Greylady

by Peter Morwood

  And from the fleeting look that Marc ar’Dru shot at him, he had seen it too.

  * * * *

  “So blatant,” said Mevn later that same night. “And why the old man? Why not someone more important, like Clan-Lord Gerin himself?”

  Bayrd rolled over in the big bed they had started sharing again, even if only on a mutually-agreed intermittent basis. And tonight they wanted to share: warmth, closeness, and another living body. Anything rather than the thought of the dead body growing cold and stiff on a bench downstairs, a bandage of the red and white clan colours across its eyes to bind the soul within, and candles set at head and feet to keep the dark at bay until it went into the last brightness of the funeral fire. There were candles here too, making the room smell sweetly of last autumn’s honey. Bayrd had exercised a Bannerman’s privilege, and refused to take no for an answer.

  “Whoever did that was trying for the clan-lord,” he said, “and they missed. You can do the same thing with an arrow. Hit, or miss. It’s easy.”

  “You don’t miss.”

  “And you don’t leave off harping on it.” Bayrd smiled a bleak smile all the same, because that shot had done his reputation nothing but good. “At such a long range it was more luck than anything else.”

  “Like magic.”

  “No. At least, I don’t think so. If they – whoever they might be – had known more about Gerin, they might have struck him just as dead as his uncle.” And if Gerin had known anything at all about sorcery or the Art, he would have been lying downstairs between the candles as well. Goel’s slight hesitation when pressed on his sources of information had left suggestions in Bayrd’s memory, and that abrupt stab of pain through his own head as the old man died had confirmed it. Goel had possessed a little of the Talent; not enough for him to recognize it, not enough in a man of his great age to save him when someone else, somewhere else, reached out to snuff the flame of his life. What Bayrd had felt was the wind of the blow going by. It had come as close as that.

  “And—” he pulled away from his private thoughts and held his hand up quickly as Mevn opened her mouth for more questions, “—I don’t know what they needed to know. Skarpeya could tell you.”

  “But nobody talked to Skarpeya. Except you.”

  “Except me. And what good did it do? My own blood-clan wouldn’t speak a civil word for almost half a year.”

  “I did. Marc did.”

  “And more than that.” Bayrd pulled the furred bed­covers down enough to kiss her lightly between the breasts. “Both of you. Much more.” He kissed her again, lingering more until Mevn sighed a long, shivering breath and pushed the covers further away and wound her fingers in his unbraided long hair, guiding his head and his mouth and his tongue and his lips to just where she wanted them.

  “You can’t choose your family, kailin-eir my lord,” she murmured, shifting languidly in the bed. “But you can choose your friends. And, and – Oh, oh, yes…! And more than friends. Yes. Yes…oh, much more indeed!”

  “Bayrd-ain?” It was Marc’s voice, muffled somewhat by an inch of still-seasoning timber. “Excuse me, Bayrd?” Knuckles rapped against the door and the mood in the bedroom shattered, seeming almost to tinkle like thin ice as it fell away to nothing.

  Bayrd blinked at Mevn along the length of her body, sweetly curved and glistening and golden in the light of the candles, and squirmed up enough to rest his chin in her navel. “I think you should be aware,” he said, “that I intend to kill your brother. Right now, and slowly.”

  “No.”

  Bayrd raised his eyebrows until they vanished in the tangle of dark hair hanging down over his forehead, and pushed up like a cat against the hand which stroked those tousles back to better look him in the eyes.

  “I said no,” Mevn repeated, and gave him a crooked grin by way of explanation. “Family prerogative. I get first chop. You can have what’s left. But only after we find out what brings the idiot up here at this time of night. He deserves that much courtesy at least.”

  Does he indeed? Bayrd liked young Marc well enough, but this was stretching friendship farther than it should be expected to bear. Except for the night-duty guards, and the yscopen priests and those of his family who stood deathwatch over Goel ar’Diskan’s body, everyone in the entire citadel had gone to bed two hours ago. Whether that was to sleep, or for more energetic reasons, was their own affair; and Marc had better not have come here just to complain that Vitya ar’Diskan had thrown him out, even though knowing Marc as he did – and Vitya as he had done, just the wearing once and that quite enough – Bayrd couldn’t imagine what reason even that notoriously voracious lady might have had. Otherwise the Chosen Son of House ar’Dru was likely to learn what being thrown out really meant. It was a long flight over the fortress wall, and the worst part was the abrupt stop on the ice of the frozen moat at the bottom.

