‘What are you wishing for?’ asked Jant.
Lightning leant back. ‘You should know by now that if you tell anyone, it doesn’t work.’
‘Rubbish. I bet you can all guess who I’m wishing for.’
Lightning glanced at him and he fell quiet. Raven seemed to be making an eagle, and on his other side Snipe was elongating his clay into an S, but I couldn’t tell what animal he was making. I concentrated on my otter, which was not proceeding to plan. The clay was too soft for it to stand and it kept sagging. I decided it would have to be an otter couchant, lying in the way my dogs sleep, with its tail wrapped around its nose. Jant peered at it. ‘What’s that? A dormouse? Or a toad? A wish toad?’
‘It’s an otter,’ I said, laughing.
‘An otter that’s been run over?’
‘It’s not finished!’
‘This is not a competition,’ said Lightning.
‘Ha ha, I am pretty crap at it,’ I conceded, then vaguely wondered if that was the correct way to address an Eszai.
‘Well, it looks very much like an otter to me,’ said Raven. ‘At home in the River Rachis.’
‘Thank you, my lord.’ I picked up my knife and scored hairs in its tail.
Around us the shouts, as people found their acorns, had all finished and conversations were a low murmur as everyone concentrated on fashioning their Wishes. Occasional bouts of laughter broke out as they appraised each other’s efforts or gave up making difficult animals and plumped for snakes or owls. When I had finished my otter I held it in cupped hands and whispered, ‘Hello, otter. This year I have a new wish. I wish that Raven’s selfish Awians and Dellin’s militant Rhydanne would fuck off out of Carniss so that peaceful Rhydanne and Awians can continue trading more profitably than ever before.’
‘What did you wish for?’ asked Jant.
‘The same as always. That next year my trade will be better than ever and that Macan will continue to grow strong and healthy.’
He wrinkled his nose as if he considered this boring.
‘It is supposed to be a secret,’ I added. ‘If you find other people’s secrets commonplace, you have only yourself to blame for asking.’
Raven used his signet ring to impress his shoot-at-the-moon emblem on his eagle, and set it on his plate. It stood clasping a clay mountaintop with crooked claws and its beak had a very disdainful expression. Snipe had finished his model too, a lizard with holly berry eyes, but Jant was still sculpting intently.
‘It doesn’t have to be perfect,’ Lightning told him. ‘It is only a game.’
‘Perfection is in the eye of the beholder!’ Jant dipped his fingers in our hand-washing water, gave his sculpture a shine, and placed it on his plate. He had made a model of himself! A tiny Jant, unmistakable with roguish face, sitting cross-legged with a platter on his knees as if it was making a smaller model.
‘You’re supposed to make an animal,’ I said, laughing.
‘Raven insists that the Rhydanne are animals.’
‘Jant!’ said Lightning. ‘Not now!’
‘Who better to carry my wishes into eighteen ninety-one than myself?’
I placed my admittedly rather squashed-looking otter with the rest of our Wishes onto the platter and a servant carried them down to the kiln. Throughout the hall, servants were collecting wish animals from all the tables: salvers full of black clay hedgehogs, rabbits and piglets, robins, tiny dormice and fat marmots. All were decorated with berries and leaves that the revellers had found to hand, but only ours were coloured. It’s the perk of the High Table to be first to know whether our Wishes will come true. Everyone else had to wait till morning, when they could pick over the cooled trays of ceramic figurines on display on the trestles and discover whether their animal had shattered or not.
The servants carefully took the animals - a huge, inventive variety so every maker could identify his Wish tomorrow - and placed them on great iron trays. They slid each tray into the kiln on runners. Ours was first to go in and, for an instant, I saw the silhouettes of our figurines black against the flames. Then the flames roared high; blue, green and red leapt from the top of the kiln and the audience watching cooed, ‘Ooh!’
Meanwhile, more serving boys were bringing in the feast. Two lads carried between them a whole roast ox on a tray more like a stretcher. They placed it in front of us then moored gravy boats and ramekins of hot horseradish sauce around it.
‘Amazing!’ I said. ‘It’s as big as a man!’
