Bloodkin (Jaseth of Jaelshead) (6 page)

It was, however, to be a very long time before I saw Sambeth and Myr Rudi again.

t must have been late morning when Charlie slowed his horse to a walk. The highway at this point had curved around to run alongside the Jael and Charlie led us down a short beaten track to the river to water our horses.

“Hey Jaseth, there aren’t any Temples that we’ll be passing today, but there’s a nice quiet clearing just further down if you want to go do the Ritual of Gratitude.”

I was momentarily confused. “The what?”

“Oh, I just thought with it being Sunday and all you might want to.”

“Ah, right, no, I’m not particularly religious, so it doesn’t matter. Um, feel free to do it if you want.”

Charlie chuckled. “No no, don’t worry about me. All that Temple stuff is for Humans, Nea’thi don’t, ah, need it. Do you not go at home?”

“Well, on the festivals and stuff, yeah, but not every week. My father is a bit… sceptical.” And he thought followers of the Temple were tree-hugging hippies, but I didn’t need to mention that.

“Huh, I thought Humans were really into the Temple, they are in the Capitols at least. The great Temple of Lille is a rather beautiful place, and the High Priestess really is a lovely woman.”

“You know the High Priestess of Lille?” This was unexpected.

“Hanniash? Well, I met her many years ago when she was still an Acolyte. I, er, knew her Mentor.”

“The High Priestess of Lille is Nea’thi-Blood?” More surprises.

“Well, yes, of course, they often are! There’s lots of Nea’thi-Bloods in the Capitols, doing a variety of interesting things.”

“Will I get to meet her?”

Charlie laughed. “Maybe! But we still have to get there first! If you’re not going to do a ritual, then maybe we should get back on the road.”

Later that afternoon the vineyards on our right gave way to wide grain fields, almost ready for harvest. To our left, the side of the highway was covered with groves of willow trees, the ground thick with blackberry brambles as the sounds of the Jael became audible from the road. We passed under a stand of elms and rounded a bend and at once we could see the river, washing gracefully past, at least twice the width of the stream that meandered through our forest at home. A huge curved stone bridge crossed the river ahead of us, onto a road that stretched west through trees and fields all the way to Fortesta in the south.

On the near side of the bridge was a cairn of rocks, piled just higher than a man’s head, and I realised with a start that it signalled the end of the Jaelshead district.

Charlie saw what had caught my eye and he smiled gently. “This is it Jas, we’re leaving the ancestral home.”

“Yeah,” I muttered, “Guess we’re in the real world now.”

I also realised as we rode closer that there were two armed guards on our side of the bridge. They both wore chainmail and open-faced helms that glinted in the sun, and over their chests they wore tabards in the green and white stripe of the national armed force. More worrying were the long pikes they both held upright, but lowered as we approached.

Surely this was normal? If I remembered my geography lessons properly this was a major intersection. We were now out of the rather sheltered and quiet Jaelshead valley and were getting close to Lille. I hadn’t really considered the possibility, but I suppose there were brigands and highwaymen-types around, I wasn’t
that
naïve.

“Let me handle this, okay Jas? And try not to pull rank unless you
really
have to, we don’t want to antagonise them.” Charlie spoke quietly to me as he slid off his horse and walked up to the guards holding the reins. I did the same as the guards moved up to meet us with more than a hint of belligerence in their swagger.

Charlie lifted off his hood and nodded politely to the men. “Guardsmen, how fares the road today?”

To their credit, neither of the men looked surprised to see a Nea’thi traveller, but instead of the usual friendliness that Charlie seemed to elicit from everyone we met, the guards regarded first him and then me with expressions that were distinctly unpleasant.

One of them twisted a smile. “Not so good today, elephant.” The last bit was muttered, but still loud enough for us to hear. Charlie was unperturbed, but the unease that I had felt was bubbling into something like anger. These two pieces of yokel trash had weapons, for Lilbecz’ sake, and they appeared to be threatening an important Nea’thi emissary and the Lord’s bloody heir! Didn’t they
know
who we were?

“Has there been trouble, good sirs?” Charlie was trying to ingratiate himself with his wide-eyed sincerity, but they guards appeared to be almost angry themselves, and I didn’t know why, but it seemed to be aimed at Charlie.

“They’re going the wrong way,” the other guard muttered to the first and they exchanged glances.

“Still, what’s he doing with this pretty young thing, eh?” This obviously referred to me, and I was rather appalled by the insinuation. I was about to open my mouth and protest at this disrespectful treatment when I glanced at Charlie. His expression changed from one of concern to gentle encouragement and he squinted almost imperceptibly at the men.

Suddenly I didn’t feel angry at the guards any more, if anything, I felt a bit sorry for them – standing guard at a rather remote and boring spot. And they must have felt some terrible hurt in the past to be directing such anger at Charlie, a man they had never met before!

Now they were lowering their weapons, one of them looking thoughtful, the other a bit sad.

“Please men, we’ve been travelling for some time and would be extremely grateful for any news of the city,” Charlie pleaded quietly, though his big unblinking eyes never left them. The men almost tripped over each other in their eagerness to respond.

“Well, it’s like this, see—”

“What we’ve heard is—” They both began at the same time.

Charlie laughed good-naturedly and they both grinned. This time only one of them spoke.

“Well we’ve been sent out here to keep an eye on the roads. There been some folk disappearing, mostly them queer half-breeds. Everyone knows it’s Lya Vassalion, but we’ve to keep a look out just the same.” He peered at me more closely. “Are you alright there, sonny? He hasn’t…
done
anything to you?”

The suggestion was so completely laughable I giggled a bit as Charlie answered for me. “Jaseth is Nea’thi-Blood and I am his Mentor and we are on our way to the Academy in Lille. Please, tell me why Lya Vassalion would be interested in Mingles?”