  “Are you decent?” called the muffled voice, sounding a bit plaintive. Bayrd muttered something irritable into the skin of Mevn’s stomach, and rolled sideways onto his back. Then looked down, laughed, and rolled over again, face-down with his head cradled on his crossed arms. Staying there was the nearest thing to decency he would be able to manage for the next little while; Marc’s timing was as bad as that.

  Mevn patted him approvingly on the head, then snuggled down and pulled the top layers of bedclothes up around both their shoulders. “Decent enough for you!” she snapped in that tone of voice which in the course of four years Bayrd had learned to recognize or avoid. “Now get in here and stop waking decent people up.”

  “And what,” Marc slipped hurriedly inside and shut the door behind him, “about indecent people?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Bayrd studied him over one shoulder, not feeling inclined to turn over quite yet. For one thing…well, for another, it would put him in too good a position to throw something, and he was very much inclined to do just that. Something hard enough to make his displeasure obvious, like maybe the wrought-iron candlestick by the bed. “This had better be good.”

  “I think it is,” said Marc virtuously. “And the clan-lord thinks so too.”

  That was enough. It would be a poor banner-bearer who needed more of a summons than that to his place by the clan-lord’s side, and a poor sort of Bannerman’s lady who would give herself precedence over her lover’s duty.

  “Out!” ordered Bayrd and Mevn in perfect unison; and Marc, though he might have preferred to argue some point or other about it, got out.

  * * * *

  There was a man on the floor in the hall. Or rather, it had been a man once. Now it was a corpse.

  As Bayrd strode closer, belting his tunic and pulling back his hair and doing all the hasty things to make him look at least slightly as neat as a clan-lord’s Companion should, he could see clearly enough that death had probably come as a welcome release. He was quietly grateful, to whoever had made the decision, that Marc ar’Dru had not been sent to fetch him until after whatever foulness had happened here was over – and as he saw more of what that foulness had entailed, was just as surprised that he hadn’t heard at least some of its progress.

  “A spy,” said Clan-Lord Gerin in terse explanation. “Or more properly, an observer.”

  “Observing what, my lord?”

  “What do you think, ar’Talvlyn? You saw it too.” Overlord Albanak had been unseen in the shadows of the darkened hall until he stepped into one of the scattered pools of lamplight, but his voice rang harsh in the stillness. Rather than answer at once, Bayrd took refuge in an immediate First Obeisance that gave his face an opportunity to control itself.

  “Seventeen people died tonight,” Albanak went on. “Seventeen. Men and women, young and old. They died like Goel ar’Diskan, even though two of them were children. Three years old, and eight. So what do you think, ar’Talvlyn?” he said again.

  It was impossible to separate grief from anger, or those from any of the other emotions simmering in that hard voice. Outrage, definitely; despa
ir, never. And the hope of an honest reply…? Unlikely, but always possible. He decided to chance it, regardless of what other questions the answer might provoke.

  “I think sorcery, Lord,” Bayrd told the floor. He was still bowed in his obeisance, and with the Overlord in his present mood, he wasn’t about to get up without permission. “One elderly gentleman might have died of a weakness of the heart, or great age, or…or any of the things that suddenly strike the old. But not so many in one night. And not men and women in good health. And most definitely not children.”

  “I should have had more of my retainers put aside their dignity and speak to the Hospodar Skarpeya while there was still a chance to do so,” said Gerin ar’Diskan quietly. “And so, Albanak-arluth, should you. Pride and wisdom do not always go together.” Fingers snapped, a sharp, twig-breaking noise that might have come from either the clan-lord or the Overlord, but it was Gerin who pre-empted Albanak and said, “Bayrd-eir, get up.”

