He handed the tea to the wizard and tried not to be irked by the look on the man’s face. He had the look of a man who smelled something very unpleasant.
“Welcome to Rabing Isle,” Brand said, trying to sound friendly.
“Glad to be here,” said Myrrdin, but it was plain to Brand he was speaking a polite lie.
“I’ve got good news,” said Brand, deciding not to wait around until the wizard got to whatever point he had in coming here. “My brother is to be wed this day, right here. We will be performing the ceremony at noon, if you care to stay.”
Myrrdin seemed surprised at the invitation. His mood rose somewhat. “That’s very kind of you Brand. I doubt I will be able to stay, but I dearly wish that I could.”
Brand sipped his tea and waited.
“Brand, I’m here for a very special reason. I certainly don’t want to interrupt your happiness on this important day. In fact, now that you tell me of your celebration, I would normally leave, or hold my talk for a better time.”
“I take it, then, that you don’t bring happy tidings?”
Myrrdin shook his head. He sipped his tea a final time, then leaned forward, his eyes becoming intense. His gaze locked with Brand’s. “No. No, I do not. I fear things are going badly. I don’t understand all of it, but I’ve heard things, Brand.”
“What things?”
“Muttering. Whispered conversations in dark places. The drums of war are beating Brand, in a dozen places.”
“Why? Why now?”
“The Kindred, Brand. That, and other hurt feelings that have finally boiled to the surface. You see, powers have shifted. When that happens, there are inevitably winners and losers from the new arrangement.”
Brand nodded, undisturbed.
“Yes,” Myrrdin continued. “I know, you account the River Folk as among the winners. But that isn’t how everyone sees it. They see you as an upstart, a trouble-maker. To give evidence to their claims, you have helped shift the delicate balance of power between the races further on several occasions.”
“Such as giving the Blue Jewel to Tomkin.”
“Yes, and slaying Fafnir.”
“How can anyone argue that dragon deserved to keep the Orange?” demanded Brand.
“They don’t, but they would rather not see it being wielded by the Kindred. The Kindred, Brand, are at the core of the entire problem. They are only dangerous when they have a monarch. You have helped give them that monarch, and a Jewel at the same time. Never has the world seen such a combination.”
“So? What terrible thing might they do with it?”
“They have enemies, enemies that sleep, enemies so ancient the Kindred themselves have forgotten them all. And these enemies are fearful of the Kindred, especially when they have gained a great power and are filled with purpose.”
Brand threw up his arms. “I can’t see how I am involved in this. I can’t understand how the Kindred scaring others is a bad thing for the Haven. They are, after all, our allies.”
“Exactly,” said Myrrdin. His face became thoughtful, almost calculating. “You see, the state of the Kindred is being used to create fear among others. They are a threat, and others are preparing to meet that threat. Your alliance with them doubles that threat. As does the third member of the alliance.”
“You mean Tomkin.”
“Yes,” said Myrrdin, as if even the thought of Tomkin annoyed him.
“So, what are you asking? Speak plainly, man.”
Myrrdin leaned forward and spoke quietly and intently. “Leave the alliance. Declare neutrality. It isn’t even necessary that the entire River Haven do this, just you, Brand. The rest of the world doesn’t care much about the Riverton Constabulary and their blue fluttering cloaks. It is you and your axe they fear. You don’t need the protection of the Kindred, and they don’t need yours. In fact, you may well keep the peace if you denounce them.”
“Let’s entertain for a second that I would do such a thing,” said Brand, fighting to keep his voice even. His axe was thumping into his knees and he had to admit it had a point on this occasion. The wizard was clearly not on his side. “What possible good could it do? If our enemies fear to strike due to our strength, then appearing weaker will only embolden them.”
Myrrdin shook his head determinedly. “No. No, there you are wrong. It is their fear that is driving them. They fear you, and the Kindred, and even Tomkin. They fear you as an unknown, as an upstart. A group of upstarts, if you will, who have banded together and have managed through an alliance to shift the ownership of Jewels willy-nilly.”
