It resembled hunting costume of doeskin boots and breeches, a russet leather jerkin and a white linen shirt, and looked feminine enough with a lady’s cymar riding-mantle flung casually over all. The details were rather less so. Whorls of gold embroidery decorating the jerkin were wire, not thread, and one of its three purses, with thick braided cords wrapped around the fastening, was heavy enough make the entire belt sag. Aldric knew a sling and a pouch of lead slugs when he saw them, just as he recognised the dry click and rustle of metal where none was visible. At a guess the jerkin was like his own riding-coat, with lamellar scales or mail concealed between leather and lining and held in place by that sturdy ornamental wire. Then Kyrin laced blued-steel plates from a light cavalry armour over her sleeves, cross-strapped a Jouvaine estoc so its hilt rose high at her left shoulder, and any notion of concealment went by the board.
It meant that idle passers-by gave them a wide and wary berth, though there were any number sharing the road. Peasants rode ox-carts or walked in noisy groups, well-heeled merchants lounged in their carriages and the less wealthy jolted in horse-palanquins. A few elderly kailinin cast disapproving looks at the younger set, fantastically tricked out in fashions from the Imperial court, the Jouvaine city-states or wherever else took their fancy, but it made Aldric feel more at ease. In this holiday atmosphere his own dramatic black-and-silver and Kyrin’s half-armoured russet-and-blue were no more than whimsical fancy dress.
As they came closer to Erdhaven the crowds increased, and judicious eavesdropping heard rumours that this Festival was the best and biggest for years. For a man intending to lose himself among the press of people it was good news.
The scream of a gull cut through the other noises and Aldric glanced up at the birds circling above the road, attracted by scraps of food, occasional spillages of grain and maybe by himself. Was he being unimaginative, watching for crows when a seagull would look less out of place near the coast? Reining in, he stared at one big yellow-eyed brute which seemed suspiciously disinterested in the scraps lying under its beak.
“What’s the matter, Alban?” Kyrin saw the worried look on his face before she saw the gull, and when her eye fell on it she gave a dismissive snort. “Ah, those pirates! Nasty, but no concern of ours.”
“None of yours.” Aldric eased a telek from its holster, because his own carelessness at the inn still rankled. The thief who took his money could so easily have been sent by Duergar to take his life. Or worse, bring him back to Dunrath for more personal attention. “I’m not so sure.” He cocked the spring-gun and levelled it in the arm’s-length posture for target practice.
The telek thumped, and the gull went down in silence. There was no human shriek of agony this time, only a reflex spasmodic flutter of one wing which soon ceased. Aldric ignored the ironic applause from other travellers, racked another dart into the weapon and nudged Lyard slowly forward, eyes and telek fixed on the dead bird. Kyrin followed, muttering under her breath in her own language and wondering again why she’d bothered to come along with this madman. He dismounted, prodded the corpse with a toe, rolled it over, then finally tugged the dart free. Throughout all, it remained a seagull.
“If you don’t tell me what this exhibition is about. Alban, I’ll leave you to play-act on your own.”
Aldric dropped the carcass and wiped his fingers on the grass. “If I don’t, could you bear to leave without finding out?”
“Don’t twist words!”
“All right, I won’t. I’ll tell you everything.” He hesitated. “Everything you need to know. But not here. Once we’ve found a room and a bed—”
“Beds, Alban. I’ve warned you already.”
“Beds, then. Or privacy. And Kyrin-ain—” the endearment was mostly for other ears, “—I warn you that you won’t like what you hear. Play-acting has no part in it.”
“What I don’t like is all this secrecy. Why don’t you trust me?”
“I do trust you. If I didn’t, I… I wouldn’t have told you my name.” Even though she hadn’t so much as repeated it back, never mind used it since.
Kyrin stared at him for a long time without saying anything, then inclined her head a fraction. “I believe what you say, Alban. And I’ll accept whatever you tell me about this business, however little it might be.” She glanced towards the road. “Best be on our way if we want somewhere to stay tonight. Otherwise your small change won’t last until tomorrow.”
