by Alec Hutson
His gaze swept the room, commanding attention. The Dymorians had paused their huddled conspiracies and now watched him, while beneath the roaring wyvern skull Alomir wiped down the bar distractedly. Jan caught a flash of gold from the cracked-open kitchen door. He ran his hand along the smooth wood of the lute’s neck, enjoying the simple pleasure of holding it again. How long had it been since he’d performed for someone other than Elinor? Ten years? Twelve?
His fingers brushed the strings, picking out a simple melody. At first he kept his movements simple, letting each note hang shivering in the inn’s silence before plucking the next. Ever so gradually he increased the tempo, layering another simple tune beneath the first, twining the two so that a new, more complex sound emerged. An appreciative murmur rose from those listening as the distinct melodies he had created on the upper and lower strings blended, and they recognized the song. The core of the ballad was as ancient as the north, though the words had changed over the centuries. He remembered suddenly, in a memory that came and then faded like a flash of lightning, that he had first heard it as a boy in Nes Vaneth, sitting in his sister’s lap while a wandering one-eyed bard performed for his House.
Then it had been known as The Lament of the Raven Prince, and though he knew the modern incarnation of the song he decided on a whim to keep the old verses.
In Ferdelin, far Ferdelin
On the edge of the twilit sea
A tower rose from the stony shore
For which there was no key
A princess fair with sunset hair
Gazed out longingly
From the tower’s cold high walls
And whispered forth a plea
“Oh Raven Prince, my light, my love
How could you abandon me,
After all the centuries we’ve shared
Why am I not free?”
The raven heard, that dark-winged bird
And flew unerringly
To that distant land of harsh black sand
On the edge of the twilit sea
He sang in a language his listeners could not understand, save for a few words that had survived down through the centuries, but by the third time the refrain came round the Visani were stamping their feet to the music and attempting to sing along. The thin, dark-haired girl squealed as she was bounced from lap to lap, her flailing arm upsetting a tankard and drenching the older Visani who had approached Jan in ale, which brought a roar of amusement from the rest.
Jan finished with a flourish and offered a bow as the audience applauded. To shouts of “another” he rubbed his throat and one of the Visani motioned towards the bar for a drink. Mella must have been waiting for this sign, as she appeared only moments later beside the stage with an overflowing tankard.
“You sing beautifully,” she whispered into his ear as he bent down, her fingers lingering on his hands as he took the ale. She smelled like wildflowers and summer.
Jan nodded thanks and drank deep. Then he set down the tankard and strummed a few random chords before beginning One-Shoe Suli, a tavern favorite that by the end had the Visani standing and kicking up their heels in some peculiar hopping dance. He followed with Frog’s Eye Pie, another popular tune, and then changed course, plucking out the first haunting melodies of The Brother’s Ballad. The Visani settled back into their seats as Jan sang of the twin princes Conn and Celn, and the greed and madness that led to the brothers’ deaths and the fracturing of their kingdom.
Finally he left the stage to a roar of approval, many hands clapping his back as he wended his way back to the bar and slipped onto a stool. Alomir set a fresh tankard before him as the sad-eyed lad climbed the stage and started in on a song. For a moment he sang sweetly, but then his voice cracked, and Jan winced as a groan rose up from the Visani.
“You’ll be called up there again soon enough.”
Jan shook his head at the innkeep’s words. “I haven’t performed in so long I doubt my throat could survive another round.”
“You’ve a good voice. Best I’ve ever heard, I think. Maybe if I keep the ale flowing you’ll gift us with a few more songs.”
Jan raised his drink in thanks. “The more of these that are set before me, the more likely I’ll sing again.”
Alomir turned and spat, then leaned in closer. “That first song – I only understood a few words. It was like . . . it was like a dream I couldn’t quite remember. Familiar, yet so distant.”
Jan took a long swig. “Ah. I don’t really know what it means, either. I trained under a bard who had grown up in the north and held some interest in the old tongue. He said the song was ancient – maybe even Min-Ceruthan.”
