The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  Brightening glare lined his chin with hard light as he braced in preparation. ‘Luhaine.’

  On that spoken signal, he ceded the powers he had awakened to the control of his discorporate colleague. All ties to sensation left him. The sole thread that grounded his consciousness to flesh became his gentling hand on the pony. The nexus of his will bent into a craft honed through thousands of years of experience. Nothing else mattered. Nerve and bone would unravel before he lost hold on his wards to shield Halliron from the wrenching flux of spell-transfer.

  Daybreak charged the lane.

  Power whined and crested. The pattern flared, then shattered past visible light into a pealing vibration. Luhaine’s deft mastery trapped the enabled current, then directed an unruly dance of forces to turn, mesh, and ignite wild power into an orchestrated explosion.

  A crack ripped the unshielded air. Winds blasted. The torn seams of tapestries whipped to frayed threads, and every glass flask and window-pane left whole in the mayor’s palace burst to sugared powder and blew outward. For an awful, time-rending instant the confines of the feast hall lay scoured in primal glare.

  Then normality reasserted. Eddies of mauled air spun and died. Tile fragments raked into crannies, then skittered and clunked back to rest. The spellcraft raised through the focus pattern pulsed and dimmed, and slowly died. The sorcerer, the cart and its occupant were gone, delivered to a ruins in Sanpashir’s desert. The place they had occupied in Jaelot held only a smoking curl of dust and a pile of steaming manure.

  For that; for the crazed marks of wheels and the crescent-shaped dents that the pony’s shod hoofs had gouged in the marble stairway, a second sorcerer whose spirit was discorporate had no polite means to fix. Luhaine departed, a drifting wisp of cold, as drudges, servants and blue-blooded residents gave way to hysterical screaming.

  A blind fool could guess that Halliron’s apprentice sorcerer had revisited, to terrorize the city with more spells.

  In due course, dishevelled officials raised in haste from their beds converged to assess the fresh damage. They called guardsmen to set chains on the perpetrators; except there were none to be found.

  The Mayor of Jaelot’s smashed feast hall lay uncannily empty. The roster was changed, the day’s patrols recalled from the gatehouse, while his lordship fumed and paced. The lyranthe-playing sorcerer his judiciary wanted burned had escaped through thin air, beyond all reach of due process.

  Hallucination

  Dakar awakened late to the cinders of a burned-out fire. Halliron, the sorcerer, and the pony cart bearing them had departed before first light, with a note left behind in explanation. The black stud remained, pawing restlessly by the tree that tethered its headstall. Grumpy and sore from scanty sleep, Dakar stumbled out of his blankets to root for a snack amid the cache of supplies.

  Nearby, damp-haired from a wash at the stream, Arithon crouched over the sorcerer’s saddle packs, immersed in thoughtful study as he fingered a heavy gold coin. Clearly recovered from the past night’s distress, he looked up at Dakar’s blundering. His expression seemed as affable as the manner he had affected in disguise as a masterbard’s apprentice.

  Curdled to distrust, Dakar stared until he tracked the elusive discrepancy: a striking, indefinable tension infused the Shadow Master’s presence. Stripped of the shadows he had used to veil his features, his poise reminded of a wildcat set to stalk.

  ‘This coin is riddled with spell-wards,’ he opened, his flexible voice inquiring. ‘I hear them. But without more experience, I couldn’t unravel the purpose behind their harmonics.’

  Dakar squatted, rifled the nearest canvas bundle and fished out a wrapped loaf of bread. Guardedly wary, he settled on his hams and broke the crust. ‘If Asandir left that to pay the black’s stabling, it’s rotten with mage-craft, sure enough.’ Through a bulging mouthful, he qualified. ‘You’ll see that bit of gold get passed from hand to hand, from ostler to horse trader, and the stud, whether sold or rented to post riders, will find his way back to his master. He’ll be where Asandir next has need of him, glossy and fit, and have not a whip mark on him.’

  Arithon’s interest turned rueful. ‘My worry was wasted, I see.’

  The sailing instruments; Dakar kicked himself for lapsed wits. With Arithon bound seaward, a horse would be useless as tits on a fish. Disgusted to find the bread as unpalatably stale as the ship’s biscuit he heartily detested, the Mad Prophet stamped off to the stream to wash down the crumbs and relieve himself.

