Authors: Jude Fisher
Something in this description sounded improbable to Saro, but he could not quite think what had made him so uncharitable in these dire circumstances. ‘Have they caught these people?’ he asked instead.
‘Ah,’ said Fabel. ‘They took the girl who was with them.’
‘The girl?’ The idea of a band of rapists accompanied by a woman reinforced his sense of unease.
‘A rough-looking young woman from the northern isles. Climbed the Goddess’s Rock she had, too, the harlot.’
Saro’s heart turned to ice. ‘And they have her still?’ he said, thinking of the figure in the boat.
‘Going to burn her now,’ Fabel said with a grimace of distaste. ‘Feel I ought to go along to show my face – a Vingo presence, you know, given the state of poor old Tanto, but I could never stomach a burning. Nasty way to go, Falla’s flames or no.’
A vision of the scarecrow figure in the midst of the guards offered itself to Saro then. It was Katla Aransen they had, he knew it now. And the woman in the boat? No time for such conundrums. Grim-faced, he strode across the chamber and into his own room, and returned a moment later with his sword in his hand. Then, without a word to his bewildered uncle or sobbing father, he disappeared through the door-flap and began to run as if he could feel the scalding breath of Falla’s great cat on his neck . . .
‘Mother, Mother!’
Alisha Skylark hammered on the stars-and-moon door of the old charm-seller’s wagon. Frustratingly, there was no response. ‘Mother, we must go now, before the riots reach us. There’s no time: we must make haste!’ Nothing. She applied her eye to the crack at the hinges and was rewarded by dim flares of light from the interior of the wagon. ‘Mother!’ she cried, ‘I know you’re in there!’
A moment later the door opened minutely and moonlight flicked off a dark and beady eye. Then a clawed hand shot out, collared Alisha and pulled her inside. The door slammed shut behind her.
‘Shush,’ said Fezack Starsinger, laying a finger on her daughter’s mouth. ‘You’ll disrupt the crystal.’
In the gloom of the wagon, the great rock glowed and sparked. Alisha had never seen it as much as glint without the impetus of human contact before, but no one was touching it now.
‘The magic is back,’ the old woman whispered, hugging herself as if to contain this marvellous secret. ‘It’s truly, truly back, at last . . .’
‘Mother, when we looked into the crystal yesterday, all we saw was death and hatred, and the fires, the burning fires—’
‘Something has changed. Something has interrupted the pattern.’
‘Let me see.’
Alisha arranged herself on the floor and, with a deep breath, laid her hands on either side of the great rock. Patterns of coloured light chased themselves across her face, flooded out across the wagon, to pick out a polished tin mirror here, a blue pitcher there; bundles of hanging feathers and shells, serried rows of little pots. Distended shadows danced out across the floor, travelled up the old woman’s patched robe, the shiny bald forehead, the piercings and topknot. Within the crystal tiny figures ran about wildly, brandishing swords and torches, mouths open in silent shouts. Pockets of fighting went on between the tents: Eyrans against Istrians, Istrians against Eyrans, in threes and fours and fives, and in larger, more amorphous groups where space allowed. She saw a tall fair-haired man battling a pair of blue-cloaked guards, a black-bearded man at his shoulder grimly wielding a small but deadly axe. She saw a thin-looking lad in stained leather being tied to a hastily-erected stake; she saw Istrian slaves running to and fro with armfuls of smashed wood as fuel for the pyre. Further down the strand, a group of them were hacking at a northern faering. Another boat lay broken apart on the shore, its ribs white in the moonlight like the carcass of a great sea-creature. She saw a young, dark man with desperation in his eyes running for his life, sword aloft, into the middle of the fray; and another, keeping to the edges of the fighting, staring over heads and between burning pavilions as if he searched for something lost.
In the opposite direction, she scanned the unrelieved darkness, until she found Virelai the map-seller watched over by a cruel-eyed man with a curved and bloodied knife, scrying into a bowl of water which he held steady with one hand. With his other, he held a black cat tightly by the neck. She stared in disbelief. Familiar-magic had been forbidden for centuries now; but here was Virelai, the man she had lain with only hours before, who had held her gently and let her rock herself to a climax on his fingers, and had not complained once about his own lack of satisfaction, practising that ancient, abandoned art. Their eyes met. With a gasp, she took her hands off the crystal. At once the images dulled.
‘Did you see it?’ Fezack asked. ‘Did you see the thing that has disrupted the pattern?’
