For a moment, the survivor went on as if he had not heard:
“-But she cannot hold for long when Canna Moidart’s Northern allies join with those patriots left in the city-”
There was a feverish, canting tone in his voice, as though he repeated a creed. Sweat broke out on his brow, and spittle appeared on his lips. “Aye, we’ll have her then, for sure! And caught between two blades-”
He held his tongue and studied Cromis closely, squinting. Cromis stared levelly back, endeavouring not to show how this intelligence affected him. Mor clawed himself into a sitting position, trembling with the effort.
“Wise to reveal yourself, tegeus-Cromis!” he cried suddenly, like an orator who singles one man from a crowd of rustics. “Where does your service lie?”
“You tire yourself needlessly,” murmured Cromis. “It matters little to me,” he lied, “for, as you see, I am a recluse. But I admit myself interested in this tale of the Old Queen and her Northern cousins. She has a large following, you say?”
As if in answer, Ronoan Mor’s good hand fumbled in his clothing again. And this time, it drew forth a twelve-inch sliver of flickering green light that hissed and crackled:
A baan.
He drew back his lips, held the ancient weapon stiffly before him (all men fear them, even their users), and snarled, “Large enough for you, sir. You see”-he glanced sideways at the trophies on the wall-“others may hold forceblades. Northerners, they tell me, have many such. With whom does your service lie, tegeus-Cromis?” He twitched the baan so it sparked and spat. “ Tell me! Your evasions weary me-”
Cromis felt perspiration trickling under his armpits. He was no coward, but he had been long away from violence; and though the baan was in poor condition, the energies that formed its blade running low, it would still slice steel, make play of bone and butter of flesh.
“I would remind you, Ronoan Mor,” he said quietly, “that you are ill. Your arm. Fever makes you hasty. I have given you succour-”
“This to your succour!” shouted Mor, and spat. “Tell me, or I’ll open you from crutch to collarbone.”
The baan flickered like an electric snake.
“You are a fool, Ronoan Mor. Only a fool insults a man’s queen under that man’s hospitable roof.”
Mor flung his head back and howled like a beast.
He lunged blindly.
Cromis whirled, tangled his cloak about hand and baan. As the blade cut free, he crouched, rolled, changed direction, rolled again, so that his body became a blur of motion on the stone-flagged floor. The nameless sword slid from its sheath, and he was tegeus-Cromis the Northkiller once again, Companion of the Order of Methven and Bane of Carlemaker.
Confused, Mor backed up against the head of the bed, his slitted eyes fixed on the crouching swordsman. He was breathing heavily.
“Forget it, man!” said Cromis. “I will accept your apologies. Your illness wears you. I have no use for this foolishness. The Methven do not slaughter merchants.”
Mor threw the forceblade at him. tegeus-Cromis, who had thought never to fight again, laughed.
As the baan buried itself in the trophy wall, he sprang forward, so that his whole long body followed the line of the nameless sword.
A choked cry, and Ronoan Mor was dead. tegeus-Cromis, who fancied himself a better poet than armsman, stood over the corpse, watched sadly the blood well onto the blue silk bed, and cursed himself for lack of mercy.
“I stand for Queen Jane, merchant,” he said. “As I stood for her father. It is that simple.”
He wiped the blade of the sword with no name and went to prepare himself for a journey to the Pastel City, no longer plagued by dreams of a quiet life.
Before he left, another thing happened, a welcome thing.
He did not expect to see his tower again. In his skull, there was a premonition: Canna Moidart and her true kinsmen burned down from the voracious North with wild eyes and the old weapons, come to extract vengeance from the city and empire that had ousted them a century since. The savage blood ran true: though Canna Moidart was of Methven’s line, being the daughter of his brother Methvel, old quarrels ran in her veins from her mother Balquhider’s side, and she had expected the sovereignty on the death of her uncle. Viriconium had grown fat and mercantile while Methven grew old and Moidart fermented discontent in kingdom and city. And the wolves of the North had sharpened their teeth on their grievances.
