The Rose of the World (64 page)

Ravn shrugged, untouched by this accusation. ‘When I first knew you I thought you a good companion to my wife, and a good nurse to my child; but it seems you are either mad or Istrian, and since my child is dead, I have no further use for you. Though my warriors may . . .’ He gave her the wolfish grin which had always previously turned her knees to water but now chilled her to the bone; then he looked aside. ‘The raven, Jarn, hurry!’

‘A bird has arrived, my lord.’

‘From Forent, or Ixta?’

‘It is . . . a raven, my lord.’

‘A raven? Since when did Forent use ravens to carry their messages?’

‘I believe it has come from the enemy force, my lord.’

‘But they have withdrawn.’ There was a pause as the Lord of Cantara crossed to the window and looked out. When he turned back, his expression was grim. ‘Give me the message.’

The guard handed over the curl of parchment and stood well back.

‘
To the Lord of Cantara from Ravn Asharson, King of Eyra
,’ he read aloud. He scanned the rest, then waved the guard away. When the door was safely closed, he continued: ‘
You have shown your mettle against babes in arms; now I challenge you to try your metal against me. Single combat, the hour after dawn tomorrow, on the sward outside your keep. If I win, you will cede me the castle and my wife. If you win, I will give you back your daughter, Selen, and my army will withdraw. Dawn tomorrow, wife-stealer, or we will take the city down stone by stone!
’

Virelai gazed at him with limpid eyes. ‘Will you do it?’

Tycho Issian laughed. ‘Hardly. The man’s a warrior, trained in the arts of battle since he could walk. Whereas I—’ He shrugged. ‘No, my dear Virelai: you will be going in my place.’

‘I?’ The sorcerer was aghast. ‘I can barely lift a sword, let alone wield one. Besides, there is a geas upon me—’

‘Geas? I don’t give a whore’s toss for your geas. What’s the point of you if you cannot kill a man with magic?’

Virelai’s eyes filled with bitter salt. ‘Can you not just send back a message refusing his challenge?’

‘And be branded a coward?’

‘But if I lose—’

‘How can you lose? You are a sorcerer, while he – he is just a man.’

‘A very strong and angry man.’

‘But a man, nonetheless. I will find you something of mine to wear. Maybe the crimson: it cuts a dash. The semblance I know you can manage. He will only need to see your face once: then you can don a helm and use all your skills to disable him.’

Virelai turned away, his face drawn, his chin quivering.

‘Oh, and Virelai?’

Keeping the tears barely in check, Virelai looked back. ‘My lord?’

‘I want him dead. The barbarian king. Stone dead. Do you hear me? Merely wounded won’t do. They’re tough, these Eyrans. Amputated limbs, lost eyes, sword in the guts – somehow they manage to survive, and we can’t have that. No: stone dead. Make it look good and I will reward you well. Very well indeed. Why’ – his black eyes glittered with malice – ‘I think I may well give you my daughter Selen. Have you seen my daughter? Come, look there: see – standing by the barbarian standard-bearer? How they came to capture her, the Lady only knows. Still, there she is, and quite comely, though I say so myself. Ruined as she is, I can hardly marry her to another lord; so why not keep a sorcerer in the family? How would you like that, eh? It is very fitting, I think: like a chevalier knight, you will save my daughter from the savage horde, and in exchange win her hand and a castle in the desert. Perfect. They would make songs of it – if they knew the truth!’

Virelai fled down the corridor.
If only
, he thought,
my magical skills were more advanced, I would turn myself into a bird as the Master did and flee this terrible place for ever
.

It was a red sun which slipped over the hills the next morning, and many men on both sides of the keep’s walls made superstitious signs, each taking it as a portent of ill omen. Ravn Asharson donned his armour with great care and deliberation, checking each strap, each buckle, testing the links in his mail. He whistled as he did this, an old folk song: ‘The Maid of Kurnow’. The older warriors looked from one to another: it had been one of Ashar Stenson’s favourites, too.

‘Blood will out,’ the Earl of Stormway observed to Egg Forstson, who merely shrugged and cracked his knuckles.

‘I don’t like this, Bran. Not at all.’

‘I don’t trust them either: but other than station our archers among the trees, there is no more we can do to safeguard him.’

‘Impetuous whelp!’

‘He’s not the cub you think him any more, Egg. Remember how he won the swordplay at the Allfair.’

