“Feroz Sohrab!” exclaimed Jewel. “Now I recall where I have seen Scorpion before. He walked past me at the Fair Field in Cathair Rua, when I was with my grandfather—”She broke off, as if she wished to reveal no more.
“A fair beginning to your disclosures,” Arran said to the man. “Now, reveal your full story and omit nothing! If you lie, the vengeance of my kindred shall seek you out and fall upon you like boiling oil.”
The Ashqalêthan commenced to speak, and the tale that unfolded was this:
Fionnbar Aonarán and his sister Fionnuala had for years been searching for a certain child born in the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu. To this end, they hired Fehroz Sohrab and Bahram Gaspar to keep watch on a marshman by the name of Earnán Mosswell. Eight months ago, in Jenever, the patient seasons of vigil had been rewarded. In the Fairfield outside Cathair Rua, Sohrab spied Mosswell in secretive converse with a young damsel. Better than that, Sohrab managed to glimpse a marvelous gem the girl carried with her. Exulting, he bore his tidings to Weaponmonger. He in turn relayed them to Aonarán, who seemed to possess some kind of hold over the weapons-dealer.
“Me and Sohrab supposed it was the pretty stone they were after,” said Gaspar. “We thought Aonarán would tell us to steal it and that would be the end of all the games. But he wanted something more.”
In Cathair Rua they observed and followed the damsel. It became evident she kept the company of weathermasters. Come Spring, Fionnuala had journeyed to High Darioneth in the guise of a gypsy peddler. As soon as she set eyes on the girl, the woman knew she was indeed the one they sought.
“By what did she recognize her?” growled Arran. “What is it about Jewel that betrayed her?”
“How would I know?” moaned the miserable Ashqalêthan, spreading out his hands in a pathetic gesture of appeal. “The young lady’s looks are striking . . . perhaps her eyes . . .”
“This is purely conjecture,” said Jewel sharply. The shock of these revelations and the man’s over-familiar reference to her looks stung her, provoking her to retaliate with haughtiness. “I will not be discussed by a creature lowlier than a clod. There will be no more opinions.” She turned to Arran. “As a gypsy, that woman informed me the Dome was no longer guarded. I stepped right into her trap, or else she put some spell on me, for from that moment on, all I desired was to visit Strang. They must have guessed I would not be able to resist seeking out my heritage—oh.” Realizing she was once more in danger of saying too much, she broke off, glancing quickly at Gaspar, who only shrank from her. His attention flicked anxiously back and forth between her and Arran. “You,” she said brusquely, “tell on.”
“Aonarán followed you and the young lord to the Dome.”
“What?” Stormbringer’s tone was incredulous. “He followed us? Me?”
“Conceivably you were too intent on your own hunt to note you were also the hunted,” Jewel murmured, aside.
“What Aonarán saw at the Dome he would not tell,” gabbled the man of the desert. “Leastways, he would not tell us, nor even Weaponmonger. He told his sister, though. Ever thick as thieves, those two,” he added, unconscious of the cliché’s irony. “We tracked you to Saadiah, Sohrab and me. You tried your weathermaster tricks to throw us off your scent, but Aonarán is no fool. He found you.” Gaspar drew his knees to his chest and clasped his wiry arms around them, as if trying to contract himself into a smaller space. “He’s as brutal as a coward, is Aonarán. Savage as a cur that has been mistreated and knows no response other than attack.”
“In that case, why do you work for him?” demanded Arran.
“He pays well. He has money. Lots of gold. Where he gets it from nobody knows for certain, but the word is that he and Weaponmonger sell arms to gangs of Marauders. That Fionnuala, the sister, she is better, but not much better. She fancied Knife, but ’twas plain he had only contempt for her. I’d avow he only tolerated her because she was Aonarán’s kin.”
“Better?” Jewel said sardonically. “I hardly think so. She tricked me and trapped me.”
“Ah, but I heard her one day speaking with Aonarán, telling him she wished for no harm to come to the blue-eyed girl, for the sake of the memory of someone she had once known. He assured her you would remain unscathed.”
Perplexity creased Jewel’s brow for an instant, before a notion flashed into being and she muttered beneath her breath, “I wonder whether that woman ever met my father. . . .”
