Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides

by David Hair

  A woman in midnight-blue robes appeared in the far corner of the balcony, floating out of the twilight gloom: a white face in a cloud of black hair. She gestured with her right hand and stone tiles peeled from the balcony floor and flew at Alyssa: a torrent of lethal stone.

  Alyssa gave a small shriek and flew to one side, gathering her shields in time to deflect the stones, but Taldin was neither swift enough nor strong enough to do the same and she saw a square stone slab the width of his torso slam into his chest corner-first. He rebounded off the balcony, his ribcage already shattered, then a further torrent of stone pulverised his skull, turning the face she’d been kissing three seconds before to meat jelly and broken bone, nothing more than a dark smear in the rubble.

  Justina Meiros turned to Alyssa. ‘So, my darling.’ Her hard, acerbic voice throbbed. ‘Shall we dance?’

  *

  The whole house shook, and above Ramita’s head the very stones cracked and boomed as dust fell from the ceiling and poured in through the barred window. There was a momentary pause, as if the world did not quite know how to react, and then the screaming began.

  Ramita grinned suddenly, quickly stuffed her belongings back into her two bags, then sat back down on the bed and waited. A minute later, Justina Meiros opened her door with a blast of gnosis and stepped through.

  ‘Ramita?’

  ‘Hello, daughter,’ Ramita greeted her, knowing how much the term irritated her husband’s child and unable to refrain from using it despite the situation.

  ‘I’ve told you not to call me that, bint.’ Justina scowled as she bent over the fallen Hamid. ‘He’s not dead,’ she added, turning Hamid’s head over with her foot and studying his face. ‘Best I remedy that.’

  Ramita shivered. ‘Spare him,’ she blurted. ‘He was kind to me.’ He hadn’t been, not really. But she didn’t want to see a death.

  Justina scowled, but acquiesced. ‘We must go.’

  Ramita clutched her shawl about her. ‘I am ready.’

  ‘Do you have any possessions here?’ Justina asked her.

  ‘Only these,’ Ramita replied, showing her the two bags. ‘Everything else was at home.’

  ‘Father’s house has been pillaged,’ Justina said angrily. ‘Everything is stolen or ruined.’

  Ramita felt the same way. She hadn’t owned much; now she had nearly nothing.

  Justina’s eyes bored into her. ‘I’m doing this for the children, not for you. You are nothing to me but an annoying Indranian bint. But Father seemed to like you, and you have conceived of him, so I will see you and your children safe, for his sake.’

  Ramita was reminded of just how many secrets she held that she could not afford this woman to know, especially her own perfidy in betraying her husband – secrets her enemies knew.

  I pray she will never learn such things …

  Justina gripped her shoulders and shouted aloud. Ramita lost all coherent thought as they flew upwards, the fabric of the building exploding around them. They erupted through the balcony, where the very stone was scorched, in places partially liquefied. One battered body slumped against the broken balustrade; the lawn below was littered in corpses. Ramita felt her limbs trembling in shock, but Justina placed her on a solid patch of stone, ignoring the destruction as if it were commonplace. She gestured, and a huge bundle flew towards them, then unrolled itself: a flying carpet, the very one Antonin had once used to show her the Leviathan Bridge. She knew what was expected; she walked as steadily as she could to the centre of it, then sat cross-legged. Justina barely gave her time to settle before sending them soaring upwards towards the rising half-moon.

  ‘What happened to Alyssa? Is she dead?’ Ramita asked hopefully.

  ‘Alyssa? Huh! She wouldn’t stand and fight someone like me. She’s a manipulator, a parlour witch. You can’t fight with divinations and scryings. She ran for her life.’ Justina gave a small, bitter laugh. ‘And I let her go. For old time’s sake.’ Her mouth curled into a little grimace of self-mockery.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the Isle of Glass,’ Justina told her, as though this explained everything. ‘Shut up and let me concentrate. Someone is already trying to scry us.’ The carpet picked up speed, thrumming northwards through the darkening sky, and Sagostabad fell away behind them in the night. Ahead lay only darkness.

