The Rose of the World (39 page)

Then those eyes flashed with a sudden, unmistakable shock of recognition.

Saro frowned. He had encountered the Rosa Eldi amid the killing fields of the Moonfell Plain; but this was not she. This was but a simulacrum, manufactured by a sorcerer in the confines of his hellish laboratory from whatever unpromising material today’s merchant had brought in. There was no possibility that this creature could know him. Unless, he thought gloomily, the man had travelled up from Altea with some poor servant girl from the Vingo home.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked suddenly, even though he knew it would displease Tycho Issian to have the girl speak and ruin the illusion.

‘The island of Rockfall,’ the figure replied tersely, and a sudden hardness had come back into her. He watched her fists ball at her sides and a tremor run through her thin frame as if she would launch herself at him then and there and rip his heart out with her fingernails.

And then he knew her . . .

All at once, a great surge of adrenalin crashed back into him. He grinned stupidly, a man reprieved from his own death sentence. ‘Katla Aransen,’ he said softly, his voice almost a whisper. ‘Is it you in there? Are you truly alive?’

At this moment there was a commotion at the door, as if the guard there was scuffling with someone. A moment later, a tall man strode into the entrance. He glanced at the naked form standing on the rich Circesian rug and recoiled.

Virelai hurriedly bundled the woman into the encompassing sabatka and drew her away to the door. It would not do to show his handiwork too freely: the Lord of Cantara might not have him burned for witchcraft, but there were many others who would have no hesitation in sending him to a pyre.

The man stared at them, then shook his head as if collecting himself and came forward. ‘Lord Tycho Issian?’ he said, addressing himself to Saro.

Saro, seated behind the great desk, stared at him, bewildered.

The Lord of Cantara unwound himself sinuously from the day-bed, adjusted his robe and stood before the visitor, his face like thunder.‘I am Tycho Issian. Who are you and what business do you have with me?’

‘I have some information for you,’ the hooded man said.

The Lord of Cantara frowned harder. ‘Come and talk to me tomorrow,’ he said curtly. ‘I have other matters to attend to now.’

‘So I saw,’ Erno returned smoothly. ‘This information is about your daughter.’

Tycho bridled. ‘My daughter?’

The guard, having retrieved his composure, stood awkwardly by the door. Tycho afforded him a single, scathing glance. ‘Get yourself gone, Berio. Attend my orders.’ He waited until the man had closed the door, then asked smoothly, ‘How could you possibly know anything about my daughter?’

‘I have seen her.’

The Lord of Cantara sucked his breath in between his teeth. ‘Where?’

Erno smiled. ‘I have a proposition for you, my lord,’ he said and watched with dismay as Tycho Issian’s attention wandered to the shrouded woman behind him. He looked impatient, distracted, utterly uninterested.

‘I heard that your lordship may have taken delivery of a woman from the Northern Isles this day,’ Erno persisted loudly.

Those sharp black eyes swung back to focus on him. They were brimming with malice. ‘What of it?’ he snapped.

‘I would buy her from you.’

‘I will not sell her!’ the Istrian lord said flatly.

‘Not even for information as to your beloved daughter’s whereabouts?’

Tycho Issian gazed at him with narrow eyes. ‘I will make a bargain with you,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me what you know and I will allow you to live.’

This scenario was not playing itself out at all as Erno had expected. He felt suddenly foolish, out of his depth. He had thought to make a trade with a distraught and loving father; not a reptilian creature with all its thoughts bent on satisfying some immediate and perverse lust.

‘Unhood yourself,’ the Lord of Cantara demanded. ‘Let me see who it is who dares to thrust himself past my guard and into my private quarters at such an hour.’

Slowly, Erno drew back his hood.

Tycho took in the visitor’s ill-dyed mane of hair, his light eyes and strong jaw. ‘What is your name?’

Erno had prepared for this. ‘Alesto Karo,’ he said.

‘Your parents had a fondness for sacred poetry, did they?’ the Lord of Cantara spat venemously.

Erno nodded, disconcerted by the man’s response. He had taken the name from one of the best-known ancient Istrian ballads, a lay so popular it was recited even by the northern bards. Alesto – the mortal man plucked from Elda to pleasure the Goddess herself, who had sacrificed himself in her fires for her love. It had seemed quaintly appropriate at the time.

