The Rose of the World (63 page)

Now Tycho looked thunderous. ‘The Rose? The woman I rescued from the Eyran king? The Rosa Eldi?
My
Rose?’

Virelai nodded dumbly.

The Lord of Cantara regarded him through narrowed eyes, taking this in. Then his face went shuttered and still, a sign that he was calculating something. ‘But if she was his, why has he allied himself to Ravn Asharson . . . Is it a ruse? Does he use the barbarian as his stalking horse, I wonder? Perhaps all is not lost . . .’ He caught Virelai by the shoulders, shook him roughly. ‘Stop this. I need your arts. Pull yourself together, man!’

By the time the lord holding Cera responded to the message, the sun was climbing in the sky and Ravn Asharson was twitching with impatience. Tycho Issian appeared on the battlements in his finest garb: beside him stood a tall figure in the flowing green silk of an Istrian sabatka. In her arms, a baby was cradled.

Ravn caught his breath, felt a stabbing pain in his heart.

‘It is her!’ he cried.

Rahe frowned. ‘It is a veiled woman. It could be anyone.’

‘I would know my wife anywhere.’

Rahe stared up at the battlements, his white beard bristling with distrust. Then he made an incantation and, shuddering, disappeared. In his place, a kestrel hovered. It perched for a second on the startled king’s shoulder then, digging its talons sharply into the skin, it gathered itself and soared into the air. Straight as an arrow it flew for the castle, circled briefly over the heads of the Lord of Cantara and his entourage, then planed swiftly sideways and returned to the Eyran lines. It came to rest on the grassy sward by the river, where it stood, head down, tiny breast visibly palpating. Just as Ravn thought it was about to expire, its shape shimmered blearily, and in its place an old man lay prostrate on the ground, gasping for breath.

After what seemed an age, Rahe pushed himself clumsily to his feet and, swaying, lurched back to the King, who regarded him ruefully.

‘If the small matter of shape-shifting can reduce you to near death, I am concerned that your powers may not be such as you vaunted, Master Magician.’

Rahe drew himself up.‘Shape-shifting is no “small matter”, my boy: it is perhaps the greatest transformation a mage can perform, for it requires both a spell of Making and Unmaking, rather than a mere spell of Seeming.’

Ravn shifted from one foot to the other, possibly a displacement activity to stop him from kicking the mage. ‘What did you see?’

‘It is the Rose,’ the mage pronounced mournfully. ‘Only her lips were visible, but, ah: how well I remember those lips!’

Ravn crushed the question which begged to be aired. Then he asked: ‘And my son?’

Rahe shrugged. ‘There was a child in her arms. Ask me no details. Babies are babies: they all look the same.’

Now a white pigeon came winging its way from the castle.

Ravn stared at it, one eyebrow raised. ‘A messenger bird, mage, or do they also have a shape-shifter?’

The old man looked away, irritated.

‘Only one way to find out,’ muttered Ravn, taking up his bow.

Down came the bird, cleanly spitted. A dead bird, that was all. A warrior retrieved it for the king.

Ravn unwound the fabric from the bird’s tail.
‘The woman and child are my hostages,’
he read.
‘Leave now, or we shall see whether your heir can fly.’
He balled the silk up in his fist. ‘By the god, I shall rip his heart out!’ He turned to Rahe. ‘Can you not turn yourself into a firedrake and incinerate him where he stands?’

The mage spread his hands apologetically. ‘Unfortunately, my lord king, I can only transform myself into creatures which still exist in this world; and the firedrake has been extinct for a great time now.’

‘Well, a lion, then; an eagle – tear his eyes out, then carry my queen and son back to me.’

‘A lion could never leap so high; and as an eagle, well . . . they would shoot me down before I ever got the chance to approach their lord, and then you would have squandered your most precious weapon.’

Ravn looked him up and down distastefully. ‘You do not seem so precious to me at the moment: indeed, word of your presence does not appear to have dismayed them much at all. Damnation. Bran, Egg!’

The two old advisers came quickly to his side.

‘He threatens my boy if we do not withdraw.’

The earls exchanged glances. They looked haggard. Neither wanted to speak first.

‘What? Out with it!’

Egg looked at his feet. Stormway sighed. ‘He has nothing to lose by using one of them as a demonstration of his determination, while he still holds the other as a hostage against your conduct.’