‘Aye, sword
play
. And he nearly lost an eye then. This is to the death, and he’s our king: lose him and there will be mayhem back in Eyra. With Bardson gone, there’s not even a clear successor.’

Stormway hung his head. ‘You’re right, of course. But what choice do we have?’

The Earl of Shepsey leaned in close. ‘Talk to the mage,’ he whispered dramatically. ‘See what he can do.’

His companion looked appalled. ‘Egg! Where’s your honour?’

‘Honour stole from me long ago all I ever cared about.’

‘But Ravn would be furious.’

‘Furious, but still alive.’

As the sun rose, Cera’s great iron-bound gates swung open. Two heralds rode out onto the rickety bridge, their great banners all in scarlet and silver fluttering bravely on the breeze. Behind them, looking curiously unstable on a magnificent bay stallion, came the Lord of Cantara, his crimson cloak billowing. Behind him, a pair of page boys carried a gleaming helm of silver and a greatsword sheathed in red leather. Reaching the sward on the other side of the lake, he swung down from the horse, which bucked and danced away, its eyes rolling. When he took the sword from the page he fumbled and almost dropped it on the ground as if he had misjudged the weight of it.

The earls of Shepsey and Stormway exchanged bewildered glances.

‘We may not need the sorcerer’s aid after all,’ whispered Egg with a grin.

‘Or he may be cleverer than he looks,’ Bran replied warningly.

‘All style and no substance,’ averred one of the oarsmen behind them, and his colleagues muttered their approval of this judgement.

‘Fancy gear doesn’t make a warrior,’ jeered the navigator of the
Axe.

‘True: but the crimson may hide the blood our Stallion will shed!’ returned the captain of the
She-Bear
, and the men all roared their laughter.

Tight-lipped and without a word, Tycho Issian saluted the Eyran king with a fist to the chest, and with hawk nose and jutting chin lifted proudly, donned the helmet. The sun’s first rays struck the polished silver with such force it hurt the eyes to look at him.

Ravn scowled. ‘I am little surprised you have no words for me, deceiver,’ he said. ‘You had better pray to your bitch-goddess that your sword will speak for you more eloquently!’

And then, hefting his great weapon, he charged the Istrian lord, who lifted his sword awkwardly and parried the first blow so that the blades rang in the still morning air and the sound reverberated off the city’s walls like the clanging of a death-knell.

Virelai trembled and shifted his grip on his sword. His arm was numbed and weak from that first blow, his fingers barely able to clutch the hilt, yet already the northern king was coming at him again, and there was no time for spell-craft. His mind felt blank: even though he had abandoned the spell of seeming which had so occupied his efforts all this while, no useful stratagem came to mind. He concentrated on stepping out of Ravn’s way, ducking inelegantly and swinging his sword around in some semblance of a stroke; but the onlooking Eyrans catcalled. So that had hardly looked convincing.

Sweat ran down inside the bright clothing. The straps on the breastplate chafed his skin; the helmet pinched his ears, trapping him inside it. He was aware of even the tiniest discomfort: a ridiculous matter, since the next discomfort he was likely to know was that of an arm, a leg or even his head being lopped off by Ravn Asharson’s fearsome blade.

Again the northern king came at him, and again Virelai danced away.

‘At least put up some sort of fight!’ Ravn snarled. ‘Or next time I will not be playing with you, Wife-stealer and Childkiller. Next time I shall carve the flesh from your bones as neatly as from a roasted fowl. Aye, and draw your organs out through your back so men can see the lily of your liver.’

The mouthguard of the helmet muffled Virelai’s whimper.
O Great Lady
, he prayed,
do not let me die like this. Please save me from this wild man who is your husband. Help me, please, O my Goddess. I should have been stronger: I should have saved you in Halbo, but I did not know how, I was weak and afraid. But never as afraid as I am now!

He realised suddenly that he was mouthing the words inanely, a pathetic mantra to a goddess who would – if she would deign to return her consciousness to the world – surely smile upon his much-deserved death, a death which would see her back in the arms of the man she had chosen. The prayer seemed hollow even to himself.

I deserve to die. I know it,
he wailed silently.
But not like this, not as I have truly begun to live. O my Lady, hear me!

