The Ships of Merior

by Janny Wurts

  In slinking humility, Dakar forced hurting sinews to move, to rise. No s’Brydion voice protested his freedom; none dared. Asandir’s forbidding presence charged the room like new frost. Dakar tripped and reeled in his haste. Aware of Duke Bransian’s glare like a coal dropped on his bare flesh, harried on by Mearn’s thwarted blood-lust, he stumbled through the open doorway in a running plunge for the stair.

  Behind him, the half-sotted Duke of Alestron ventured in an acid show of courage, ‘Apparently the fat man didn’t he about his ties with Fellowship sorcerers. Is he your lackey or that of the Master of Shadow?’

  Then Asandir’s reply, never loud, but emphatic enough to pierce through the iron-bound portal as it shut. ‘As soon as you and your brothers sober up, we need to have a serious discussion.’

  When midnight came, Arithon still waited in the hayrick alongside the oak grove. The neat linen shirt tailor-made for him in Farsee hung torn at the elbows, grimed with oil and sooty dust. His left cuff was scorched, legacy of a fire arrow. The laces of the right were sliced and blood-soaked, courtesy of a s’Brydion knife throw; another shallow gash scored his ribs. A jagged, clotting scab marred one steep, s’Ffalenn cheekbone, and the soft, cloudy drizzle that had dampened him since sunset wicked up the sulphurous reek of smoke that hung about his person.

  Absorbed in the act of digging splinters from his palm, he looked up as something clumsy thrashed through the brush beneath the trees. A muffled curse followed, then the sound of cloth tearing, and a thud as a body collided with a low-slung branch.

  A sharper oath issued through the rustle of the bough, and a dewed fall of droplets pattered into deadening leaves; apparently Luhaine’s escort to Alestron’s city gates had included no pause for the purchase of a four-penny lantern.

  Without moving, Arithon said, ‘Prophet of Madness. Lost your mage-sight, I see, to fatigue?’ He sheathed his stolen dagger and carolled a line of balladry in lyrical, lilting satire. ‘“And whither went thy trust, that thee abandoned?”’

  Dakar clawed his way into the open. Adorned like a springtide celebrant with sticks and sprigs of plucked oak leaves, he took a planted stance above his nemesis. ‘Ath, what possessed you to start a fire?’

  Arithon looked up, stilled as old rock in the darkness. ‘And what did you expect, since you sent me in unwarned? Those casks contained a firespell, or some other seal of unbinding destruction, and I’m mageblind! People died. I was made the instrument. If you chose me as your proxy to fulfil some promised duty to Sethvir, I’d say you got far less than you deserved.’

  A dangerous fury sparked within the green eyes.

  Chastened to fear, wary with the knowledge that affairs had gone beyond a simple baiting, Dakar shrugged off a raking chill. Then, struck by the leashed temper in Arithon’s regard, his own hot rage rose and shattered into stunned recognition. ‘Fiends! You guessed I would betray you!’

  ‘Guessed?’ Arithon stood. Robbed by bruises of his usual easy grace, he caught up his lyranthe and belongings. ‘More than that, my blind-sided seer. My strategy hinged upon that single fact. But don’t be asking my gratitude.’

  The damning train of past events stitched together, of an endless narrow corridor; of locked and barred doors; and of guard captain Tharrick, weeping broken on his knees, pleading still as the whip fell and fell, that no sentry posted under his command had done any less than maintain Alestron’s security. Now, through abrasions and dirt and a racking, sharp ache of stiffened muscles, Arithon regarded the agent whose predictable betrayal had unkeyed those inviolably guarded posterns. His face showed contempt, and a brittle impatience as he slung satchel and lyranthe across his shoulders.

  Dakar felt kicked breathless as a man just bludgeoned in the belly. ‘May Daelion speed your spirit to the darkest pit in Sithaer. You’ve been using me all along! What have I been but a living tool to further your unsavoury wiles!’

  ‘By all means, place the blame where it’s properly due,’ said Arithon in ringing, hard warning. ‘I don’t require self-indulgence. I never asked you for loyalty. But step softly. This time innocents have suffered. Cross me again at your peril.’