He did not expect to see Balmacara again: so he stood in his topmost room and chose an instrument to take with him. Though the land go down into death and misrule, and tegeus-Cromis of the nameless sword with it, there should be some poetry before the end.
The fire in the rowan wood had died. Of the crystal launch, nothing remained but a charred glade an acre across. The road wound away to Viriconium. Some measure of order had prevailed there, for the smoke haze had left the horizon and the foundations of the tower no longer trembled. He hoped fervently that Queen Jane still prevailed, and that the calm was not that of a spent city, close to death.
Along the road, grey dust billowing about them, rode some thirty or forty horsemen, heading for Balmacara.
He could not see their standard, but he put down the gourd-shaped instrument from the East and went to welcome them; whether with words or with his blade, he did not much care.
He was early at the gates. Empty yet, the road ran into the rowans, to curve sharply and disappear from sight. A black bird skittered through the leaves, sounding its alarm call; sat on a branch and regarded him suspiciously from beady, old man’s eyes. The sound of hooves drew nearer.
Mounted on a pink roan mare fully nineteen hands high and caparisoned in bright yellow, the first horseman came into view.
He was a massive man, heavy in the shoulders and heavier in the hips, with thin, long blond hair that curled anarchically about a jowled and bearded face. He wore orange breeches tucked into oxblood boots, and a violet shirt, the sleeves of which were slashed and scolloped.
On his head was a floppy-brimmed rustic hat of dark brown felt, which the wind constantly threatened to take from him.
He was roaring out a Duirinish ballad which enumerated the hours of the clock as chimed inside a brothel.
Cromis’s shout of greeting drove the black bird entirely away.
He ran forward, sheathing his sword and crying, “Grif! Grif!”
Grif gathered up the reins beneath the roan mare’s bit, hauled her to a halt, and pounded one of the oxblood boots with the heel of his hand.
“Grif, I had not thought to see you again! I had not thought any of us were left!”
2
“No, Cromis, there are a few left. Had you not gone to earth after your sister Galen’s accident, and then crept secretly back to this empty place, you would have seen that Methven made due provision for the Order: he did not intend it to die with his own death. A few left, but truthfully a few, and those scattered.”
They sat in the high room, Birkin Grif sprawled with a mug of distilled wine, his boots on a priceless onyx table, while Cromis plucked halfheartedly at the eastern gourd or paced restlessly the floor. The chink of metal on metal filtered from the courtyard far beneath, where Grif’s men prepared a meal, watered their horses. It was late afternoon, the wind had dropped, and the rowans were still.
“Do you know then of Norvin Trinor, or of Tomb the Dwarf?” asked Cromis.
“Ho! Who knows of Tomb even when the times are uncomplicated? He searches for old machines in deserts of rust, no doubt. He lives, I am sure, and will appear like a bad omen in due course. As for Trinor, I had hoped you would know: Viriconium was always his city, and you live quite close.”
Cromis avoided the big man’s eyes.
“Since the deaths of Galen and Methven, I have seen no one. I have been… I have been solitary, and hoped to remain so. Have some more wine.”
He filled Grif’s cup.
“You are a brooder,” said Grif, “and someday you will hatch eggs.”
He laughed. He choked on his drink. “What is your appraisal of the situation?”
Away from thoughts of Galen, Cromis felt on firmer ground.
“You know that there were riots in the city, and that the Queen held her ground against Canna Moidart’s insurgents?”
“Aye. I expect to break the heads of malcontents. We were on our way to do that when we noticed the smoke about your tower. You’ll join us, of course?”
Cromis shook his head.
“A cordial invitation to a skull-splitting, but there are other considerations,” he said. “I received intelligence this morning that the Moidart rides from the North. Having sown her seeds, she comes harvesting. She brings an army of Northmen, headed by her mother’s kin, and you know that brood have angered themselves since Borring dispossessed them and took the land for Viricon. Presumably, she gathers support on the way.”
