Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  “You wouldn’t want my ol’ Pa’s spirit to be disturbed in his rest. He told me to vow never to give his precious sword away. Even if it means nothing to you it meant something to him, gods only know why, so it means something to me for his sake.”

  Reluctantly the smith handed the sword back. “What’s your name?” he asked, not releasing his grip of the hilt as Alex grabbed the empty pommel.

  “Sam, Sam Tillerman,” Alex said. I’m staying in South East Quarter, in the Hawk and Hallows Inn, but I think I’ll be returning to my village soon.”

  “You’re a villager?” Brandon asked, unconvinced.

  “From Pine Hill. A bit outside the village, truth be told,” something Alex did as little as possible with strangers, even less with friends, “but…”

  “You dress pretty well for a bumpkin.”

  “I don’t like the expression,” Alex turned up his nose with affected pride, “and neither does any farmer worth his salt.”

  “There’s no soil in those nails. No callouses on those hands.”

  “I’m a gentleman farmer, not a peasant,” Alex said with his best imitation of haughty disdain, easy to learn in the theatres of North Bank, observing the nobles in the galleries, where their pricey box seats kept them safely away from the crush of smelly, raucous groundlings.

  “There are some pretty smart liars in this city, prentices faking at mastery, jugglers playing at being knights, thieves…”

  “Are you a thief?” Alex said with affected indignation, turning the accusation back on the blacksmith, “the sword is my ol’ Pa’s. Should I call the watch?”

  “You want to do you?” The blacksmith smiled, and Alex realised he had fallen into a trap of his own making.

  Brandon would not let go, and Alex, so much smaller, could hardly force him. He had to act quickly, but what could he do? His hand vanished for a brief moment beneath his cloak and emerged with a gold coin, which he tossed in clear sight of the smith, but beyond the reach of his free hand. The morning sun flashed from the coin as it spun. The glitter of gold was too much. Not enough to make a fanatic let go entirely, but enough to loosen the grip of a canny businessman for an instant. Alex felt the relaxation, and dextrously twisted the sword away. For all his strength the blacksmith did not have the thief’s lighting reflexes. The coin fell to the ground, now ignored by both men. Before Alex could adjust his grip to hold the hilt properly, the blade fell to the anvil, edge first. Alex gaped in amazement. Instead of chipping, as a sword made of bone might, it had sliced into the solid iron anvil as though it were a slab of butter. He had not even applied any force! It had merely fallen in his awkward grip. He recovered his composure and took a sidewise look at the smith’s face, but instead of surprise there he saw a smile of satisfaction. The smile vanished as Alex turned his face directly toward him.

  Alex slid his hand from the empty pommel to the hilt, wrenched the sword free, and knelt to pick up the gold coin, careful to keep the sword out of Brandon’s reach, and said, “How about that sheath?”

  “Give me the sword and I’ll see which one’ll fit it.”

  “Give me a sheath and I’ll check it.”

  The blacksmith stepped threateningly toward Alex, and the blade leapt at his throat. He felt unmistakable power surging through him, and a bloodlust not his own. “Blood!” a voice screamed in his head, and he gripped the hilt tightly, desperately holding the sword back. He had not thought to threaten the blacksmith with the blade. That was not his style. He was a thief not a standover man. But the blade seemed to have a mind of its own. And a voice! He had heard it in the necromancer’s tower, when he had stepped into the room of the raging spirit and grasped the hilt. He had not heard it at the top of the tower, when he took the sword from above the beautiful woman with flesh like water, so he had not been sure. But now there was no doubting its source. The sword screamed in his head, and Brandon’s life dangled from a slender thread which Alex felt he must cut. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Shut up!” he screamed in his head, his lips twitching to prevent the scream leaving his mouth. “Blood!” the sword screamed. “No!” he replied, again silently. He gritted his teeth, opened his eyes and held the blade back. Its tip had drawn blood from Brandon’s throat. A tiny drop, which rolled down the blade and vanished, as though sucked into its substance. Alex gripped it with both hands, physically struggling to hold it back, while mentally he challenged its will, almost pleading with the voice in his head.

  Holding it firmly, feeling it trying to slip from his grasp toward the smith, he repeated, less calmly now, “How about that sheath?”

