by Andre Norton
She cast her perception wider, found what she sought. Yes, here it was. She could see clearly now. Erft had an heir—a granddaughter, supposedly a frail wraith of a child. But seasons pass quickly enough, and since the girl had struggled through the first threatening years of life and survived… well, she must have strength of a sort. Her name—Ysa sought again, ignoring the headache that was starting in her temples.
Laherne! Her questing ended abruptly and she opened her eyes wide, thrown off guard for a moment. How could she have forgotten? Not surprisingly, this girl was not only Rowan, she was also Ashenkin, the result generations back of a mating to enmesh the strength of two lordships. And all concentrated in this single girl, as delicate as the yellow rose on the Rowan badge, and as unsullied as its motto, "Here find all peace."
Ysa settled back in her chair, her hands dropping again to her lap. Yes, though young and not yet aware of who or what she was, this Rowan- Ash creature was of marriageable age. Now Ysa smiled, a small, tight movement of lips. Why, it worked out to her purpose. Ash was gone, Rowan nearly so. Still, there could be a mating of power once again, bringing all the remnants of the four Great
Families into one place, distilling them into one heir. The Prince, Oak and Yew, was yet unwed. As for his fumbling in bed and chasing anything in skirts, his wife would have to learn to cope the way her betters had. The way Ysa herself had.
The Queen rubbed her forehead to ease the ache. Certainly she had no hope of trying to seek a bride for the Prince from abroad. Those eyes and ears that reported to certain ones she controlled had made it plain that Rendel need not bother to look elsewhere for new blood to shore up their failing lord- lines.
This was a time for bargaining, for shadow-seeking, not a time for delegations to neighbors with the offer of a possible crown for a stray daughter of a solidly founded House.
Ash and Rowan. Her right hand slipped across the left, covering them with the
Oak and Yew Rings. There was symbolism for you, she thought. Then her small moment of satisfaction was interrupted by a commotion at the window just in front of her. Through its arch the little flyer darted, and she raised her hands quickly to catch it. To her surprise, the tiny creature trembled, and she stroked it with an unaccustomed gentleness, crooning to it. In a few moments, it settled down. Then the Queen raised her servant to eye level. The sparks in its head were vivid with knowledge ready to be given her.
There was a moment of vertigo as her sight passed, it would seem, from one set of eyes to another. Now she hung aloft, while down below raged fire enough to turn an ice-bordered night into day. This must be the northern lands, home of uncouth wanderers. Here burned a keep the might of which shook her somewhat.
There was little barbaric about these flame-scorched walls. For a moment, she saw destruction, and those who rode strange, monstrous white beasts and circled the site.
Vertigo assaulted her again as she swung out over water, where the rise of the moon gave light to see the vessels that parted the waves there. Ships of that kind could cause terror along the coast, as she herself knew. Northern people were in flight, having managed to escape destruction in their stronghold. They would beat a way south eventually. She must raise defenses at once.
Then, behind her, a shadow. She turned and glimpsed the ravenous mouth of a huge flying creature, not a bird, and knew at once that it was ready to scoop her up and swallow her. She knew also that anyone so caught would be less than a morsel served at her table as an aperitif, and that the creature's real seeking was not for her, but for those on board the northern ships…
Then she blinked out. With a rush, she returned to herself once more whole and separated again. She set the little flyer on her shoulder, and she could feel the heavy beat of its heart against her cheek. It had indeed served her well. It deserved a name.
"Visp," she said. "I'll call you Visp." It began to purr, as if pleased. If only she could find those among her own kind who would serve her even half as well as
Visp.
Six
Boroth had been dreaming again, thrashing the covers about on the bed in his struggles against some dark assailant. He lay staring upward into the black rise of bed canopy above him. His heart was thumping fiercely; there was a taste like barnyard mud in his mouth, and an aching that might have come from a grievous wound behind his eyes. They burned, and he knew from long experience that if he looked at himself in the mirror, he would see they were deeply bloodshot.
As always, the waking was worse than the dreams, a truth haunting him these days. Slowly he levered his flabby body up into a sitting position. He was dry, near perishing with thirst. With one hand, he fumbled on the table next to his bed while he uttered a guttural growl.
The night lamp, which was always to be kept alight, had failed. Nevertheless there was moon enough to show that the trundle bed of his body- squire was empty.
He strove to lift his voice above a croak. "Rugen!"
He was alone in the huge bed on the dais. Not only had the curtains to his right been left open to the dark and the night, but those at the foot were also undrawn. Boroth squinted. There was something there, faint sparks of light.
Shifting all his weight to one elbow, he made a grab at those sparks and slid toward the edge of the rumpled bed.
"Staffhard!" Even his guard—Had they all deserted him? Had he been true-dreaming? Had he really been left alone, to face whatever might prowl the dark?
