by Dave Freer
They waited as ropes were cast ashore and the vessel was secured. Soon the gangplank was lowered and that in turn was used to put a horse-ramp in place. Soon an alvar prince, resplendent in sky blue silk hose, a delicately engraved silver mail-shirt, with a midnight blue surcoat embroidered in silver over that, rode out on a spirited gray horse, with silver bosses on her fine tack . . . And nearly fell off, as the fine mare found the half-horses very much outside of her experience.
"Prince Gywndar," said Ixion in greeting, as the alvar tried to keep the last shred of his dignity intact by at least staying in the saddle.
The use of his name was almost the last distracting straw, and Gywndar had to grab the saddle to stop his suitably grandiose arrival in the lands of the centaurs from ending with a splash in the harbor. But, like all of the alvar he was good with horses and did eventually calm his steed. "Greetings," he said. "I seek urgent counsel with the leaders of the centaur peoples, our ancient friends."
"Speak, Prince." It was true enough that the alvar had always avoided conflict with the centaurs. Although to call them ancient friends was a little disingenuous.
"Take me to your leaders. I must speak with them," said Gywndar, tilting his head back and trying—and failing—to look down on them a little. They were taller than he was.
"We do not have hierarchical ranks as you do, Prince. In the herds Cyllarus and I are counted as the leaders of Phalanxes. I think it is us that you wish to speak to. That is why we are here."
The alvar prince looked at the two big centaurs facing him. Ixion had made a study of alvar kind. If the centaurs had been setting out to make things easy, they could have worn some kind of insignia or symbol of rank. Faced with two bronzed torsos, and no clothing at all, unless you counted the utilitarian weapons of war they carried, how was the alvar to have guessed? After a few seconds of looking into their faces he looked around and said awkwardly. "Um. Here? On the dockside? There are humans unloading loading crates of fish over there."
Cyllarus nodded. "We do not have palaces as you alvar do. We speak where we meet, Prince. What is it that you wish to talk to us about?"
Gywndar was by now thoroughly off his stride, and discomforted. Which, if he had been a centaur . . . or even a fire-being or a dragon, he would have realized was the purpose of their actions. But the alvar had fixed ideas about protocols, and had become very set in their ways. "Erm. Well, I come as an emissary. Can I present my credentials to someone?"
"We know who you are, Prince Gywndar," said Ixion. "Your coming was foretold."
"One forgets that the centaurs are so adept at reading the future," said Gywndar, favoring them with his best smile.
"We have not forgotten that the alvar are so silver-tongued. We are here to listen," said Cyllarus—which was true. They were.
"I've come to tell you of portentous and tragic happenings and to beg for your aid. I am the prince of Yenfar. We are the guardians of an ancient treasure . . ."
"The Angmarad of the merrows," said Ixion.
"Er. Yes. Anyway, there has been some kind of vile conspiracy. A conspiracy between some humans, the merrow, and, we are sad to say, a renegade dragon, to steal this sacred trust."
"They have returned it to the water. The shock of it, and the renewal of the sea, was felt everywhere," Cyllarus said.
"No, we recovered it. A large group of the thieves were caught with it in their possession. Nonetheless it was a breach of trust. A breach of the ancient compact. They must be dealt with before they try again. This means war!"
"Why?" asked the two centaurs, together after a moment of silence.
The alvar princeling opened and closed his mouth at them, like a fish out of water. "The balance of powers, the merrow and, and, and a human!" he squeaked eventually.
"Not to mention a dragon," said Ixion, controlling a desire to laugh.
Gywndar drew himself up. "The dragons rally behind us to show that this was just one renegade. They are our staunch allies. We are now gathering all the peoples to deal with them."
"All of them?"
"Yes," said Gywndar firmly. "Well, some of them. We're sending emissaries to the merrows to demand that they turn over the thieves for justice. And we'll give them a good lesson."
"I meant all of the dragons. Our scrying of the dark glass of the future shows dragon fighting dragon, and the lands of Tasmarin aflame."
"Lord Zuamar gathers the great ones to him. We'll soon weed out the handful of traitors. They and the merrows and their human allies will be eliminated. Will you join us?" demanded Gywndar.
Ixion tried reason, although he was sure that it would fail. "The merrows' sea does not threaten your forest and mountain home, nor our high grasslands. The war we see coming is an evil and ugly one, where friend will slay friend, and brother will turn on brother."
Gywndar lifted a face set in flinty determination. "We have no choice. I had not wished to tell you this, but the human thief is also a worker of magic. That must be dealt with. The dragons will give no respite until that is done. At this stage we hold them in check, barely. But they will destroy every human and every human holding until they find them. They will not spare the centaurs."
Cyllarus turned to Ixion. They looked at each other in silence remembering what they had seen in the dark pool. Then they turned to Gywndar. "We will gird for war. But we are a peaceful species. It will take us a great deal of time. We beg you to hold the dragons and your fellow alvar in check for as long as possible."