  Arithon used the interval to pack the small camp and scatter the dead embers of the fire. When Dakar puffed back uphill, he was waiting, the black stallion’s bridle reins looped through one hand. Spattered green-gold in new sunlight, his black hair thrown back from angled cheekbones, the prince who was Master of Shadow appeared absorbed by the trill of the woodlarks that flitted through the boughs overhead; except the eyes he turned upon Dakar stayed emerald-hard and measuring as a trap cocked and baited to draw blood.

  The Mad Prophet stopped. Determined to stay nonchalant, he hitched chubby fingers in his belt. ‘You plan to ride.’

  ‘To Ship’s Port, I think.’ The invitation casual, Arithon added, ‘We’ll take turns in the saddle, if you wish.’

  The rage rose thick and hot, until Dakar felt he might strangle. ‘Do as you please. I’m not going.’

  ‘I’d thought not.’ Arithon slipped a thong at the saddlebow; a canvas packet slithered loose. He flicked a neat wrist and tossed it.

  Slammed in the chest by the bundle, Dakar staggered backward, gasping into the smoke-tainted cloth reflexively clutched in his arms.

  That’s your share of our stores.’ Over his shoulder as he vaulted astride the tall stallion, Arithon finished, ‘Don’t waste the coin on cheap doxies.’

  ‘Bastard! You planned that I wouldn’t be coming.’ The last imprecation flurried the woodlarks away on scared wings. ‘You insufferable son of a bitch!’

  ‘Yes, to the first, who denies it?’ Touched to a wicked edge of laughter, the Shadow Master raised his eyebrows. ‘But the last? Dakar! How unfortunate for Lysaer.’ The black stud snorted and shouldered ahead at the brush of his rider’s heels. ‘We did after all share a mother.’

  Jostled aside, then dealt a buffeting sting by the whisk of the black’s departing tail, Dakar kicked a log and howled insults until his ears rang. The fit gained him no satisfaction.

  Sometimes fate seemed to dog him like the fury of an unpaid whore. Never mind the small blessing that the rain had dried up; from the moment the Mad Prophet set off hiking, the day grew perversely less pleasant.

  South of Jaelot, the coast road jagged inland, to the east hemmed by rock-slashed ravines capped in fir, ruched and ruffled like a widow’s collar around the stripped peaks of the Skyshiels. To the west, in summers when storms stayed mild, rolling meadowland quilted the hills in a sun drenched patchwork of hayfields. Between pocketed hollows where the farmers’ crofts clustered, blooming larkspur twined sprays of indigo amid daisies, and yarrow splashed in drifts like white foam. Under wide, cloudless sky; across broad, wind-combed acres, any spirit escaped from an onerous duty might revel in new-found freedom.

  Yet Dakar took no joy from leagues of magnificent scenery. By noon, his eyes itched and his nose ran; country air had never agreed with him. Each step he took reminded him how much he detested travel on foot.

  The nap he snatched to refresh himself became spoiled by the diabolical placement of an ants’ nest. Scratching and twitching and shaking out his clothing, he sought second refuge by a streamlet. There he fell asleep in comfort, only to discover as twilight came on that foraging muskrats had ripped open his pack and devoured every crumb of his food.

  Too lazy to regret the ward-spells he might have set to protect himself, Dakar flagged a ride with a merchant’s drover bearing candles and beeswax. Since the heat of full day would damage the wares, the wagon travelled to market by night. The Mad Prophet tucked into a niche behind the buckboard, contentedly primed to
share gossip.

  At midnight, beaten down by judicious wheedling, the drover shared his meal of barley bread and ham. Dakar cheerfully stuffed his belly, only to waken shortly afterward, doubled over and moaning with cramps.

  The meat had likely been spoiled. Far too crafty to voice such suspicion, the Mad Prophet rocked and clutched his belly. ‘That stream water must have been tainted.’

  The drover met the excuse with the same sappy nonsense he used to soothe his draught mules. Self-absorbed in a misery that spiked like white fire through his groin, Dakar missed the moment when his benefactor’s sympathy changed to shouted imprecations.

