The Rose of the World (45 page)

Leta stared at him, uncomprehending.

‘I need no company,’ the Rosa Eldi said from behind him, but the man was not listening.

The Lord of Forent reached out now and traced the line of the girl’s cheek. Her dark skin was velvet-soft and she was colouring now, embarrassed by his unambiguous attention. ‘You have the appearance of an Istrian,’ he said softly. ‘How well you would look in my seraglio. Where are you from?’

‘My l-lord,’ she stuttered. ‘You know me. I am Leta Gullwing . . .’

‘A pretty name for a pretty girl. I look forward to better making your acquaintance, though I cannot offer you the most luxurious of bedchambers on my ship.’

‘Your ship, my king?’

Rui blinked. Of course, he still wore Ravn Asharson’s likeness. No wonder the girl was so uncomfortable – the King of the Northern Isles making a frank sexual advance to her right in front of his wife! He laughed. ‘No matter. You will know soon enough.’

He stared with some distaste at the bawling baby in her arms and for just a moment Ulf stopped crying and scrutinised him in return. Then he reached up to tug at the beard he so loved to play with, and his fingers slipped right through the illusion. There was a moment when little Ulf glared in fury at this deception, then he set to howling with a vengeance. The noise rang out around the chamber, echoed off the stonework, the pillars and the beams.

The heir to the northern throne had certainly inherited a powerful set of lungs. And if it continued to wail so, it would surely attract unwanted attention.

Rui glared at Virelai. ‘Make it be quiet!’

Virelai looked alarmed. ‘It’s a baby. What do I know about babies?’

Little Ulf was reaching tantrum pitch now, his chubby face livid.

The Lord of Forent reached for his dagger. ‘Then I will have to shut it up myself—’

‘No!’ Leta Gullwing wrapped herself around the child, muffling its cries in her bosom.

‘Lucky boy,’ Rui grinned as the baby subsided at long last into choking sobs. ‘You can show me how you do that later. But now we must leave. Bring what you need for the child’s comfort.’ He watched as she frowned in consternation, then gathered bedclothes, linens, and a well-chewed wooden teething-ring into already full arms. ‘But why, sire . . . ?’ she started to ask.

The shimmering man hastened across the royal chamber, opened the outer door and consulted a figure standing outside.

‘Hurry, my lord,’ he called back.

It was as if the proximity of the magic which created the shimmer had also somehow disguised the man’s voice from her. Now that he was at a distance, it came into abrupt focus. The Rose of the World knew that voice well. Betrayal vied for a moment with a terrible upswelling of joy.

‘Come along, now, Leta,’ she said distractedly, overwhelmed by these unfamiliar emotions. ‘All shall be well, all manner of things shall be well . . .’

Down dark corridors they walked at a determined pace: a goddess, a mother with babe in arms, a sorcerer, a usurper and a traitor. They passed knots of folk in court dress, who bowed; they passed retainers and servants and others who did not appear to see them at all.

Virelai felt lightheaded. He thought it was probably the use of so much magic, which was working far better than he had ever expected. Rui Finco still looked a perfect match for Ravn Asharson: a remarkable achievement given the state of terror he had been in at the Allfair when he had last set eyes on the man. And Erol Bardson: well, all he had done there was make him dark and change the cast of his face. He could not help but congratulate himself when they passed two richly arrayed women on the stairs and they carried on chattering without surcease; but when they had passed around the corner he found himself frowning. He had not cast an invisibility glamour: so why was it they had not been seen? The faces of others they passed went suddenly blank. People stopped moving. It was most bizarre.
Perhaps
, he thought with a desperate need to rationalise,
I am doing it without even realising in my wish to be out of here as fast and as safely as possible. That must be the reason.

But he knew it wasn’t.

Even if he had not known her to be the Goddess, he would have recognised that the Rose of the World was a different woman to the one he had brought to the Allfair last year; for that woman had been all temptation and compliance, a creature who could be manipulated and gained from, whose power was easily tapped and stolen. A woman who had no idea of who she was. The woman with them now was another matter. He could feel the power emanating from her in waves. It was diffuse and golden; unchannelled, benevolent; now he knew her for who and what she was, he felt terror and awe grip him whenever he looked at her. And so he made every effort
not
to look at her.

