The simmering stew needed one more ingredient to boil over, and Aldric unwittingly supplied it when he twirled his sword in a lazy circle. It was merely to flex his wrist-joint, but Barrankal saw the flourish differently. This arrogant Alban was showing off, demonstrating how much better he was than a mere sailor with a stave.
Barrankal levelled that stave and charged.
The quick hammer of footsteps brought Aldric around with the wooden sword whipping up to deflect whatever stroke came at him. It should have stayed low, because this time Master Barrankal’s attack was no cut and Aldric only avoided the lunging stave with a twisting sidestep that made him gasp. Barrankal recovered in an eyeblink, sliding his stave back with his right hand as he shifted aim with the left, and thrust it out like a siege-ram. The blow would knock breath from lungs and leave a spectacular bruise, nothing more. At least on healthy ribs.
On ribs already weakened, the result was more impressive.
En Sohra’s crew cheered as Aldric staggered and cried out, but they stopped when his face went white and his shirt went dark, a wet blotch spreading all down the left side. Ashwood clattered on pine as his taidyo slipped from limp fingers.
“They told me,” he mumbled to no-one in particular, “no bones broken.” It hurt to breathe, he had trouble forming his words, and when he put the flat of one hand to his side, jagged things like splinters moved beneath the sodden shirt and bandages. His senses swam and the bright morning contracted to loud red darkness. “I think. One’s gone. Now…”
With a little sigh he followed his sword to the deck.
*
Aldric’s eyelids flicked back and he was awake with no intervening period of drowsiness, but he still stared straight ahead, not daring to look right or left, in case any movement brought back the aching dark. The ceiling above was higher than he recalled, honey-coloured pine rather than the dark planks and red-oak beams of his shipboard cabin, and his bed had an actual quilt instead of those leg-tangling sheets. Rain pattered against the small panes of a draped window, and a book’s pages rustled as someone nearby leafed through them. He clenched his teeth against potential pain and sat up. Nothing hurt, nothing at all. And there were no bandages either…
“Good morning, Aldric.”
His head jerked round at the familiar voice. “Altrou?”
“Yes.” Gemmel put a marker into his book then closed it and set it down. “Welcome back.”
“How did you get here? And where is here?”
“Questions, always questions. I should have expected it and let someone else wait for you to wake. Still…” The enchanter got to his feet, crossed to the window and opened its curtains. “I came here with your king. After the incident at Erdhaven Festival—” Aldric wondered how Gemmel knew about it, but didn’t ask, “—I assumed he’d want a word with me. Which he did, to the tune of three hours’ talking without a rest. And here is Cerenau, and the port of Kerys. The real one.”
Gemmel spoke with such reassurance that Aldric wondered what the enchanter had seen in his face. Legend claimed the other Kerys lay half a mile off-shore, a lost city sunk in deep water whose bells still rang when the sea was rough. Just a story, except that after sorcerers and firedrakes and winged demons, he wasn’t so certain what was story and what was truth any more.
“Altrou, what happened?”
“You were stupid. Putting strain on any injury is foolish, the effort involved in swordwork plumbs the depths of idiocy, then to cap it off you misjudged your opponent. Ar Korentin knew there would be better doctors ashore, and kept you drugged asleep until the ship docked. He did the right thing. I was here.”
“And you healed me?”
“Of course.” Gemmel gestured to where three heavy branches lay on a small table. Green leaves and sap showed they had been fresh-cut, but the timber was already soft and rotten. “It took the strength from all three to knit your bones so quickly.” Aldric looked blank. “Did you think I could just point a wand and say Be Well? Power for any sorcery has to come from somewhere, and healing-magic more than most. Would you prefer I made some young man old? Spelled a useless peasant into his grave?”
“Light of Heaven, no! Never!”
“Easily said now. It’s a harder choice to make when your life, or a friend’s life, is draining into the dirt. Then the question of who matters most has a different answer. Now: I hear you encountered some other small difficulties.”
