If Kusint had crossed this Great River of the East, as the Solurans called it, in search of some long lost relatives among the Forest Folk or in hopes of fighting more Mandarkin spies sent south to harry the Solurans’ flank, as Anskal himself had been, Corrain had no hope of any message reaching the boy this side of winter solstice.
Then he would have to find some way to contact the wizardly Elders of Fornet himself, Corrain concluded. Though he couldn’t deny that was a daunting prospect, after seeing three of their mages so efficiently slaughtering Anskal’s henchmen over yonder in that very forest. And Kusint had said those Soluran wizards must be among the Order’s lesser apprentices, to be sent beating such vermin out of the bushes.
After all, Corrain had outwitted the three of them, finding Anskal before the Solurans could execute the Mandarkin mage out of hand, to promise him instead sanctuary and riches in Caladhria.
He ground his teeth in frustration. Were these mysterious Elders mages of sufficient proficiency to defeat Anskal once and for all? Or would they prove no match for the Mandarkin for a second time of asking? Assuming that they agreed to give him a hearing. Would they accept that Planir and Hadrumal had no part in Corrain’s catastrophic folly without Kusint’s word to lend weight to his contrition?
The doubts and fears that had gnawed at him as he lay wakeful in bed were continually snapping at his ankles, however briskly he walked these wharves and streets.
He was certain of one thing though. If Kusint’s word was to have any value, then rejoining him must be the Forest lad’s own decision.
The noon bell tolled and prompted an answering growl in Corrain’s stomach. If the Solurans divided the full circle of a day and night into twenty equal hours, ignoring sunrise and sunset, midday remained the same fixed point as it was at home.
Home. Where he had left Zurenne to manage the rebuilding of Halferan Manor, so unseemly a task for a widowed baron’s lady. Corrain set his jaw. She had Fitrel and Sirstin and Gartas and so many others to help her and now that burly Ensaimin mage, Tornauld. Halferan was safe enough for the present and if it was to be safe for his dead lord’s children’s future, they must be rid of Anskal. Only the Archmage could secure that for them.
He turned his back on the river. Careful not to fall foul of the laden drays and their labouring teams of horses heading for the wharves, he followed a broad road towards the market square. He could see the tall stone pillar in the centre, rising above the awnings erected daily for the hucksters arriving in the town and willing to pay their copper pennies to Lord Pastiss’s market reeve for a show of transient respectability.
The girl who’d brought Corrain his breakfast had explained there was always trade to be done in Solura as families made the long journeys from their remote farmsteads to these scattered towns where they could buy whatever finished goods, necessities and luxuries they could not make or raise for themselves. Especially in these last days before the autumn equinox as the harsher weather threatened to make the roads so much more of an ordeal until the following spring. Soluran life was very different from home.
As he approached, Corrain contemplated the illegible Soluran script on the broadsheets and lordly declarations pasted onto the stone pillar, as high as a tall man could reach. He remembered the landmark from their previous visit so he hadn’t needed the tavern girl to tell him that’s where everyone went for news or to meet by arrangement.
He would have preferred to meet Kusint in a shrine; ideally under Trimon’s gaze, to convince the Forest lad of his sincerity. Though Kusint’s orphaned mother had been raised by a Soluran family rather than out in the wild woods, she had taught her son to honour the Forest Folk’s gods and goddesses, the Traveller most of all. Add to that, some priest or priestess’s presence might curb Kusint’s desire to cut his throat.
Corrain hadn’t truly appreciated the Solurans’ root and branch hatred for all Mandarkin. Not until he had seen the fury in Kusint’s eyes, the loathing twisting his face at the notion of asking a Mandarkin wizard to fight the corsairs. Even after everything that Kusint himself had suffered at Archipelagan hands, fists and whips.
But the Solurans honoured no gods, not Trimon or Talagrin, Halcarion or Larasion. They had no shrines, not in the way that Caladhrians did. Kusint had told him that. So Corrain had to decide how many days he’d sit on those market steps. Until he became a joke for passersby, like a death’s head on a mopstick at winter solstice.