Brand’s fist came down on the armrest of his chair. “Well, I won’t do it. I will not say I am neutral, because I’m not neutral. If any enemy were to strike at Snowdon, I would march to intervene. I believe knowing that helps keep the peace, more than it foments war. Let them worry about what we might do. We are tired of fearing them, of putting our children to bed with terrible stories of stealing hands and of lilting voices that might lure them into the forests.”
“Brand, you must try to see the wider view—”
“No! Again, I tell you Myrrdin, no. It is they who must adjust. It is they, the elder races who are set in their ways, who must alter their behavior to accommodate the younger ones.”
Myrrdin stared at him angrily for several seconds before replying.
“You think you have won. You think this is all over, because you have outfought them and cheated them a few times. Brand, you don’t understand what you are dealing with. These beings may just wait out your short, flaring lifetime and then swoop down upon your descendants, when they are weak and Ambros is ready for the plucking.”
“Then I will work hard to make sure our children are well-versed in the ways of our enemies. You should be helping us, Myrrdin. Don’t half your loyalties belong with us?
Myrrdin looked pained. “I’m not choosing sides. I’m trying to prevent another war from erupting. I’m trying to keep a lid on a pot that is boiling over.”
Brand nodded. “I believe you, old friend. I believe you think, in your heart, that you are working to save lives and save the peace. But I will not bend my knee. Nor will any of my people. The River Folk stand with our allies. We are at peace. We do not want war. But any that march against us must know they will face our combined strength.”
“Will you then, at least, condemn any aggressive wars upon which the Kindred may soon embark?”
Brand gave him a troubled look. “I don’t know of any—”
“Will you?” interrupted Myrrdin.
“I don’t know. If I hear of such a war, I will decide then. I’ll not condemn an ally before they have made their case to me.”
Myrrdin stood then, his lips compressed into a tight line. Brand stood with him. The meeting was at an end.
“We have found no common ground this day,” said Myrrdin, sounding formal. “The fact makes me sorrowful for the future.”
Brand let him out, and followed him. He stood in his doorway, his brow knitted in a harsh frown. He felt that he must have resembled his own father then, a stern man long dead.
“Tell them, Myrrdin, not to seek out trouble. For if they do, I shall seek them out.”
Myrrdin gave no hint he had heard the words. He left, carried away swiftly by his long angry strides.
Brand was left to wonder about the way the world had changed around him. He made a mental note to report this conversation to Gudrin. She had to be warned that others were plotting against Snowdon.
Chapter Five
The Kindred Stir
Piskin fretted terribly. As they sailed past Rabing Isle and onward upstream, he was sure at any moment a River Folk war-party would come whooping after him. His eyes never ceased combing the banks and he stared piercingly at every passing sail. If he had had a second hand, he would have tried to wield one of the ridiculously huge poles these stomping big idiots used to work their way upriver at speed. Like all Wee Folk, he was very strong for his size, but not that str
ong.
He eyed the maid, thinking of urging her to pole for them. But he couldn’t think of a good excuse for haste. He’d told her they were on their way to meet Puck, and that lie was the only thing that kept her with him.
He was certain she had become suspicious of him. She prattled on about stopping to meet an aunt who lived along the river, a woman who had been kind to her in her youth.
“Tut, tut, girl,” Piskin told her, shaking his head with sad, exaggerated slowness. “How little you know of the world. It’s a shame, it is, to be the one to tell you.”
“To tell me what?”
“No one is going to help you. You see, a maiden is the desire of every heart, the joy dancing in every eye. But you are the very opposite of a chaste, girlish maiden. Now, you are heavy—gross in fact—with child. Under different circumstances, had you a waiting husband, your condition might be seen as a blessing. But alas, that is not the case. You are an outcast, girl. A disgusting sight. A waddling sow, demonstrating your evil past with every thudding step you take. All your kind shun you. You know this to be true. All have forsaken you save for Piskin, and hopefully, Puck.”