The Nea’thi phrase for ‘the family’ was one of the few that had been absorbed into general Human dialect, but only as a contemptuous reference to a semi-mythical criminal syndicate that operated out of Lille; whispered about as a sort of guild of assassins and held by legend to operate under the protection and guidance of a Nea’thi goddess, referred to as Lya Myn. I was pretty sure Lya Vassalion was little more than a fairy story, but even if they were real, Charlie would hardly be worried about murderers, would he?

“Well who else would be doing killings in the city? We would know, wouldn’t we? It’s you lot that are going missing, and it has to be something to do with magic…” The guard fell silent as Charlie squinted at him again.

“If that is all the news from the city gentlemen, we must be on our way.” Charlie was smooth and encouraging. “You two are doing a difficult but important job out here, you should be proud of yourselves.” On cue, the guards straightened and smiled. “Carry that pride with you, kind sirs, and treat those who pass this way with the dignity and respect you expect for yourselves.”

Charlie turned from the guardsmen and mounted his horse, gesturing that I should do the same. With a salute to the men who were still standing there, grinning proudly, he wheeled around and set off down the road that led to Lille.

We cantered some way in silence. I thought about the guards. How difficult it would be to guard a bridge that, for all it was a major crossroads, was smack bang in the middle of nowhere. To be sent so far from the city, from the garrison where no doubt most of their friends were still stationed, and surely they had families to miss. I found
I
was proud of them, doing their duty and following orders so well. They hadn’t been that bad, really.

Really? I shook my head, it felt a bit clouded as I remembered the things they had said to Charlie as they had lowered their weapons at us, they had called Charlie an elephant, for Lilbecz’ sake, with voices filled with spite and with rage in their eyes. They were common effing racists and I felt
proud
of them? What the hell had just happened?

My horse had slowed to a walk and Charlie looked back, surprised, to see what the holdup was. He waited as I caught up and urged his horse to walk beside mine as I looked straight ahead, thinking.

Finally I turned to him. “You magicked us,” I managed flatly. My earlier rush of good feeling for the guards had dissipated and I recollected the confrontation with growing bitterness. “You magicked them, and you magicked me. What the hell, Charlie?”

He sighed and settled uncomfortably in his saddle.

“Yes.”

“Yes? That’s all you can say? What the hell happened back there?”

He sighed again, then collected himself.

“Yes” he said more firmly. “The Hầұeӣ involved is a form of Psychosolastry, but not particularly complicated. You will learn about it, in time, at the Academy.” I grunted but he continued. “Your Masters will be able to explain it better than I, but you direct the Hầұeӣ to release extra serotonin to lift the mood of the subject, then shift the brain waves so they are more susceptible to suggestion.” He shrugged, embarrassed. “Sounds easy when I put it like that, doesn’t it?”

“Sounds like you bloody hypnotised them.” My bitterness was welling up. “Yeah, you hypnotised them and you hypnotised me.” I looked him in the eye, suddenly furious. “You can’t do that to me! You’re supposed to be my Mentor, for Lilbecz’ sake, and I can’t even bloody trust you not to magic me when it suits you!”

Charlie looked hurt, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t even trust him.

“I’m sorry Jas, I really am. They could have decided to hurt us—“

“And you couldn’t trust me to not stuff it up? You had to magic me, like I’m some idiot guard scum.”

Charlie smiled ruefully, infuriatingly. “You looked like you were going to pull rank on those two.” He shrugged apologetically. “I needed to diffuse the situation quickly. And I needed to find out what the problem in the city was.”

Oh yeah, I had forgotten Charlie’s apparent concern about the Lya Vassalion thing. Well, if he thought I was going to ask him about it, he could shove it up his arse.

“Look JJ, I’m sorry—“

“Oh bugger off Charlie. I get it. You don’t trust me so you had to magic me. I get it. Now just leave me the hell alone.”

Charlie just nodded wisely, the smug bastard, and I kicked my horse into a gallop so I wouldn’t have to see his stupid grey face any more.

We rode hard all afternoon. I was still furious, and wanted to punish Charlie with the pace. I barely noticed as the road curved beside the river as it swung in a north-westerly course and the flat plains began to roll gently into green hills. Until now we had
still been within the Jaelshead District where grape vines and high-cropping corn were farmed on every available acre of the flat bottom of the valley. Jaelshead’s wealth was derived from the excellent wines that were produced from the gravelly soil and long, hot summer weather the valley enjoyed. Animal husbandry was concentrated in the foothills of the Rhye Mountains that framed the region, though that was limited mainly to the farming of alpacas who thrived in the dry runs on the steep hills and whose beautifully soft fleeces were the other pride of the district.

Now that we were heading northwest up towards Lille, even the quality of the air was changing. Small roads frequently branched off the highway to the east, meandering around the gentle, rolling hills and out to the mountain range that was misty and distant to the north and east. Here, the hills and valleys were patchworked with small fields, edged with stone walls and trees that were almost beginning to yellow with the turn of the season. The paddocks were dotted with cows, farmed for their milk and their meat as well as for their hides, which were cured in the small tanneries that dotted the riverbank periodically. Herds of small white sheep grazed aimlessly, raised for their meat and their wool which made strong, inexpensive cloth when spun or felted. This I knew from long, tedious hours with my tutors, though as I had never left Jaelshead before this was the first time I had actually seen such intense farming in action. The sun was setting as I finally slowed my pace and allowed Charlie to catch up. Lumps of cloud drifted above us, steel-grey in the centre but haloed with pink and orange as colour leeched from the sky, which flamed gold as the heavy sun sank out to the west.