“He won’t leave things like this, will he?” Temar gnawed on a thumbnail. “We make sure he goes nowhere and see what he comes up with next time?” He looked for agreement.
“He certainly thinks you’ll trade something for the prisoners,” Guinalle said slowly.
“Can we ask for Naldeth by name?” asked Larissa, hopeful.
“Not without Muredarch doubling whatever price he puts on his head,” Halice told her tartly.
“I would not make any deal with him, over anyone,” Guinalle said with evident distress. “He has no intention of keeping his word about anything.”
“I hardly need Artifice to tell me that,” said Temar without thinking. He smiled hastily at her but Guinalle was too preoccupied to notice.
“He’s a pure opportunist,” she continued. “No fool and not given to ill-considered impulse, so we mustn’t make that mistake. He can plan ahead and on a grand scale; he’s determined to make himself overlord of some free traders’ fiefdom in these islands. He’s quite confident he can do it. But that’s as much as he intends. He doesn’t see himself ruling Kellarin for instance, just plundering it judiciously.”
“Where do the Elietimm fit in to his plans?” demanded Temar.
“He really has no idea what he’s dealing with.” Surprise and concern coloured Guinalle’s reply. “He sees them as a tool for his use and believes them entirely loyal to his ambitions.” She smiled without humour. “They have made sure of that. As far as Muredarch knows, Ilkehan is sole ruler of another group of islands, a predator on trade and the Dalasorian coasts much the same as himself, just more successful at keeping himself hidden. He sees him as an equal and a potential ally in gaining a stranglehold on as much ocean trade as possible.”
“So what do we do now?” Temar looked from Usara to Halice and back again.
Halice didn’t seem to see it warranted a question. “Keep them penned in until Ilkehan’s dead. Go in and kill the lot of them.”
“Couldn’t we trade a few things?” Guinalle pleaded. “Not enough to get a ship seaworthy but just to get a few people safely out of there.”
“This isn’t a game of Raven,” Halice warned her. “Don’t try being too clever; we’re dealing with real lives and deaths.”
“We want him concentrating on us, don’t we?” Temar looked at her. “Even with this other Elietimm leader’s help, it going to take time for Livak and Ryshad to reach Ilkehan’s keep. Then they’ve to find some way of killing the man. Keeping him talking might keep that pirate off balance. Then our final attack will be all the more effective, if they’re wrong-footed.”
Halice nodded with a twinkle in her eye. “A fair point, for someone trained in the Imperial cohorts.”
“If Muredarch’s concentrating on us and our deeds, those enchanters will be doing the same,” Usara said seriously to Guinalle who was still looking upset. “That should draw Ilkehan’s attention south and lessen any chance of him suspecting attack closer at hand. Do you want to sit down? Shiv was showing me how he helped Livak—”
But the noblewoman shook off his hand and went to stand at the very stern of the Dulse, looking out over the waves towards Suthyfer.
“Come on, ’Sar.” Temar ducked as the mizzen sail unfurled above him with a rattle of canvas and ropes. “Let’s get back to our island and work out how best to make Muredarch’s life difficult, shall we?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Thoughts on the Ancient Races
Presented to the Antiquarian Society of Selerima
By Gamar Tilot, Scholar of the University of Col
As students of history in our various degrees, we are invited to regard the ancient races of our lands as set apart, an impassable gulf of time dividing their lives from our own and rendering them unknowable. Why must they be so very different from ourselves? I argue these peoples are as easily understandable as the gentleman sitting beside you in this hall. Consider the question thus.
The Forest Folk of old are known through the ballads of wandering minstrels and the legends we tell our children. We entertain ourselves with tales of unicorns and griffons, with myths of women born from living trees and unearthly voices heard in dark and sacred groves. We imagine the people living with such wonders as innocent as children, unfettered by possessions, blithe in romances uncomplicated by marriage or settlements. Such an ideal life is a wonder that has passed beyond our ken.
