by Paul Collins
Daretor’s head appeared for a moment, covered in reeds. ‘Jaelin, can’t swim!’ he gasped as he thrashed about.
He can’t swim! Jelindel immediately reached out for him, lost her grip and rolled out of the boat as well.
Jelindel could not swim either, and worse, she was wearing the chainmail beneath her sheepskin. She breathed water for a moment as her feet kicked against the submerged willow log, then she felt her hand wrenched. The cord of the splash baffle was tangled around her wrist. She dragged herself back to the surface.
‘Daretor!’ she spluttered as her head broke the surface beside the boat.
She caught hold of the side, then moved hand over hand along the boat’s gunwale until she reached the middle. Daretor was nowhere to be seen. He’s gone, she thought frantically. I’ve lost him. He’s dead.
Then something gripped her leg and gave a sharp tug. Horror-stricken, Jelindel clung tightly to the boat. It rocked wildly as something tried to drag her under. Daretor surfaced and squirted a mouthful of water at her, then he stood up until his waist was clear of the water.
‘But I don’t need to swim when I can walk,’ he added to his earlier cry.
Jelindel hauled herself back into the boat and lay there panting and shivering.
‘Daretor, that was the most foul of tricks –’
At that moment the boat tore free of the ribbon reeds and began to drift with the current.
‘Hie, wait,’ called Daretor.
Jelindel seized the pole and held it out to him. Daretor was pulled off his feet and free of the bank of ribbon reeds.
‘My sword, it’s back there!’ he cried.
‘Damn your frackard sword! We’ll buy you another, we’ll buy you two! Hurry, climb aboard before something else happens.’
Daretor hauled himself along the pole to the boat, then up and over the gunwale. Jelindel held her breath and clenched her teeth as he flopped into the boat. His weight rocked it down to the waterline but it did not cap-size. The boat was by now gaining speed as it was swept along with the strengthening current. Jelindel slumped back, in relief, and was amazed to see that the flame in the lantern had survived all the dousings of the minutes past. Whoever had designed its housing was a genius.
‘If you want to play tricks,’ she panted, ‘throw mud next time we’re on the bank. Don’t muck about in the boat.’
‘Gah, a small revenge for tricking me,’ Daretor chuckled.
‘What?’
‘Into playing poleman.’
‘That petty revenge nearly had us stranded on that reedbank while Zimak drifted off with the boat.’
‘You could have snared it with a binding word,’ he countered dismissively.
‘According to my new books, dryland magic doesn’t work well over water,’ snapped Jelindel. ‘Besides, I’ve not practised the form of a snare-word yet.’
Daretor simply said, ‘Oh,’ and looked sheepish. She doubted that he really regretted anything.
Little of their spare clothing was dry after the incident at the reedbank, and the miles that followed were cold and miserable. Reculemoon and Blanchemoon marked off the hours in the sky as they travelled, and the sky was cloudless. The quays that they passed were lit by torches and signs in the darkness, and villages were distant scatters of light set further back.
At long last a larger mass of lights appeared in the distance ahead, and by now the water had slowed to the speed of a leisurely walk. Upon reaching the town of Headport they got the boat to a quay and tied up, but only after a great deal of floundering and splashing. When a wharfjack asked how they had enjoyed the trip, Jelindel replied that it had been so quiet that one of their number had fallen asleep.
‘Never heard the like,’ the wharfjack said, amazed. He returned to his station shaking his head.
They lifted Zimak out of the boat and carried him over to another wharf where the river barges were moored. One of the barges was due to leave just as Jelindel called out to the master, and they struggled up the gangplank carrying Zimak and their packs. Jelindel had sealed their papers in a roll jar, and she quickly uncorked it and ran back ashore to get the stamps for their entry to the long, meandering Kingdom of Serpentire.
They were in motion by the time Blanchemoon and Reculemoon were coincident at two hours before midnight, and they passed the border obelisk into Serpentire just beyond the town walls.