  The smith reached out a hand to redirect the sword point, but it flicked his hand aside and thrust at his throat again. He bent backward to avoid the tip and the sword dropped, pointing at his heart. He backed warily away and went into his shop, coming back out with an armful of sword sheathes. He spilled them across a work table and stepped away from the table, keeping a cautious eye on the blade. Alex tried one, but as he pushed the tip toward the opening of the sheat it glanced off, as though the blade and sheath were repelling magnets. He searched through the others, but with each the result was the same.

  “How much do you want for it?” Brandon asked. His tone had become desperate. His fear of the blade had apparently made him more covetous, not less.

  “More than you have,” Alex said and turned away.

  “If you change your mind.”

  “I’ll think of you first,” Alex agreed. But he would not come back. Obviously the sword was enchanted in some way. But how valuable was it? How good a price could he get for it? He had to find out, and not with someone who would just try to snatch it from him. He had no idea who else to ask. Rosy was an excellent fence for jewels, but this? It was not like you came across a magical sword every day. Maybe he would keep it.

  Chapter 7: Alex: Thedra

  Alex bribed the guards at Capita gate, the inner gate of Thedra Bridge. These guards were paid by the House of the Hand, the thieves’ guild, to shakedown freelance thieves, like Alex, but they knew a regular source of skill gotten gains when they saw him, having received enough coin from him in the past. One thing Alex loved about Thedra’s constabulary was that they could be re-bought as easily as bought.

  Thedra Bridge was a city in itself, three hundred yards wide and a thousand long. It was the liveliest part of Thedra, even more busy than the great market square just beyond it, adjacent to Capita gate. Shops and houses and temples and guild halls lined both sides. At this time of the morning travellers were pouring into the city, others who had come earlier now leaving. Horses and oxen hauling carts. Farmers on nags showing more rib than flesh through their hides. Asses and mules and yapping matted mongrels and squinting, unusually calm cats and the occasional tame rat of a street urchin. Men and women and children from nearby villages on foot, baskets or sacks on their backs or heads, laden with produce, grain freshly milled in village mills or the mills on Lower Plateau, below Bridge Gate, the outer gate of Thedra Bridge, or fresh fruit and vegetables from orchards within a few days’ walk of the city. Wealthy merchants from all corners of the kingdom and beyond, trading amongst each other or for the gold mined under royal licence in the mountains above Thedra – bringing wine from Gwendur; tallow and fine armour from Vrong Veld; wine, oranges, olives, olive oil and naphtha from Navre; wine and desiccated fruit from Sard; tin and copper from Seltica; silver, wolf pelts and mountain goat wool from Pecta; beer, cheese, honey, beeswax and amber from Norwalds; ponies and hawks from the northern steppes; pearls and jewels from the southern archipelagos; jade, silk and spices from the lands beyond the Silk Sea; diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and lapis lazuli, precious papyri and stolen funerary art from Kemet; pygmy monkeys from the jungles of the deep south; manuscripts in indecipherable or non-existent languages from ancient civilizations beyond the ken of most men, copied or forged in the scriptoria of Vrongwe’s many monasteries. Priests rode through the crowd, as proud as secular nobles, their ermine trimmed robe
s and gold set jewels as gaudy as any lord of the Assembly, contemptuously kicking aside any who got in their way. Mendicant monks begging with their bowls and crutches by shop doorways from which the shopkeepers would mostly chase them, or occasionally relent to offer them a few bronze coins or a crust of stale bread or a wooden bowl of water, watching carefully that they did not steal the bowl. Penitential monks in rough spun brown worsted robes, peeled back and hanging around their rope belts so they seemed to be wearing skirts, flagellated themselves with twined leather whips as they shuffled forward, blood streaming down their mortified backs and flicking into the air in droplets that landed on the faces and best clothes of protesting affluent shoppers. Itinerant tinkers hawking their skills, sharpening knives and hammering at pots and ladles, mending with ingenuity and curiously shaped tools. Shopkeepers’ boys shouting out their masters’ wares, or darting out into the crowd to guide with gentle nudges the more naïve or pliable passers-by into their shops. Shopkeepers’ daughters displaying cleavage as enticement, then skilfully making a sale of anything but themselves. Others dodging away from unwelcome gropers, or slapping impertinent young dandies.