“Your understatements are showing, altrou.” Aldric was glad to put the uncomfortable subject of sorcery’s costs aside. “They weren’t small.” His explanation was as terse as an army report, and Gemmel’s occasional comment proved he had heard the same story from Dewan and Kyrin. “Apart from the winged thing which attacked our ship, none of it was to do with… With them.” Gemmel nodded, well aware who they were. “Yet they found me easily enough in Erdhaven.”
“Yes, the neatness of your encounter with Duergar’s sending concerned us. Coincidence always does. Well, it was no coincidence. There were Sendings in all the major seaports: Elmisford, Dunacre, Cerdor Great Port itself, even here. It’s all right, they’re long gone.” He didn’t say how. “Did you enjoy your conversation with the firedrake?”
“No, I didn’t. There wasn’t much in the way of small talk. I’m thankful you taught me what you did, because I don’t think Ymareth listens to excuses.”
“It doesn’t. You did well.”
That unexpected compliment made Aldric grin, like a half-trained puppy which against all odds had brought back a thrown stick. Quite an impressive stick, too. “Where’s the Dragonwand now?” he asked. “Someone might recognise it, or just describe it, and so much for secrecy.”
“Out of sight in a sheaf of javelins on Dewan’s saddle, under Sightwarp so it looks like all the rest.”
“Altrou, you say I’m always asking questions so here are two important ones. What does it do? And how do you plan to use it? Straightforward answers, please. No vagueness.”
Gemmel combed his beard with his fingers, neatening it, then stood up and bowed with false politeness. “Of course, my lord,” he said. “Though not at once, my lord. I’ll be telling King Rynert and part of his High Council what you want to know, my lord, and if you’re at the meeting you’ll find out. But since you’re still in bed…”
“Not for long. I want a bath and something to eat. What time is it?”
“Dawn, on a wet and windy miserable midsummer day. Well, it’s not midsummer or anything close, but the alliteration pleases me.” Aldric made a face. “Rynert expressed a particular desire to see you, and if he doesn’t, you’ll be in more hot water than your bath can hold. Your young lady wants to see you too. And afterwards… Afterwards, we can have a private talk about the Dragonwand, the Echainon spellstone and other matters. Good morning once again. Don’t be late.”
Aldric stared at the closed door for a few seconds, wanting to say any number of things. With no-one left to hear them he simply yawned, stretched and slithered quickly out of bed, because testing a king’s patience wasn’t the best way to start any day. As he wriggled into a robe he glanced out at the wet rooftops, grimacing as a gust of wind slapped raindrops against the glass.
The crow huddling for shelter under the eaves of an opposite house looked up with a jerk as he appeared at the window. Its beady eyes fastened on his face, and its pickaxe beak opened in a croak of surprise even as it shuffled farther into the shadows. When Aldric had gone the bird gurgled to itself and performed a triumphant little dance on the narrow ledge.
Then it settled down to wait.
*
Lord Endwar Ilauem-arluth Santon reined in at the crest of the same ridge where Aldric had once sat. Like the younger man before him he gazed at the might of Dunrath-hold, brooding and silent within a ring of steel six thousand strong through which nothing passed unchallenged. Santon dismounted and walked to the camp-stool set beneath his standards. The sun shone without warmth from a cloudless sky, the wind tugging the blue and pur
ple banners was icy, and Dyran’s offered cup of hot spiced wine was most welcome.
Though Dyran Haskol’s main duty was as bugler, like any youthful low-clan kailin serving a great lord he might be warrior one minute and servant the next. His eagerness to please was a standing joke, but Lord Endwar Santon saw no humour in anything right now. His army had come up from Erdhaven in just eight days, two hundred-odd miles of hard marching, and passed from one season to another. The Spring Festival felt very far behind. He had seen with his own eyes a brief unmistakable scudding of snowflakes across the open moorland, driven by air like the breath of an underground crypt. Santon had shivered then with cold; he shivered now with something more.