Alisha shook her head, pushing away the unwanted intrusion. After a moment she gathered herself enough to answer her mother. ‘I have seen just what I saw yesterday, no more, no less.’
The old woman clicked her teeth angrily. ‘I have not taught you as well as I thought,’ she said, pushing her daughter aside. ‘Let me show you—’
She squatted down and grabbed the rock roughly. The same scenes of carnage and cruelty tumbled through the crystal facets, until, by the very power of her will, it seemed, Fezack found what she was looking for. ‘There!’ she hissed. ‘See, there!’ She nodded frantically. Alisha craned forward and placed her hands crosswise to her mother’s. At the centre of the scene, something odd was happening. She squinted at it, twisted her head back and forth in case what she saw was caused by the angling of the facets. But no: something was moving through the crowd; something with no shape and no aura; something that cast no moonshadow, though folk moved out of its way as if by instinct. The crystal marked its progress with patterns of dancing energy, shattered waves of light that broke like a wave where it passed.
‘What is it, Mother?’ she asked, awed at last.
‘I do not know,’ the old woman said slowly. ‘But if it can shield itself from the eye of the crystal, it has more power than any natural thing should possess.’
‘Aiee!’
The map-seller shot back from the scrying bowl as if it had scalded him, and the cat yelped piteously as his hand tightened on its throat.
‘What?’ demanded Tycho Issian. ‘What did you see?’
Virelai rubbed his eyes. They were red and sore-looking. ‘Your daughter is alive, in a boat with a northern man—’
Tycho swore foully. ‘And the Rosa Eldi?’
Virelai bowed his head. ‘I thought I saw her, in the crowds at the burning, but I . . . could not be sure.’ How could he tell this murderous man that where he had sensed her, she had pushed his eyes away, that she had clothed herself in shadow and deliberately disappeared from the scrying? That as he searched for her again he had met the eyes of another, also searching?
Tycho grabbed the map-seller up. The scrying bowl upset itself all over the cat, which yowled in disgust. It tried to wrench free from the pale man’s grasp, but Virelai stuffed it swiftly back into its box. Furious at this undignified treatment, it hissed and lashed out, catching him smartly across the knuckles with its razored claws.
‘Ow,’ he wailed, ‘the cat—’
‘Falla take the blasted creature,’ Tycho growled. ‘Take me to the Rosa Eldi.’
At Finn Larson’s booth, Fent found two mercenaries sitting outside, their swords across their knees – a big fellow with a lumpy face and a dwarf, it seemed, as round as an apple. They looked bored. When they saw him coming, they got to their feet and looked a little more engaged.
‘Is the shipmaker within?’ Fent asked carefully. His hands itched.
The two mercenaries exchanged glances. ‘Who wants to know?’
‘Tell him Fent Aranson is here, brother to his intended bride.’
The little man snorted and made an obscene gesture. The big man shoved him into the tent. ‘None of that, Dogo. Watch your mouth.’
A moment later Finn Larson emerged. He looked white about the eyes, a man embroiled in matters that had got out of hand. When he saw Fent standing there, he smiled in relief. ‘Is the fighting over yet, lad?’
‘No,’ said Fent through gritted teeth. The sight of the ship-maker grinning away like a madman was too much to bear. ‘How could you do it?’ he wailed. Tears pricked his eyes. He blinked them away furiously.
Finn looked alarmed. ‘Do what, lad? Your father offered her to me, fair and square, you know—’
‘You know that is not what I mean. How could you give the Istrians the key to the Ravenway?’
Sharp panic infused the shipmaker’s eyes. ‘Not give, lad,’ he managed at last.
‘No,’ said Fent, and his eyes were hard again. ‘You sold it.’
Finn Larson, shocked, looked considerably more so when the Dragon of Wen slid home. Fent withdrew the blade and danced backwards, ready to fend off the mercenaries. The ship-maker stared down at his slit belly. ‘It seems I have eaten well these past years,’ he said puzzledly. Then his knees folded beneath him and he fell face forward.
‘Mam won’t be too happy about that, eh, Knobber?’ said the little man, rolling the body over with his foot. ‘Said to keep him safe, she did.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
There came a howl and a figure lunged past Fent and cast itself on its knees before the body. ‘Father!’ Jenna Larsen wailed.
Fent began to feel uncomfortable, and not just for the blade he felt prod him hard between the kidneys. He released the Dragon of Wen on to the ground.
