The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  Silence fell, tensioned with threat.

  While inimical stares from the councilmen sharpened around the table, and the Mayor of Isaer whispered something to a servant that brought guardsmen in full mail to block the doorway, Lord Diegan groped to draw the hidden dagger in his sleeve.

  The prince acknowledged none of this, but centred upon a careworn alderman who fluttered his napkin in dismay. ‘You can’t suggest a treaty with the clanborn! Ath! There’s no way to reason with such, uncouth as they are. Like animals.’ While the mayor’s fat steward retreated without refilling the wine goblets, he added with whispered distaste, ‘ ‘Tis said of Maenalle s’Gannley that she wears uncured animal skins.’

  For a moment Lysaer looked blandly mystified. Then he roused and said in forbearance, ‘Forgive me. I can’t support such hasty thinking.’ Under the table, his hand clamped hard on Diegan’s arm, locking the little knife in its sheath. ‘What would an armed campaign accomplish except to drive Tysan’s clans to share grievance with their brethren in Rathain? No. Blood-hunts are too dangerous an option, and Arithon s’Ffalenn too wily an adversary to risk driving allies to his cause. Of all things, I dare not draw his interests to your land to threaten the industry of your cities.’

  With a deftness that seemed natural chance, the discussion was deflected to threats of shadow and sorcery; Lord Diegan swept into passionate description of the heinous slaughter that occurred on the banks of Tal Quorin, when a grisly chain of traps had savaged Etarra’s proud garrison.

  The telling set him in a cold sweat. Deshir’s clansmen had always been killers; allied with Arithon s’Ffalenn and his demonic touch at spellcraft, they had narrowly been stopped from threatening civilized Rathain. Hands clenched on his cutlery, Lord Diegan spoke; as if the roar of Tal Quorin’s flood still battered his ears, and the screams of those troops swept away. Sucked back into memory like nightmare, he heard the crack of arrows striking through foliage and flesh; the ripping of timber and earth as concealed spring traps and deadfalls left his lancers gutted and bleeding out their lives in whimpering agony. Death did not account for all the losses. Some men were permanently deranged by the maze wards and shadows Arithon had used to bind them into confusion; others had been broken in spirit, prone to fits and raving when relivings wrenched them from sleep.

  By itself, the account of the battle the Shadow Master had launched in Strakewood was enough to inspire terror. Isaer’s council ministers departed mollified; by direct command of their mayor, the men at arms tactfully dispersed.

  Later, lighted by perfumed candles in a tapestried upper chamber, Lord Diegan chose his moment and cornered Lysaer before the prince called his valet to retire. ‘What are you playing at? I thought we agreed at Etarra that barbarian havens anywhere were too ready a tool for the Master’s use and design!’

  ‘You’re worried?’ The brandy had been particularly fine; yet an edge of irritation burned through the prince’s flush as he crossed the guest suite’s floral patterned carpet. Contained as smoothed marble, he said, ‘Then rest content, the raids in the passes will be ended. One way or another. By armed force as a last resort.’

  Lord Diegan met and held those blue eyes, that could seem inhumanly assured in their candour. ‘Pretty manners and slick language might disarm the mistrust in Isaer. But tonight’s talk at supper would get you bloody and dead on the other side of the passes. Don’t fool yourself. Erdane’s mayor won’t be stood off with sweet talk and gifts.’

  A frown knitted Lysaer’s brows. ‘I thought as much.’ He sighed and stifled a yawn behind a blaze of sapphire rings. ‘It’s inconvenient, I admit, but we’re going to need every city’s loyalty against Arithon. We’ll just have to find something else to ease the Lord Mayor of Erdane’s antipathy.’

  To which Diegan could say nothing, but only turn on his heel and retire to a bed where sleep did not ease him.

  The following morning, the royal retinue left Isaer to rejoin its abandoned caravan, now moved thirty laboured leagues to the west. After the escorting honour guard trailed four ox-wains crammed full of pottery, patterned linen and dyed feathers. The mules bearing the last crates of Falgaire crystal took a dislike to the ox teams, which occasioned much swearing from the drovers.

  Surrounded by confusion that stirred a third of the cavalcade into a brew of bawling animals and stopped wagons, Talith’s suave brother screamed orders until his teeth grated from inhaling airborne grit. He ignored the ragged crofters who had paused at their sowing to stare. If he also missed the hoofbeats that approached through the din made by children beating clappers to scare flocking sparrows from the seed grain, Diegan obstinately faced forward as the rider arrived and fell in alongside.