  Dakar swung a fist to smash those fine-boned, impervious royal features. His blow deflected off a stinging parry. Then hated hands gripped and spun him, hurled him off-balance into the wet, wooded darkness. Words equally scathing pursued him. ‘Just like my half-brother, you’d give all in your power to kill me.’ Arithon laughed in glass-edged malice that Halliron would have known for a foil to mask underlying anguish. ‘You’ll have to do that in cold blood if you can, my injured prophet. But wait for tomorrow. Unless you like the company of the brothers s’Brydion, we had best flee to Kalesh and catch a fast ship at slack tide.’

  Trust

  Lord Bransian, Duke of Alestron, awakened to the bother of wrapped, insistent hands pestering his shoulder until his teeth rattled. His gummed eyelids cracked open. Early light bit through his lashes like a raw stab of needles to the brain. Last night’s drizzle had cleared off to clean sunshine, a change he would rejoice to do without. He groaned and tucked his face into the crook of one arm, while Mearn resumed worrying at his. elbow with the brainless tenacity of a rat terrier. The ducal head felt thick as a melon. His temples throbbed like the stretched skin of a wardrum pounded by sticks furred in felt.

  ‘Begone.’ Bransian flailed a clumsy, thick fist to fend off his disruptive brother.

  His aim flew wide by a yard. The physical half of Mearn’s torment let up without dampening his wild spate of chatter. Since peace could only be recovered through an answer, Bransian moaned, pushed erect, and groped to recoup his bludgeoned wits.

  Minutes passed before he attached any meaning to Mearn’s invective. His first response was outright laughter. Absurd to believe, that he and his three siblings should be confined to their own keep by the whim of some Fellowship sorcerer.

  ‘Mearn, if I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that you tried beer and hallucinated.’ Alestron’s reigning duke pushed stiff fingers through the short hair at his temples, his swollen face reddened with affront.

  A shadow fell cold across the sunlight.

  Too peevish to notice, Lord Bransian snorted through another chuckle. ‘By Ath, this is my city, after all. No sorcerer can usurp my authority.’

  ‘Which point could be struck flat in a law court,’ injected a pointed, level voice that scarcely troubled to appreciate the humour. ‘Read your city’s charter, as granted by Melhalla’s twelfth High King.’

  Bransian stubbed grit from the one eye that worked with knuckles puffed red from scrapes and scabs. He blinked, peered, forced gritty vision into focus, and felt reality return with a thud. Before his very chair stood a lean, tall personage, wrapped in silver-bordered wool, and watching him in thin-lipped acerbity. The manner of his presence was stark peril swathed in velvet, and his regard could unpick a man’s thoughts. This was nothing if not a Fellowship sorcerer, solidly arrived in displeasure.

  In keeping with his bloodline, no s’Brydion heir would forgo bristled pride to apologize. ‘Pox and Daelion’s fury,’ Bransian groused. ‘I wish you were a nightmare brought on by fatigue and bad wine. Since you’re not, you can lighten my headache by leaving.’

  Asandir laughed and sat down. ‘We’ve a lengthy bit of business to attend, first. Do you want breakfast before we start?’

  ‘No breakfast.’ His flush tinged green at the edges, the Duke scraped back his chair. ‘You’re forgetting - I rule here.’ He thrust to his feet in magisterial arrogance, then spoiled all dignity by shambling from the chamber on an unsteady quest for the privy. The brothers left behind were scarcely more amenable. Keldmar and Parrien nursed the same furred tongues and evil hangovers, and Mearn’s thin nostrils were pinched white at the corners, sure sign he was mad enough to murder. Too distrustful to sleep in a stranger’s presence, far less one announced as a sorcerer, he had paced away the night in fuming idleness. The friends he habitually met for cards had gambled the week
’s stake without him. Some rival he should have beaten easily would be smirking over a winning cache. For that, Mearn sat and drummed his poulticed fingers on the table-top. The pucker between his eyebrows suggested he preferred to be flaying mage hide in strips with a knacker’s knife.

  Bransian barged back through the doorway. He stretched until his knuckles brushed the ceiling beams and all of his joints popped and cracked. Then he spun a chair backwards and alighted. Disturbed air fanned by his movement bore a miasma of carbon and ash and singed hair. While the sturdy oak beneath him settled creaking to his weight, he treated his Fellowship visitor to a flat-eyed, inimical regard. ‘You didn’t answer my question, last night.’

  Straight and ageworn as antique steel, Asandir smiled. ‘I came as no man’s lackey, but as the keeper of a trust sworn two ages before you were born.’

  Pained by the prospect of a lecture, Parrien clapped his palms over tousled hair and wishfully muffled his ears. A planted, stubborn pace beyond his shoulder, Mearn looked primed to interrupt.