They were about to cross the courtyard outside the west gate when there came a cry of warning. Men with torches appeared suddenly along the castle walls. A great flurry of activity was occurring in their wake: orders were shouted, though the words were carried on winds above their heads, and so they ran, Rui Finco, hauling the pale woman with him, the others keeping pace – through the courtyard, along the wall, between the trees dotting the snow-covered sward leading down from the castle towards the harbour. As they cleared the last of the great oaks, a contingent of armed soldiers came up from the Sentinel Towers to meet them.

Rui broke out into a sweat. He drew his sword, but the man at the front of the group merely saluted. ‘We’ve come to escort the Queen and the Prince to safety my lord, as you ordered. Been looking everywhere for them, but it seems you found them first.’

The Lord of Forent stared at him, trying to concentrate on the cadence of the Eyran language. ‘Ah . . . yes.’ He paused. ‘I’ll come with you.’

The soldier looked anxious. ‘Won’t you be leading the men to battle, sire?’

Something had gone badly wrong. Rui Finco assimilated what little information there was available to him and tried not to panic. He nodded furiously. ‘Of course, man, of course. But I must make sure my wife and child are safe first of all. Future of the kingdom, and all . . . You . . . ah . . . muster the troops . . . all of them . . . up in the . . .’ he searched for the correct vocabulary ‘the . . . ah . . . courtyard there.’ He waved vaguely back up the slope towards the open ground they had crossed some minutes before.

Now the man looked thoroughly alarmed. ‘Me, sire? I’m just a sergeant. They won’t follow me.’

‘You’re a general now,’ Rui declared, clapping the man on the shoulder. He raised his voice.‘You hear me?’ he addressed the rest of the contingent. ‘This good soldier – ’ he broke off, looked the bewildered man in the eye – ‘what’s your name?’ he hissed.

‘Guthrun, sire,’ the man said slowly, ‘Guthrun Hart. Navigator on the
Sur’s Raven
, sire, you remember?’

Rui winked.‘Got you there!’ He grinned, Ravn Asharson’s grin in perfect replica. Then he shouted aloud once more, ‘Guthrun Hart is your general now: I’ve promoted him. Do what he says and pass the word!’

‘Up in the West Square, my lord?’ Guthrun sounded dubious. ‘Not on the quays?’

‘I need to address the troops,’ Rui returned. ‘Put some . . . backbone into them.’

Guthrun absorbed this. Then, ‘Aye, sire,’ he said at last and gave his king the open-handed salute used by generals. It felt strange to do so, but also satisfying. Bela would never believe it. ‘Perhaps if I were to take a token from your highness?’ he suggested suddenly. ‘So that there’s no question—’

Now Rui Finco was irritated. ‘Oh, for Falla’s sake, man—’

‘Falla?’

Shit.
He winked. ‘Your ears must be deceiving you, Guthrun. Here.’ He fiddled at his swordbelt. ‘Give me your . . . weapon, and take mine.’

A massive smile wreathed the soldier’s face. ‘Yes, sir!’

A moment later Rui found himself carrying a worn but serviceable Eyran sword, while Guthrun examined his new weapon. It was not as richly worked as he had hoped: there was no pattern welding, no silver on it at all. And it felt a bit light: not much heft. All in all, it was rather disappointing. Still, he considered, Ravn was a fighting man with a reputation for fast footwork: and this was probably not his finest sword.

And so he raised it aloft and led the soldiers away from where any invading force was most likely to land.

Out of sight, they started to run now, their feet crunching in the new snow; but as they emerged into a cobbled alley with a view down the hill between the ramshackle dwellings and warehouses, the Lord of Forent skidded to a halt.

The Istrian fleet, which he had left anchored well out of sight around the headland, with clear orders to await his signal for ambush, was invisible no longer. Just beyond the mouth of the harbour a flotilla of ships was limned in silver by a fickle moon, with one vessel well ahead of the rest.

Rui Finco groaned. ‘That bloody hothead Tycho Issian—’

Erol Bardson paled, his ambitious dreams burning away like morning mist. ‘They’ll raise the chainwall and trap them. It’ll be a massacre.’ When he turned to the Lord of Forent, the whites showed all around his eyes.‘We should flee inland,’ he said suddenly. ‘Take horses to Broadfell and bribe a shipman to take us off down the east coast.’

‘Cross a hundred miles of hard country in a blizzard with the Queen of Eyra and a bawling child?’ Rui Finco grimaced. Then he turned to the sorcerer. ‘Can you transform her?’ He indicated the Rosa Eldi, whose lambent eyes were fixed on the dark waters of the harbour below them.