The next blow fell upon his hopelessly inadequate and largely ornamental shield, which promptly split in two and fell from his hand. He staggered backwards, weeping, almost falling on his arse, and the Eyrans cheered.

But suddenly there were words on his lips, recalled out of thin air as it seemed, and then his sword arm came up as if of its own accord and swept Ravn Asharson’s killing blow away as if it had been made with a willow stick. Ravn, wearing no helm, looked momentarily surprised at this abrupt change of competence in an opponent he had written off as a fool. He firmed his jaw.

The next encounter set the northern king off balance as his attack was parried with a fierceness which turned defence to offence. The blade in Virelai’s hand shimmered with a sudden access of power and he realised that from somewhere deep in his unconscious mind he must have dredged up a suitable enchantment. He did not think it would kill the Eyran, but it might at least save his own skin while he tried to think of a more decisive strategy.

Up came his sword arm again: light as air it felt, the muscles somehow imbued with golden fire instead of blood. Again, the blades rang and Ravn Asharson fell back, bemused.

In the Eyran ranks, one man stared hard, shaken out of the miasma of concentration in which he had been wrapped.
Magic!
he thought, suddenly furious at this intrusion on his own domain.
He’s using the spell of ultimate defence!
For a second, maybe two, this realisation permeated Rahe’s ageing brain; then he knew who the man in crimson truly was. ‘Virelai!’

‘What?’ The Earl of Stormway was immediately at his side, his regard disapproving beneath those great white straggling brows. ‘What did you say? Have you cast your protective net over our king yet? It certainly does not look that way . . .’

‘Damned upstart! Little runt! How dare he steal from me and flaunt his theft thus! I’ll show him why I am called the Master. Now he will meet his match, the worm, the insect, the . . . the . . . rat’s turd!’

Bran frowned. He had little trust for sorcery and seers at the best of times, but this old man was clearly mad, and working himself up into a fine frenzy.

Seconds later, he felt dizzy, disorientated, as if the world had subtly shifted out of kilter. Then Egg Forstson was stumbling against him, and out of the corner of his eye he thought he glimpsed Aran Aranson, the Master of Rockfall, carrying an unconscious Ravn Asharson from the battlefield. But when he turned back to the sward, there was his king, as real as ever, battling fiercely against the Istrian. He blinked, shook his head, feeling slightly nauseous.

He cleared his throat, glanced at the Earl of Shepsey. ‘Are you all right, Egg?’

Egg Forstson looked at him curiously. ‘Funny you should ask,’ he said, screwing up his face. ‘For a moment there I felt distinctly odd. A bit woozy. Didn’t sleep much last night, you know.’

Bran turned and scanned the spot where he had been so sure he had seen his king. But there was no one there now, though the guards beside the royal tent looked strangely blank-faced.

‘Oh!’

A great cry went up from the watching soldiers: for Ravn was now bearing down upon his foe with a real fury, his sword scything the air as if he would shortly harvest the Istrian’s head. The Lord of Cantara reacted with extraordinary speed and skill and together the blades swung, ratcheting off one another with a sound which offended the ear. Then the two men spun away from each other, changing their stances, and circled like two wolves assessing each other’s form.

Almost, the watching Eyrans forgot that the outcome of this contest brought with it either rousing victory or humiliating defeat, so swept up were they in the skilful play of feet and hands and brawn and iron. None had ever seen a battle like it. With bated breath they waited for the next charge, the next clash of blade on blade. Who would ever have thought the soft southerner who had practically fallen from the horse which had carried him out of the city gates might show his mettle in such a brave fashion?

‘So, Virelai, now we shall see what you have learned from your trove of stolen secrets!’

Inside the shimmer of the spellcraft which showed the likeness of Ravn Asharson to the onlookers, Virelai glimpsed the identity of his opponent. The shock was so great, he almost vomited.

‘Master . . .’ he gasped.

‘Yes, you slug! The master whom you robbed and left to die, such was your gratitude for all the years I raised you as my own.’ Spittle sprayed out of the old man’s mouth, showering Virelai with a slimy mist. ‘The master whose greatest possession you stole away, without the least understanding of what you did or had. The master whose store of knowledge you ravaged and destroyed!’

This last, at least, was grossly unfair, since it had been Rahe himself who in the grip of a sustained despair had set about dismantling his icy kingdom and the treasures within; but Virelai had neither the energy nor the will to deny him.