When he rode to Aldric Talvalin’s Eskorrethen ceremony, the towers and citadel of Dunrath had been hard blue-grey stone from the Blue Mountains under a soft blue-grey autumn sky. Now the fortress was red with the flapping vermeil silk of Kalarr cu Ruruc’s battle banners above every wall, and every stone, every tower and every turret seemed freshly dipped in blood. The hue shifted like the cross-weave of a damask cloth with only one thing constant: the ominous arterial scarlet of the central donjon. Lord Santon had once visited the Imperial city of Egisburg on yet another of King Rynert’s diplomatic missions where he saw its Red Tower, a palace, fortress, and grim prison which had never yet released a living prisoner.
Dunrath looked like that.
He drank his wine and surveyed the siege-lines, wondering when King Rynert and the other legions would join him. It could never be too soon. The core of his army were the two thousand foot-soldiers and five hundred horse of his household retinue, with the rest levied vassals and kailinin of lesser clans returning field-service for their lands. Four thousands of foot and two of horse would bottle any garrison and put all thought of open battle from their minds. It still fell far short of any force required to take Dunrath by storm.
It was considered the strongest fortress in all Alba, not as large as the Leyruz citadel at Datherga, nor as modern and complex as Santon’s own hold of Segelin, but Dunrath’s foundations were the mountains themselves and it had never fallen to open assault. Yes, the place had left and returned to Talvalin possession within the space of three months during the Clan Wars, but that had been by treachery both times. And now treachery had taken it again.
Endwar Santon stared at the blood-red walls and the ground before them, pale with unseasonable frost. Why is it so cold? he wondered, rapping his commander’s baton against one armoured knee. And if I need to know, why was I not told?
He drained his cup and called to Dyran for another.
*
For speed’s sake Aldric used a drench-tub instead of his usual leisurely bath, taking care with the valve-ropes until its overflow was just right. Too hot would make him want to sleep again, too cold was like childhood mornings when he rinsed off sleep’s cobwebs with a jolting shock of icy water. This felt like a good day, and he wanted no reminder of bad ones.
Breakfast, so extensive and elaborate that it deserved a better title, improved that good day still further. It provided a platter heaped with bacon, peppery blood-sausage and fried apples, then fresh rolls, butter, honey and two sorts of cheese. Living under the same roof as the King had definite advantages.
Afterwards Aldric walked back to his room to prepare for the Council meeting. Protocol required an elyu-dlas Colour-Robe, and he owned one of those even though it had been packed away unworn since his Eskorr—
Unworn for a long time.
Protocol also meant wearing two of his Three Blades, and after losing his taipan overboard from En Sohra, Isileth would have to suffice. Even back-slung in peace position the taiken would raise eyebrows, but not as many as if he wore a tsepan alone. That was a convoluted message he had no desire to send.
The building swarmed with kailinin, lesser lords and legion officers, and Aldric bowed or saluted more often since leaving his bed than during the previous three weeks. He was the focus of much speculation, and several dignified heads swivelled in a most undignified manner towards the eijo croppy in black combat leathers who wore a high-clan crest-collar and whistled a jaunty tune.
Then he turned a corner and stopped whistling.
Kyrin was standing outside his bedroom door as if she had come looking for him, hadn’t found him and didn’t know what to do next. Her teeth nipped her lower lip, and she pinched a letter between her thumb and forefinger as if it was almost too hot to hold. Tear-tracks down both cheeks glistened in the wan light from the window at the end of the corridor, and that concerned him.
But when she turned she smiled, and that confused him.
Aldric Talvalin was all too familiar with tears; rage and pain, fear and grief, he had shed them all. But not tears with a smile, and for several seconds he was at a loss about how to respond. Kyrin was clearly overjoyed by the news in her letter, and expected him to be equally pleased on her behalf. But he could guess what that news would be, so even feigning any pleasure about it would take effort. The guess was right.
“Seorth’s alive! He’s alive, they all are, and now they know I’m alive as well!”
So much for the good day.
Learning that someone believed dead was still alive must be a wonderful feeling, one he could never hope for except in dreams. To envy it was wrong, even though it laid his own unspoken hopes in ruins at his feet. First Ilen, now Kyrin. If life was mocking him, it was time he stopped providing fuel for the mockery.