“Min-Ceruthan,” Alomir said softly, sketching a quick warding circle in the air. “A cursed folk. We sometimes get travelers passing through here, heading north to trade with the Skein squatting in their dead cities. One fellow . . . must have been a few month or so ago . . . he was coming south from the thane’s hall at Nes Vaneth. He said what he’d seen still haunted his dreams – ruins of tumbled stone, white steps climbing into the sky, towers of glimmering crystal sheathed in ice. He said if you pressed your face to that ice, you could see shapes within, man-shapes, staring back . . .”
A tingling had spread through Jan as Alomir talked. He felt dizzy, and had to lean on the wood in front of him to stop from sliding off his stool.
The barkeep gripped his arm. “You all right, lad?”
“Aye, I’m sorry,” Jan murmured, managing a weak smile. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what came over me. Mayhap your northern ale is a bit strong for this southerner.” He shook his head, trying to clear it. What was wrong with him? Shapes in the ice, flesh turned to stone . . . something fluttered on moth wings at the edges of his memories.
Alomir was looking at him queerly. “Aye, well, have a rest, lad. You’ve come a long way, and if you’re heading west you’ve a long ways to go still. I’ll send the fellows from Vis a round if they try and pull you up there again.”
Jan nodded his thanks and pushed away from the bar.
He stood at the entrance of a vast, blue-lit chamber. Once he had known this place, but it was different now. Sorcery coiled in the air, drifted between the silent ones with their dead, granite eyes – accusing, knowing eyes. How they cowered! There was Helmskjatter, breaker of dragons, his mouth open in an endless raging challenge, the golden whip that had tamed the Wild Wyrm looped at his side – now but cracked stone. And there was fair Elowyn, of whose fabled beauty the bards had sung. He had sung. Her hands were raised imploringly toward the wall of shimmering ice that filled the far end of the room, atop the stairs that had once climbed to the Dragonbone Throne. Was she begging, or praying? What had been her final thoughts as the magic had rolled over her and the blood had begun to thicken in her veins? Did she curse what her queen had laid within the ice? Jan approached the flickering blue wall. Dark shapes lurked within, but one in particular drew him closer, and he reached out trembling fingers to brush the ice . . .
He awoke to the smell of summer. Mella hovered over him, indistinct in the light from the hearth’s fading embers, her golden curls cascading down to tickle his face. She leaned in closer and her lips found his, her tongue darting inside his mouth. For a moment Jan welcomed the kiss, and he had to fight the urge to pull her down on top of him and crush her soft body against his own.
Instead he pushed her away. “Mella,” he whispered, stealing a quick glance to see if any of the other sleepers curled near the hearth had woken, “what are you doing?”
The girl bit her lower lip, her wide eyes pleading. Jan tried to ignore the warmth of her body.
“Master bard,” she breathed softly, “take me with you. Please. I can sew and cook, and I’ll never complain, promise.” She tried to kiss him again, but he held her away.
“God’s blood, girl. You’ve only just met me. I could be mad or da
ngerous or cruel.”
Mella shook her head, her expression certain. “You’re not. And I’m not foolish. I wouldn’t try and run off with any handsome face with a shiny sword. There’s something about you, I can sense it . . .”
Jan stared into her soft brown eyes. Then he pushed himself into a sitting position; she moved to give him room. He gently brushed her cheek, and she flinched away. There was something behind that pretty, round face, a glimmering of the gift. If she did not escape these swamps, then likely one day she would be named wise-woman, and sought out by other marsh-folk for her charms and advice.
Jan extended a tendril of magic. He could not compel her – especially one marked by sorcery, no matter how minor – but he could make her take notice of what he said now, and consider it deeply.