As they mounted up and cantered towards Erdhaven, neither noticed a black crow gliding from the lower branches of a tree where it had cowered from sight behind the trunk. Nor did they see how it wheeled high into the blue spring sky before flapping away towards the northwest and the citadel of Dunrath.
*
Kyrin’s guess was close to the truth. Separate rooms were either impossible to find or impossible to pay for, and they ended up sharing one in a small tavern near the harbour. It was better than Aldric expected, but more costly than he hoped, and even ten minutes of haggling left his meagre funds sorely depleted.
“One bed,” said Kyrin, her voice carefully toneless. “And a chair, and some blankets…”
“I paid for this bed and I’m sleeping in it,” said Aldric. She said nothing, and instead began piling her saddlebags in front of the chair as a makeshift footstool. “Kyrin. Kyrin.” He met her stare for a second, then gestured at the mattress. “It’s big enough for half each. To sleep, nothing more. We’ll need rest, both of us. I know you won’t… What I mean is, I…” Embarrassed now and angry because of it, he unslung Isileth Widowmaker and laid the sheathed taiken precisely down the centre of the bed. “Half each.”
She looked at him, then at the sword. “You promise like that?” Aldric nodded once, willing her to accept without comment and not make him look foolish. “All right.” She smiled, no more than a twitch of her lips, as if she found his intensity amusing. “Why such an old-fashioned gesture?”
“It, it seems right the right thing to do.”
“Sometimes, Alban, I wonder if you’re real.” There was no mockery in her voice and as Aldric remembered his own feelings when Gemmel presented him with the sword, he matched the twinkle in her eyes with a shy smile of his own. Then Kyrin lifted Widowmaker from the bed and he bit back harsh words. No warrior ever made so free with another’s sword and though Kyrin was attractively female, the way she wore sword and armour made her as much a warrior as any kailin-eir. Perhaps she sensed his outrage, because she turned hastily and bowed from the waist as she had seen him do along the road.
“May I?” she asked, as she should have done at first. Aldric hesitated, still irritated, then decided he couldn’t expect the right customs and protocol from a foreigner and acknowledged her hurried courtesy with a curt nod of his own.
Isileth’s blade left the scabbard with a whisper like stroked silk and something ominous came with it like the touch of a winter wind. Kyrin shivered. The same intangible chill sometimes hung around Aldric and she wondered, not raising her eyes from the cruel beauty of the steel, which of the two was its true source.
“Have you used this?”
“She was drawn in the dawn-light, under the Eye of Heaven, that she might know me,” said Aldric, then dropped the formality. “But used? No. Not yet.” Kyrin affected not to notice the way his hand touched hers as he retrieved the taiken and secured it in peace position aslant his back. “Someone tried to insult me once. He said I slept with my sword. I wonder what he’d say now.” The thought prompted a small, crooked smile that grew to an honest grin. “No, I don’t. He’s not worth that much notice. And I’m not down to the last of my wallet-change yet, so let’s see what food this place can offer.”
*
“So he made for one of the five ports after all,” said Duergar. “And I guessed right about where to send the bronzes.” His pale gaze remained fixed on the thin figure in black who knelt before him. The man’s hood was thrown back, revealing yellowish eyes and dark hair hanging in sweat-soaked tails. If he had
been a horse he would have been lathered. Until a few minutes before he had been a crow, and he was still lathered. “You’re certain it was him?”
“Quite certain, lord.” The man was still trying to regain his breath and Duergar’s impatient questions hadn’t helped. “If Talvalin had spotted me I would have been,” he cleared his throat and ventured a gap-toothed smile, “dead certain.”
“Spare me your feeble humour.” Duergar stood up and the changeling lowered his head respectfully. “Go rest. There will be rewards for this day’s work. I wish all my servants did so well.” He crossed to the door, put one hand to the latch, then glanced back. “Mark you, no word of this to Lord Kalarr.” He opened the door.
And Kalarr was standing there, teeth bared in a hard, mirthless grin.
“Why not?” he asked. “I’m most curious.” There was a broad-bladed taipan shortsword in his hand, its point resting against the door-ward’s lips. “I heard one of your crows had returned, yet this,” his sword prodded delicately, “said otherwise.” Kalarr’s gaze settled on the black-clad changeling, who stared back with fear in his eyes. “It seems he lied.”