  As Bayrd swung to his feet in the graceful knees-heels-hips flex that concluded an obeisance, he glanced once again at the messy corpse near the fireplace. Near enough, probably, that the red coals would lose none of their heat before they were rammed… He winced, and looked away.

  “The spy also spoke of sorcery, Lord?” he said, thinking neutral thoughts and appreciating how well the stink of tallow masked whatever other smells were hanging in the air.

  “Among other things. Guelerd used up three of his best wizards to do what he did tonight. This carrion—” Albanak kicked the charred, chopped body as it was being dragged away, “—was to have told him how well the magic had succeeded.”

  “Except that my guards saw him, stalked him, caught him and brought him back here,” said Gerin. “Then I sent for the Lord Albanak and his chief inquisitor, and we began asking questions.”

  “Uh. Yes.” And you were all in a hurry for answers, by the look of things. He couldn’t understand why Marc, with his notoriously queasy stomach where such cold-blooded violence was concerned, hadn’t said something about it. Either he hadn’t been here, or there was more to young ar’Dru than met the eye, and his squeamishness was no more than a pose. That wouldn’t have surprised Bayrd at all. There was more than enough posing and pretence in the world already, and his own secrets were far from being the worst.

  “This sorcery they enacted tonight. It killed three wizards in the making of it, and the spy could not say why. He wanted to, but he didn’t have an answer for us.” Gerin hesitated delicately, perhaps not wanting to insult his Bannerman by imputing against his honour.

  “And you wonder if I have an answer, my lord?” said Bayrd, quickly enough to indicate that if no offence was intended then he was willing to take none.

  “You were the only one I know who spoke to Skarpeya in other than—” Now it was the Overlord Albanak’s turn to hesitate, hastily reconsidering all the implications behind what he had been about to say.

  “I spoke to him, rather than swore at him. Yes, Lord. We discussed horses, for the most part.”

  “Horses. Not sorcery?”

  There was enough suspicion at the evasive answer that Bayrd looked sidelong at Marc ar’Dru and briefly considered the possibility that he had been talking about things best kept silent. Then he dismissed it. Confide in one, the old adage went, seldom in two; tell three and the whole world knows. He had confided in two, Marc and Mevn, but he was willing to take oath that they had preserved his secret.

  And yet, in Albanak’s view at least, what else would a wizard have talked about? Just horses? Hardly.

  “I knew about horses, Lord. He knew about magic. We, er, exchanged opinions on our individual skills.”

  “And you were as interested in this as he was in the horses?”

  What is this, another inquisition? “The man was… He was ordinary, Lord. No claws, no fangs, and he didn’t summon fire from the sky. My arm was broken and in a splint at the time. It seemed to me just then that I had suffered more harm from horses than he had from magic.”

  “Answer the question.”

  Bayrd drew himself up very straight. He was Bannerman and Companion to the lord of this clan, and had been so for long enough that Albanak should be well aware of it: and the respect that went with such a position. If the Overlord had forgotten, and if Gerin ar’Diskan had decided to take his own sweet time about defending him, then Bayrd had the right to remind them both that he was no longer an ordinary low-clan kailin.

  “Of course I was interested, Lord. No. I was fascinated. As would you have been, had you taken the trouble to listen. Skarpeya spoke to me with courtesy, treating me as an equal rather than a subordinate vassal of the king. I returned that courtesy as a kailin should. As too many kailinin did not.”

  And still do not…

  The words hung unvoiced in the moment’s nasty silence during which Bayrd could clearly hear the other two men breathing; then at long last Gerin grunted some wordless noise of approval, pleased as any other clan-lord to see his retainers behave arrogantly and with a sense of their own worth. At least when they were in the right.

  Albanak cleared his throat with unnecessary force. “Bayrd-eir,” he said, “it has been a trying night, one way and other. That is not an excuse. Just a reason. I ask your pardon.”

  “As I ask yours, Lord.” Bayrd bowed his head a little; acknowledgement and acceptance, but most definitely not another obeisance. “This behaviour is unbefitting to both our ranks, and to the high-clan hall in which we stand.” He could sense Marc ar’Dru and the other men in the far shadows of that hall hiding their smiles or their outrage, and Gerin ar’Diskan felt it too. The clan-lord stepped forward hastily to ensure peace and no further incidents.