  Keldmar seemed too fuddled to try speech, his stubbled chin propped on listless fists, and his bleary eyes half-lidded; yet it was he who spoke out of turn. ‘By the Fellowship’s presence alone, I presume the weapon we developed is proscribed?’ At his eldest brother’s snarling glare, he added crossly, ‘Well, you can scarcely pretend our damnfool culverin’s still a secret. Not when the armoury went up in black smoke and a bang to dunt the siege bells in their cradles.’

  ‘No such secret could stay masked from Sethvir at Althain Tower in any case,’ Asandir cut in.

  ‘Why should your Warden stick his sniping nose in Alestron’s private business?’ Too fastidious to endure the chamber’s frowsty tavern reek, Mearn crossed the carpet to avail himself of the cleaner breeze through an arrowslit.

  ‘How plain must I be?’ Asandir no longer looked either tolerant or amused. ‘You’ve discovered that saltpetre, potash and brimstone can be mixed and ignited to cause a mighty explosion. You have turned this to destructive purpose, and fashioned a weapon more lethal than blade or crossbow. This culverin you’ve developed has small art to its usage. As yesterday most ably demonstrated, any ignorant fool with a torch can precipitate broadscale harm.’

  An accusatory burst from the Duke s’Brydion, ‘Then that was your spy!’ entangled with Mearn’s declaiming shout, ‘But the weapon was made for our defence!’

  While sore heads alone stayed Parrien and Keldmar from compounding the altercation, the sorcerer raised a hand to stay outcry. ‘Power by itself has no morals. What is to prevent the greedy man from turning this new force on his fellows with intent to exploit and force dominance?’

  ‘We certainly don’t plan on sharing our discovery,’ Keldmar snapped, then regretted his vehemence and winced. ‘Sithaer! Why else keep the weapon and shot locked away, under guard day and night by crack sentries?’

  ‘Who will your heirs be?’ Asandir arose. ‘Can you guarantee their self-restraint?’ Too tactful to pursue the contradiction implied by a captain’s flecked blood on the carpet, he jerked out an empty chair and on the strength of a glance, recalled Mearn across the chamber to settle down.

  ‘You built this culverin from a treatise written by Magyre,’ the sorcerer resumed like struck iron. ‘Had you met him, you’d know he was a frail old scholar whose conscience balked at swatting flies. He discovered black powder by accident, then pursued his study to make displays of fire and noise to amuse his grandchildren on feastdays. The Fellowship set our case before him, as I shall for you this morning. Under guidance of our counsel, Magyre set aside his experiments. Later, we learned he had cached several copies of his papers. For vanity, he could not bear to burn all his records, since his works had brought the young so much pleasure. Here we sit, scarcely one generation later. Already you have turned these pretty flames and loud bangs into a weapon to make widows and orphans. Magyre would weep, were he alive to know, but the damage is done. Your armoury is ashes, your citizens are terrified, and no secret can be harboured past a lifetime.’

  Too rankled by the wreckage in their dungeon to listen to reason with equanimity, the brothers set squared jaws and exchanged a round of glances underlain by bedrock resistance.

  Bransian thumped a mallet-sized fist on the table edge. ‘If you’re asking us never again to fire a culverin, you waste your time. We’re not timid scholars to be cowed by what might shape the future, but a city surrounded by enemies. We’ll yield up none of our advantage.’

  ‘You will cast no more such weapons,’ Asandir contradicted. A change touched his aspect, potent and frightening, as a storm charge might gather before lightning. ‘This was never a choice. A different decision will confront you before I leave. When I have finished, you’ll know why.’

  Brash as they were, and fierce in contempt, not one of four brothers could muster a whimper of protest. The sorcerer gathered himself a moment in preparation, head bowed over the knuckles left folded on the golden, oak grain of the table. Far below, cheerful voices floated up from the courtyard as a guardsman cracked a coarse joke. Thin smoke from the brick yard furnaces laced the first stir of breeze as labourers began the day’s firing. Such commonplace details fell strangely on the senses, distanced like a dimmed, surreal dream.

  By contrast, in the study within the drum tower, details seemed cased in clear glass. Littered trays and emptied goblets and the gold-leafed spines of books assumed a transcendent sense of being. Sun through an arrowloop smote Asandir’s crown and gouged the shadows from his creased face. For an instant, limned in light that burned away the stains of travel and the marks and bitter trials of past ages, he assumed the very image of a fair, untried mortal youth.