Birkin Grif heaved himself from his chair. He stamped over to the window and looked down at his men, his breath wheezing. He turned to Cromis, and his heavy face was dark.
“Then we had better to ride, and swiftly. This is a bad thing. How far has the Moidart progressed? Has the Young Queen marshalled her forces?”
Cromis shrugged.
“You forget, my friend. I have been a recluse, preferring poetry to courts and swords. My… informant… told me nothing but what I have told you. He died a little later. He was in some part responsible for the smoke you saw.” He poured himself a mug of wine, and went on:
“What I counsel is this: that you should take your company and go north, taking the fastest route and travelling lightly. Should the Queen have prepared an army, you will doubtless overhaul it before any significant confrontation. Unless a Methven be already in charge of it, you must offer (offer only: people forget, and we have not the King to back us anymore) your generalship.
“If there is no army, or if a Methven commands, then lead your men as a raiding force: locate the Moidart and harry her flanks.”
Grif laughed. “Aye, prick her. I have the skill for that, all right. And my men, too.” He became serious. “But it will take time, weeks possibly, for me to reach her. Unless she already knocks at the door.”
“I think not. That must be your course, however long. Travelling by the canny routes, news of her coming would be a full three weeks ahead of her. An army cannot take the hill ways. With speed, we can hope to engage her well before she reaches Viriconium.”
“What of yourself, in these weeks we scatter like minutes?”
“Today, I leave for the city. There I will arrange the backing of Queen Jane for the Methven and also seek Trinor, for he would be an asset. If an army has been sent (and I cannot think the queen as ill-informed as I: there must be one), I will join you, probably at Duirinish, bringing any help I can.”
“Fair enough, Cromis. You will need a couple of men in the unquiet city. I’ll detail-”
Cromis held up his hand.
“I’ll ride alone, Grif. Am I hard-pressed, it will be useful practice. I have grown out of the way of fighting.”
“Always the brooder.” Grif returned to the window and bawled down into the courtyard, “Go to sleep, you skulkers! Three hours, and we ride north!”
Grif had not changed. However he lived, he lived it full. Cromis stood by him at the window and clapped his meaty shoulder.
“Tell me, Grif: what has been your business all these years?”
Grif bellowed with laughter, which seemed to infect his men. They milled about the courtyard, laughing too, although they could not have heard the question.
“Something as befits a Methven in peacetime, brooder. Or as you may have it, nothing as befits a Methven at any time. I have been smuggling distilled wine of low and horrible quality to peasants in the Cladich Marshes, whose religion forbids them drink it…”
Cromis watched Grif’s ragged crew disappear into the darkness at a stiff pace, their cloaks flapping out behind them. He waved once to the colourful figure of Grif himself, then turned to his horse, which was breathing mist into the cold night. He checked the girth and saddlebags, settled the Eastern instrument across his back. He shortened his stirrups for swift riding.
With the coming of darkness, the winds had returned to Balmacara: the rowans shook continuously, hissing and rustling; Cromis’s shoulder-length black hair was blown about his face. He looked back at the tower, bulking dark against the cobalt sky. The surf growled behind it. Out of some strange sentiment, he had left the light burning in the upper room.
But the baan that had killed his sister he had in an insulated sheath next to his skin, because he knew he would not come again, riding to the light out of battle, to Balmacara in the morning.
Refugees packed the Viriconium road like a torchlit procession in some lower gallery of Hell. Cromis steered his nervous beast at speed past caravans of old men pushing carts laden with clanking domestic implements and files of women carrying or leading young children. House animals scuttled between the wheels of the carts.
The faces he passed were blank and frightened, overlit and gleaming in the flaring unsteady light of the torches. Some of them turned from him, surreptitiously making religious signs (a brief writhe of the fingers for Borring, whom some regarded as a god, a complicated motion of the head for the Colpy). He was at a loss to account for this. He thought that they were the timid and uncommitted of the city, driven away by fear of the clashing factions, holding no brief for either side.
He entered the city by its twelfth gate, the Gate of Nigg, and there was no gatekeeper to issue even the customary token challenge.