  His next clear sensation was the dry jab of weed stalks prickling into his cheek. A pungency of road dust and pepper grass made him sneeze, a detail which forced recognition: the uncharitable drover had pitched him out on the verge. Dakar sweated through the bothered conclusion. He might languish of bellyache until crows came to peck out his eyes; not precisely the plan he had intended to escape his obligation to Asandir.

  Too wrung by discomfort to care, the Mad Prophet closed his eyes. Small use to dwell on dying when he could dream more pleasantly of hot, lusty tavern girls and foaming tankards of ale.

  He got instead a disruptive intervention by brisk hands that first rolled him over, then latched his armpits in a grip like torture and peeled him up from the ground. Sunlight hit his face and his eyes like a slap, while the world upended and spun.

  After disjointed thoughts, he unriddled the indignity that he dangled face down over somebody’s saddlebow. The shoulder of the horse that bore him was sweat sheened and black; the girth unfocused inches from his nose had been stitched with sigil patterns to discourage wear.

  After centuries of being collected comatose from binges, Dakar knew precisely where he was. He groaned at the gouge of the pommel in his gut until unconsciousness mercifully reclaimed him.

  The most vile hangover he had ever suffered hounded him back to awareness. He sensed darkness and a fire. A demon rode his skull, one that wore spurs a half an inch long and delightedly stabbed heels through his eye sockets. Clear-minded enough to bemoan the unfairness, since no drop of spirits had passed his gullet, he clamped sweaty hands to his temples. ‘Gaaah,’ he grated through parched tissues. ‘I feel all ground into ruts by the wheels of Dharkaron’s filthy Chariot. Where in Sithaer am I?’

  A rapid-fire shower of lyranthe notes drilled like bodkins through his ears.

  ‘It appears we came to share the saddle after all,’ observed Arithon from some unseen place beyond the embers. ‘Since you asked, you are currently sprawled on dry oak leaves, halfway down the road to Tharidor.’

  The Mad Prophet ripped out a scatological epithet, then winced at the sting of his own vehemence.

  ‘It could be worse.’ Athera’s new Masterbard dampened his instrument, careless of the string that sawed out a sullen buzz against the white-gold setting of his signet ring. Amused by Dakar’s flinch, he added, ‘You might still be lying in a ditch, abandoned to the crows and the insects. Do you get migraines often? The wax merchant’s drover decided you had plague. He carried on about pestilence until you’re lucky the northbound couriers didn’t overhear. They’d have rousted the watch back out of Jaelot with faggots to burn your diseased carcass.’

  ‘Never migraines.’ Dakar sniffed in corrosive irritation. ‘I got indisposed from eating spoiled ham.’

  He covered his ears, whimpering and uncommunicative. Though his sour stomach relented by morning, he maintained an offended silence throughout three days of hard travel. Since the man was a fool who risked the temper of any s’Ffalenn prince, Dakar sneaked away by night and begged passage into Tharidor on the slats of a salt merchant’s cart.

  By noon, a whistle on his lips, he kicked open the door of the city’s most commodious tavern. Blinking through the fusty murk of pipe smoke, he breathed in the smells of acid oak casks, unperfumed humanity, and thicker odours of hot grease and chicken meat roasting on spits in the kitchen.

  The inevitable pack of idlers clustered by the hearth. Dakar nodded greeting and chose a bench between a group of whispering merchants, fastidious in their summer silks and lace, and a foursome of sun-cured deckhands. ‘Beer,’ he demanded to the bar wench who scoured the stones by the hob. The best brew the house has to offer, and also, a plate of spiced chicken.’

  The deckhands renewed their squabble over a dice throw made by a cheater, while Dakar’s order arrived. He licked his lips as the head foamed over clean glassware, then raised the tankard to catch the thick stream in his mouth, eyes closed in beatific anticipation.

  The taste hit his tongue, bitter enough to scour the linings of his sinuses. He huffed and slammed backward in recoil that rattled the floorboards. His eyes bulged. Tears streamed down the flushed apple curves of both cheeks and he choked through a spray of expelled droplets.

  ‘Fiends alive!’ snapped the sailor across the trestle. ‘If you’re minded to sprinkle, do it elsewhere, matey. Or else, understand, I’ll see your stinking lard carved up and stewed into lamp oil.’