But Tycho Issian’s face had become dark with blood, as if a storm were brewing inside him. A moment later it was unleashed. ‘You think to steal my goddess, do you?’ he roared. ‘You come here offering lies and extortion in the presence of this vision! You slimy worm, you fetid toad, you filthy snake! Alesto the Lover, indeed. More like Alesto the Crawler! You are not fit to lick the soles of her feet – you . . . you . . . dungbeetle!’

Erno swung around to see to whom the madman could be referring, and saw only the draped figure by the door. Confusion set in; then with a horrible rush of intuition he could not explain, he knew her. ‘Katla!’ he cried in Eyran ‘Is that you?’

There came a sharp intake of breath from the figure. Then it simply said, ‘Erno . . .’

His heart ignited. He whirled around only to find the Lord of Cantara advancing upon him murderously, the front of his robe thrust out by some giant erection. Now Erno saw the imminent danger Katla faced; and at the same time cared nothing for the peril he was himself in. In fact, he realised, he cared nothing for anything or anyone beyond Katla Aransen at this moment. If he could only save her, the rest of the world could burn . . .

He put his hands out in a placatory gesture.

‘My lord, I have not finished with my bargaining—’

This drew Tycho up short. He stared at the man called Alesto suspiciously.

‘I know that your lordship is engaged upon a holy war with the North,’ Erno said as quickly as his facility with the Old Tongue would allow him. ‘I have heard tell of a mighty weapon which would help you win this war. An artefact which has the power – they say – over life and death.’

Both Virelai and Saro became deathly still; and as if sensing their attention, Tycho listened.

‘It is a moodstone, graced by the touch of the Goddess, to become what the hill-people call a deathstone. It can heal the sick and raise the dead. It can strike men down in their tracks. Imagine what you could do with such an object, such a weapon. I know a man who could lead you to it, if you will only give me the girl—’

‘No!’

It was a wail of inhuman despair. Behind the Lord of Cantara and the man who would trade all Elda for the sake of a single woman, there was a sudden blur of motion. Then with savage strength, Saro Vingo pushed the Istrian lord aside, his face a mask of hatred, and hurled himself at Erno Hamson. His arm came back and then descended as fast as a striking hawk, and the candles in the chamber lent whatever it was he held in his hand a wild blue light.

It all happened so quickly that Erno had no understanding of what had transpired. It was as if one of Sur’s lightning bolts had struck him out of a clear sky. He swayed where he stood, blinking stupidly through a thick curtain of blood, trying to recall what it was he had been saying, and why, but all he could think of was sitting on the mole at Rockfall harbour on a late autumn evening, fishing for crabs with a girl whose hair flared crimson in the dying sun, wanting to lean over and kiss her, but fearing that if he did so he would spoil the moment.

That perfect moment.

A slow, rapturous smile spread itself across his face. ‘Ah, Katla,’ he whispered, ‘Katla . . .’ And then he crashed to the floor, his cloak billowing up and over his ruined head like the wings of a crow mantling over its kill.

For two – three – seconds no one moved. Then Katla Aransen leapt across the space between her and the fallen man and with a single practised motion swept the exposed greatsword from the scabbard across the dead man’s back. It was too big for her, and heavier than she had expected; but even so, the weapon sang in her hands, a fire which burned up her arms.

The Lord of Cantara had no hesitation in saving his own neck. He grabbed Saro Vingo and shoved him at the robed woman with all his might. Saro went stumbling, the bloodstained paperweight flying from his hand to shatter into a thousand bright blue shards against the far wall, and collapsed in a heap at Katla’s feet. There, instead of hurling himself upright again or trying to escape, he knelt on the floor, breathing hard, his throat stretched out and vulnerable, his hands spread, willing her to deal him the death he deserved.

For a long moment they gazed at one another. Saro could feel the heat of her loathing scorching through the azure veil. He waited for the killing stroke to fall.

And Katla would gladly have dealt him the death he sought, were it not for the sudden appearance of the guard.

‘Don’t kill her!’ shrieked Tycho Issian.‘Just get the damned sword away from her—’

Berio looked at Katla, a bizarre apparition in azure silk. Istrian women knew nothing about swords – you could tell by the way she was holding it. He laughed. He had been interrupted by a shout just as he was in the pleasurable process of taking a dump; which was in itself annoying – but to be interrupted just to disarm some loopy whore was beyond a joke.