The taipan crunched past the sentry’s lips, teeth and neck, driving deep into the panelled wall and pinning the man there like some grotesque specimen. Kalarr released the weapon and sauntered into the room while his victim slid forward down its blade until the hilt held him in quivering obeisance above a puddle of his own blood. He took a fearful time to die, but Kalarr paid him no more heed. All his concentration was focused on Duergar.
“Enough of this charade,” he said. “I grow weary of it.” He chuckled like tearing metal and sent a whirl of yellow fire across the room. It filled the air with heat and the reek of burning, yet dissipated a yard from the Drusalan’s face. Kalarr’s chuckle became a snarl. He had hoped Duergar would rely on the useless talisman, but instead there was some protective shield in place. Such things needed different spells to breach them.
By the time he repeated a fuller invocation Duergar too was ready, emboldened by his own survival. Power surged and crackled through the room and as the changeling scuttled for shelter his world dissolved into harsh colours and raw, atonal noise. Cloth, wood and even stone seared away under the lash of such ravening energies, consumed to fuel their own destruction.
The magic died abruptly in a whirl of sparks and for several seconds nothing moved. Echoes of thunder rolled sonorously towards the mountains, while in the shadow of the citadel donjon ordinary folk raised their heads from the dirt and looked around in terror. Only the sun shone placidly from a clear blue sky.
“It seems we’re well matched,” said Kalarr, and coughed on a wisp of acrid smoke. Shaking with exertion, Duergar sat down on the spell-warped floor. Sweat glistened on his hairless scalp.
Kalarr chuckled again, this time genuinely amused by the state of the room. It had a dizzy, nauseating look. Walls sloped out of true at giddy angles, floor and ceiling were corrugated like waves on a petrified ocean, and the changeling was a grey silhouette scorched into the window-frame where a blast of force had snuffed him out of existence.
“If neither can defeat the other,” he said as if the past few seconds had never happened, “the obvious solution is a true alliance. There is, however, one problem.”
Duergar glared at him. “Just one?”
“Just one, and the source of all others. Lack of trust.”
“You try to kill me, then you say I lack trust?”
“Certainly you lack manners. Hear me out. What oath would you accept as token of good faith?”
Duergar looked blank. The question was so improbable that he had never considered a possible answer. “Suggest one.”
“Before I learned my other skills I was once kailin-eir, as much as Aldric Talvalin. My clan and my other name is… is no concern of yours, but I still have rank, and lord-right over lesser men, and honour when I choose to remember it.” As he spoke he went to the door, twisted his taipan free of the wall and the sentry’s face, then cleaned the blade fastidiously with a silken kerchief until a footfall in the corridor made him turn to see who was there. Kalarr smiled and dropped his sword into the warped, rotting wood of the floor where it stuck, quivering.
“So you alone have the courage to brave this sorcerer’s den, eh? Come in.”
Baiart Talvalin bowed low as he entered, ignoring the corpse in the doorway. “You’re unhurt,” he said. Kalarr’s smile widened into a cruel grin.
“The deep sincerity of your concern touches my heart. All went as usual in Cerdor?”
“How else would it go?”
“How indeed? Tell me, Baiart-arluth, Clan-Lord Talvalin, what great oath would a man take if he desired an enemy to trust him? An enemy, mind, not a friend needing deceived.” Baiart glared. “I don’t mock you, man. Not with that question.”
“No? I didn’t see the sun rise in the north today either.”
“It might do so tomorrow.” Kalarr’s dark eyes glinted, he dropped his pleasant aspect like an actor changing character and a whirl of energy distorted the outline of his hand. “You might not live to see it.”
“You don’t frighten me, warlock. Not now. I wear my tsepan at Court and here, but the damned Drusalan’s spellbond means I can’t use it. Death would be a welcome gift.”