“Mella,” he said gravely, cupping her chin, “I know you think of this place as a prison. That you yearn for a different world, like the one you’ve heard about in song and traveler’s tales. But I’ve wandered this land for more years than you’ve drawn breath” – much longer, he silently added – “and I can swear to you before any god you can name that having a home where others care for you is what brings true happiness, not jewels to pin in your hair or servants to draw your bath.”
Tears glimmered in her eyes. “I know they care for me here, Uncle and Nana and the cousins . . . but I want more than this. More than bringing ale and squirming in the laps of ugly merchants. I want to see Vis, and Farayne, and maybe even the Gilded Cities.”
Jan withdrew his sorcery. “Aye,” he said tiredly, rubbing his eyes, “truly, Mella, I can’t blame you for that. But my path is my own, and too dangerous for a serving girl to travel. I can only give you some advice: be careful with whom you finally leave this place. Will you do that?”
Mella nodded, swallowing back her tears. “I promise,” she murmured, then stood and dashed silently across the common room and through the kitchen doors.
Jan watched her go. He sighed and lay back down again, pillowing his head on his bedroll, and met the eyes of a Visani merchant who had turned towards him.
“Singer,” the man said with a slight smile, “you’ve more strength than I. That would have been too much temptation for me.”
“Almost too much for me, as well,” Jan whispered in reply, rolling over to stare at the darkened rafters.
He tried to push away thoughts of Mella and the memory of her smell. He had been dreaming, hadn’t he? Something about Nes Vaneth . . . a frozen chamber, a wall of ice . . .
Jan sat upright. He had been there, in the audience chamber beneath the palace. Some of the great lords had been turned to stone, others were entombed in the ice, the terrible ice that the Kalyuni had called down upon the north.
Jan threw aside his traveler’s blanket and stood. North. He must go north, and find out what he could about his past. There was knowledge in the ancient holdfasts, answers to riddles he could not yet even ask. Alyanna had those answers and more, he suspected, but could he trust her? Perhaps, if he went north, he might discover who he really was, what had happened to him. What had broken him.
Jan quickly gathered his things and slipped from the inn into the gray dawn-light. The dogs curled beside the boy sleeping in the hay raised their heads and growled, but Jan calmed them with a flicker of sorcery. He untied his horse from the hitching post, and as quietly as possible opened the inn’s gate and led his mount back onto the road. His horse whickered in what seemed to be exasperation when it gazed upon the endless gray waste resolving from the darkness, and Jan patted its neck. “Strength, boy. We’ve a long way yet to travel.”
Fingers of pink light spread across the horizon as he rode west, and by the time he came to where the road forked, the rosy dawn had given way to a dull blue sky, the first Jan had seen since leaving Vis. One path led on through the moorland, vanishing far ahead among hazy, dun-colored hills. The other turned north, and Jan’s eyes were drawn to the distant Bones of the World, soaring and snow-capped. That way was Nes Vaneth. His home.
He urged his steed onto the right branching, but at first the horse resisted. “You might have more sense than me,” Jan muttered, pulling harder on the reins.
They had ridden only a few hours when he sensed the presence ahead. It stood half-hidden in the tall grass of the moors, a girl-child in tattered gray rags. Long, tangled hair veiled her face, and the patches of skin he could see through the shifting grasses looked bone-white. She waited silently. Jan halted and slipped from his suddenly skittish horse, his hand on Bright. A cold wind gusted, stirring his cloak and bending the grass around the girl, but her clothes and hair remained untouched.
His flesh crawled. He had felt this thing before, and had tracked it across Araen, only to be turned away at the last by Alyanna and her promises. Yet here it was, waiting for him. He drew Bright, blue light flaring as the spell-steel left its sheath. The creature did not move.
“Finally we meet, demon.”
jan. His name seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, spoken in the hoarse whispers of many children.
“You know me.”
we do. you are known to our mistress, so you are known to us.
“I should destroy you for what you did to Tristin Willesorn.”
The titter of children’s laughter filled the air.