Gywndar looked at the two centaurs. "Shall we sign a treaty? Agree to timeframes?"
"No," said Cyllarus. "And in the end we foresee it being to no avail. The black dragon continues to work his destruction. We can see nearly all of it."
"What black dragon?" asked Gywndar.
"The one who is entwined in all the fate-lines. Can we help you to your ship?" asked Ixion, meaningfully. He wished again that his brother Actaeon might have been here to deal with the alvar. He had been better at it, which was why he was now in exile. For a centaur, death was easier than being apart from the herd.
The conspirators met at a request from the sprites. It was in a neutral spot here on Vorlian's Starsey, not far from one of the sprites' great dancing-glades. The centaur had to make do with a hand-mirror. He lived, Vorlian gathered, a very lonely existence in the meadows in the rocky north of the island. Lord Rennalinn had come across from the nearby Maygn isle—Vorlian wondered what his dragon overlord, or, for that matter, the alvar prince to whom Rennalinn gave fealty, would feel about this meeting. The alvar of Starsey were few in number, and, Vorlian gathered, not of a particularly noble lineage. Their duke was a bluff fellow of no particular intellect, who did his work for Vorlian well. Vorlian wondered why he'd never considered him for this role instead of the pretentious Rennalinn. As far as he could remember, he'd been introduced to this alvar by the sprites, when the panic about the collapse of the first tower was still raw.
There was a new visitor. Haborym had always seemed—and the dragon was aware that it was probably nothing more than a seeming—tall and affable.
This was one of the energy creatures, but it was not Haborym.
He was taller, and it would seem that his flames burned even hotter.
"Who is this?" asked Vorlian, his voice neutral. It was said that, yes, in open conflict, dragonfire, with the liberation of energy from any form of matter, was the one thing creatures of smokeless flame struggled to endure, besides immersion in water. The alvar were generally quite at good magical repulsion of the creatures of heat too, although Vorlian was not sure how they did it. But fire-beings were even more strict of rank and hierarchy than alvar, so it was unlikely that Haborym's master would not know of this.
"This is Belet," explained the sprite. "Haborym has become discorporate."
"What?"
"His energies have dissipated. You would say that he is dead," said Belet. "I have been sent to replace him. To see that the great goal is pushed towards its desired conclusion."
"The human mage killed him. She destroyed one of the parts of us too. She has allied herself with the water-people. And, also, we believe, with a dragon, although our acolyte says he saw a tall human with her as well. And there were traces of dvergar magics on the sister they killed. It seems she has been found by, and co-opted to, the cause of those who oppose us," said the sprite.
Vorlian sighed. "And to make matters more complicated there are several dragons now calling for the destruction of all humans, and also any dragons or others who try to stop them. Have our plans gone awry in any other ways?"
The sprite nodded. "Yes, Haborym's thieves succeeded in getting the merrow treasure. Unfortunately the alvar have recovered the treasure. They gear for war with the merrows."
"Awkward," said the centaur, admiring himself. "Merrow magic is effective on alvar, but not the other way around. The merrows are not going to be impressed, I think. But the sprites can deal with that, eh?"
"If we choose," said the sprite.
"And do you?" asked Vorlian.
"There is a price to all things," said the sprite.
"And the question of the dvergar, who in turn are beholden to the merrows to keep the dvergar hammer safe. It's all very beautifully balanced," said the centaur Actaeon.
"Perhaps you need to think about that bag of yours," said Duke Belet. "Now, Lord Vorlian, they're gathering their forces. Obviously they cannot be allowed to destroy our human quarry until we have done with her. In the interests of peace and security can we rely on you to raise some delays? We have some forces of our own. Besides those of our kind we have armies at our disposal who can fight delaying actions if need be."
"Do you propose to let me lead our world into war?" asked Vorlian dryly. He'd planned to defend his own. But . . . what other forces? Armies were not raised and trained overnight. Armies of which species? This smelled. And not of anything wholesome. And yet . . . what other way forward was there?
"Surely it won't come to that," said Belet. "Once they realize the weight of forces arrayed against them, they'll back down."
Vorlian suspected that Zuamar had no idea what the words "back down" meant. But . . .
"I'll look into it," he said.
"We arm our worshipers," said the sprite. "And the alvar have come calling on the Mother grove. Some, like Prince Gywndar, call for war, a war of punishment against the merrows. Other alvar beg us to hold back. We have told both sides that we favor them."
So much for the deep trustworthiness of the sprites, thought Vorlian. The alvar seemed predisposed to believe whatever the sprites told them, but he didn't. Still, he had a goal, and he needed the sprites.
Chapter 33
Fionn wondered if the merrow had had any idea how complex the process of leading him—and of course the rest of them—safely to the sea had been. The black dragon's knowledge of Tasmarin was encyclopedic—the charts were merely a way of helping to work out the enormously complex relationships between the energies when he wasn't precisely on site to feel or see the effects. He could see deep into the infrared, so, circling in, he'd pinpointed the checkpoints.