The pressure stopped. The woman he had seen disrobe at the Gathering appeared in front of him.
‘What in the seven hells did you do that for?’
‘He was betraying Eyra,’ Fent said stiffly.
Mam rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, do grow up,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve lost the King his shipmaker and me a ship.’
Something here was not right: he couldn’t work out whose side these people were on. ‘But he was making ships for Istria . . .’ he started.
‘We all sell our services for the price that suits us, whether it’s money or some ridiculous notion of loyalty to king and country,’ Mam sighed. ‘Me, I prefer money, and that ship was my means of getting more than you can dream of.’
‘My father gave Finn Larson all the money we had,’ Fent said. ‘But if you help me save my sister from the burning, you can have it and welcome.’
Mam laughed. ‘With the old man dead, we can just take it anyway.’
Joz Bearhand, a lump the size of a duck’s egg on his temple, appeared then beside his chief. He marked where the Dragon of Wen lay on the ground at the lad’s feet, bent and picked it up and weighed it in his hands.
‘I’d have been sorry to lose this blade,’ he said slowly. ‘It’s fine workmanship.’ He slid it into his empty scabbard, then looked up. ‘Be a shame to see the girlie burn, Mam. A right shame, and for no good reason.’
‘Sentimental old fool.’ Mam reached up to cuff him across the ear. Then she placed a hand on Jenna’s shoulder. ‘Bring out your father’s coffer and give it to Dogo. Dogo, you make sure she and the money get safely to the boat, right?’
The little man winked at the weeping Jenna. ‘Right enough, boss.’
‘Give the lad your sword.’
‘But—’
‘Give him your sword. You know you’re at your best at close quarters with that wicked little knife.’
Reluctantly, Dogo relinquished his blade into Fent’s hands. Fent looked enquiringly at the mercenary leader, but in response all she did was glare at him. ‘You’ve caused me enough trouble, this night,’ she said. ‘See you don’t cause me any more. Now let’s go get your sister.’
Katla stumbled along in the midst of the guards. She had not realised how difficult it would be to walk quickly with her hands tied so and someone shoving her in the back with a spear-shaft. None of the guards spoke to her; now that they were away from the Gathering, they had reverted to their native Istrian tongue. At one point she caught herself remembering something her father had said after the two officials had visited their tent on that nerve-wracking occasion: how odd it was that the Allfair guard this year consisted solely of Istrian men. She had found her thoughts straying to the inconsequential and irrelevant since the moment they had declared the burning. Was this what people did when they were in fear of their lives, she wondered? Did it take the edge off their panic, to fill their heads with a jumble of nonsense before death came to steal them? As it was, her mortality was not something she’d ever given much thought to. She’d been close to death a few times climbing on the seacliffs near Rockfall: a name that should have given her pause, had she but thought of it. On one memorable occasion, a hold on which she was hauling had without warning come free in a shower of earth and scree and gone whistling past her ear, grazing her forehead as it went. Then, she’d not had time to think of anything at all but holding on with her other hand, jammed securely into a crack, while her feet flailed for purchase a hundred feet above the sea and the jagged rocks below; and as soon as she’d got them back on the rock, she’d scuttled to the top like a frightened rabbit, her mind a white haze of adrenalin. Or fishing with Halli in a storm a mile or more offshore, when the boat they were in had suddenly capsized, sweeping them into the freezing waters. She remembered the grey waves closing over her head, the burning sensation of the salt in her throat, her nose, her eyes; and how lucky they had been that old Fosti Goatbeard and his son had been fishing not a hundred yards away. Old Fosti . . . She found her eyes misting over. Had she not insisted on coming to the Allfair and taking his place in the
Fulmar’s Gift
, she’d not be in this predicament now. It was her own pig-headedness that had got her into this situation, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to get herself out of it.
Up ahead in the distance, she could make out people scurrying about a dark structure – a blocky mass with a mast or something sticking out of it. She puzzled over this for some moments, with boats in her mind. But no vessel had ever looked so cumbersome. It was with some shock that she recognised it at last for what it was: a pyre, ready for the burning. The mast was some pole that had been stuck into the ground to form a stake, the blocky mass a great hummock of firewood stacked at its base. She felt her heart go cold in her. She’d heard tales of the southern burnings – how the Istrians had sent to the fires hundreds of nomad folk they accused of witchcraft and heresy, burning them alive so their souls would flee to the southern Goddess – but she had never expected to see such an atrocity, let alone be the victim whose skin would crisp and char—