  Through a half-strangled fit of pure rage, Dakar spat into his tankard. Too husky to shout, he beckoned to the barmaid. ‘Look here, what’s this? The drink you serve is vile. Pure lye.’ His tirade gained volume as the pucker in his throat began to loosen. Do you habitually try to poison customers?’

  Drawn from the kitchen by the commotion, the landlord appeared, a meat spit clamped in hand like a battle mace. ‘I won’t have this!’ He strode past the flabbergasted merchants and shook his iron implement at Dakar. ‘My establishment serves the finest fare in Tharidor.’

  ‘Oh?’ Dakar folded his arms in mulish challenge. Then standards hereabouts must need a boost to lick the belly of a snake.’

  The spit banged into the trestle and stuck there quivering, a hair’s-breadth from Dakar’s planted elbow. The landlord loomed over him and bristled with both fists cocked on his hips. ‘You’ve no cause to sling lies and insults. If you can’t handle a man’s brew, go back to drinking fresh cider.’

  Wide eyes averted from the metal that skewered the table, Dakar coughed into his cuff. ‘Well, look, you try this.’ He gave the tankard a shove with his forearm. ‘I’ll be fair and admit to poor manners if what slops inside doesn’t scald your mouth to perdition.’

  The sailhands’ dice clicked and stopped in suspended stillness. By the hearth, the greybeard idlers leaned forward in fascination as the landlord scooped up the glass. The merchants looked on, more discreet in curiosity, as he quaffed the contents in one draught. Then he sighed, his features hard with animosity as he licked the foam from bearded lips and thumped the drained vessel rim downward beside the upright meat fork. ‘You have a lively imagination, the sort that makes trouble I don’t like.’

  A jerk of his chin called two enormous thugs from the one dim cranny Dakar had neglected to watch. These grasped his elbows in bruising, cruel fingers and forcibly pitched him out.

  Hours later, parked on his rump in the gutter with three knuckles skinned and one side throbbing to the ache of bruised ribs, the Mad Prophet ran tender fingers over a swelling black eye and conceded to woebegone defeat. He had sampled beer vats and wine shops the breadth of Tharidor and found not a potable drop. The town tosspots making their evening rounds singled him out for ridicule, until the last tavern he visited paid heed to rumour and as firmly as though he was afflicted or insane, turned him away at the door.

  The meat from the sausage stall he visited as consolation caused his belly to chum and rebel. Wary by now of offended proprietors, Dakar stilled his complaint. As his sensitized innards clenched into fierce cramps, he squeezed back tears of aggravation, paid for his scarcely touched meal, and turned his back on the puzzled vendor to sit by the gutter to regroup.

  In dark thought and vile temper, the Mad Prophet weighed the temptation to ease his troubles between scented sheets in a bawdy house. But even the thought of a paid doxy’s comforts shot an unpleasant, warning tingle through h
is crotch.

  Bearded chin propped morosely on the knuckles folded over his knees, his hair stuck like crimped yam to his brow by the stifling, seaside humidity, Dakar began serious cogitation. While elegant, lacquered carriages and dusty drays rolled to whip cracks and jingling harness past his perch, his stumbling thought met enlightenment.

  ‘Ath!’ His burst caused an alley cat to streak behind a stack of barrel hoops. A street-child clad in motley stopped scavenging hand outs to regard him with startled eyes. Dakar paid neither any mind. ‘Fiends plague that interfering sorcerer, what I really need is a herb witch!’

  The street-child sidled nearer and gave him a winsome smile. ‘Master, I know such a person. For a half-silver, I’ll take you to her cottage.’

  Dakar glowered at the waif, whose bare feet and rags masked a disingenuous, well-fed frame. ‘Miserable robber.’ But hunger and thirst overcame his will to haggle, and he grudgingly doled out the coin.

  The herb witch brazen enough to practise her craft in Tharidor kept a squalid shack in the alley behind the tanner’s yard. Shown to her sagging entry by the street-waif, who bolted immediately afterward, Dakar pinched his nose with sweaty fingers and regretted his need to continue breathing. The reek that drifted from the tanner’s was overpowering, even without the witch’s rain barrel, heaped under in desiccated entrails and alive beneath a sun-caught swirl of flies. The eyes of scavenging rats gleamed from the shadow under the footings, then flashed in darting retreat at his irritable rap on the door.