He realised he was passing by an open door with a holly bush nailed above the lintel. That particular emblem served the Solurans instead of inn signs and within, he saw the tavern was busy. If that wasn’t necessarily much recommendation at midday, the food being carried to and fro looked appetising enough and the kitchen maids all had decently clean hands and aprons.
He went inside and joined the line at the long deal counter separating the tavern’s tables and stools from the wall of stacked and spigoted barrels. Rushes covering the beaten earth floor crackled under his boots.
‘A nooning—’ he began, half hopeful, half apprehensive lest he couldn’t make himself understood.
‘Sit, please,’ the innkeeper said in swift, accented Tormalin. He thrust a foaming tankard at Corrain before looking past him to the next customer, their conversation a quick flurry of Soluran.
Corrain lifted the tankard out of the slopped puddle. Back home he’d have lamented that loss of ale and held back a copper cutpiece when he paid his reckoning. He wouldn’t do that for the sake of this curiously scented brew. By all that was sacred and profane, whatever possessed the Solurans to throw spruce twigs into their tuns?
Besides, he wasn’t spending Halferan coin. Planir had given him a fat purse of Soluran-minted silver. Had the wizards got such wealth in trade, he wondered, or summoned it up from the earth with their magic, like the gold that the Eldritch Kin supposedly stamped out of sunbeams? At least it didn’t vanish after a day and night like Eldritch gold in chimney corner stories.
Moving slowly through the tavern, he seized his chance of a stool when a drover stood up to leave. One of the maidservants arrived with Corrain’s laden wooden plate, wiped the table, swept up the previous customer’s leavings and departed without a word.
Corrain ate quickly. Bread, but coarser and sprinkled with some pungent seeds which he’d never encountered back home. Cheese, pale as lard, not warmed to rich gold with the marigold petals which the Halferan maids used in their dairying. Its flavour hinted at goat’s milk mixed with the offerings of the local rough-coated black cattle.
No bacon, but that wasn’t surprising given the time of the year. Corrain had seen the herds of pigs being driven down to the wharves, to be ferried across to the woodland for final fattening on acorns and beechmast. There would be feasting hereabouts come autumn equinox. Meantime, Corrain was content to eat succulent venison, plump after summer’s browsing.
He looked around the taproom as he ate, alert for any redhead coming into the tavern. He wasn’t ready to give up on Kusint just yet and who better to carry his messages far and wide, than the lad’s own Folk, so well known for their incorrigible wandering. They were the ones bringing the freshly killed deer, the raw, roughly cleaned hides and bundles of antlers across the wide river from the Great Forest.
He glimpsed a sun-burnished copper braid and a beaded leather-clad shoulder amid the shifting throng at the counter. Cramming the last of the food into his mouth, Corrain left the plate and half-drunk ale and eased himself through the crowd.
As he got closer, he saw why getting to the counter was proving so difficult. That shoulder belonged to a Forest lass wearing a tightly fitted and sleeveless leather jerkin ornamented with tiny bone beads dyed in myriad colours. Her plain hide leggings were as closely cut as that jerkin and cross-laced up the outside of the girl’s thighs. The Folk might wear such garb to avoid snagging themselves on tree branches or brambles but the effect on feminine curves was undeniably alluring even in Solura where as many women as men went breeched.
Add to that the Folk’s reputation for sharing their blankets, man or woman, and no wonder the Soluran drovers and traders were crowding around like bees round a honey pot. Not that Corrain had any inclination to casual lust.
The Soluran men suddenly backed away. One raised his hands in surrender and offered what sounded like an apology. Corrain didn’t understand the local tongue but he could see the faint score across the man’s grimy palm swelling into a thin line of blood. That was something else he remembered about Solura; the women mostly carried blades whether they wore breeches or skirts and used them as readily as the men.