His habitually morose mood shifted to the sombre as he took the great radial road Proton Circuit, paved with an ancient resilient material that absorbed the sound of his horse’s hooves.
About him rose the Pastel Towers, tall and gracefully shaped to mathematical curves, tinted pale blue or fuchsia or dove-grey. They reached up for hundreds of feet, cut with quaint and complex designs that some said were the high point of an inimitable art, thought by others to be representations of the actual geometrics of Time.
Several of them were scarred and blackened by fire. Some were gutted and broken.
Seeing so much beauty brought down in this way, he was convinced that a change had come about in the essential nature of things, and that they could never be the same again.
Proton Circuit became a spiral that wound a hundred yards into the air, supported by slim and delicate pillars of black stone. At the summit of the spiral lay the palace of the Young Queen, which had been Methven’s hall. A smaller building than most in that city, it was shaped like a filigree shell, built entirely of a pure white metal that vibrated and sang. Before its high bright arch stood guards in charcoal livery, who made stringent demands on him to reveal his identity and business.
They found it difficult to believe him a Methven (memories had indeed grown dim, for their chief objection to his claim was that he came with no ceremony or circumstance) and for some time refused him entrance: a circumspection he could only applaud.
He remembered certain pass words known only to the guards of the city.
He made his way along corridors of pale, fluctuating light, passing strange, precious objects that might have been animated sculptures or machines, excavated from ruined cities in the Rust Desert beyond Duirinish.
Queen Jane awaited him in a tall room floored with cinnabar-veined crystal and having five false windows that showed landscapes to be found nowhere in the kingdom.
Shambling slowly among the curtains of light and finely wrought furniture was one of the giant albino megatheria of the Southern forests: great sloth-like beasts, fifteen feet high when they stood upright (which was rarely) and armed with terrible cutting claws, though they were vegetarian and amiable. The Queen’s beast wore an iridium collar, and its claws were sheathed in clear thick resin. Seeing Cromis, it ambled up to him in a sleepy manner, and gazed myopically at him. Patterns of light moved across its shining pelt.
“Leave him, Usheen,” said a small, musical voice.
Cromis turned his eyes from the megatherium to the dais at the south end of the room.
Queen Jane of Viriconium, Methvet Nian, whom he had last seen as a child at Methven’s court, was seventeen years of age. She sat on a simple throne and regarded him steadily with violet eyes. She was tall and supple, clad in a gown of russet velvet, and her skin was neither painted nor jewelled. The identical Ten Rings of Neap glittered from her long fingers. Her hair, which recalled the colour of the autumn rowans of Balmacara, hung in soft waves to her waist, coiled about her breasts.
“Queen Jane,” said Cromis and bowed.
She buried her fingers in the thick fur of the megatherium, and whispered to it. The false windows flickered with strange scenes. She looked up.
“Is it really you, Lord Cromis?” she said, a strange expression crossing her pale triangular features.
“Have I changed so much, madam?”
“Not much, Lord Cromis: you were a stiff and sombre man, even when you sang, and you are that still. But I was very young when we last met-”
Suddenly, she laughed, rose from the throne, and came gracefully down to take his hands. Cromis saw that her eyes were moist.
“-And I think I preferred Tomb the Dwarf in those days,” she went on, “for he brought me the most wonderful things from his favourite ruins. Or Grif, perhaps, who told questionable tales and laughed a good deal-”
She drew him through the shifting light sculptures to the dais, and made him sit down. The megatherium came to gaze wisely at him from brown, tranquil eyes. Methvet Nian sat on her simple throne, and the laughter left her.
“Oh, Cromis, why have none of you come before? These ten years, I have had need of your support. How many live? I have seen none of you since my father’s death.”
“Grif lives, madam, for sure. Hours ago, he rode north at my request. He believes that Tomb and Trinor live also. Of the others I have heard nothing. We have come late to this, but you must not think too ill of us. I have come to discover just how late we are. What have been your moves to date?”
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