Jant choked on his beer and it frothed up over the rim of his glass onto the table.
‘What’s the matter?’
He glared and wiped his mouth. ‘As big as a man? Help yourself to him.’
I dealt some slices of beef onto my plate and poured on strong Bitterdale blue cheese sauce with mushrooms. Then came baskets of roast potatoes, tureens of crisp swede and parsnips glazed with honey, sauerkraut, carrots and peas shining with vinegar from the pickling jar, baked batter puddings, fried rice balls stuffed with figs and sultanas, and sausages wrapped in bacon. Platters clustered around the ox till there was no room left on the table.
Raven must be pining for a traditional Awian New Year. If the sweet course was just as customary I might almost be prepared to forgive him for wrecking my trade. I loved plum pudding in a moat of double cream and packed with cherries, almonds, all kinds of candied fruit, cinnamon, ginger and cloves. Not to mention a festive splash of brandy.
Every table bore the same. The serving boys were queuing up on the staircase outside and bringing in ox after ox, roasted as dark as mahogany and lying with their legs tied on their trays. Domestics in Raven’s new livery entered to carve them and slices of rich meat accrued on the platters.
‘There’s nothing Darkling here at all,’ said Jant.
‘Nothing Rhydanne, you mean,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘We should ask Raven to give us some kutch.’
‘I think that would be a very bad idea.’
‘What is kutch?’ asked Lightning, leaning forward to look at me over Jant’s heaped plate.
‘A drink the Rhydanne brew,’ he said. ‘Any kind of meat stewed with any kind of alcohol.’
‘Often with water, blood or milk,’ I added. ‘It makes a sort of broth.’
Lightning considered this. ‘By god,’ he said, at length. ‘The horror.’
I ate happily, looking at the gorgeous decorations. All the beams were bedecked with satin ribbons and gloriously fat scarlet and pearl-white baubles. Each one reflected the flames of the two fireplaces and the flickering kiln. Wreaths draped the fireplaces, too; boughs of berried ivy looped up to bunches of mistletoe, with gold pine cones and purple baubles in their centres. Between the fireplaces was an enormous portrait of Raven looking haughty astride a black horse, but its grandiose frame was hidden by tinsel made of foil and silk, which fluttered in the rising heat. Decorations of gold bees and acorns - symbols of hard work and the subsequent rewards - hid among the tinsel. Beside the painting hung an ornate brass pendulum clock, at which everyone kept glancing. It now showed half past nine.
Whether it was accurate to Starglass time or not we didn’t care. It was Carniss time, our own time in this bizarre bubble Raven had made, and we were waiting excitedly for its twelve chimes to bring in midnight and eighteen ninety-one. A quartet of musicians, two violins, one viola and one cello, arranged themselves on chairs at the foot of the dais and began playing. Raven brightened considerably on hearing the first bars and nodded to Lightning. ‘They’re far from their best in this damn climate, but listen how they play The Comic Turn.’
‘One of your favourite pieces.’
‘Yes. They were part of my household in Rachiswater but only four were loyal enough to join me in exile.’
‘You could make Carniss a place of inspiration for musicians and artists,’ Lightning suggested.
‘Ah, it pleases you to laugh at me,’ said Raven.
‘I’m not laughing.’
‘You must agree
no artist or poet will ever climb this dreary crag. You must agree our feast is modest compared with what you’re used to. Or compared with my brother’s masquerades … his orchestras on the bridge … Remember his sleighs pulled by horses with gilded manes. Or his kilns floating on gondolas on the river?’
‘Yes, I do,’ said Lightning. ‘But this is far more memorable.’
Raven snatched at this: ‘Will you remember?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes,’ said Lightning, startled by his vehemence.
I wanted to tell Raven that he should put all that stuff about his brother behind him. There’s enough to do in Carnich without bothering yourself with the misery of the past. But he began to muse. ‘If you remember this for ever, in a small way I shall never die. You might live for another thousand years, Lightning. Maybe two thousand … or even more.’
Lightning said nothing, so Raven continued, ‘And among all your memories, sometimes at a Shattering you’ll recall Raven Rachiswater, now lost in the depth of time. You’ll think, his very bones must be dust by now. I will live on in your recollection. All the more reason to give you a present; it will act as an aide memoire.’