  There were none. In common with so many Albans, Bayrd knew when it was best to passively accept what might often seem the foolishness of his superiors, and when he might be justified in a sharp retort; but unlike most of the others, he also knew when to stop. Honour had been upheld and face saved on all three sides, and unless Overlord Albanak had the inclination and enough free time on his hands to hold a grudge – which Bayrd doubted, on both counts – neither he nor Gerin ar’Diskan would hear anything more on the matter.

  What he did hear was more curiosity about the Art Magic than Albanak would have allowed as entirely proper if coming from somebody else, and as the questions came with increasing rapidity from both sides, Bayrd explained as best he could. It had been easier with Marc; then he hadn’t needed to take refuge in the vagueness of Skarpeya said and Skarpeya told me and So I took Skarpeya to mean, and then he hadn’t needed to edit everything he said before he spoke the words, for fear of sounding that dangerous bit too knowledgeable.

  “Though I can guess why the three Pryteneks died, Lord,” was one of the few things he could say without worrying, “I don’t know enough to say for sure. They were…” He hunted for a comparison that would make sense to the two high-clan lords, and after a moment found one that would suffice. “They were swinging a weapon of unknown weight at an unknown number of targets. Some hit, and the targets died. Some missed, and the force of the blow had to go somewhere. So it came back on the wielders. And they died. But more than that I won’t even guess, because I don’t even know if they were sorcerers or wizards, practicing the Old Magic or the High.”

  And that led to yet another round of questions. The Alban words were pestreyhar and purkanyath: ‘powerwielder’ and ‘spellsinger’. The only time Bayrd had heard any Alban use those words before was as part of a curse, and now he was sitting by his own lord’s fire, in the presence of the Overlord of all Albans, drinking more honeyed spruce-beer and trying to explain the difference between the two without incriminating himself.

  “As I understand it, my lords, wizardry and the Art Magic is a studied skill, while sorcery is an inborn Talent.” There; he had actually used the proper term for it, and neither of them had noticed. “The sorcerer summons or directs or focuses the Old Magic of the old elements: earth and air, fire and water
. Natural forces – or even his or her own personal force, for all I know.”

  For all I know… The sound of mocking laughter hung softly at the back of his mind until he shook it aside like a cobweb.

  “And the wizard?”

  “Again, summoning and directing and controlling…” Bayrd shook his head. “Hospodar Skarpeya called it the High Magic; but he wasn’t very forthcoming about the rest. That makes me suspect the forces and powers involved are very far from natural. Or safe, or wholesome, or particularly High, except in the way of stinking meat. I think he referred to the summoning of demons.”

  “Avert…!” He heard the chorus of nervous gasps running around the hall, and even in the shadowy light of dimmed lamps and banked coals, could see the flicker of hands moving in the hasty gesture to turn evil-wishing aside.

  “Lord and my lord, I suspect that this is only the latest and most blatant demonstration of such power.” Heads turned towards the source of the new voice, and Marc ar’Dru gave both clan-lord and Overlord a swift obeisance at being properly noticed for the first time that evening. Then he straightened up again and nodded a reassurance to Bayrd that what he was about to say had no bearing on any privileged information he might hold.

  “Explain,” said Albanak, intrigued.

  “Lord and my lord, we have always been a quarrelsome people, but never more than now – at a time when all past chronicles set down in the Books of Years prove we are best able to put our private wrangling aside in face of the common enemy. I believe that same enemy has – somehow – been encouraging our own worst traits, in the hope that we will do to one another what Lord Guelerd and all his men have been unable to do this past half-year. That it has not worked is obvious: we are still here, and Guelerd is turning his attention to more direct means of attack.”

  “The boy’s words make an uncomfortable sense, Albanak-arluth,” said Gerin.

  Albanak nodded grimly, and stared at the settling coals in the great hearth for several minutes whilst he digested this latest information. “Is such a thing possible, Bayrd-eir?” he asked at last.