  5

  Mercellus di Regia

  Rimoni Gypsies

  The Ascendants and the allied armies invaded Rimoni, and there was no revenge they would not contemplate to destroy the power of their former Imperial masters forever. Thousands of people, sometimes whole communities, were exterminated, particularly around Rym, the capital. Soil was systematically salted and forests burned to the ground. Immigrant colonies were brought in to displace the locals, leaving many landless and forced into nomadic, poverty-stricken lives. The covered wagon of the Rimoni gypsy is now a common sight across the continent, and whilst some welcome them grudgingly for the trade they bring, others do not, for the Rimoni themselves never forget that they were once the masters.

  ARNO RUFIUS, LANTRIS 752

  Eastern Noros & Northern Rimoni, Yuros

  Julsep 928

  1st month of the Moontide

  The road east from Norostein took Alaron and Muhren from the high slopes, where towns had been hewn into the rock, down into the lush farms and vineyards on the valley floor. With so many men away, marching with the Crusaders or selling goods and produce in Pontus, it was left to the women to work the fields.

  The journey felt surreal. Every night he fell asleep fully expecting to wake up in his bed, having dreamt all this danger and intrigue. People like him did not find themselves on quests for the Scytale of Corineus. The presence of Jeris Muhren beside him gave proceedings a certain grounding, however: the former watch captain was nothing if not solidly real, and he was firmly in control. Hel, he’s a genuine living legend, Alaron admitted, and I’d be screwed without him.

  Muhren knew people – literally, at first: they’d enter a tavern and half the men in the room would erupt with greetings. Anonymity was initially so difficult they took to sleeping in the woods. After a few days they’d left behind all that immediate recognition, but Muhren still knew people: he knew if they were honest or not, and if the information they were passing on was genuine or rumour only. It wasn’t gnosis; Alaron thought he’d have sensed that. It was just that Muhren seemed to know what made a person tick.

  He also knew how to cinch a saddle and clean a horse’s hooves without getting kicked, and where best to site the fire, how to bring down game and cook it, how to prepare a campsite, when it was going to rain and when that rain would stop. He could even tell when the water in the stream was safe.

  But he didn’t know Cym at all.

  ‘She said she’d go to her mother in Hebusalim. That’s where she’s going,’ Alaron repeated, tired of the debate already.

  ‘But her family summer in Silacia, picking grapes for the familioso,’ Muhren said stubbornly.

  The man could not conceive of being wrong, or so Alaron thought.

  ‘And you’ve told me they purchased a windskiff.’

  ‘To sell. They sell everything – that’s what the Rimoni do.’

  ‘No, Alaron. She will want to use it to fly east.’

  ‘I piloted it. She just helped me build it.’

  ‘She’s a smart girl; she’d learn quickly enough.’

  ‘They live hand-to-mouth. Her father would have sold it.’

  ‘They’re not so poor as that,’ Muhren replied. ‘Mercellus is as shrewd a man as I’ve met. And he wears gold earrings.’

  ‘They wear their wealth – Cym says some nights they have to eat boot-leather.’

  ‘That old story?’ Muhren laughed aloud. ‘Come, we’ll take the pass on the coast road south to Silacia.’

  ‘North, then east to Pontus.’

  Muhren just shook his head, kicked the flanks of his horse and surged ahead.

  Alaron
cursed, and bounced along in his wake. He called his horse Mallet because every night as he dismounted it felt like someone had taken a mallet to his backside. I’m going to have an arse like tooled leather after a few days more of this, he thought grumpily. Muhren’s mount was called Prancer. Bastard.

  It wasn’t that Alaron couldn’t ride, but he’d never ridden for days on end, and such long distances – the farmlands and forests of Noros were boxed in by mountains, and he’d never ridden further from Norostein than the journey from his parents’ town house to the family manor house, which had been sold in the spring.

  The road they were on ran east to the coastal ranges, then south into Silacia. The farmlands and villages soon gave way to wilder countryside, the road winding through woods and alongside mountain streams. The weather was pleasant enough – the summer temperatures were mild and the air humid enough to raise a sweat in direct sunlight. But mostly the clouds high overhead drifted along under cooling breezes. Alaron estimated they were covering about thirty miles a day.

  The land became more rugged and undulating, with steep, rocky hills devoted mostly to sheep-farming, and pinewoods where logging gangs chopped down the great pines, then hauled the logs away on oxen-carts. Many of the rivers and streams were strung with fishing weirs.