Jelindel tipped the cook of the big barge to let them dry their clothing by his hearth, and he lent them blankets from the store. Daretor and Jelindel were asleep within moments, lying beneath the stars while Zimak snored nearby.
Zimak woke as dawn broke over the Serpentire Plains. He did not appreciate the wonderful, luminescent splashes of colour above the green, fertile plains – which told him that the mountains of Passendof were long, long gone.
‘What! Where are we? Where the hell is this, then?’ he wailed.
‘You’re still alive,’ muttered Jelindel irritably, every muscle in her body aching and the rough blankets itching her skin.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘You were invited to the chambers of the new Passendof Queen last night –’
‘Damn you, Jaelin! How did you know that?’
‘Magic. Magic also told me how many swains that lepon of hers has eaten.’
Zimak swallowed, tried to find words, failed. He realised that apart from his cap he was naked under the blanket. He swept off his cap and flung it into the water, then hunkered down with his back to the bows.
‘How long have I been drugged?’ Zimak demanded.
‘All night and half a day,’ Daretor informed him.
‘We can’t have come so far in such a short time.’
‘Look around you, dummox,’ Daretor said, sitting up stiffly and waving an aching arm at the horizon. ‘These are the Serpentire Plains. We rode the aqueduct down from the mountains in a single half-day and night.’
‘Aqueduct? What aqueduct?’
Explanations took quite some time. Jelindel fetched their now-dry clothing from the galley and they dressed amid the bales and sacks that were the cargo.
‘Who undressed me?’ muttered Zimak.
‘Daretor,’ Jelindel snapped back.
‘She didn’t want to look down on the out-of-work,’ Daretor added.
Zimak cursed them both, then went to the bow to sulk alone.
The sun was warming them by the time the cook brought them soupy stygr bush tea and date cakes. Zimak had eaten nothing for a day by now, and he reluctantly joined them for breakfast.
‘What I want is a big tankard of mulled ale and a beautiful maid on my knee – who has no voice!’ declared Zimak.
Daretor cringed back and awaited the explosion that he knew was building up within Jelindel. He was not long in waiting.
‘What you want! What you want!’ shouted Jelindel. ‘What about what I want?’
‘You want books by dead people – and limewater,’ sneered Zimak.
‘Well I want a bath, with clove and cinnamon scented soap and rose scented bath salts, with twelve servants to carry more hot water in, and another twelve to mop up everything that spills. And I want my hair down to my knees again, and to wear it unbound, and cut crystal combs to groom it. And I want a honeynut pie with as much sour cream as fits on the plate!’
‘I was wondering –’ began Daretor.
‘I want a green silk overrobe with a collar of woven, teased goosedown, and a saffron tunic, and kid leather slippers with brushed silk lining. When I go out I want a lounge cart with proper springs, and it’s to be pulled by twenty strong guardsmen who have all had a bath and are wearing clean tunics, and two more guards holding harlgen plume sunshades, and a maid with a ring-tassel fly whisk, and another spraying essence of mint to drive away the odours of the market.’
‘Look, I know –’ Zimak knew defeat.
‘And I want a nice goblet of lathe-polished crystal full of chilled juice from hand-watered grapes, and a machine shop with ten
skilled artisans who will make whatever devices it takes my fancy to design – like a farsight tube of polished brass, with moonfish bone inlay and rubies for rangestops, and nice lenses ground to a tolerance of one ten-thousandth of a tig from clear crystal with a main glass as big as the palm of my hand.’
‘A slab of crystal that size would cost three thousand argents,’ Zimak pointed out, but Jelindel ignored him.
‘I want a tower of greenstone and polished aurelite with an open roof so that I can study the moons, stars, planets and comets.’
‘We should reach the Serpentire and Vilder confluence in six days,’ Daretor commented, looking at a passing milestone.
‘I’d like a trip down the Serpentire River on a big, comfortable barge, with a crew of one hundred, and two months’ supply of roast walnuts and almonds coated with nice, sticky Nerrissian delight.’
Jelindel turned away from them and stared out across the grasslands. Daretor turned back as the welcome silence lengthened.
