed both hands on the reins to control his careering horse.
The nomads, seeing the nature of the threat in sudden, vivid colour, were galvanised; but still they would not abandon their carts. Saro, who wore no sword, looked desperately around him for a weapon.
‘Here!’ It was Falo, wielding a long, stout stick of age-pitted holly-wood. ‘It was Amma’s,’ he said, holding it out for Saro, ‘though I don’t think she ever hit anyone with it.’
Saro’s hands closed over the smooth wood of the staff, and allowed the expected wash of memories and experiences to flood through him – sunlight and dappled ground; a young man; an old man; the pain of a birth; a powerful sense of protectiveness, a deep connection with the world. Against the skin of his chest, the death-stone began to pulse with a pale green light . . .
‘Run away,’ Saro said to the boy, and his own voice sounded strange to him, deeper and slower and from a long way away, as if it were being drawn out of him by an unseen hand. And Falo must have seen something too, for the boy’s eyes went wide and then he turned and sped away down the riverside track.
Fingers gripped his arm and he started, shocked by a sudden chill. The sorcerer took his hand off Saro as if burned. His gaze was violet, intense.
‘The stone . . .’ he breathed. ‘Saro – do not use the stone—’
Too late. Saro’s fingers had already closed over the pendant. As the first soldier charged at them, he drew it out and pointed it at the man. A coruscating light haloed the stone, sending out darting rays and sparks. The soldier’s horse shied and whinnied and banked abruptly to the left so that the man lost his stirrups and fell head first into the river. The horse galloped past them with its eyes rolling. Seeing all this, the second soldier hesitated. For a brief, hallucinatory moment, Saro could make out each mark made by the claws Bëte had raked down the horse’s flank; then the soldier had wrestled his sword out and was shouting at them. Saro’s fingers burned with sudden heat which travelled the length of his arm, through the shoulder joint and into the muscles and bones of his neck and skull. He closed his eyes and wished the man away. There was a cry; a thud. When he opened them again, the soldier lay unmoving, his sword arm flung wide; the weapon spun away across the ground.
He turned, shocked, to say something to the sorcerer, but Virelai was off and running for the cover of the trees in the wake of the nomads. He was on his own. When he turned back, two more soldiers were on the hillside. They must have seen the events which had overtaken their fallen comrades, for their movements were cautious: then, instead of hurling themselves down the slope, they wheeled their mounts about and headed back uphill. For a few seconds their silhouettes were visible against the sky, then they disappeared.
Saro let go of the pendant. His head ached and his stomach felt hollow with dread. The first man he reached was plainly dead, his eyes rolled up into the sockets to reveal yellowed corneas and the barest rim of iris. The second man, however, was floundering around in the shallows of the river in an uncoordinated fashion. ‘Help me!’ he spluttered at intervals. ‘I’m drowning!’
Saro hauled him out onto the bank and he lay there coughing and wheezing and throwing up trickles of water and bile. The contact rendered a number of images – a sensation of exhaustion and angry boredom, heat and dust and thirst; aches from the saddle; a faint disgust as a woman’s body burned in a pyre, face down, her heavy peasant shoes jerking convulsively; fear as a huge black cat loomed out of undergrowth causing him to stab down again and again with his sword . . .
Saro took his hands away. ‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
The soldier blinked. ‘Deserter,’ he croaked, pointing at Saro. ‘Sent to bring you back. And the pale man, as well. Got to be punished, that’s what Lord Tycho said. Example to others.’ He coughed again, wiped the resultant ejecta away with the back of his hand. ‘Supposed to bring the cat back, too.’ He paused, laughed. ‘Trouble is, no one told us how big the damn thing was!’ He hauled the leg of his ripped breeches up to inspect the damage. ‘See?’ he said.
Flaps of skin hung like ribbons on his thigh. The water had made the blood thin and red again where it had been starting to coagulate. It pulsed out of the wound, staining the dry grass beside him.
‘Still, I got the bloody thing, I think,’ he said with some satisfaction. ‘Right in the side.’ He thought about this for a moment, then: ‘Got a bandage?’ he asked.
Saro stared at him blankly. Was Bëte dead? He had heard no roar since the first shriek on the hillside; no other sound from her at all. Despair came to him again, as dark as a cloud. He got up and walked away, leaving the soldier where he was, looking after him with a confusion bordering on outrage.
The stallion, Night’s Harbinger, stood a little way downriver with his head dipped into the water, drinking unconcernedly. But where was Virelai? Saro walked into the bushes where he had last seen the pale man, ducking under branches, stepping over roots and brambles. He found the sorcerer curled up at the foot of a huge rowan, clutching his knees to him and rocking to and fro like a distressed child. When he saw Saro standing over him, he looked terrified. ‘Please don’t use the stone on me,’ he begged.
Saro shook his head. ‘I won’t,’ he promised. ‘I’ll never use it again.’ He removed the pendant from around his nec
k. ‘Here, you take it. I do not want it: I never wanted it – all it has been to me is a curse.’
But Virelai scrabbled away from him till his back was up against the tree and there was nowhere else for him to go, his features set in a feral rictus. ‘Oh no,’ he protested. ‘Not me.’
Saro frowned. ‘Then let us bury it here, or cast it into the river: then no one can use it.’
The sorcerer shook his head. ‘Others may find it, and that would be worse.’
‘Are you sure you will not take it?’
Virelai looked appalled. ‘Not I,’ he said. ‘It is too strong for me.’
Defeated, Saro put the thing on again and tucked it back under his tunic. ‘Let us go and find Alisha, then,’ he said at last. ‘I think the soldiers have gone.’
When they emerged out onto the riverbank again, the wounded soldier was no longer where Saro had left him, and neither was Night’s Harbinger. But the ground was churned where he had last seen the stallion: it looked as if the beast had taken to its heels and headed after the nomads.
At a bend in the river, they found the caravan. Or the remnants of it, at least.
Of the four wagons, two were upright and seemed intact; the other two lay on their sides with their wheels spinning. Three yeka lay where they had fallen, necks or legs broken; so did the two old men. Elida, they had pinned to a tree with their lances. She sagged, spiked through the torso and shoulders, and twice through the legs. It looked as if someone had made a poor attempt to cut off her head, then abandoned the task.
Falo lay splayed out on the ground. He was covered in blood. Some distance away, his severed arm still clutched a long club, the end of which was matted with blood and hair. Of his mother there was no sign.