  The wildlife grew larger as they travelled east. Otters frolicked in pools and foxes haunted the margins of the farms. They heard the distant howls of timber wolves, and Alaron saw his first wild bear, gorging on the fish from a weir it had destroyed.

  As the road became more overgrown, Muhren grew more cautious. At his insistence they both wore shield-wardings, though they were draining and distorted distance-vision. ‘There are bandits here,’ he warned. ‘If we display wards, they’ll leave us alone.’

  On the fifth night, the stream they were following fell down a waterfall into an icy, crystal-clear pool. A platform of rock jutted a little from the woods, affording them a view back the way they had come, and Alaron was surprised to find they were so high. The valley westwards was all trees, the pastures hidden by the folds of land. The Alps were lost in the clouds, but to the north, the opposing hills were clear and massive. He’d studied maps; he knew Noros was small compared with other provinces of the empire, but to him it seemed vast and untamed.

  ‘Do you think we’re being followed?’ he asked.

  Muhren was shielding his eyes from the westering sun as he peered back the way they had come. ‘We’ve not been scryed – my wardings haven’t been tested, at least, not that I’m aware of. Even a pure-blood Inquisitor with the right affinities would struggle to scry me undetected.’ He sounded calm about that possibility.

  ‘Then what are you looking for?’

  ‘Dust clouds on the road. It’s dry enough that we’ve been kicking up a faint trail.’ He glanced at Alaron. ‘I also started leaving some minor ward-spells on the path: little cantrips that are dissipated if trodden on. I can sense if they are broken. It doesn’t tell me who, but it might indicate if we’re being followed.’

  ‘Have they been triggered?’ Alaron asked with a little trepidation.

  Muhren shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He patted Alaron’s shoulder. ‘Let’s make camp. Make sure the wood you use is dead; it smokes less. Use Air-gnosis to break up the smoke if you have to. I’m going hunting.’

  Alaron got a fire going, and made a wooden rack for the billy and by the time Muhren returned with a dead hare over his shoulder he had a broth cooking. Muhren was perspiring from the climb back to their camp, but butchered his catch and added the pieces to the pot before pulling off his clothes and wading into the pool.

  ‘Isn’t it freezing?’ Alaron called.

  ‘We’re magi, Alaron.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ There were ways to insulate the body from hot and cold if you didn’t mind tiring yourself, but Alaron had never been strong or skilled enough to routinely resort to them.

  After a minute or two splashing about, Muhren waded from the water. ‘I swear there’s an eel the size of my leg under that big rock,’ he laughed. ‘If we had time I’d spit and smoke him.’ He looked more relaxed than Alaron had seen him before, with no cares beyond food and sleep. The Jeris Muhren he’d grown up knowing, the Watch Captain of Norostein, was terse, wary and always poised on the edge of action. Naked, he was an impressive figure, strong and lithe, with no lack of athleticism despite his bulk. His torso was already brown, as if he took every opportunity to enjoy the sun. ‘I’ll watch the fire, lad,’ he said. ‘Have a splash yourself.’

  Alaron felt reluctant but after a quick sniff under his arms he stripped self-consciously, feeling skinny and pale beside the muscular watchman. The water was so cold he nearly choked, until he remembered to use the gnosis to regulate his temperature. Just a few minutes was enough to exhaust him, but at least he was able to get clean. He found a place on the rock platform where the stone was still warm from the sun and let the wind dry him. He was still panting from the exertion, but he felt fresh and strangely alive.

  Muhren threw him a blanket, wrapped another about his own waist and went to tend the horses, which were whickering peacefully as they grazed on the tussocky grass. Alaron stared out across the trees, listening to the wind rustling the leaves. It was hard to understand why people would choose to live in tiny houses in piss-rank alleys in stinking cities where the air was smoke-laden and the water polluted, when you could live out here. There was probably a reason, but right now it didn’t feel good enough.

  ‘Where is your father?’ Muhren asked. He and Vann Mercer were old friends.

  ‘He went east a few months ago, to try his luck trading in Dhassa. He says you can still find traders east of Hebusalim where the Crusade doesn’t usually go – he says lots of traders do it.’