‘Come on, love,’ he said reasonably, advancing on her with his own weapon in his hand. ‘Drop the sword.’

His patronising tone infuriated Katla, even if the foreign words were no more than a jumble of sound. With a howl of rage she ran at him and took his arm off neatly at the elbow, sword and all. It described a graceful arc, gouting an elegant fountain of blood through the air, and landed at Virelai’s feet, spattering gore up the front of his robe. The sorcerer – already deathly sallow – paled further; and fainted.

More guards were coming: with the preternatural senses of a woman suddenly eager for survival, she could hear their footsteps on the stairs. She glared at the southern lord, at the boy kneeling on the floor, at the fallen sorcerer, the dying guard. Bending swiftly, she pulled back the cloak and kissed the dead man gently on the forehead.

‘Erno Hamson: I will avenge you, I swear it.’

Then she turned and ran, the greatsword tucked awkwardly under her arm.

Saro Vingo cast one wild look at Virelai’s still form, then another at Tycho Issian, standing stunned as if by the sight of so much blood, so close to his own precious person, and fled after Katla Aransen.

He caught up with her in the stairwell, facing off a pair of uniformed guards, bemused by the sight of a silk-shrouded houri wielding a huge and gory sword. As it was, the greatsword was not an ideal weapon in such an enclosed space, but the guards seemed to be making up their minds to deal with the bizarre situation. The first one drew his own sword – a stubby, brutal-looking thing – and advanced up the stairs. Made nervous by the sudden appearance of Saro in her peripheral vision, Katla lunged forward with a swiftness the guard had little expected and stuck him with considerable precision through the neck. Cartilage creaked and parted. Blood fountained. Kicking his flailing body off the point of her blade into the path of his companion, she spun around, teeth bared at Saro like a beast at bay. Red-streaked and lethal, the greatsword hovered suddenly at his own throat.

‘Tell me why I should not kill you!’ she demanded fiercely.

‘If you kill me, I cannot save the world.’

‘A large claim.’ Through the azure veil, eyes glittered balefully. ‘I have sworn to avenge my friend, who came to save me.’

Saro looked anguished. ‘I had no choice. Oh—’

Tycho Issian had emerged from his chamber into the shadows at the end of the passage, a curved and wicked-looking blade in his hand.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve any more useful paperweights?’ Katla asked scornfully. In the same breath, she kicked out at the second man, catching him on the kneecap so that he swore and lowered his guard. The angle was too narrow for the greatsword. Frustrated, Katla shoved past him like a charging bull and sprang down the remaining stairs. ‘All yours!’ she called back over her shoulder.

Saro regarded the recovering guard nervously: what use was weapons training when you had no weapon? In desperation, he drew himself up and adopted his loathsome brother’s haughtiest tone. ‘For Falla’s sake, man, get out of the way!’

Born to a life in service in that most orthodox of cities, the guard all but bowed and stepped aside politely. If the man had had a forelock, he’d most likely have tugged it.

Taking his opportunity, Saro dived after Katla, stopping only to retrieve the dead guard’s sword.

The Eyran girl ran on to the end of the passage and down another flight of stairs, a blaze of azure against the dark sandstone walls. Down here on the second level of the castle, where visiting nobility usually stayed, all was silent and dark, since no one had bothered to light the sconces. Neither had they stationed any guards on this floor; but pursuit was not far behind, and Saro had little more idea of the way out than the robed woman who ran grimly beside him. They passed door after door, but instead of checking for a possible escape route, Katla just kept running. At last, turning a tight corner, the greatsword caught in the billowing blue robe and tripped her headlong, then spun away from her with a clatter fit to wake the dead.

‘Sur’s bollocks!’

A moment later she was on her feet, seething with bad temper. She tore the veil from the rest of the sabatka with a vicious rip, revealing ragged hair of barely shoulder length, distinctly more red now than gold. Then she grabbed up the back hem of the robe and knotted it up at her waist, transforming it into a most outlandish garment indeed. Grinning triumphantly, she reached to retrieve the blade, only to find it in Saro’s hands.

At once, she sprang at him, a bundle of coiled energy, Eyran obscenities pouring from her. Hatred seemed to crackle from her skin, her hair, her eyes: she looked wild, foreign, mad, possessed.