He could smell the thick odor of wine. Saliva flooded his mouth and he swallowed convulsively. He wanted— must have—drink. Only give him a full goblet of wine and his world would come right again.
Those points of light—eyes, surely they were eyes!
Spying upon him. In a hidden curtain sheath, not far from him, hung his pillow-sword. Not daring to look away from the eyes, he flailed out in panic and tore at the heavy tapestry with his fingernails until he found the weapon and closed his hand on the hilt.
"By the Wraith of Kambar, who are you?" He licked his parched lips. The Power he called upon was one long forgotten in these days. He hoped it still protected him.
Except, except… his own eyes had been captured by those that glowed out there.
His breath began to come in gasps as he found it more and more difficult to fill his lungs. He saw the eyes, he saw beyond them…
There was a darkness that hung like one of the deep red curtains of the bed. And then there was a grayish gleam. It slowly swam into focus and took the shape of a leaf. His befuddled wits were clearing. Yes, truly there was a leaf, man-tall, standing straight as a guardsman on duty.
A leaf. What leaf? Memory stirred. His brain felt sluggish and even more in need of a drink. Then he recognized it. Ash! The leaf—it was Ash! Before his eyes it shifted, melted, turned into a woman, she whose face he had thought never to see again.
"Alditha—"
"Boroth," she whispered, the word as faint as a sigh.
She gestured with both hands, and then faded from view.
Something about the grip on the pillow-sword was different. The weapon fell from his hand, and he felt frantically over his fingers for what was missing—there were no metal bands half sunk in his puffy flesh. No tightness of metal- and-wood bands. Unbelieving, he touched the deep dents where the Rings had lately been—thumb, forefinger, thumb, forefinger. Anger, fueled by fear, found outlet in a bellow of rage.
Someone answered. "Sire! Lord King!"
There was light enough now, and not that of the eyes. A candle, unbearably bright. Boroth was shaken, dazzled, so that he blinked several times.
"Rugen?"
"Yes, sire. I am here. What do you desire?"
Old habits die hard. Boroth was aroused enough to attempt to be what fate had made him—a ruler and a leader.
"Bring me wine!" he said hoarsely. "Where have you been, you sneaking whoreson?
Do you go about at night trifling with some loose wench, forgetting your duties?
I'll have the skin o
ff your back come morning—"
By now, Rugen had come around the end of the bed. He set down the double candlestick so that the light showed him busy pouring from a tall pitcher into a goblet. Boroth fairly snatched the vessel from Rugen's hand, dribbling some drops onto the bed. He drank like a man dying of thirst. He lowered the goblet and breathed deeply, eyes closed, waiting for the familiar ease. It did not come.
Surely it had been only a dream. Why, he couldn't summon even a clear memory.
Nothing but a dream. Yet there had been a time when some dreams had been sent as warnings. He raised the goblet again and saw his hand plain once more. He had not imagined it.
The Rings were gone!
His old power had not deserted him. Alditha had come to warn him, to tell him.
He hurled the goblet into the darkness and lunged across the bed toward Rugen.
Though the servant stepped back, startled, the King caught him by the shirt and dragged him over the edge of the bed. Rugen lost his balance and went down on his knees, clutching at the bedclothes to keep from falling entirely.
Boroth thrust his face close to the servant's. "Where are the Rings?" He shook
Rugen with some of his former strength. "You are a dead man if you don't tell me at once! Where are my Rings?"
"Sire—sire—I have them not!" Rugen clutched at the bed, striving to free himself from the grip without raising his hand against his master.
"Then who does?"
Boroth was no longer befuddled with drink. He might have dreamed away many memories, but this had sobered him completely and, perhaps, permanently. He well knew on whose fingers those Rings belonged.
"Her Majesty, sire, the Queen."
Rugen near tumbled to the floor as Boroth released him as quickly as he had seized him.
But Boroth was no longer paying him attention. The King was spreading his hands into the light and staring down. There were marks in the flesh there, mocking him. It was as if the Rings had bit into skin, and perhaps been forcibly taken from him.
So that was the way of it! Though his head throbbed and he was fighting down nausea, it was as if he had opened a door and brought in more light upon himself and his state than he had been aware of for years.
He touched thumbs and fingers in turn, whispering the words aloud, but only to himself. "Oak." He rubbed the thumb as if he could still caress a metal band.
"Yew." Now he grimaced. "Ash." What was there about Ash? He could not remember, but he would once the last of the wine fumes was out of his head. Oh, yes, he would remember! "Rowan!"
Never again, he vowed. Never again would he allow himself to become so besotted with wine that such a monstrous indignity could be lodged against him. The Rings were his, to answer him since his crowning, and he was not to be despoiled. He would have them back even though he could never again have the one whose memory had come to him to tell him of the theft. As would be discovered.