‘We’ll ride along the river,’ he said to Zimak. ‘We can check at each town until we reach the sea port of Centravian. Lots of people pass through there. Perhaps one will have a link. The mailshirt will glow – it’s the one thing we can depend on. That reminds me, Jelindel got the dragonlink back in Dremari. We can get it looped in at the next town that has a discreet armourer.’
‘Maybe we could work our way down the river on these barges,’ Zimak suggested. ‘That way we travel faster, and even by night, like. We could keep watch on the mailshirt by shifts.’
‘I’d like enough books for the entire voyage,’ Jelindel continued, her back still turned on them. ‘I want a librarian to keep them orderly, and to clean off the dust, mould and book-mites. By night I want lamps burning extra-virgin olive oil for clean, bright flames, and with polished silver reflectors.’
‘Two more links,’ sighed Daretor. ‘They will be harder to find. I can feel it. Maybe months, maybe years.’
‘Months or years of listening to Jaelin complain,’ added Zimak.
‘Every year I want a birthday revel and only people who can read will be invited.’
‘Should have known learning to read would get me into trouble,’ grunted Zimak.
‘Only girls will be invited, girls who bathe at least once a week, who have clean breath, no lice, and who have read at least thirty books. I’ll burn sandalwood incense and serve plates of candied locusts, and riverwort hearts stuffed with honey and crushed palm nuts from North Bravenhurst. We shall drink limewater chilled by snow brought down from the East Algon Mountains by runners.’
‘Jaelin, please!’ shouted Daretor, holding his head.
‘I for one would prefer you as a boy again,’ Zimak muttered.
‘And I for one like being a girl after so long. My name is Jelindel.’ She paused, reflecting on the unfamiliar sound of her real name. ‘Would you believe that?’
‘Jelindel – that’s a pretty but powerful name,’ said Daretor. ‘But I – I don’t think that we could continue with you as a girl, though. Don’t you agree, Zimak?’
‘What did Ellien see in you that I lacked?’ asked Zimak, breaking out of his own thoughts.
‘Common courtesy and someone who asked her what sort of day she’d had.’
‘What? How am I to get a leg over by talking about pouring beer and washing tankards?’
‘See what I mean?’
There was a long and awkward pause. Presently Daretor cleared his throat.
‘Jelindel, what are you going to do now?’ he asked bluntly.
‘I want –’ she began, but Zimak threw his hands up to his ears.
‘Oh no, not again!’
‘Zimak, shut up!’ Daretor snapped impatiently.
‘I want to help you two find the last two links, and to do that I would probably function better as a boy,’ Jelindel answered.
‘Jaelin, welcome back,’ said Zimak, and Jelindel could not help but laugh. Daretor and Zimak willingly joined in.
‘One day I shall return to robes and unbound hair again. I’ve been thinking that perhaps I shall become a neophyte in the Temple of Verity.’
‘You’d become a priestess?’ gasped Zimak. ‘What a hideous fate.’
‘Well, I’m technically a countess just now, and it’s hardly a pleasure.’
Later that day they stopped at the first of many Serpentire river ports and found an armourer to join the lepon’s link into the mailshirt. Jelindel made sure that nothing but cold steel was touching the link when it was split.
Chapter
18
Behind them there were events unfolding that would forever change the face of Q’zar. The lancers of the new Passendof Queen made a stately journey through the mountains to the town of East Chasmgyle, then stopped, rested, had their armour and weapons polished and acquired fresh warhorses from Baltorian merchants. They then attacked the new Skeltian trade enclave without warning.
The enclave had only two dozen troops and another twenty staff and their families. They fought bravely for an entire day, but the place was not built for a siege. When it fell, the Passendof lancers slew all within, whether men, women or children. They then posted the declaration of war to the ruins and hastened back over the border before the local Baltorian garrison was sent to intervene.
One family who had been visiting Baltorian friends, however, returned to find carnage, ruins, and a declaration of war with Skelt nailed to the gatepost and signed by the new Queen of Passendof. They hired a barge that very morning and set off for Tol. Upon reaching the Baltoria-Skelt border they were overjoyed to discover that the Preceptor was exercising his mounted militia in full campaign rig.