“How did they know what it was we sought in this place?” Arran demanded of Gaspar.
“They told us they did not know, sir!” The desert-man cringed from the young man’s ferocity. “They said they guessed only that you hunted for some hidden thing of great value, some wealth that once, maybe, belonged to the Sorcerer of Strang. It is now clear they’d had some hint from a fellow named Mac Gabhann.”
“Get up!” Arran nudged the captive with his boot.
Gaspar scrambled to his feet. “Do not hurt me,” he whined. “Don’t bring the flames! Where we come from, little is known of your kindred. None of us guessed you were one of the truly powerful weathermasters who could smite with fire—”
“I’ll see justice done,” barked Arran. “You’ll come with us to Spire, and there I’ll turn you over to the shire reeve, along with a litany of your crimes. But first you’ll tell more of what you know.”
The breeze, now freed from the persuasion of the brí, continued blowing gently from the east. On its shoulders it carried scents and sounds. The voices of Stormbringer and Gaspar were borne down the air currents to the woman who had been stealing toward them through the trees, her haggard face pink-splotched with the legacy of weeping. Fionnuala halted at the edge of the clearing, screened from view by the thick foliage of a mulberry. She peered out from her vantage point.
Two graceful figures stood near the waist-high stump of a dead tree, whose boughs had been carted away by the local folk to be used as firewood. A third person was bent into a half-crouch.
The daughter of Jarred Jaravhor was clad in a flowing burnous that looked to be a second-hand Ashqalêthan garment. A broad-brimmed hat on a cord dangled down her back, revealing a shock of hair the color of deep sleep and forgetfulness, the locks wisp-ended and pointy. Earlier, Fionnuala had taken note of the girl’s amazing eyes—like amethyst cups brimming with snow-melt. By her eyes and black tresses the girl seemed unfamiliar—but in all other ways she did indeed resemble her comely brown-haired father.
Next, the spy trained her gaze on the taller form of the weathermaster, he who had cruelly slain Cathal Weaponmonger. The youth, also, was clad in flowing desert robes dyed in stripes with the coppery browns, oranges, and buttercup-yellows of Ashqalêth.
He was handsome, this son of the mountain lords. A dark-brown mane cascaded across his shoulders and down his back. The last gleams of sunlight sprinkled his hair with a powder of glints. He spoke accusingly to the fool Bahram Gaspar, who was ducking and bowing like a scolded cur. The desert man was travel-worn and dirty. His straggling beard jiggled like some large and lanky spider that had affixed itself to his lower jaw.
Fionnuala’s cool, measuring regard concealed the turmoil of grief and rage boiling inside her head. Her mind dwelled on a single purpose: Weaponmonger was dead, therefore retribution must be exacted.
She silently slid two quarrels from her quiver and subtracted a small jar from her pocket. Carefully, she dipped the head of the first arrow into a dark ointment and laid it on the grass beside the open jar, then repeated the procedure with the second arrow, this time placing the jar at her feet and retaining her grasp of the quarrel. After unslinging her crossbow from her shoulder, she slotted the bolt into the chase and pulled back the lever to cock the weapon. The wood creaked as tension was loaded. Air streams murmured in her flaxen hair, pouring around her the sound of the weathermaster demanding of Gaspar, “Where does Aonarán hide himself? Where can he be found? Tell me or suffer my wrath!”
Gaspar was opening his mouth to speak when Fionnu
ala lifted the wooden stock, to which the bow was fixed crosswise. Stepping from the shelter of the trees, she raised the weapon and trained the sight on Arran Stormbringer.
From the corner of his eye the weathermaster glimpsed the movement, and in the next fragment of time several events rapidly took place. His first impulse being to protect Jewel, he flung himself between her and the archer and dragged the girl to the ground. Locking her in a tight embrace, he rolled with her behind the tree stump. Simultaneously, the quarrel that had been intended to slay him shot humming past his head, almost grazing his flesh, so close that turbulence ruffled his hair and the droning whine temporarily blocked his hearing. Even as Stormbringer fell, he was already calling out a vector command.
Gaspar’s attention was riveted to the sight of the couple rolling unexpectedly at his feet. He stared in astonishment, at a loss as to why they should suddenly throw themselves down. Standing side on to the assassin, he was not yet aware of the danger.