  And then he spoke, his timbre as compelling as a masterbard’s that no man within earshot could deny. ‘From such weapons will grow others that cause ruin and death to a scope beyond your imagining, and on the power and tyranny enforced by such horrors, you will build a civilization driven by fear.’

  ‘How can you know?’ demanded Bransian.

  The sturdy, capable fingers, tucked one inside of another, spasmed tight as Asandir looked up. ‘I know because I was one of seven who caused such a thing to happen, on a scale this land will never see.’ The merciless flood through the arrowloop touched eyes gone limitlessly bleak. The humanity in them was a fearful thing, paired to a burden more desolate and weary than any charge borne by a mortal.

  ‘It scarcely matters to you here,’ Asandir said. ‘The horrors I helped to create were inflicted on another world, far distant, and inconceivable centuries in the past. They are the reason for the Seven’s sworn Fellowship, as Athera became our choice to protect.’ Duke Bransian loosed a wordless grunt. Parrien, thoughtful, drew a wicked little dirk, and in silent, balked fits of annoyance, tested its edges by slicing off ribbons from his cuff.

  ‘There’s a fugitive spy on the run while you blather,’ Mearn complained. When Asandir’s regard encompassed him directly, he dug at an exposed cuticle, ripped skin to the quick, and fisted his fingers to damp the sting.

  ‘The plight of that man is the least of your worries,’ the sorcerer declared. The leashed power in him devoured the very air and leached off inclination for more argument.

  Lent what passed for patience by his tender head, Keldmar stirred out of silence. ‘You say he’s not yours. Why protect him? He broke into our armoury and inflicted untold damage.’

  ‘It is the culverin that brought me,’ Asandir corrected. ‘My Fellowship has a sworn covenant with the Paravian races, and by its law, that sort of weapon is forbidden. I am going to allow you to understand why before your final choice is presented.’

  He went on to speak of the First Age legends, that preceded the time when Paravians or men came to settle the five kingdoms. Before them had lived the greater drakes, creatures of a vast and wild beauty, but ancient in clever intelligence. From the riddle of Ath’s deepest mysteries, they spun dreams that Named, their unbridled ambition to expand the living fabric of t
he cosmos. Theirs was a deeply mistaken belief that higher mastery could be theirs for the taking. But they forgot, in their pride, that the Creator founded the birth of the world in compassion. In the end, the fruits of the drakes’ making escaped their control altogether.

  ‘Let me be plain,’ Asandir said. ‘The dragons did not originate evil, they spun energies that embodied senseless destruction. Their meddling with the mysteries spawned fearsome predators called Seardluin that lived for the dark thrill of killing. These creatures are not fables. Our Fellowship saw the last of them die at the close of the Second Age, and we count ourselves favoured to be alive. Athera still harbours drake-spawn that survive from that era: the lesser iyats are among them. Wyverns and Khadrim still fly and mate, but if any of the greater worms yet lie deep in volcanic caverns, they are diminished, and have abjured the temptations of true-dreams. Since the Paravians vanished from the continent, Sethvir keeps continual watch.’

  The sun mote slanted with the day’s progression; Asandir’s seated frame slipped gradually into shadow. Not one of the s’Brydion brothers held mesmerized and listening ever noticed the change as his speech took on the soft, rolling cadence of the Paravian tongue. Whether his voice wove a seer’s spell, or whether power enspelled the words themselves, only the sorcerer could have said. His meaning formed in direct imprint upon the mind, beyond definition of sound and symbol; the brothers experienced the past through Asandir’s recounting, as sharply as though they stood witness.

  A herd of deer grazing in a misted vale suddenly raised their heads, listening. There came no warning, no sound, not even the shower of dew from disturbed grass; just a sudden, explosive burst of motion as something massive and dark erupted from the brush beside the dell. A ripple of muscle under black, maned hide; a blurred feline shape and a lightning swipe of claws; then the scream of a dying animal. The herd bolted, spun, and bolted again, but the predator circled them, faster. A snap of a scaled tail, the gore of a horn, and another deer went down, tawny legs threshing; then another, neck-broken in the clash of fanged jaws. Too swift to flee, with a sinister, blurred grace, the Seardluin killed and killed again, until the dell lay bathed in steaming carnage, and the last doe lay gutted and still.