Ravn’s eyes bulged. ‘He would hurt my son?’ He paused, fury gathering. ‘He would hurt my
wife
?’

Egg shook his head quickly. ‘Not your wife, sire: I am sure he will do nothing to harm the lady. But the boy . . .’

Ravn gritted his teeth. ‘He would not dare.’ He turned to his men. ‘Do we bow to this threat?’ he cried. ‘Do we crawl away from this place like beaten dogs, or do we show its lord what happens to those who steal our loved ones?’

The Eyrans roared and waved their swords, then beat them, booming, against their linden shields so that a great drumbeat rose up through the ranks.

Ravn touched his fist to his chest where the drumming reverberated through his breastbone like courage incarnate. ‘You see, Bran? Nothing will stop them. We shall take this castle and I shall tow its lord’s carcass back to Halbo behind my ship!’

Tycho Issian rubbed his hands together. ‘Well done, Virelai. Magnificent, in fact.’

Virelai was still trembling uncontrollably. Partly it was that the proximity of the Master was hard to bear, partly that he now knew the identity of the white queen beneath whose robe he now cowered, holding up the child, his arms shuddering with the effort of it. Why did she not strike him down, even now, in her semiconscious state? He had used her unforgivably as they travelled the world; he had shown her no respect, yet she had never once chided him for his lewd schemes, for the money he had taken from her despoliation. And now he had made her walk, to perform this despicable tableau: was there no end to his ignominy?

‘Now, give me the boy.’

Virelai looked up through the slit in the robe. ‘The boy?’

‘They have not yet withdrawn.’

‘It has been mere minutes, my lord. Aaah—!’

Smarting from the well-aimed kick, Virelai almost dropped the baby himself.

‘Indeed, that drumming sound they are making sounds most warlike. Defiant; provocative. Well, I cannot have them doubting my word.’

As if comprehending the threat to it, the child began to cry and twist in Virelai’s hands. He held on grimly, but it struggled harder. Its wail rose in volume. The next thing he knew, he had lost his hold on it and the Lord of Cantara was dangling it over the parapet.

‘My lord, you cannot—’

The baby’s cry was suddenly distant and waning; then it ceased altogether.

Ravn Asharson sank to his knees in the mud.

‘Ulf,’ he whispered. ‘My god, my son . . .’

He stared at the spot, several hundred yards away, where the tiny body had fallen.

Behind him, the drumming faltered. Then outrage seared the air.

Thirty-seven

Deceptions

The Eyran troops withdrew. They sailed around the bend in the river, drew up their ships and pitched their tents on the bank, gathered what little brushwood they could find, set up cookfires and dug latrines under the orders of those two old campaigners, the earls of Stormway and Shepsey. That night the camp was muted. Men huddled together, talking quietly, remembering their families at home, or those taken by the Istrians. Others knotted memento strings.

Bard Rolfson’s string read thus:

But the fierce raven-feeder sat apart from the rest of the men and said a word to no one. All night he honed his sword, and his thoughts were dark.

At first light the next morning, a prisoner was brought into the camp, a slight figure wrapped in a cloak, seen slipping from the castle’s postern gate by Jarn Filason and another of the scouts. It was a woman, carrying a swaddled bundle in her arms.

When her hood was drawn back, there was a gasp. ‘Leta! Leta Gullwing!’

‘My lord!’

The girl stumbled, would have fallen had Jarn not caught her arm.

‘I . . . I cannot believe you are alive! They said you were, but oh, I saw you die.’

Ravn frowned. ‘Not I.’

‘On the deck of my father’s ship.’

‘As you can see, I am hale.’

‘How can it be?’ Her soft dark eyes searched his face in wonder. ‘It is a marvel.’

But Ravn’s eyes had slipped to the object in her arms. He took in the shape and size of it, the way she cradled it, and his heart lurched. ‘Is it—?’

