Rose of the World (FOOLS GOLD)

by Fisher, Jude

  ‘Wait and see,’ was all she said.

  At last the eldianna came back to them. He looked thoughtful, which at least was better than despairing.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He’s here. Or at least his baggage is.’

  Mam nodded. ‘Good. Where?’

  ‘Inside the castle, somewhere in the west wing.’

  The mercenary leader looked surprised. ‘I wouldn’t have thought a mere merchant would be that well connected.’

  ‘Given what he paid for the girl, he’s got to be rolling in it.’ This from Dogo.

  ‘True enough.’

  Joz Bearhand coughed. ‘Actually, I heard something—’ He took Mam by the elbow and drew her aside.

  Erno strained to hear their conversation, but Persoa said quickly over the top of their hushed tones, ‘I should explain some of this to you. To alleviate your anxiety. The man who bought Katla came here. The moodstone tells me this, you see. I slipped it into the merchant’s baggage.’ And when Erno stared at him, uncomprehending, added, ‘I can feel it. Through the rock, the walls, the ground. I feel it here,’ he touched his scalp, ‘and here,’ his hands, his ribs. ‘It is what an eldianna is: my people have a – what would you call it? – a connection with the world, an affinity with rock and crystal, and especially with these stones they call the Goddess’s tears. Each one resonates quite differently.’ He smiled.

  ‘So she’s definitely here?’ Erno persisted, his attention caught.

  The eldianna opened his mouth to respond, but at once his pleasant features contorted, his face becoming abruptly a mask of agony.

  ‘What is it?’ Erno asked, alarmed. He caught Persoa by the arm, and drew back at once as if burned. Where he had touched the hillman, his palm and fingers tingled uncomfortably. ‘Are you ill, hurt?’

  Persoa steadied himself against the wall, his breath coming in short bursts. A few seconds later it was as if the spasm had passed and he was himself again. ‘By the Lady, a death-stone,’ he muttered wildly, and in the wan light his face looked sallow.

  ‘A what?’

  Persoa blinked. He rubbed his hand across his face. He looked tired. He did not want to open this subject, but Erno’s intent expression made it clear he would be unable to avoid an explanation. He took a deep breath. ‘For some time I have felt an occasional disruption of the world’s energies. It’s been getting worse the farther south we come. Down in the desert lands near my home someone is using a deathstone – and when they do . . .’ He paused, sucked in his breath. ‘I feel my soul withering inside me.’

  Erno remembered the shadow which had fallen across the hillman’s face on the road from Forent, his dazed expression, the time he had pulled up short as he ran ahead of them, clutching his side. He was intrigued.

  ‘You mean you can feel something that’s happening hundreds of miles from here? I don’t understand.’

  ‘You’ve seen moodstones, yes?’

  Erno nodded. ‘At the Allfair, being sold as jewellery and gifts, yes.’

  ‘Once, such stones were used for healing – channelling the spirit of the world through a person’s body to cleanse and balance. That is why they change colour when you hold them – to show the healer your disposition and the resonance of your body’s energies. But over the years as magic was lost from Elda the healers were persecuted and made outcast, and the true purpose of the stones became degraded to the playthings the Istrians make of them today. But in the wrong hands . . .’ He shivered. ‘Each crystal is a piece of Elda – taken from the veins which channel the Goddess’s power through the rock of the world.

  ‘They call me “eldianna” – man of Elda – because I belong to the world. Among other attributes I have inherited the ability to feel this power. For me, it is like another sense, another way of seeing the world. I use it to navigate. My mother used moodstones to see into another’s body and cure aches and pains in the joints; my grandfather used his stone to read the thoughts of another’s mind and offer wise advice.’ He spread his hands. ‘For my people, such things are second nature. But in these paranoid days they would burn me for witchery if I spoke openly of these abilities. I do not touch moodstones any more if I can help it. It is too dangerous. And this stone that I can sense is perilous indeed.

  ‘It is said that if the Goddess breathes upon a moodstone, it gives the stone, and the one who wields it, the power over life or death. It can deal death to thousands or restore the dead to life; in the wrong hands it can even wield power over the Goddess herself. There is an old tale told by the hill peoples. They say that hundreds of years ago Falla made such a deathstone for healing a wise king whose health was failing him because his people came to her and begged her to do so. But this king was also a crafty sorcerer. Fully restored to himself, he stole the stone from the Goddess and used its power to imprison her brother, the god, and to steal away Falla and her familiar, the great cat Bast—’

  Mam appeared suddenly to slide an arm around Persoa’s waist. ‘You hill-people and your stories!’ Then she grinned at Erno. ‘Tomorrow, we rescue your lady-love, but tonight I think a couple of jars in the Eternal Swan is in order.’