That had been all very well but there were still patrols to be avoided. He could smell and hear and sense the moving mass of metals—they caused tiny gravitational changes. It had still been difficult and stressful getting them to this hidey-hole, and down the cliff. That had been unstable and therefore even the local cockle-pickers avoided the place. Fionn had had to resort to unnatural means to get them down in one piece. If anyone else tried it they'd not be so lucky.
The tricky part was going to be getting a boat away from the island. Normally this bay was popular with little fishing cobles, with men working handlines for reef-fish, and Fionn had thought they'd hail one, and get it to take them to something larger, for a suitable bribe.
Only there seemed to be no fishing boats about. Fionn could think of only one reason, and that was that they were being stopped from putting out to sea. The artisanal fishermen who scraped a living from the sea couldn't afford to do that for very long. But then, Zuamar didn't really care if they starved to death. The alvar were less merciless, but also somewhat distant from the suffering of the peasantry. Fionn suspected that many of them were rather enjoying galloping about the countryside, making a pain in the nether end of themselves. It made them feel important or something. That was a need Fionn had never felt.
On the other hand the conjugation of events and forces said that, pleasant as the damp seaweed-reeking cave might be, it was time to move along to see to those forces. Besides, he couldn't leave the Scrap and her puppy here. The pup was an odd thing. Dogs instinctively shied away from Fionn, along with horses. But, because the small dog's god did not run away from the dragon smell, and Fionn still had some cold mutton . . . the little beast was wagging its disreputable feather of a tail at him, and looking at him and edging forward tentatively. It was—despite being a victim, something of a rogue, and probably going to prove more trouble than it was worth. But he still fed it.
"Come dusk we're going to have to go and look for a boat," he said to Meb, who was hypnotizing the dog with her juggling. The dog might just unscrew its own head if it kept following the balls like that.
"Yes, Finn." She paused. And then thought better of whatever she'd been about to say, and started to turn away.
"Spit it out," he said.
"It's just . . . we can't be more than a few miles from Cliff Cove. They . . . the raiders, wrecked all the boats. And most likely they'll have taken all the small-craft away. So not much use going back there," she said.
"Are there other boats likely to be on fishing grounds between here and there?" asked Fionn. Fishing boats were not rocks or features of geography. Those he knew intimately.
She shrugged. "Don't know, Finn. We had good banks. I think the men used to fish here too, by the way they talked about it. I'm sure they mentioned that double-spike rock on the point . . . There was another place further along the coast from here going west. I never went to sea with them of course. And then there's Tarport's fishermen. They'd come this far if there were no fish closer. It's far enough overland, but not so bad with a good following breeze."
"Well, we'll be going toward Tarport. So you might get to see your old village—in the dark. There is probably nothing much left, Scrap."
She nodded. "There wasn't much left by the time they'd finished with it. And people took what they could, I suppose. It was nothing like as bad as my scrap's"—she patted the dog—"home. Only a few people died."
There was something about the way she said it that told Fionn that those few people had still been far too many.
They made their way up the treacherous cliff again that evening just after dark. The cloud had broken up enough to allow them shreds of moonlight. It was still tricky. And made trickier by a guard on the headland. It would have been worse if he had been watching the sea instead of the land. It could have been better if Finn had been leading the way. The startled guard tried to draw his sword from under his cloak. Meb simply dropped her head and cannoned into his stomach. They fell in a scuffle of two and a puppy.
Finn rapped the alvar warrior on the head, and hauled him off the two of them. "You really have to stop fighting with everyone you meet, Scrap," he said with mock severity. "Now we'd better tie this fellow up and leave him somewhere. It does mean that we only have tonight to get away."
They bound and gagged the guard and Finn hoisted him onto his shoulder, and carried him inland to behind a little hummock and dumped him into the gorse bushes.
"Well, let's walk. Hope there are not too many of those. Eventually something will go wrong."
They walked on through the dark for a good hour. Meb was glad to quietly take hold of Finn's cloak again, as he did not stop or slow down when the moon was hidden by the clouds.
"Looks like your little village has people in it, Scrap."
Meb had not even known that they'd arrived there. But now she could see a thread of light through a crack.
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br /> "Let's walk a little closer. It sounds like a few fishermen," said Finn.
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Not many other people talk of salt cod with enthusiasm," he said dryly.
They walked closer. Meb realized that she too knew that they were fishermen—because she knew exactly who they were, and not just because they were arguing about which bank to fish in this weather. Her step-brothers had mostly been carelessly kind to her.
"Er. I think I know them," said Meb wondering how she was going to explain her appearance to them. They'd surely recognize her and give her away.
"Good." Finn pulled out a handful of silver. "You go in there and talk them into taking us to Starsey. Or Pallin. We'll pay them that much again when we get there."
Meb felt the weight of the silver in her hand. "We want them to take us there. Not buy their boat!"