The Forest woman looked around, her green eyes hard as agate. She was assuredly a woman, Corrain realised, now that he saw her face. Her sharp features were weathered and seamed with an old pale scar cutting through one sandy brow. She owed her slender figure not to girlhood but to scant foraging in the Forest through the lean summer seasons.
Corrain wasn’t about to try fighting his way to her side and get a knife in his ribs for his efforts. He turned away and saw that a featherweight of luck had drifted his way. The seat which he’d left was still empty, his plate and ale untouched. He sat and lifted the tankard. Soluran brews might taste peculiar but he was thirsty.
Conversation swirled around him; the Soluran tongue, the speech of the Forest and the Mountains equally incomprehensible.
‘Is this seat taken?’
He looked up, startled to be addressed in fluent Tormalin.
It was the Forest woman. Well, the Folk were as well known for their talent with unfamiliar tongues as they were for their skills with song, harp and flute as they wandered the highways and byways. Priests and nursery tales agreed that Trimon had given these gifts to his most favoured people.
‘May I sit?’ The woman looked quizzically at him.
‘If you wish.’ Corrain set his tankard down and gestured to an empty stool.
‘You didn’t want to try a roll of the runes with me?’ She squared her shoulders to emphasise the alluring swell of her breasts.
‘No.’ Corrain took a drink. She would have to do better than that to get a rise out of him.
‘What brings you so far from home?’
To his relief, she seemed honestly curious rather than piqued by his lack of interest in bedding her. Regardless, Corrain took a moment to survey the taproom before answering. He had no time to waste on some Soluran buck who might hope to impress the woman by challenging this outsider straying onto Pastamar’s turf.
Since the man with the cut hand had vanished and no one else was casting disgruntled glares his way, he looked at the woman. Dress her in modest Caladhrian garb and anyone would take her for Ensaimin born and bred with that accent, whatever her colouring.
‘I am looking for one of your kind,’ he said quietly. ‘Of the Blood as I think you say. A young man called Kusint.’
Her sandy brows lifted. ‘What is he to you?’
‘A friend. No—’ Corrain raised his hand in apology. ‘I forfeited his friendship.’
‘How?’ She angled her head like a curious bird.
‘Through arrant folly which, forgive me, I don’t propose to discuss with you.’ Corrain replied politely as he could. He still wanted this woman’s help spreading word through her kith and kin.
But he wasn’t fool enough to admit his stupidity here. The merest mention of Mandarkin would draw Soluran ears and one listener with a passable command of Tormalin could share his crimes with this whole tavern. Thrown into Lord Pastiss’s dungeons with no one interested in his excuses? Corrain wouldn’t wager goatshit against gold coin that Archmage Planir would rescue him to further enrage these Soluran wizards whose help he sought.
The woman pursed pale lips. ‘What do you want with him?’
‘To ask for his forgiveness.’ Corrain found that surprisingly easy to admit to a stranger. ‘To ask for his help in putting things right. Not that I have any right to ask,’ he acknowledged. ‘He had no part in my folly.’
The faintest of smiles softened the woman’s harsh face but only for an instant.
‘What is that you wear?’ She pointed at the link of chain protruding from his linen cuff. ‘Are you some fugitive from lawful justice?’
Corrain was momentarily tempted to say yes. He certainly felt guilty for leaving Lady Zurenne and her daughters amid the chaos and dust of Halferan. But he was making amends for their sake as much as for his own and he was here because he had offered himself up to the Archmage’s judgement.
‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I am no fugitive.’
Her slight smile teased him once again. ‘Very well.’
Corrain expected her to say something further, to ask more questions. Instead she rose to her feet and walked away and left the crowded tavern without another word.
Would she share his message for Kusint with her people? Corrain had no idea. He looked at the dregs of his ale and couldn’t face drinking any more of the stuff.
Someone spoke and he looked up to see two Soluran merchants with brimming tankards and expectant expressions. If Corrain couldn’t understand them, their meaning was plain enough.
‘Have the table and welcome.’ He made his own way out to the street.
He should go the market square next, he decided. There would surely be more Forest Folk mingling with the peddlers and tawdry merchants.