  ‘He’d better take care. I’ve a feeling this Crusade is going to be a lot worse than the last.’

  Alaron sighed. It was another thing that was gnawing at him.

  Then he felt it: the questing eye, like a orb in the sky that was beating down on him, tendrils snaking about it, ripping at the wards he’d clothed himself in. It wasn’t aimed at him; he could tell that instantly. He just happened to be close to the person it was aimed at. ‘A scrying!’ he called urgently, leaping to his feet.

  Muhren ran towards him. ‘I can shield you within my ambit if you’re close enough, and your presence will disrupt the attempt to find me.’ He pulled out his dagger and began to gouge the earth. ‘Counter-wards, quickly.’

  Alaron joined him, putting his gnosis into boosting Muhren’s ward. A shape began to appear in his inner vision, a masklike visage with eyes that were seeking—

  Muhren grasped a handful of earth and tossed it into the air above him: Earth to counter Air-gnosis. Alaron felt two things click into place about him: the earth fanned out like a shield, hanging about them in an immobile cloud, and Muhren’s wards merged with his. The shape he’d sensed – a product of his imagination, not truly visible – vanished. He trembled, rubbing at his temples.

  Muhren squeezed his shoulder encouragingly. ‘We’ve repelled them for now. They won’t try again soon: scrying takes more effort than hiding.’ He gazed towards the west. ‘It came from the direction of Norostein. I didn’t recognise the mental signature.’

  ‘Inquisitors?’

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘It was targeting you, not me,’ Alaron noted, frightened by the realisation that pursuit was no longer just an abstract thought; it was real.

  ‘They’ve linked me to Vult’s death. Perhaps they’ve even found Fyrell.’

  ‘Will they try again?’

  ‘Almost certainly. But defence is stronger than attack in the gnosis. I can set up wards to cover us while we sleep. And the more distance we can put between us and them, the better.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry, lad. They won’t find us.’

  They settled in for the night, wrapped in blankets on either side of the fire, eating the stew and sipping from a flask of whisky Muhren produced from his s
addlebag. One sip was enough for Alaron; it was potent stuff. The scrying came again, but Alaron scarcely felt it this time. Muhren grinned as the attack fell apart. ‘See, lad? If they’re going to find us, it’ll be with leg-work, not scrying.’

  ‘What else could they do to find us?’

  ‘Sorcery – necromancy or wizardry, using spirits of one sort or another to find us. Animism, setting creatures on our trail. But those methods all take time, and they’re erratic. If we keep moving, eventually we’ll outrun their resources.’ He stared into space, measuring with his mind. ‘Once we cross the pass south into Silacia, I dare say they’ll have lost us in terms of scrying.’

  ‘Will they give up then?’ Alaron asked hopefully.

  ‘With the Scytale of Corineus at stake? No – but they’ll have to use less direct methods. The longer we can avoid them, the safer we’ll become.’

  They fell silent for a while, wrapped up in their own thoughts. Alaron wrestled with a bleak future of constantly running, drifting rootless with no place to call home, never finding Cym and never losing the Inquisitors. It was a dismal prospect.

  ‘Tell me about you and Aunt Elena,’ he said eventually, as the last of the daylight left the sky. The moon was waxing, and he could see its cratered face. Are there woods and trees up there too? he wondered. Or is it all a desert?

  Muhren sighed ruefully. ‘Elena Anborn.’ He ran his fingers through his hair as if trying to make himself more presentable to the memory. ‘Now there was a woman in a million.’ He poked at the fire with a stick. Somewhere, miles away, wolves howled, and they listened for a few seconds until the noise died down before he went on, ‘I first met Elena in 908, when the Noros king was defying Pallas and open revolt was brewing. I was twenty-seven, she was twenty-one. There were a lot of meetings amongst the magi in Norostein then. She already had quite a reputation – she was the first woman in Noros to win honours in swordsmanship, so most of the men wanted to try her out. More particularly, they wanted to demonstrate that her honours were undeserved, because surely no woman could be the equal of a man.’ Muhren chuckled softly. ‘Lad, she could fight like a hellion and curse like a windshipman. She broke a few skulls and made no friends at all.’