But who sings us these songs? Why, travelling bards who come out of the Forest, boasting that same red hair celebrated in every chorus. They leave greenwood families living not in indolent ease but in the straitened circumstances of any who must forage for food among root and bough. Minstrels carolling the romances of Viyenne or Lareal do not exalt a lost ideal but merely solicit coin to clothe their children and fill their bellies with bread. Their songs are not mystical history but idle entertainment, to distract their folk from their own cold and hungry existence. Look around your city and you will see plenty of copper-crowned heads. Over the generations, many a Forest man has forsaken the woods for the practical comforts of settled life and trade. The Forest Folk are not distant paragons of a nobler age; they are your tradesmen, your servants. We all share the same concerns for our children, our prosperity, and our posterity. Those so inclined worship the same gods. Why should we imagine it was not ever thus? One can tell a tree by its fruit, after all and the apple never falls far from the tree.
Consider the Mountain Men. Read the sagas copied in the libraries of Vanam and Inglis and you see a race remote and forbidding as the very peaks of Gidesta. Incomprehensible myths speak of men unyielding as stone, dangerous as dragons reputed to haunt their peaks. Scholars nod wisely of the cruel climate that makes such men so harsh. The miners and trappers among the hills and forests north of the Dalas would laugh at such wilful ignorance. Where have the towns of northern Ensaimm learned their noted skills in smelting and smithing if not from the countless sons of Mountain blood who have settled in softer climes and married there, quite content with their lot? There can be no such great differences between us if they do not divide those sharing the honesty of the marriage bed. Tales of ancient warfare among the snowbound crags may send a shiver of steel down the spine when told around a fireside but the truth is that the Mountain Men are as familiar and as slight a threat as the knife you use to cut your meat at table.
What though of the Plains People? That is the greatest mystery of all, or so it is whispered around the chimney corners. We see no trace of them, only gazing in awe at the earthen walls that ring their sacred places, at mighty barrows raised above their honoured dead. Gentlemen such as yourselves dig into these and wonder at copper pots and axes. Why were they buried? Did they truly believe such possessions could be carried aboard Poldrion’s ferry? Every discovery turns up more questions than pebbles. The earth-stained bones cannot speak so we invent answers for the silent skulls. Just as children make monsters out of fear and the shadows cast by candles, so we weave the darkness of ignorance into the myth of the Eldritch Kin, masters of a realm beyond the rainbow, rulers of the unchancy lands of water meadow and sea strand, the Plains People gone away into the twilight where we cannot follow.
Nothing could be further from the truth just as no race could be closer to us. The turfed forts of Dalasor may be remote and eerie but the prosaic ploughs of Caladhria and Ensaimin turn up copper rings and brooches with every spring sowing. We live among the ancient dwellings of the Plains People; we cannot see them only because our barns and houses, streets and shrines are raised upon their remnants. We cannot see descendants of this ancient race as we do of Forest and Mountain because those born of the Plains are our very selves. As we have lived for untold generations on these wide and fertile lands, so we have passed from primitive lives and beliefs to wed with the civilisation that the Tormalin Emperors brought from the east. As warp and weft in one cloth, so we wove together the superiority we enjoy today, as the growing child sets aside his toys and takes up the tools of manhood. The Mountain Men have followed ou
r lead and in time the Forest Folk will turn from their amiable idleness and heed their lessons in turn.
Islands of the Elietimm,
5th of For-Summer
Be careful, there’s ice melt coming down there.” Shiv looked back over his shoulder. He was sitting in the prow of the wooden-framed, hide-covered boat we’d stolen. He shook seawater from his white, wrinkled hand. “Curse it, that’s cold!”
Behind me, Ryshad was steering, long tiller tucked under his arm, both hands gripping it firmly. He narrowed his eyes at the milky flow running across the dark grey beach to bleach the greenish water of the sound. “Put your backs into it.”
Sorgrad and ’Gren exchanged a mutinous look but both renewed their grip on their oars. I smiled encouragement at them and did my best to keep my feet out of the water puddled in the bottom of the boat. My back ached from sitting on the hard thwart and the non-stop wind was cutting through my jerkin. I shivered and began rubbing my arms to try and get a little warmer. “Sit still,” Sorgrad told me curtly.
“I’m freezing,” I retorted.