Mari frowned at him distrustfully. She had been doing quite a lot of that lately. It made him want to throttle her all the sooner. But he had changed his mind about killing her now. He had reasoned that he needed her child’s blood fresh. A bowl of week-old, dead red soup, sticky and fetid, surely would not coax the hound. He didn’t want to have gone to all his trouble and then fail at the last instant due to such an oversight. He needed the child alive and wriggling, so he could bleed it freshly into a cup for the hound’s pleasure. And by far the easiest way to transport the unborn brat was while it stayed within its mother’s womb.
“Not everyone shuns me,” argued Mari. “The porter at the Inn quite liked the look of me, I’d say. With child or not.”
“Ah, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to sting your pride, milady, for truthfully, you are a beauty. But even the most beautiful of milk cows does have a definite purpose, does it not? Perhaps the porter looked on with pity, not allure, in his eye.”
“Nonsense,” she said, crossing her arms over her swollen midsection.
“And what of your mother? Did she not reject you soundly?”
Mari pouted. She had no retort for that assault, he knew.
“A milk cow indeed,” she muttered.
As he watched her sulk in annoyance and self-pity, Piskin fought the urge to smile. There would be no more talk of visiting aunts now.
* * *
Few could recall a time of greater activity beneath Snowdon. Every forge churned, every back was bent. Thousands of the Kindred toiled upon the single task of repairing the broken vent over Earthlight. Mechnicians, metal smiths and miners swarmed the structure, each of them moving with a fanatical energy and unity of purpose.
Gudrin herself stood among them, fists planted upon her hips. Her sky-blue eyes were alight, as fiery as the blasting red heat of the Earthlight. Upon her brow no hint of hair remained, all of it having been burnt away during her early experimentation with Pyros. Now that she had attuned herself to the Orange Jewel however, the one thing she was immune to, in any form, was heat. She knew she could walk into the magma of the Earthlight itself unaided, and swim in it like a warm lake without harm. She had not yet dared such a thing, but knew that it was possible for the master of Pyros to perform the feat.
She watched with swelling pride as the groaning cranes and roaring Kindred hoisted rattling cables and pulleys into place. The vent itself had been reforged where it lay after Fafnir had dislodged it. Proudly, Gudrin herself had provided the fantastic heat it took to melt an alloy so hard, so ancient, that it had withstood the breath of magma for a thousand years. Only Pyros could produce such a dexterous tongue of flame as was required. She did not know how her ancestors had managed the job without the Orange Jewel.
Like an artist with a stylus of fine brilliant flame, she drove a white beam of fire from her extended fingers at will. She had first carved a new hinge for the vent, a hinge so great and massive that the pin alone was thicker than the trunk of any tree that grew upon the world. Ancient metal melted like wax before her stylus of flame, and when she looked upon the finished hinge, she felt as might a sculptor gazing upon her masterwork.
Now that the vent had been reforged, and the hinge had been welded back together with the fantastic heat of Pyros, they were ready to lift the structure into place.
All eyes fell upon Gudrin. She raised her fist slowly upward above her scarred, bald head. She extended her fingers then, flinging them wide with a sudden thrust. A gush of fire shot up, red-orange, from her open hand. The ballooning puff of flame rolled a hundred feet up toward the cavern ceiling, resembling the triumphant exhalation of a great dragon.
A tremendous cheer went up from the Kindred, all of whom wore heavy leathers to protect themselves from the heat, save for Gudrin. Obeying her signal, a thousand pairs of arms convulsed, a thousand backs hunched. But the real power came from the ticking machinery they had so carefully deployed.
The mechnicians opened great valves atop the fat-bellied boilers. The boilers had been rebuilt of fresh shining brass, and they had been stoked to bursting with superheated steam. The steam, coursing through huge pipes, pumped against pistons and forced them to move. With a screeching of new metals, massive cogs were forced to rotate. Cunningly laid axels spun huge gears. Each gear pressed against another, increasing the slow, but inexorable, power of the lifting mechanisms. The slack cables drew taut. The straining Kindred could not possibly lift the massive weight, being as it was a mile-long length of dense metal. Only machines, properly engineered, were up to the task. The clockwork engines applied impossible torque, straining to lift the fallen blade of the Great Vent.