The Preceptor was known to be decisive, and he reacted to the news of the massacre so swiftly and firmly, one might have guessed that he had advance warning.
The Baltorian Governor of the Marisa Province had meantime dictated a strong protest to the Passendof Governor across the border, and he despatched riders to his own King with the news. The journey, however, would take them three weeks even at the hardest pace that could be managed.
On the very night that they left, the Preceptor struck with a swiftness and ferocity that had hitherto never been seen on the continent.
Publicly he reacted to the news of the Chasmgyle massacre with righteous anger, but in private he was delighted. He had authority to wage war should war be declared on his King, and such a declaration had been affixed to the ruins of the Skeltian enclave. His entire force of mounted militia was on the Bargehorse Road beside the river within the hour. Riding at a forced pace they travelled the seventy miles of the treaty road to Chasmgyle and there paused only to view the vanquished merchant enclave.
They stormed across the Passendof border to the Chasmgyle garrison’s fortress before the local commander had even realised that he was under attack. The gates were open and the setting sun was at the Skeltian militia’s back as they galloped in on their exhausted horses. The mere three hundred Passendof lancers and local infantry were no match for the elite Skeltian militia -men who outnumbered them by nearly thirty to one anyway.
Not a single Passendof defender was left alive within the walls of the fortress by the time sunset had faded from the sky. Every horse in the nearby town of East Chasmgyle was seized, and a brigade with the Preceptor at its head went on into Passendof on fresh mounts. Reculemoon gave them good light, and within another day ten strategic bridges and crossroads had been seized and blocked against Passendof forces. The Preceptor was within sight of Headport on the Serpentire border before he paused with his remaining militiamen and blocked the Nine-arch Bridge over the Serpentire River.
His troops caught up with him four days later, and reported that a dozen fortresses and outposts had either fallen or were under tight siege. Every village had an officer and five militiamen stationed in it to break up any attempts to organise resistance, and this proved very effective. Whenever these were set upon and killed the entire village was put to the sword and the hous
es burned. Such measures, however, were needed only twice before word spread.
The little wayside fortresses of Passendof that held out against the onslaught had been built and manned to extract tolls from mountain caravans, not to withstand an invasion. One by one they surrendered as their small stocks of supplies were exhausted. These men were treated well, as incentive for others to give up easily, but when siege engines had to be built to crack the more stubborn fortresses and citadels, none of those within were spared when the walls finally fell.
The invaders had moved so fast that bridges could not be destroyed in their path, and those few Passendof troops who managed to escape and give the alarm were not believed until it was too late. Back in the northern province of Skelt the Preceptor’s deputy mobilised every man who could hold a weapon and put them into barges and carts to pour into Passendof along the free trade corridor. The Governor of Baltoria sent alarmed messages south to his King, pointing out that while the Skeltians were entitled to do such a thing under the strict letter of the Marisa River treaty, it did not seem to be within the spirit of what had been agreed to. By the time the monarch’s reply arrived, Passendof had fallen to the Preceptor.
It took only a fortnight for the Preceptor to gain total control of the roads from Chasmgyle to Headport. By the time he laid siege to the capital he had been joined by twenty of Fa’red’s deadmoon warriors – and Fa’red was still within the walls of Dremari. The deadmoon warriors were masters of disguise, and dressed as Passendof irregulars they infiltrated the great and beautiful terraced city with Fa’red’s help and seized prearranged towers on the walls. The Skeltian forces swarmed in virtually unhindered, and the fighting to subdue the inner city lasted less than two days.
The Queen of Passendof surrendered her throne to the Preceptor exactly four weeks from the day that she had declared war on Skelt. On that very same day the Skeltian King had finally received word that Passendof had declared war on Skelt, and that the Preceptor was retaliating in his name. The King sent urgent despatches to Tol ordering the Preceptor south for consultations before engaging the Passendof army.