“There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. You’ll only get more chilled fidgeting,” he said sternly. “Who’s spent more time in the mountains, you or me?”
“Just make sure you keep your hands and feet moving,” Ryshad advised. “You don’t want frost nip in your fingers and toes.”
I could see Sorgrad scowling at that but it seemed he couldn’t deny that was fair advice, much as he might want to.
“You could always cursed well row,” ’Gren said as he pulled hard. “That would soon warm you up.” He certainly boasted a rosy glow.
“I don’t want to risk grounding,” said Shiv with some alarm.
“It’s all sandbanks round here,” scoffed ’Gren. “We’d be all right.” There were certainly none of the vicious skerries that had threatened us like vicious claws as we’d negotiated the uncomfortably exposed shore of Shernasekke.
“Let’s not take the risk,” suggested Ryshad.
Sorgrad said nothing, just shooting ’Gren a warning look.
“So you stay sitting like a noblewoman on a pleasure jaunt,” ’Gren grumbled. If he wasn’t having a good time, no one else was going to.
I refused to feel guilty for having neither the heft nor the weight to match anyone else’s stroke. I’d tried spelling both brothers and no one could dispute Ryshad’s decision that I stop, after we found ourselves veering so unexpectedly off course.
“Pull, now!” Ryshad leant all his weight into the tiller and the brothers bent over their oars, hauling them back with breath hissing through their teeth. From the concentration on Shiv’s face, he was doing his part with magic. All I could do was hold tight as the light boat bucked and swerved. Ashore, a surging stream laden with fine white sand cascaded down a mountainside thick with ash. It drew a stark line across a black sand bar, which itself cut abruptly across the paler grey of the beach where huge boulders, raw edges unweathered, lay scattered like a haphazard throw of knucklebones. Pale fingers reached through the dark waters towards us but everyone’s efforts took us safely past.
“ ’Sar would dearly love to see a fire mountain burning,” Shiv remarked, gazing at the mountain rising high above the shallow swell of the island we were passing. Yellow-tinted grey, the jagged peak had faint wisps of cloud clinging to the topmost pinnacles. No, not cloud but smoke or steam, ever renewed to defy the constant winds. I wondered if Misaen would heed a mongrel lass like me asking him politely to keep his fires banked until we’d quit this unnerving place.
“See, that’s all rock spewed up recently.” Shiv pointed to a formless mass of black stone sprawling across the beach and dusted with white. “It was so hot, it boiled a barrel full of salt out of the sea before it was quenched.” He smiled, intrigued at the notion.
I decided I preferred land that had the decency to stay as it had been made.
“Livak, put your hood up.” Ryshad spared me a blown kiss when I turned to see him covering his own head. I would have responded but this third day of harsh wind and such sun as burned through the recurrent mists had cracked my lips painfully. We’d taken a laboriously circuitous route in order to keep a long low, grass-covered island between us and the forbidding bulk of Ilkehan’s mountain-spined domain.
Our little boat crawled with aching slowness past a rocky islet in the midst of a treacherous sprawl of dunes and grass. A squat watchtower stood on the scant solid footing, the walls around it were stained and broken in several places. Small figures were making repairs with new, paler stone and several paused to look in our direction.
Sorgrad winked at me. “We leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.”
But the builders on the fort weren’t the only people to see us coming in from the shallow seas between the outer Elietimm islands and the deeper ocean. To reach this mysterious Olret’s fiefdom, we had to navigate the inner channels winding between dour grey islands fringed with saltings claiming equal kinship with sea and land. We saw men, women and children up to their knees in mud, digging for whatever the grudging sand might yield. Wading birds, black and white and trimmed with flashes of yellow or red hopped around in eager anticipation.
“Why couldn’t we steal a boat with a god-cursed sail?” grunted Sorgrad as some unseen current slowed us.
“Why don’t you take an oar, if you Tormalin know all about boats?” Puffs punctuated ’Gren’s words as he favoured Ryshad with a disgruntled glare. “I’ll bet even I could steer with a wizard smoothing the water under this thing’s arse.”
“That’s called the hull, ’Gren.” I grinned.
“Your man been making you an expert?” he began.