  ‘Stop sulking.’ Lysaer laughed to his uncommunicative future brother-in-law. ‘When the snow comes, we can haul the fancy feathers out for mattress stuffing.’

  ‘Did you look in those sacks?’ Diegan reined around his dust-caked mount, his calf gloves fringed with hanging threads where use had torn off the beadwork. ‘They hold goose quills. Stiff ones, for pen nibs. If you can coax my sister to sleep on those, I’ll pick you nettles to plump your pillows.’

  Caught on a hill crest against sky, his gold hair wind-ruffled against racing fleeces of spring clouds, Lysaer regarded the riled profile of Avenor’s Lord Commander at Arms. He said in teasing merriment, ‘That merchant’s vixen daughter refused you, I see.’ Which comment got him shoved from his saddle into dung-spread furrows in just and indecorous vengeance.

  From astride his snorting charger, Lord Diegan glared down at his prince, who accepted his demise without rancour for mud-spoiled velvets.

  ‘In Erdane, the headhunters’ league is lawfully sanctioned to torture clanborn captives for public amusement. As a prince in line for the succession, they’d hold a festival over your ripped carcass.’ Hurting in his affection as if his liege were an endangered brother, Diegan finished, ‘Will nothing I say dissuade you?’

  Lysaer picked himself up, dusted loose earth from his breeches and cloak, then ascertained that one of his pages had recaptured his cantering horse. His eyes still pinned into distance, he said, ‘Wherever the Mister of Shadow lies hidden, whatever his current machination, he’s unlikely to be exposed without risks. I set out to bring these lands protection from his sorceries.’ Wide as sky, the blue eyes lifted to regard Avenor’s captain at arms. ‘Diegan, don’t ask me to reject a whole city just because its governor is petty, and terrified, and convinced royal blood can harm his position. We will ride through Erdane. Should I come to die there, then Tysan will require no prince. A townborn man like yourself will go forward to rebuild Aveuor and unify this kingdom in my name,’

  The last time Lysaer crossed the Thaldeins by way of the Orlan Pass, the mountains had been mantled in mist and blizzard. Hastened then in the company of a Fellow-ship sorcerer, he recalled no landmarks beyond drifts and treacherous abutments of seamed rock. With the visible sky 4 ribbon of blue overhead, the scarp traversed today under knives of morning sunlight looked savage and strange, a tableau of broken slate overhangs, wind-chiselled ridges, and stands of gnarled evergreen slashed and skewed with the boulder-strewn scars of old slides. The road wound and jagged between buttressed peaks, a mere lip in places over vast, windy chasms of cold air. The forested valleys unfolded below like creases in a painted silk fan, delicately blued in haze and crisscrossed by the gliding flight of hawks.

  Here, a raffish band of barbarian scouts had once dangled Arithon s’Ffalenn upside down from a rope over a precipice. Lent abrasive reminder of a deceit that had once beguiled his trust and friendship, Lysaer gazed down a cliff wall bared of snow and jumbled with bone-grey, splintered timber and stone shards. He could wish now that the knots in the noose had failed.

  Had the Shadow Master fallen to his death on that day, seven thousand Etarrans would still be alive with their families.

  Over the bends and the rises, the wagons rattled and groaned, their hubs scraping rocks scarred by a thousand s
uch impacts, while the opposite wheel rims flicked gravel in clattering spurts over the sheared edge of the verge. On the approach to the high pass, the carter’s quips echoed through the narrowing way, until Diegan sent outriders ahead to clear the road. Once committed, the drays could neither turn nor manoeuvre; caught between their lumbering bulk, horses and mules could not pass, should wayfarers meet them head on.

  Merchants who hauled goods through the pass of Orlan for that reason eschewed use of carts. Informed of the risks, Lysaer had ignored all advice. Mounted, exposed in the vanguard, he looked least surprised when three riders positioned abreast approached and blocked off the trail.

  Their mounts were a matched set of bays in gold-beaded bridles; silken manes and tails, and caparisons of loomed wool fluttered and tugged in the wind. Annoyed to see his advance guard had lapsed in their duty to detain so small a party until the prince’s retinue cleared the narrows, Lord Diegan flicked his boot with his crop and began to swear.