  There was a lot of contact, as impatient people yelled abuse at and pushed past each other, almost inviting a pickpocket to steal. Alex did not want or need to pick any pockets today though. He was tired from his adventure in the necromancer’s tower and his own pockets and pack were full of gold. A young pickpocket with a dirty face and hungry eyes brushed up against him, reaching into one of his convenient, artificially obvious pockets, packed with jingling worthless fake coins. He decided to make an exception, and when the boy later checked his takings, he would find he had lost more than he had gained. No one picked anything of value from the pockets of Alex Quickfingers, though many had tried. Alex thought the younger boy was talented, but not subtle enough. What the older boy did was not an act of cruelty though. The younger boy needed to learn. Better to learn with a small loss than lose your life on the gallows. Alex skilfully turned this way and that as he passed through the crush, avoiding accidental contact and aware of the weight of his pack, which he wore, unlike some paranoid shoppers, on his back. Wearing a bag about your front, like a precious child, was an invitation to thieves, and would not deter the more skilful ones. His own pack was deliberately threadbare in appearance, so as not to attract greedy eyes, dark brown inside, for his nightly employments, and faded ragged brown cloth outside now that it was turned inside out, such as any beggar might carry.

  He passed out through Bridge Gate and walked east, crossing over North Bank Bridge, pausing halfway to lean against the side and watch the wheels of the watermills turning below. He breathed in the air, which seemed fresher this morning than it had in a long while. The water churned through the watermills with what seemed like joyful abandon. Beyond them a small village spread out between the stream and the Low Road that ascended to Bridge Gate from the lower plateau. The carters and bargers’ village. Across the low road was another small village, the tanner’s village, a place of foul smells which produced high quality leather for the market, and had even produced one queen for the palace, the young queen Rose whom the aging king doted on. Next to the tanners village a ring of stone contained the thatch roofed dwellings of the leper colony. Shunned but necessary, untouchables, only they could carry out the death rituals many Thedran’s still depended on, carving the flesh from the bones and burning it in offering to the gods, leaving only the bones from which the bimateya carvers on Thedra Bridge would carve the statuettes of the ancestors.

  Alex put his hand in a well hidden pocket, holding tenderly the statuette of his father, and that of his first adoptive mother. Most Thedrans would keep these statuettes in a shrine in the family home. He had no shrine. He had no home. But he had his ancestors here in his hand. And he remembered. No one else would remember them, a beggar and a whore. He must. He took out the bimateya and examined them. Perfect miniatures. The carvers would follow the bodies down to the leper colony, fixing in their minds the features that they would later carve. He could see a bier being carried down now. The statuette of his father frowned at him. How had the carver known that? Does a corpse frown? The statuette of his mother had no nose. She had lost it with her mind to the pox, curse of whores and catamites. She had worn a wooden nose to cover the gaping hole in her face. It was said if a statuette were lost or its name forgotten the spirit would forget itself and wander unknown and forlorn in the underworld, but that if the statuette were preserved and the name remembered they would feel the warmth of the family hearth, and communicate their wisdom in dreams to their descendants. He had no family hearth, but his hands were warm. He said softly, “Chris. Caroline. I remember.”

  Behind him the giant tower of the Crypt of Kings rose from the caldera lake, and a gulley wind gusted down from the mountains, chilling his back. The bodies of nobles were not surrendered to the lepers. They were cremated whole, a practice that some wealthier merchants were starting to adopt. The kings were buried whole in that crypt, and raised to the status of gods on their death. But he did not care about nobles and merchants, or kings made gods.

  He held the bimateya tightly. He would not forget.

  He slipped them back into his pocket, then followed the procession of the bier down to the leper colony. A carver walked beside it, carefully observing the features of the dead woman so that he could accurately carve them later from the de-fleshed bones, usually the large bones of the thigh and hip. Just outside the gate was a cart full of produce, distant enough from the lepers for the comfort of the trader, but close enough for the trade of the bereaved. On the other side was a cloth merchant. Alex paid for a large basket of assorted foods with a gold coin. With another he paid for a bale of cloth.