“We need to make landfall soon,” Shiv interrupted, turning to hide his map from the inquisitive wind.
“That’s going to be easier said than done,” grimaced Ryshad.
I studied the coast of Rettasekke curving ahead of us. Black pillars of rock piled in steps and stacks offering no foothold to anything bigger than a seabird. Screaming hordes of them clustered on every ledge and spilled whiteness neither salt nor snow down the cliffs. The sun suddenly appeared to strike rainbow glints from the wet rocks. The colours vanished and I looked up to see dappled cloud spreading across the sky.
“We’ll want to be under cover before long,” Ryshad observed.
“Before nightfall, I aim to be an honoured guest at this Olret’s fireside, drink in one hand, meat in the other,” said Sorgrad with determination.
“Drink and a willing lass will suit me.” ’Gren chuckled.
“You keep your hands to yourself,” I chided my irrepressible friend. “Touch the wrong stocking tops and you could find yourself flogged or worse.”
“Foul this up and you’ll be explaining yourself to Halice,” added Sorgrad. That was one of the few considerations ever to give ’Gren pause for thought.
“Let’s try over there.” Ryshad pointed to a steep stretch of mottled shingle below a stretch of turf breaking the serried black columns.
“Solid ground again,” I murmured fervently.
“Did I mention that coming ashore’s the most hazardous bit of a voyage?” said Ryshad conversationally. I turned my head to stick my tongue out at him as Sorgrad and ’Gren chuckled.
“Fast as you can.” Shiv was concentrating ahead. “We must get above the waterline at once.”
Sorgrad and ’Gren picked up the pace of their rowing. I gripped my seat and trusted to Ryshad’s firm hand on the tiller. As we drew closer, I could see the long spill of gravel making a natural ramp down into the deeper water. The instant the hull bit into the stones, Shiv jumped out, splashing through the cold sea with the painter over his shoulder. Sorgrad and ’Gren tossed their oars into the bottom, sprang over the sides and joined in hauling the boat up the slope. Ryshad was over the stern, shoving from the rear. I stayed put until the boat was solidly grounded.
“Would my lady care to come ashore?” Ryshad swept a florid bow and offered me his hand w
ith a grin.
I handed him his satchel and tossed the others their burdens before gingerly getting out of the boat. “These boots are new. I don’t want salt stains on the leather.”
Shiv was passing his hands over his sodden breeches, dry swathes appearing. “I thought you had more faith in my magic,” he said, mock sorrowful.
“When are you going to learn some useful spells like that?” ’Gren demanded of his brother as he tried to wring water from the bottom of his jerkin.
Sorgrad narrowed his eyes and steam began rising from his own clothes, leaving ’Gren open mouthed.
“Careful,” Shiv warned. “You wouldn’t be the first apprentice to set himself alight.”
“So Larissa said. ”A moment later, Sorgrad let out his breath with a triumphant grin. “What do you think of that?”
I ran a finger over his shirt cuff. “Just about dry enough for ironing.”
“Find me a nice flat stone and I’ll try heating it.” He grinned at me.
“I hate to play sergeant at arms all the time but we don’t have time to waste,” Ryshad pointed out.
“I hate being wet,” countered ’Gren.
“Permit me.” Shiv drove the water from ’Gren’s clothes with a brisk gesture. “Let’s hide the boat.”
“I don’t plan on rowing anywhere else,” ’Gren said firmly.
“I always plan on keeping every option open.” Sorgrad went to help Ryshad and I lent a hand as well. We wedged the vessel between two splintered black pillars and weighed it down with a few substantial stones.
“If we get separated, we’ll use this as a rendezvous.” Ryshad stowed the oars neatly beneath the thwarts.
Everyone nodded agreement as Shiv studied his map. “This way.”
We dutifully followed him up a steep hill shaped like an overturned boat, the blunt stern made by the stark cliffs. It was a punishing climb but the crest offered us a good view across the sound separating this island from Ilkehan’s domain. A line of rocks threaded between the sandy channels, the larger ones crowned with uncompromising cairns of ownership and one all but invisible beneath a small but sturdy fort. Ilkehan’s island beyond was hidden in secretive mists.
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