It took hours, during which none of the Kindred faltered. They sweated, they grimaced, and they gasped in worry when something swung loose or snapped taut, but they did not fail in their duties. Not a single one of Gudrin’s people succumbed to the deadly heat, or the grinding strain of their efforts. Sweat poured from brows and into their beards, but long before a rivulet of salty perspiration could reach the tip of any beard, it was blasted away to vapor by the fantastic heat.
Finally, after what seemed a hazy, dream-like time of collective effort, the topmost blade of the Great Vent reached the hinge. With a final heaving, clanking effort, the massive structure was locked into place. During the zeal of the lifting, few had spared a word except to shout a harsh warning or command, but now a ragged cheer went up. The noise rose to a frantic pitch. It was a wild, exhausted sound. The sound of prideful, unbridled joy. It was the first such sound to be heard since the effort had begun.
Dozens of Kindred collapsed then, cheering even as they sagged down onto the burning ash heaps. Some of those that fell died, their stout hearts giving out in their moment of jubilant triumph. But Gudrin knew that they had died proudly, for every one of their leathery faces was later found locked in a grinning rictus, their exposed teeth full of hot grit.
“My Queen,” said a voice beside her.
Gudrin didn’t acknowledge the courier at first. She had noted her approach during the final stages of the lifting. The courier had come from the broken citadel, which still served her people as a seat of government until such time as she rebuilt it. A message from that direction could not be good. Little good news came to any monarch in haste, and so far, Gudrin had never experienced a messenger with gleeful tidings.
And so, to savor her triumph, possibly one for which she would be remembered long after her passing, she ignored the messenger and stood gazing proudly at the Great Vent. Tonight, there would be nightfall, and every fresh babe in the Earthlight could sleep soundly, knowing that their Queen had made it possible to sleep in a cool dark place once again. No longer would the red heat of the Earthlight plague them without respite.
A dozen clanmasters, every one of them in fact, came and gave her a hearty clap upon the back. Unlike
other monarchs, such familiarity was not only acceptable to Gudrin, it was relished. The Kindred could be stuffy about some things, but a fine day’s work was to be hailed loudly and long, and hopefully with a great mug of ale in a stone tankard to wash it all down.
Finally, as the messenger shuffled from foot to foot, Gudrin heaved a sigh. She turned and faced the youth. The messenger was young and female. She had worry in her eyes, which told Gudrin what she already knew. The message carried grim tidings.
Gudrin snatched it from the messenger, growling her thanks. The girl bowed swiftly and trotted away, her cloak rippling behind her, and mounted her waiting mountain ram. She clattered away on her steed, no doubt glad to get away from the searing heat of this place.
Gudrin hesitated further before tearing open the seal on the scroll. She waved to a passing cartsman and took a cool jug of ale. She downed a great deal of it, gulping. She might be immune to the heat of this place now, but she had still eaten a great deal of ash and grit, a sensation made no more pleasant by the Orange Jewel that hung around her neck.
Thirst quenched, she tore open the scroll and rolled it out flat. She squinted at it, turning her back to the Great Vents so their lurid red light could illuminate the text.
She blinked, realizing the scroll was from the River Folk. It was from Brand himself, not from their foppish council. That part was both good and bad. It was good that Brand took the time to communicate with her directly, but bad that he felt the urgency to do so. Also, possibly, it meant he didn’t trust his own people with the information he passed on.
She read quickly. The scroll told of Myrrdin’s warnings. It gave no specifics, but said that the enemies of the Kindred, fearful of what they might do once their city was repaired, were gathering armies. Brand also mentioned his fear that Oberon was involved, and that those who had grown accustomed to having great power were jealous of those who now newly wielded it.
Gudrin rolled the scroll back up tightly. A few prying eyes were denied their chance to investigate. She nodded and pursed her lips. Brand grew wiser with every passing year. He had maintained his alliance with the Kindred, and did so most tightly. Brand did so knowing, she felt sure, that her people’s response would be in like kind.
Haven 5 Blood Magic BOOK Page 4