Jan approached the girl, but she retreated deeper into the tall grass. “What do you want?”
this is not your path. our mistress bade you to go west, to find the red queen.
“I will travel north.”
no.
Jan snorted. “Are you going to stop me, demon?”
she feared your resolve would weaken when you neared the bones. the temptation to witness your folly would again be too strong. but you will not go north, not until you have fulfilled your end of the bargain you struck.
“And if I do go north?”
if you do, we shall visit the summer child you just left weeping behind you, and hang her in bloody tatters from her uncle’s hall.
Then the girl was gone. Jan cursed and slashed at the grass with his sword, staring at where she had been.
“And begin.”
Nel lunged forward, her wooden sword thrusting toward Keilan in a passable approximation of the first form of The One Who Strikes. The boy shifted from the second form of The One Who Waits to the first, catching her blade and turning it aside. Quick as a rabbit Nel jumped back, far enough that Keilan couldn’t try any counter without extending himself. Xin felt a small flood of satisfaction. Three days ago, Nel’s speed and aggressiveness had simply overwhelmed Keilan when they trained; gradually, though, the boy had improved at parrying and blocking her attacks, and now it often took her some time before she could find a chink in his defenses and score a winning strike.
Her initial foray turned away, Nel began to circle Keilan, looking for an opening. Xin marveled at how effortlessly she moved over the uneven ground of the forest clearing, stepping over rocks and roots without even looking down. She had incredible balance, and an almost preternatural sense of her surroundings. If she continued her training she could become a brilliant swordswoman, he suspected, perhaps even one that might someday challenge a Fist warrior.
Xin regretted that thought immediately, as he sensed a mental snort of derision from his fourth brother, Chandren. The others were trying to guard their minds, but Xin felt a mixture of curiosity, disapproval, and bewilderment leaking around the barriers they had erected. Chandren had been the most vocal opponent of Xin training these two in swordfighting, but his opinion was not unique among the brothers. One of the first lessons they had learned in the red-sand pits was that the martial knowledge of the Fists must never be taught to those who were not Fettered. The origins of the Forms could be traced to the swordsingers of the lost Kalyuni Imperium, and in all the centuries since the waters had swallowed the Mosaic Cities those secrets had never left
the stables of Gryx’s slave masters.
But as Xin had explained to his brother Delon, he was only teaching the most basic of the Forms, and since the seeker would travel with the caravan for only a few more weeks – then turn south towards Nes Vaneth – there was not nearly enough time to impart very much else.
The rapid clattering of the practice swords returned Xin’s attention to the duel. To his surprise, Keilan had for once gone on the offensive, and he was pressing Nel hard. Soon her back would be up against a tree, and then the boy’s size and strength would almost certainly force her to yield or suffer a thumping blow – much like the ones she often delivered to him, he thought wryly. Her face was a mask of concentration as she warded away his sword, but Xin could tell that her defeat was inevitable now, as she had lost the initiative, and there was no place left for her to retreat.
He pushed himself from the mossy boulder he was leaning against, and was just opening his mouth to call a halt to the duel when Nel threw herself forward, Keilan’s wooden blade whistling over her head. She tucked and rolled, somehow keeping her sword in her hand, and as she came to her feet again she lashed his side with enough force that the boy’s ribs would almost certainly be bruised, if not cracked. Xin winced as Keilan stumbled back a few steps, fully expecting him to collapse in pain.
“Stop! Enough!” Xin cried, hurrying toward the boy.
But Keilan steadied himself and gave Nel a rueful smile. “I thought we were supposed to stay with the Forms?”
Nel grinned back and shrugged. “What did I tell you? In a fight, there are no rules. Take whatever advantage you can. I have a few old knife-fighting tricks I draw upon when in a tight spot.”
Xin stopped a pace from Keilan, looking at him in surprise. “Keilan, are you all right? This one thinks you should be on the ground, clutching at your ribs and trying not to cry in front of the girl.”