‘It is Ulf, but he was not your son, my lord,’ she said softly. ‘Nor am I Leta Gullwing.’ And when he started to contradict her, she went on quickly, before she lost the courage to speak the truth to this man for whom she yearned, now miraculously restored to her, ‘My name is Selen Issian. I am the daughter of the man who stole your wife and who now commands Cera’s castle. How I came to Halbo is too long a story to tell now; but you must take my word for it. The baby you believed to be your own was in fact mine, got upon me by a vile rape and taken from me by the woman known by some as Rose of the World; and by the seither at your court. By sorcery they made it appear she bore your child, and I was rendered complicit in that deceit, for which I am now most ashamed.’ She raised her eyes to his for a brief moment, saw the hurt and puzzlement there, and returned her gaze to the muddy ground. ‘Ulf was killed yesterday: but not by being dropped from the castle wall. Instead, my . . .’ she faltered, ‘my . . . father . . . killed him . . . declaring he wanted no . . . bastards dogging his steps . . . I came to bury him in a better place than Cera.’ And now she tenderly pushed back the swaddling around the baby’s face, and all could see for themselves that the child they had known as the king’s heir was truly dead.

‘And the baby dropped from the walls?’ Egg Forstson enquired, his voice steady, though tears stood in his eyes.

‘The undercook’s child,’ Selen sobbed. ‘Taken from her by force.’

There was a long silence. Then: ‘Why have you come to me?’ Ravn asked softly.

Selen Issian drew herself up. ‘I came to see if it was really you. And, if it was, to tell you the truth, so that you may leave with honour and nothing lost,’ she declared.

‘But my wife—’

‘The Rose of the World has shed not a single tear for you. She has not mourned your parting, has spoken not a word of sorrow; and since she was brought to Cera, she has spent her time cloistered, naked and compliant, in my father’s quarters. He says they will marry and she will bear him many sons. But he too will be deceived, for she has told me she is a barren creature who can bear no children.’

Ravn Asharson stared at her in horror. At last, he said: ‘You are mad.’

‘Sire.’

A tall, haggard-looking, dark-haired man had appeared at the King’s shoulder. He looked vaguely familiar. Ravn waved at him impatiently. ‘What?’

‘I have heard some of this woman’s story before.’

‘How is that possible?’

‘I am Aran Aranson. My daughter Katla was accused at the Allfair last year of being involved in some violent offence against this very woman. You, sire, stood by and watched her condemned to the pyres.’

‘I did?’ Ravn seemed amazed. ‘Your daughter, you say?’

Aran nodded. ‘Katla Aransen of Rockfall. It did seem you were not in your right mind at the time—’

Now he had the King’s attention. Ravn mulled this over.

‘Rockfall. Ah, yes. I summonsed you to the muster. You did not come, or send ships.’

‘I was . . . otherwise engaged. And when I returned to Rockfall, my home had been burned, my family taken by raiders.’

Ravn smiled bleakly. ‘Well, on that score at least it seems we are quits, my friend.’

Aran bowed his head.

‘And what of this woman’s story?’ the King prompted.

‘The name she has given to you is the name she gave to my daughter Katla and her cousin Erno Hamson when they found her bruised and bleeding, fleeing her attacker at the Allfair. Selen Issian. The daughter of the Lord of Cantara.’ He turned to the Istrian girl. ‘Katla would be happy, I am sure, to know that you have survived. Is Erno inside the castle?’

Selen shook her head. ‘I have not seen him for many months.’ She gave Aran Aranson an unsteady smile.‘If it had not been for the actions of your brave daughter, sir, I am sure I would have died. But did she survive the pyres? Erno was sure she’d died.’

‘Yes,’ Aran said grimly. ‘Yes, she survived that ordeal. But where she is now, I have no idea.’

During this conversation, Ravn Asharson’s expression had taken on the lean, hard, calculating look of his father, the Grey Wolf.

‘I cannot claim to understand this web of lies; but if one part of it is true, then it seems that Fate may have delivered a most fortunate gift to us.’ He turned to Jarn Filason. ‘Bring one of the ravens,’ he ordered. ‘I think we need to let the Istrian lord know that we now hold his daughter captive as he holds my wife.’

Selen Issian gasped in horror. ‘I came to you for sanctuary, not to be held as a hostage!’ she cried. ‘And because I thought you cared for me, in some small way.’ She scanned his face, expectant of some response, but it remained hard, impassive. Now, with dawning realisation, she felt herself a fool; worse, a heartsick fool. ‘I thought you would want to know the truth,’ she groaned. ‘But it seems you do not care for it at all, just as you do not care for me. I had expected better of you – and Eyran – but you are just like my father. You use women when it suits you, but we are no more to you than possessions to be treasured or traded, just pieces on a game board—’