Kalarr banished the poised spell from his hand. “You might earn your gift when we no longer need your mummery before the King. Not otherwise. You had your chance, Baiart Talvalin, you had your chance and you refused. I saw how you responded when Duergar’s necromancy showed how impermanent death could be. You were afraid then, you chose treachery instead, and became clan-lord as you always wanted. And you’re still afraid now, because we know what gift you truly want: not passage to the dark but passage through the fire. Yet my friend so hates to see a funeral.”
“It smacks too much of waste,” said Duergar, and Baiart flinched “Now answer the question.” His courage had returned now Kalarr’s attention was elsewhere. What happened later would depend on how things developed both here and in the Empire, and on whether Kalarr cu Ruruc could be trusted.
Perhaps the sun would rise in the north.
“It’s a blood oath,” said Baiart at last. His face was pale, and an unshed tear trembled in the corner of one eye. “For reasons sorcerers well understand. And made with a tsepan, like all the High Oaths.”
“Then give me yours.” Kalarr held out one hand, arrogantly ignoring an enemy drawing blade right behind his back. Sweat beaded Baiart’s forehead and he trembled with effort as once again he had tried to stab either himself or his undefended target, and like every other occasion his muscles refused to obey. All he could do was hand the weapon over. Kalarr glanced at it. “What now?”
“Cut once from thumb to index finger, joining the Honour-scars. Cut shallowly. A man might need many oaths in his life, if he has many enemies.” Kalarr grinned unpleasantly. “Then mark your crest in the blood, and the first character of your name, swear the oath, and wipe all clean with a cloth burnt at once.”
“What if there are no Honour-scars?” said Kalarr, and laughed at Baiart’s outraged expression. “Merely a question, Clan-Lord.” He opened his hand to reveal the three parallel white scars and sliced the tsepan lightly across the top of each.
The blood seeping from the shallow wound was as red as the sorcerer’s robes, though black would have surprised nobody. With one fingertip Kalarr drew the crescent and double curve of his crest, the winged viper, and under it a character that was not the first of either Kalarr or cu Ruruc.
“Your name,” said Baiart, “or the oath is void.” Kalarr gave him a cool stare.
“I know,” he said. There was no more explanation. “Duergar Vathach, give me your hand.” The necromancer began to protest, thought better of it, and did as he was asked. “You’re no Alban, wrapped around with honour and tradition,” Kalarr said, “but the Empire has a custom of bloodbonding which you should respect. So bloodbond friendship, for peace of mind if not
hing else.”
Duergar shrugged, flinched as the tsepan nicked his thumb then pressed it against the thin cut on Kalarr’s palm. Normally never at a loss for something to say, usually sharp and cruel or once in a rare while almost poetic, Kalarr stared at the mingled blood and spoke not a word. With a touch of his hand he closed both wounds, wiped away marks and errant trickles with a kerchief and exploded the wisp of linen into a flash of fire with a single gesture.
“And now we’re allies. So – what were you planning when I first came in?” Duergar jerked his head in warning at Baiart and Kalarr nodded. “Ah. I see.” He returned the tsepan with a derisive bow. “Would you care to leave us now, Clan-Lord?” Baiart nodded as curtly as he dared and made for the door until Duergar called him back and pointed at the dead sentry.
“Send a few servants up for that,” he ordered. “He was a strong man, a useful addition to the ranks of my traugarin.” Baiart’s mouth twitched as he turned away again. This time it was Kalarr who spoke.
“If you care to stay, I promise what you hear will entertain you. Just as it will entertain your brother Aldric.”
Baiart shook his head and stumbled from the room, but the sound of weeping drifted back from the corridor for several seconds, until it was drowned out by Kalarr cu Ruruc’s laughter.
*
There were tents all around the enormous competition field beyond Erdhaven, and Kyrin sat in one of them with a pile of silver marks in front of her and a scribble-covered scrap of parchment on her knee. The money came to almost two hundred marks, yet no matter how she managed her arithmetic, the required total was nearer five. Kyrin added again, deleted an entry, tsk’d between her teeth, deleted another and shrugged.
It was the horses, every time. Without them, any passage was affordable. She could go home, and the balance would take the Alban wherever he had in mind. He could even keep her grey as a farewell gift and stable both in Erdhaven until he came back. But parting him from his Andarran charger wasn’t quite as easy a subtraction.
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 12