Thus far had Wind and Wave favored the precipitate flight of the Sea- Rovers. But as the far overloaded ships wallowed into the heavy dark of the night sea, none aboard were released entirely from fear. However, the north-bred demons could not put their monster steeds to treading waves behind the fleeing ships. Of that much, they could be certain. Nor could their foes send great ice blocks after them; the time of year was wrong for it. This was the season for winter's-end storms. But despite all their frenzied efforts at the last, the fugitives had not been able to gather much in the way of food and other supplies, and as yet they had no plan for a near landing.
Those war captains who were still hale and on their feet gathered in a conference on deck. Three wind-shielded sea lanterns centered the small circle where they knelt or crouched, intent on what the ship's captain was pointing out on a salt-stained map.
Their way of approaching any unknown land had always been to prepare to fight, raid, and then return as speedily as they could to their ships. Most of these expeditions had been carried out by one or two ships alone. But now there were no longer home ports in which to lie safely and refit.
The captain indicated a spot on the map. "Not Volen— the voyage is too long, and we would be starving before we were halfway there. The storm season hangs ready to strike within days."
One of the men moved and Obern glanced up. It was Grabler, one whose advice his father often heeded.
"South and shore creep." Grabler's words came almost with the snap of an order.
"South is swampland save for Idim, and that is but a pocket of ruin. We could not even land all our people safely there. And the Bale- Bog—well, we all know about it."
The Sea-Rovers were not masters of the sea; no man could claim to be that. But they had had generations of learning its ways to mold them. They must establish a temporary port and find shelter for those who kept the home hearths while the raiders were out. There were enough tales of the Bog-land to warn anyone off those reef-edged and cliff- lined shores, shores even seamen less careful than they themselves had for generations avoided.
"There is this." Another hand swept into the dim circle of light around the lanterns. Even if Obern had not known his father's hand, he would have recognized the broad thumb ring of High Chief, its red stone seeming to take fire from even that limited glow. His father was well at home with maps. In the keep, whose burning still cast a red glow against the sky behind them, there had been a repository for a large map collection, and the High Chief paid good prices to any Rover who had voyaged off the known lanes and brought back a record of his travels.
"The south," Snolli said. "Beyond the Bog, across the boundary river. There have been many reports of what may be in progress there. Five, maybe six or seven years ago, no one of us with a thought in his head would have ranged far into the waters that the Ashenkin controlled from their watch-hold. They were seamen, regardless of what name be laid upon them by others. But the entire land, the
Ashenhold, is vacant, and the great Ashenkeep now lies as empty as Void, swept away by fire and sword, deserted. These southern warlords are ever at each other's throats, and among them, only Ashenkin sought sea roads. There has been no word from the Year Traders that any have come to hold what Rendel men themselves destroyed."
Around him, his chieftains murmured. To most, this might have been news, but some were well aware of the story. Snolli spoke to those who did not know.
"You heard at last midwinter feasting that speaker for the Year Traders report that the whole of that land is bubbling like a tar-pot left too high on a flame.
Their King wallows in strong drink, and his son is a wastrel. The lords of the
Council sit and watch each other lest one be on the move to take what his fellows also see as theirs. Who rules?"
"Aye," one of the lesser chieftains echoed. "If not the King, then who?"
"The Queen Ysa is a woman of some powers and all the strengths she can gather to herself. She plays one lord against another, using dark ways to make certain of the support she needs."
Snolli stabbed his forefinger at the map, just where it showed a curve of inlet.
"Ashenkeep?" His gesture was answered by cries from two of that company.
"Aye, that it be," Grabler said. "The harbor there is a good one. The river feeding into it runs from a fertile land that is now sparse of any dwellers.
It's said that a small ship can sail right up and anchor outside the very gate.
And as great was the fury of those who strove to level it, stone walls such as held there are not easily toppled. We may need but a temporary landfall and then we can send out scouts to learn what faces us."
"They say that the place lies under a Red Saying." That was Hengrid, who was always ready to see danger and ill in any offered project.
"Are we Ashenkin?" Grabler asked, a challenge in his voice. "A Red Saying holds only for the bloodline it is put upon. We are not of these queasy southern kind who would fight with a cursing instead of sword in hand. I say our High Chief has spoken wisely. We must have a port
before the storm season. If others of our kin-lines have fought to freedom, the Traders' messengers will carry the word and they can join us."
"So be it said and heard." Snolli looked at each man in turn. The verdict was repeated around the circle.
The captain set about folding his map. He rose to his feet. "Signals up, and south it shall be."
Obern slipped back from his position at his father's shoulder. He was a true
Wave Rider and had been for these ten years and more. However, all his forays had been westward to the strings of islands, large and small, overseas. By the luck of the Sea-Rovers, he had never before been on the run from any foe, nor unsure-of a safe port ahead.