‘There is really no need,’ Lightning said.
‘Yes, there is. Here.’ Raven dug into the pocket of his beaver-fur-collared coat, which hung on one post of his chair. He brought out a silver hip flask and placed it on the table. It was engraved with his old, royal coat of arms. ‘This is at hand. For want of something better, take it as a memento.’
Lightning took the hipflask, realised it had liquid inside, unscrewed the lid and sniffed it.
‘Brandy,’ Raven said. ‘Will you remember me by it? Whether it’s a Rhydanne spear that ends me, or whether I’m crushed by an avalanche?’
‘Yes, I promise,’ said Lightning.
Raven’s whimsy was making me uneasy. If he was setting out to fight the King, of course death would be preying on his mind. But it’s no wonder he’s obsessed, I thought, bearing the reminder of such a deep wound on his face. His own twin did that - the king! Of course it would twist his thoughts and make him rashly crave revenge; the lords of Awia are more vicious than any starving vassal in his plough ruts or any Rhydanne hanging by her fingernails from the crag.
A snap resounded from the kiln - the animals had started to burst and the show was about to begin. Clicks and cracks resounded, and then one exploded - bang! It turned the flames purple. Fragments of hot pottery erupted out of the top of the kiln and showered down into the space between it and the tables.
‘That was one of ours!’ I said.
‘Purple!’ said Snipe. ‘My lizard.’
‘Your wish will come true in the new year. Good for you!’
Then a second and third blew up together, throwing out debris and colouring the flames bright red and pink. ‘Pink!’ I said. ‘That was my otter, ha ha. I knew it was a winner!’
‘Oohs’ and ‘aahs’ combined with mock screams and shouts of hilarity as pieces pattered down on the tables. Someone stood abruptly, brushing her head, and ran for the corner of the room, leaving her friends in uproarious laughter. The next tray of wishes began exploding all at once. The bright flashes and bangs unsettled my dogs and a small howl emanated from by my feet. I ducked under the table and reassured them.
‘What about mine?’ said Jant in dismay.
‘Give it a chance,’ I said. ‘It’s still warming up.’
‘I want my wish to come true!’
Lightning said, ‘If it cooks without breaking, then at least you will have another ceramic figure for your mantelpiece.’
‘But I want it to release my wish! How can my wish come true if it won’t let it free!’ Jant picked up his beer glass, swirled it and shrugged. ‘Anyway, it’s all nonsense …’
‘It’s just a game,’ I said. ‘You can’t always win if it’s random.’
The bursting Wishes kept on, some all at once, then pauses, sporadic bangs that seemed the loudest, and series of pops as exploding animals set off adjacent ones. Raven laid his knife and fork down and said, ‘I should go among my people and wish them Happy New Year.’
‘Of course,’ Lightning said.
Raven motioned Snipe to join him and descended to the trestle tables. We watched him moving among the colonists, shaking woodsmen’s hands, clapping the backs of the miners and joking with them.
‘He’s rallying them!’ said Jant. ‘Some of those will join his troops, I’m sure.’
‘I have no doubt they will, and he’s probably telling them not to fear us.’
‘He’s making sure they’re stoked up with beer.’
Lightning watched Raven as if he could lip-read. ‘Yes. But we wait until they make a move.’
All this time the Wishes continued exploding, showering fragments with exhilarating pops and bangs.
‘I haven’t seen a flash of blue either,’ Jant said. ‘Raven’s eagle hasn’t blown up yet.’
‘A blue Rachiswater eagle,’ Lightning assented. ‘Poor Raven, no amount of melancholy and no degree of single-mindedness will make his wish come true.’
‘I wouldn’t call him poor.’
‘He would make just as good a sovereign as his brother, with the same appearance but a different style. Being reduced to a merchant gave him something definite to do. Tarmigan couldn’t have rolled his sleeves up and achieved all this. But Tarmigan is as good with people as Raven is with abstract concepts. I couldn’t say which would be the better king.’
Jant was about to retort but bit it back, and the two fell silent. If only they would talk as freely in front of me as they had on the stairs!