  His imprecations trailed tamely into silence as he noticed the leader of the trio was mounted sidesaddle. A woman; a boy in his late teens and an elderly man her sole escort, she carried straight shoulders impertinently mantled in a tabard bearing Tysan’s royal blazon. The habit underneath was of flowing black silk, her grey hair, close-cropped as any campaign-bound mercenary’s. Slung at a practised angle beneath her belt lay a baldric and a gleaming sword.

  ‘Fiends plague us all,’ Diegan said crossly. ‘Who in Sithaer is she?’

  Lysaer raised a hand to halt his column in the roadway. ‘The lady is Maenalle s’Gannley, chieftain of the clans of Camris, and if her records can be trusted for accuracy, empowered Steward of Tysan.’ Then, his lips curved in welcome, he spurred his gelding forward to greet her. ‘To judge by the hang of her blade, I’d hazard a guess it’s the living hides of Isaer’s merchants she hunts to furnish her wardrobe. I’ve been expecting her most of the morning.’

  ‘You know her? You’ve met her before this?’ Belatedly pressed to neaten his wind-crumpled mantle, Lord Diegan expelled a breathless laugh. ‘You do have a plan!’ Lost to confounded delight, he urged his horse into step.

  Fifteen paces beyond his honour guard, Lysaer drew rein. Uncrowned beyond the majesty of his sunlit gold hair, he seized royal prerogative and spoke first. ‘Lady Maenalle, well met.’ His nod acknowledged the elder, whom he recalled as her seniormost peer, Lord Tashan; his friendly smile was for the youngster, now grown, who had attended him as pageboy through his past brief visit, before he had joined his gift of light with an enemy’s shadows to banish Desh-thiere’s mists from the sky. In brisk invitation, Lysaer addressed the lady chieftain who had impressed him with her iron-willed fairness. ‘I go to raise Avenor out of ruin and hope you take joy in my tidings. Will you come, and bring your clans out of hiding to join in rebuilding the sovereign city of old Tysan?’

  ‘Alliance!’ Shocked to white-faced incredulity, Lord Diegan rounded upon the prince. ‘Are you mad? The realm’s mayors will never condone this!’

  In the clan chief’s party, the grizzled aristocrat looked incensed. The young man seemed torn by a longing that drove his gaze sidewards and away; while the lady resplendent in Tysan’s state colours held her emotions so savagely in check that the sun-caught gold in her tabard flashed only once and fell still.

  Lysaer inclined his head toward his outraged commander at arms. ‘Why waste the resource to retrain our new garrison to fight and manoeuvre like headhunters?’ He added in compelling reason, ‘The clansmen these delegates represent are masters at wilderness tactics already.’

  Maenalle’s mount recoiled as her hand snapped taut on the rein. Amber-pale eyes centred in black like a hawk’s never left the features of the prince. Unlike the young grandson who wore his heart in plain view, and despite an unsettled royal bodyguard forestalled by the interposed body of their own liege from stringing short bows to take her down, she showed neither nerves nor defiance. ‘There has been no oath of fealty sworn here, nor any sanction for crown sovereignty given by the Fellowship of Seven.’ The fine-grained lines on her face stayed unsoftened. ‘How dare you speak of annexing my clans as a fighting force? We have no cause to support your wars.’

  ‘Do you not?’ The significance of her dress, with the colours of kingdom authority overlying the caithdein’s plain black, had not escaped Lysaer’s notice. Diminished a little by sadness, he crossed his hands on his saddle pommel and sighed. ‘Let me pray, then, that you haven’t been beguiled into giving your loyalty elsewhere. That would grieve me. The clans of northern Rathain were all but wiped out for abetting the Master of Shadow.’

  They defended their sanctioned prince,’ Maenalle corrected.

  ‘With children sent out to stab men in the back who were down and wounded,’ Lysaer shot back in bitter truth. ‘With sorceries and traps that slaughtered seven thousand souls in a day. The scion of Rathain is a trickster without morals, a sorcerer who preys on the innocent.’

  ‘That’s not how the Fellowship phrased it.’ Unflinching as swordsteel, Maenalle never glanced at her grandson, white-faced and stiff at her side. ‘Nor Jieret s’Valerient, Steiven’s heir, whose parents and sisters all died because of Etarra’s invasion.’