  Just inside the gate a leper sat, cross legged, patches of black marring his arms and face. Behind him was the Well of Lost Souls, around which other lepers sat in a circle, chanting softly. Alex set down the gifts at the gate. He kneeled then and, taking out the cloth with the small bones he had collected at the necromancer’s tower, unwrapped it and placed it between himself and the cross legged leper. He touched his head to the dirt and when he lifted it said, “Remember the forgotten.” The leper nodded. “The forgotten will remember.” The leper stood up as Alex stepped back, took up the small bones, and went to the well. There he dropped them. Though no one knew for certain, because no one of sound body entered the leper colony, it was said that that well was empty except for the bones of the city’s many unnamed victims, at least those whom someone had kindly honoured. If all had been honoured thus the well must surely have overflowed long since. Unless the well extended all the way to the underworld. The lepers around the Well of Lost Souls prayed for the souls of the lost, ensuring that they would not be forgotten, and so not forget themselves in the underworld.

  Alex crossed the plateau and descended by the low road. In the meadows below Mount Thedra the peasants were haying, some scything, some gathering, some tying, some carting toward one of the large barns near the village between the road and the main stream of the Selta, which split above Mount Thedra, flowed through and around the caldera, and branched in an elaborate silvery web over the near plain before some streams joined again in the northern distance, others flowing east and west. A balding man sharpened his scythe with a grinding stone. A woman was tying her skirts between her legs to free her movement. They all wore dull brown clothes, so unlike even the common citizens of Thedra, let alone the flamboyant nobles, guild masters and great merchants, and their faces were tanned from working all day in the sun. A goat herder was watching his charges on the slopes, swishing a stick at dandelions and waving flies away from his face, and further down a man dozed in the shade of a grove, mouth gaping, oblivious both to the flies gathering on his lips and the approaching overseer, who had seen him slacking and trotted towards him with riding crop raised, whether for his horse or the serf Alex could not tell. At the fork with High Road Alex turned and crossed the lower bridge, and climb
ed back up to his native North Bank.

  In North Bank, he passed The Pit and The Baiting Pit, and skirted the wall of Ilsa’s Inn. Next to the entrance for the playhouse on the ground level was a large structure that seemed to lean against the playhouse for support, but the ramshackle outside belied the clean, neat interior, with rugs on marble flagstones and tapestries with fantastic pictures on the walls. The scenes were mostly of naked men and women lounging, indulging every lascivious taste, and demonstrating every feat of sexual athleticism possible, as well as many that were surely impossible. This was The House of Delights, North Bank’s most famous brothel, owned by the thieves’ guild. To one side, hidden behind a velvet curtain, was a stairway, down to The Den, a dicing, gambling front for the guild hall of the thieves.

  He crossed the room, and passed through a door into another stairwell, this one leading up. At the top was a squat, heavily muscled man. Alex sensed his presence before he saw him and ducked behind a tapestry at the bottom of the stairwell. The boards squeaked as the man came down the stairs. Alex backed into an alcove. The tapestry rippled. He held his breath. Without thinking, his hand strayed toward the hilt of the sword, but did not touch it. A grunt. Heavy footsteps thumped back up the stairs. Another of the guild heavies.

  Usually there was someone near here in case the customers bashed the whores without paying well for the special privilege. It was not that the guild cared about the whores, but a whore who had been bashed could not work until she recovered, unless some customer’s kink included caressing bruises. The girls were property as far as the guild was concerned, like cattle to a farmer. If the price were right a farmer would slit his favourite bull’s throat, and if the price were right the guild would let a customer bash or even kill a woman it owned. He feared for Rose whenever he saw one of the whores bruised or her dead body thrown into the streets. But Rose said she was too young and beautiful for that to ever be a profitable proposition; she would always earn more alive than dying, unless she was unlucky enough to catch the eye of a perverted, powerful noble, and most nobles screwed the sisters in the Convent of Love. Alex knew, as all Thedrans did, that in that convent murder was strictly forbidden, and punished with an assassination public and gruesome enough to act as a warning. It was even said that a sadistic crown prince had once suffered that fate. As a devotee of the cult of Finusthi had once told Alex, the goddess of love was not the goddess of necrophilia. That brothel like convent would be a safer place for Rose, though he would probably never be able to afford her again, since the sisters were the classiest courtesans in the city.