SNIPE
Raven was shaking Whimbrel’s hand. He took my upper arm, gripped it tightly and turned me away from the Eszai. ‘You should have done it before,’ he hissed.
‘Locked them in the room?’
‘Yes! Before the troops started arriving. Never mind. I will do it after the feast.’
I stayed mum.
‘Tell Comet and Lightning I will meet them in the room by the solar. When they are inside I’ll come out and turn the key. No windows. Jant won’t be able to fly out. Then we will assemble the men.’
I still said nothing. Locking up Eszai has got to bring some retribution. Raven had said he’d release them when he was on the throne. By then, they wouldn’t be able to stop him.
He shook the hand of Grebe. ‘Happy New Year!’
‘Happy New Year, my lord.’ Grebe had a glint in his eyes - he were mindful of our business and ready to join us at first light. Raven smiled at him, as cool as can be. But I could feel the immortals’ eyes boring into the back of my neck. Wouldn’t surprise me if, along with eternal life, the Emperor had given them the ability to hear us whispering. Or read our minds. I couldn’t believe Raven was sticking to his plan under their very noses.
‘Have you spoken to the Lowespass captain?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Nearly half are in already. All five hundred will be safely inside in a couple of hours.’
‘Give them plenty of food and make sure they rest. Tell them to form up by the kennel compound at daybreak. While I talk to them, you gather the settlers.’
‘They know the Eszai are here.’
Raven shook another man’s hand and spoke to me at the same time. ‘They only know rumours. They’ll never see the immortals. They know not to come into the hall, and in an hour or so Lightning and Comet will be out of sight. Snipe? Snipe?’
‘Yes, my lord?’
‘Pay attention. Go outside and wish the kenneller a happy New Year. He’ll be preparing the dog sleds. It’s not just the longest night of the year, it’s the longest night of our lives.’
OUZEL
The fact that Jant was dressed in Rhydanne gear couldn’t have escaped Raven’s attention. I thought Jant looked magnificent. He had managed to clean the white parka and tasselled trousers, and lynx fur tippets hung from the lacings at his hips.
Light
ning refilled his glass and asked innocently, ‘Did you find Dellin?’
‘Yes,’ Jant said. ‘I know where she’s hiding.’
‘Does she still want to drive Raven out?’
‘Yes. She swears it.’ Jant shuffled his wings and let them droop slightly open. ‘Awians swear oaths on their blood, but Dellin’s smarter than they are - she swears it on Raven’s blood.’
Lightning nodded. ‘Can you possibly stop her terrorising the villagers? ’
‘No. She’s determined.’
‘I remember her determination from the Throne Room. Do you know where she is now?’
‘Oh yes! She’s outside, among the rocks.’
‘Outside the keep?’
‘Yes.’
‘Without shelter?’
‘She’s watching the gate.’ Jant chuckled.
A frown creased Lightning’s forehead and he turned to whisper impatiently, ‘Pull yourself together! When we insist Raven stays in Carniss, he will wreak his fury on the Rhydanne instead. He’ll immediately cut their forest back as much as he can. We can commandeer his warriors but he’ll use the colonists and ask for more. He’ll denude the slopes until there are no trees near the keep for Dellin to hide in. This morning he told me he won’t stop until he has wiped her out.’
‘God! I have to tell her!’
I stayed quiet; I wanted to hear as much as possible. Lightning didn’t want to mention the coup but he had no problems discussing Rhydanne in front of me. He seemed to have cottoned on to the fact that Dellin and Raven between them had ruined my business completely. The Frozen Hound was absolutely empty; we hadn’t seen a customer for days.
He raised a hand. ‘If Dellin stops her raids, I have a small chance of bringing Raven to terms with the Rhydanne. He won’t negotiate, so he declares, but he doesn’t have my patience. Go outside now, and tell her to stop.’
‘But … but … No. I can’t.’
‘Tell her the silver man says so, ha ha, ’ I suggested. The two immortals looked at me. Lightning kept me in his clear and searching gaze, wondering whether I was trustworthy, useful, or both.
Above the Snowline Page 31