  ‘Who were these people but deluded allies?’ Lysaer’s attentiveness shifted to the boy. ‘If you doubt me, my Lady, look to your own, who is of the right age to be influenced.’

  The young man raised his chin. Silent, near to weeping from betrayal, he touched his mount with his heels. Hooves cracked like a shout against silence as his horse obediently turned, presenting the straight back of its rider to the man who once promised just sovereignty.

  ‘Oh, but Maien was influenced,’ Maenalle said, as drawn now as the grandson at her side, who held his station, trembling and flushed. ‘But not by Arithon of Rathain. The boy’s loyalty was yours, and his love, until Desh-thiere’s curse wrecked the peace. Let us not confuse our issues and deny the sad facts of this feud. You seek to kill a man who is your half-brother, who has these last six years made no effort to outfit a war host against you. My clansmen cannot support your towns against him. Nor may we acknowledge false claim to Avenor. Our allegiance is to be held in reserve for the one of your heirs that the Fellowship endorses to be crowned.’

  A cat’s paw of breeze fluttered the sigil on Maenalle’s tabard. Fresh with ice-scent and evergreen, the air seemed too sharp to breathe. Locked separate by nothing beyond glacial cold and state etiquette, Lysaer and the lady steward regarded each other through a charged and measuring silence.

  ‘We’re to be enemies then?’ the prince said finally. ‘I’m sorry. That outcome isn’t what I’d have chosen. Let me be clear, for your clans’ sake: you are free at any time to change your mind.’ Magnanimously regal, Lysaer finished, ‘If that happens, send me word. And until then, may Ath show you mercy.’

  Maenalle’s bold laugh sheared in flat echoes off the rocks. ‘The Creator need not concern himself. As a guest who swore oath at my table, you will be allowed to leave this place without being stripped of your horse and arms. The same can’t be said for your escort.’

  ‘That’s insolence.’ Prepared to add more, Lord Diegan lost the chance as the wizened old clansman snapped off a hand signal.

  The rock abutments by the roadside sprouted movement, followed by a hissed thrum of sound. The draught team harnessed to the lead wagon abruptly slacked backward in their traces and collapsed with a whistling, surprised grunt of air. The drover at their lines took a moment to start shouting; then every man within earshot shared his anger, that each fallen horse lay spiked through its crest with the feathered shaft of a barbarian broadhead. Creased by flawless marksmanship, the animals died in quivering spasms that sent small pebbles clattering off the brink.

  Erect and exposed in his saddle, provoked to lordly affront, Lysaer raised his hands.

  He would engage his given gift of light, Diegan saw, dazzled by the lightning flare of power summoned at his prince’s fingertips. On
e blanketing discharge, and the crannies that sheltered clan archers could be scorched by immolating fires. Prepared to seize the initiative, Lord Diegan drew his blade in a scream of steel. He called swift commands to his mercenaries. Prompt action could see Lady Maenalle and her party taken hostage; Erdane’s mayor would pay a rich bounty for their trial and execution.

  But before the Prince of the West unleashed his annihilating burst, a second flight of arrows sang down. The barbarian volley chipped stone in splintering explosion under the belly of his mount. The powerful horse shied back on bunched haunches. Forced to nurse the reins and jab in spurs to curb a rear which threatened to toss him over the ledge, his royal rider lost concentration. The light-bolts he shaped dispersed in flat sheets that threw off a harmless burn of heat.

  Above the scrambling hatter of hooves, Lady Maenalle voiced her ultimatum. Don’t think to try killing with your powers, Lysaer s’Ilessid. Tell your men who draw steel to stand down. Or a next round will fly and take every life in your company.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you planned?’ Diegan shouted, his rage torn through strangling mortification. Fighting the horse that shied under him, he snatched a glimpse down the switch-back. The trailing wagon in the column had wrenched crooked, its ox-team folded at the knees, as cleanly arrow-shot as the horses. The prince’s brash cavalcade was hemmed in from both ends and trapped at the mercy of barbarians. In a cry that rebounded through the winds above the valleys, Diegan cried, ‘What are you, woman, but the pawn of the Shadow Master, after all?’

  ‘I am sworn only to Tysan,’ Maenalle said, her calm like snap-frozen ice. ‘As appointed steward of the realm, my duty upholds the crown’s justice until such day as the Fellowship sorcerers declare a lawful successor.’