In that same moment Fionnuala breathed a violent curse. With a swiftness engendered by practice, she fixed a second bolt in place and wound the lever back. She had seen how it was. The weathermaster had believed the girl to be in danger, and had sought to shield her with his own body. It was clear that he valued her life above his own. Now neither of them was in range, but the lack-wit Gaspar yet stood gawping and goggling, like some burrowing rodent forcibly dragged into broad daylight. The Ashqalêthan had been about to betray her brother. If she could not slay the weathermaster, she would destroy the traitor instead. There would be leisure, later, to hunt down the wretched youth. For now, she must waste not a moment.
She released the lever a second time. The crossbow twanged and the bolt flew. Gaspar fell sideways like a skittle. From nowhere a strident, shrieking wind leaped at Fionnuala, whipping at her garments, breaking boughs, almost lifting her from her feet. The current’s force was too strong for an ordinary mortal to contest, and she knew it was driven by the brí. The weathermaster was now alert to her presence, and she could not oppose that kind of power. The wind battered at her, tipped her off balance, and pushed her over. It chivvied her, like some giant housewife sweeping with a besom, bowling her over and over and spilling the bolts from her quiver. It was all Fionnuala could do to hang on to the stock of her crossbow as she tumbled heels over head between the trees, until at last she regained her feet and began to run, with the wind fastened to her back like an unseelie rider. As she darted away, she glanced over her shoulder. Arran Stormbringer had leaped up and was giving chase.
Next to the decapitated tree-bole Jewel rested on her knees by Bahram Gaspar, as Fionnuala had knelt at the side of Cathal Weaponmonger. The shaft of a crossbow bolt was protruding from beneath his left armpit, and gouts of scarlet ichor pumped as if from a spigot.
“I think this is no mortal blow,” she told him compassionately. “You will live. We shall make haste and bear you to a carlin.” She gathered handfuls of her garments and held them to the wound, trying to staunch the flow.
“I’ll not live,” gasped the Ashqalêthan. His flesh was turning gray, his chest rising and falling as he gulped huge breaths, overwhelmed by panic.
Before he could gather strength to speak again, Arran reappeared. “I have scanned the vicinity,” he announced grimly. “The witch has escaped, leaving only a jar containing some species of fetid slime. You,” he said to Gaspar, “I will carry you into town, where we shall seek a carlin.” Squatting on his heels, he reached for the wounded man, preparing to hoist him into his arms.
Weakly, Gaspar shook his head. Terror clenched his visage. “Poison,” he mouthed, as an eerie blue stain spread quickly over his skin, springing from his left side. “There is no cure. I beg of you, slay me now. I have seen her venoms at work. If you’ve any mercy at all, pray take my life with all speed. Prithee! Prithee!” His voice rose to a shriek and he struggled to say more, then began to scream as spasms racked his body. Bile and blood spurted from his swelling mouth.
Sick with horror, Jewel stared at the figure contorting at her feet. “You must do as he asks!” she cried to Arran. “And if you will not, then give me your sword and I shall do it myself!”
Arran needed no urging. Already he had pulled his sword from its sheath. Standing with feet braced apart, he grasped the hilt with both hands and raised the weapon above his head. The stricken man, however, was writhing so violently that the young man was afraid he might smite awry, and instead augment the man’s suffering.
“Hold him! Hold him still!” Arran shouted to Jewel. The girl plunged her hands into the hair of Gaspar. Fighting his paroxysms and her own deep revulsion, she pinned his scalp to the ground.
Planting his foot on the man’s chest in a desperate effort to hold him steady, Stormbringer lightly touched the blade’s tip to Gaspar’s throat to line up his target, then raised the sword a second time and brought it down with all his strength. At the last moment Jewel looked away, unable to endure the sight, but Stormbringer denied himself that luxury so as to be certain the blow was mortal.
The sharp edge sliced clean through the neck of the tortured victim. Gaspar’s screaming ceased. His body heaved in a mighty convulsion, then lay still. In the severed head, the corneas of his eyes were already filming over.
Stricken, Jewel stared at the inert form.
“May rain fall around you,” she whispered at last, leaning down to close the man’s eyes with a tender sweep of her hand.