At least Kyrin wasn’t laughing, though she might well have done because she had been right to call him a romantic. ‘Dreamer’ or even ‘fool’ would be closer to the truth. He had always put her yearning for home to one side, hoping – or flattering himself – that persuasion and even a trace of affection might change her mind. It would probably never have happened. It certainly wouldn’t happen now.
“How did you find out?” His voice was emotionless, but she didn’t notice. Tehal Kyrin was brimming with enough emotion for both of them.
“When the coast-watchers at Dunacre reported our shipwreck it reached ar Korentin and he put two and two together. It’s all in Seorth’s letter, and he says…”
Valhollan must be a damnably concise language, decided Aldric, to get all your prattling on three sheets of paper. He could see and hear how much she had been bottling up inside. Albans were well-known for controlling their feelings, Elthanek northerners doubly so, but Kyrin’s composure about the loss of her betrothed had been astonishing and now it was all spilling out.
He was no longer needed, if he had ever been needed at all except in the physical sense. Kyrin had been honest enough to say that to his face, and if he had accepted it then he wouldn’t feel so bruised now. Aldric made his mouth smile and remembered to echo it with a crinkle of his eyes, the part that most faked smiles forget.
“I’m happy for you,” he said into a pause for breath. “Really, I am.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have emphasised the sincerity he didn’t feel, or perhaps his smile hadn’t worked after all, because Kyrin’s expression changed from happiness to something he couldn’t identify.
“No, you’re not happy. You’re angry.”
“Would it change anything if I said yes?”
The words came out without thinking. A kailin-eir was supposed to accept ill-fortune with as much courteous equanimity as the most splendid victory. Aldric wondered how they did it, if they did it at all, and how he was doing it now. This time there was no doubt about what he was seeing, and he didn’t understand why. Kyrin looked nervous, almost frightened. Of him? That was ridiculous.
“No, Kyrin-ain, I’m not angry. You told me often enough this wouldn’t last, that we should just enjoy the time we spent together.” He tried another smile, this one more genuine. “Even if a bronze monster, a winged demon and a firedrake weren’t the enjoyment you had in mind.”
“You, uh… You did tell me it might be, uh, interesting.” She even sounded nervous. But because she was Tehal Kyrin, she was still
thorough. “And you forgot the Imperial battleram.”
“Compared to the rest it’s hardly worth mentioning.”
“And the pirates?”
“Are best forgotten.” Though not in the easy way his words suggested. His mind still shied away from that whole ugly memory; not merely how he had given them to Ymareth the firedrake, but how he had gutted Kakhur and left him alive when one last cut would have been a kindness. “At least you came to say goodbye. There was another—”
“Dewan told me.”
“Ah.” What else has he told you? “Ar Korentin gossips like a washerwoman. You shouldn’t believe everything he says, it can be more for effect than truth.” Aldric said that without evidence to prove it, but the tension thrumming in the air between them like a drawn bowstring began to relax. “I should have a word with him.”
It was empty posturing because he would do no such thing, but he wondered about Dewan ar Korentin’s real motive. The Vreijek wouldn’t have tracked down Seorth and the others then passed the news to Kyrin just from kindness of heart. Perhaps Rynert had ordered him to check the truth of her story, a needless distraction for the next Talvalin clan-lord, and do something to make Aldric more focused on his oath-taken duty. Or ar Korentin might have reasons of his own, as obscure as whatever lay behind his connection with Skawmour.
All the ideas ran together like ink on wet paper, leaving no answers and making no sense.
Only one thing remained unchanged about the past five minutes. He was still expected at the High Council meeting, to contribute something useful or simply be a representative of Clan Talvalin whose head wasn’t forfeit. That meant setting more personal matters aside for a while. Aldric opened the door of his room and went inside. Someone had been there since he left and laid out the pieces of his armour in sequence, with the elyu-dlas crest-coat last of all. Only the sword-rack was untouched and he went straight to it. Isileth Widowmaker was cool against his hands, a balanced weight of steel and wood and leather he could depend on in this changing world.
The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Page 24