Virelai shook his head vigorously. ‘N-no, lord,’ he stammered. ‘I am exhausted.’

‘We should slit her throat, as the old woman suggested; the babe, too,’ Bardson said viciously. ‘It has to be done at some point anyway . . .’

At this, the Rose of Elda turned her compelling gaze upon him and the Earl of Broadfell snarled like a cornered wolf and made the sign of Sur’s anchor; which had no effect on her at all, for all she did was to smile at him: a smile of immense compassion and understanding.

‘Don’t use your spells on me, you witch! Where I come from, we would place a sealskin bag over your head and stone you to death.’ He backed away from her.

She stepped forward and reached out to him. But instead of succumbing to the gentle suggestion she tried to lay upon him, Erol Bardson lashed out furiously. His fist connected with an inexorable snap on the hinge of that exquisite jaw. For a moment she swayed where she stood; then those mesmeric green eyes rolled back in her skull and the Queen of the Northern Isles – part woman; part goddess – crumpled till she lay, white skin, white robe and white fur, upon the white, white snow.

Rui Finco was aghast. ‘In Falla’s name, what have you done?’ He stared at the Eyran traitor. ‘You’ve killed her! By the Lady, you’ve killed our only bargaining piece!’ He turned and grabbed Virelai by the arm. ‘You – get down there and bring her back to us: I need her alive!’

The sorcerer quailed. ‘I— she’s . . . She—’

‘She’s what? Dead? Well, at least make her seem alive. She’s no good to us like this. Do whatever you have to do!’ The Lord of Forent hauled him by the collar and slung him down roughly beside the prone body.

She’s the Goddess. She cannot die . . .

Virelai felt the words he had been about to blurt out hammering around his head. The freezing slush soaked through the knees of his breeches, but he didn’t feel it at all. His fingers quested out towards her, faltered. It would be the first time he’d touched her since the Moonfell Plain, and he had known so little about her then. He was ashamed, frightened. Even unconscious, she terrified him now that he knew her true nature; and if he were to touch her, surely she would know his? A man who had sold her the length and breadth of the Istrian coast; who had harboured unclean desires for her himself, desires which had remained unfulfilled only because he had not been capable; who had agreed to sell her to the man who had launched a false war to steal her back. Surely, given the untapped and hidden power he sensed inside that frail exterior, she would rip his soul apart?

Trembling, he reached out and brushed her neck. A voice sounded in his head, as if from a very great distance: and what it said shocked him. He jerked back, as if burned, and scrambled to his feet so quickly his head spun.

‘She— I—’ He rubbed his face with hands that no longer felt like his own. ‘She’s . . . alive, my lord. She’ll come round, given time.’ He averted his eyes, both from the Istrian lord, and from the woman on the ground.

Rui Finco glared at him, then decided further argument would gain him nothing. He turned to the Earl of Broadfell. ‘Carry her,’ he ordered brusquely, and when the man demurred, he drew a dagger and made his determination clear. ‘We’ve got to get her onto a ship and away from here!’

Tycho Issian strode up and down the vessel, sword in hand, shrieking orders and imprecations. The rowers rowed hard, expecting to be spitted at any moment. You only had to take one look at the man to know he had gone completely off his head. He hadn’t even stopped to take the sail down, so here they were in darkest night, picked out as clear as day with thirty square yards of undyed white canvas flapping about above them, as large a target as any archer could ever ask for. But why Cera and Prionan and the others had so witlessly followed him into this peril, who could say? Everyone knew that the harbour at Halbo had some sort of special defence system – some said magic, others that it was some kind of mechanical device. They waited for some disaster to befall, cringing as they came in under the towering black cliffs.

As they sailed in abreast of the Sentinel Towers some of the rowers from the hilltribes of Farem began to get agitated. They cast down their oars and dragged at their shackles, jabbering incomprehensibly in their native tongue and pointing at the water. Tycho took the lash from the whipman and whipped them himself. Torn between their terror of the mad lord and of the unknown magic lurking around them, they buckled to the immediate threat to their flesh and took up their oars again: their souls were lost, no matter what they did now.

Ravn Asharson, King of the Northern Isles, stared out of the map room window in disbelief. ‘They have lost their minds,’ he croaked.