Stormbringer’s flesh had paled to the color of milk. “I have never before slain a man,” he whispered, looking down at the corpse.
Jewel said, “You did not slay him.”
After a while, Stormbringer seemed to shake himself from an evil dream. He wiped his bloody sword on the grass. “Two lie dead,” he said in anger and disgust, “because of this felon Aonarán. Come, let us leave this ill-fated place.”
As evening closed around them like a funereal hood, he led her away.
The wind swung around to the west, and began to blow harder through the darkness, bringing with it the smack of salt and kelp. Stars blossomed in the east, but from the west an impenetrable cloak of cloud was moving across the sky, gradually blocking out all celestial light.
In the township of Spire, Arran and Jewel collected their horses and packs. They replaced their blood-stained garments with clean clothes, then paid a visit to the house of the shire reeve. The Lord of Saadiah—a peace-loving man—employed the reeve, who headed a small band of sergeants and constables for the purpose of maintaining order in the region.
“I am Arran Maelstronnar, son of the Storm Lord,” said Arran, displaying his signet ring with its engraved lightning emblem. The officer bowed respectfully. “Send your agents to the Comet’s Tower,” the young man continued, “and to the clearing near the pinnacles, for two men have been slain there. The bodies are in need of burial. Be not tardy. Heavy rainfall is on the way. ’Twill be easier for your constables if they complete their task before the deluge commences.”
The reeve, however, was no genius amongst men. It took quite some time and much discussion before he comprehended Arran’s request. “Who might have perpetrated these fell deeds?” he asked, not without a trace of doubt as he eyed the visitors.
“The death of one man was caused by mischance,” said Arran. “My sister and I both bore witness to the event. The death of the other was the work of an assassin, save that it was I who dealt the mercy stroke. Since doing the deed, the murderess has fled. I intend to hunt down both the assassin and her accomplice, since they each have crimes to answer for.”
He described the physical characteristics of Aonarán, Fionnuala, and Fehroz Sohrab, adding that the latter went by the name of “Scorpion,” after which he asked, “Sir, do you know aught of these folk?”
“I have seen them,” replied the reeve. “Strangers never pass unnoticed, hereabouts. But I know nothing of their doings, for they were very close—as close as you are, my friend.”
“Our business is our own,�
� said Arran curtly.
“Meaning no offense,” said the reeve hastily, shooting a sidelong glance toward the lustrous gold of the weathermaster signet ring adorning the young man’s hand.
“You suspect I claim a false identity,” said Arran bluntly, “but be informed, sir, nobody could steal such a weighty emblem as this ring. My kindred would put forth all their effort to find the thief and retrieve it.”
The reeve looked unconvinced. “Perhaps, my lord, the calling of a small spark, a token of the brí—” he murmured, gesturing vaguely.
“My people are not required to prove their abilities,” Arran said frostily, and by the look in his eye the official was at last convinced that the young man spoke the truth.
“If you wish, my lord, I shall send men to make inquiries, to discover where these offenders are lodging,” he offered. At that moment the door flew open, harried by the wind. The constable who had lifted the latch plunged into the room and slammed the portal shut.
“ ’Tis a hurly-burly out there, and no mistake,” he panted. “A rainstorm’s bound this way, or I’m a Grïmnørslander.”
“What’s afoot, Kaveh?” grunted the reeve.
“Well, sir, just now I seen two men riding like maniacs out of town,” said Kaveh, brushing tousled hair from his eyes and rearranging his cloak, “with the wind tearing at them like a starving jackal. They seemed to have no regard for the inclement weather, sir, or for the time of night. Mighty strange, I thought to meself.”
“What did they look like?”
“One was dark, sir, like normal folk. The other had a head of yellow hair, which was easy to see, on account of the wind snatching off his hood.”
“That’ll be my man,” said Arran abruptly. “If he has left town, so must I. Was there a woman in their company?”
“No, sir,” said the constable. “Not that I saw.”
The reeve said, “Alas; by now they’ll be beyond the borders of my jurisdiction, no doubt.” His expression became solicitous. “ ’Tis an evil night out there, my good lord. Won’t you take a sup and a sip before you depart?”
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 34