  Erno began to protest, but Dogo grabbed his arm and began skipping maniacally down the alley with him. ‘Let’s water down your ardour with a flagon or ten of Jetra’s finest, eh? Keep your hood on, your head down and sup up!’

  There was a mixed clientele in the Eternal Swan that night, and not a militiaman to be seen.‘Gone north,’ the innkeeper explained.‘To join the muster.’ He regarded Joz suspiciously, taking in his scarred forearms and meaty hands.

  ‘Aye,’ said Joz sagely. ‘This is our last stop before we do the same.’ He nodded vaguely in the direction of his companions, sitting in the darker part of the snug.

  ‘Good man!’ The innkeeper thumped the last two flagons down and waved Joz’s proffered cantari away. ‘You go and carry the good fight to those bastards! And bring a couple of those Eyran girls back for me, eh?’ He gave Joz a sly wink, then went to serve another customer.

  Erno spent the evening watering down his beer, rather than his ardour. He made one flagon last the best part of two hours, and when Dogo teased him for it, went to the bar for the next round. The rest were just too drunk to stop him; as long as someone was fetching the drinks it didn’t seem to matter.

  ‘Water,’ he said in careful Istrian.

  ‘Water?’ The innkeeper laughed. ‘I guess you want a clear head for your long journey tomorrow.’

  Erno caught the words ‘journey’ and ‘tomorrow’ and had to fill in the rest for himself. ‘Yes,’ he agreed quickly.

  ‘Where you from?’ the man asked.

  Erno thought hard. ‘Ah, Ixta,’ he muttered.

  ‘Ixta! My wife’s from there. Nice place, if a bit lively at the moment.’ He grinned at Erno’s blank expression. ‘Some of you north-coasters find the Jetran accent a bit hard to understand,’ he said, in the Old Tongue.

  ‘Indeed.’ Gratitude washed over the northerner. ‘Tell me,’ he said quickly, leaning forward. ‘They say a merchant brought an Eyran girl in here today, took her into the castle . . .’

  The innkeeper nodded. ‘Thinks to ingratiate himself with Tycho Issian, he does. Seems the Lord of Cantara’s got a bit of a problem.’ He leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘One of the houris told a friend of mine – ’ he winked – ‘that the current caretaker of our fair city has a permanent hard-on. Obsessed with pale-skinned, fair-haired women, he is. Can’t get enough of them. Quite literally . . .’

  Something in Erno quivered in outrage. And then he became very still.

  Tycho Issian. He recognised that name. The innkeeper’s gossipy voice receded into the background as he concentrated. Tycho Issian. Issian. Suddenly, the name was a sun burning away the fog the seither had set around his memory. Selen Issian. Selen Issian poking a charred chicken with a stick as it roasted over a beach fire. Selen Issian furiously hurling a sabatka into the flames. Selen Issian wading after him into the oce
an. Selen Issian choking up seawater in the bottom of a skiff—

  ‘Wasn’t he the one who had a daughter called Selen?’ he interrupted sharply.

  ‘Terrible business,’ said the innkeeper. ‘Abducted by Eyran brigands at last year’s Allfair. Her father was stricken with grief, went round the country preaching fire and brimstone. It’s him we have to thank for this war, Goddess bless him.’

  Erno carried four flagons of free ale back to the others, a scheme hardening in his mind.

  ‘Going for a piss,’ he said indistinctly and left in a hurry.

  Dogo guffawed.‘He holds less drink than a five-year-old!’

  ‘How would you know?’

  Dogo laid his head on Mam’s arm and gazed up at her adorably. ‘I was that five-year-old!’

  Erno stealthily retrieved the greatsword from behind the door, slung it under his cloak and ran through the darkened streets towards the castle.

  Twenty-three

  Katla and Saro

  ‘Just as Falla’s embrace is all-encompassing, enfolding all mankind within her bounteous, welcoming arms to soothe their troubled souls, so a man may be saved by a woman with whom he worships the Goddess in the sacred harmony of the sexual act. Just as the Goddess shakes free each unclean thought and deed from the sinners who come to her as she might shake loose the dead leaves from an autumn tree, leaves which will char away to dust in the heat of her holy fires, so may lying in the heat between a woman’s legs purge away a man’s sins.

  ‘There are many positions in which a man may bestride a woman to gain the greatest ecstasy and thus join his soul to holy Falla’s being.

  ‘The first of these is the stork—’

  ‘Stalk or stork?’

  Saro dipped the quill into the inkpot and shook free the excess liquid. He was weary and the flicker of the candlelight hurt his eyes. He hardly slept any more: when he did, nightmares visited him in the form of his dead brother, his face swollen and black, his eyes bulging. Staying awake was preferable, even though it made him slow and stupid. The inky letters were beginning to blur into one another. They had long since ceased to make any sense to him.

  Tycho Issian stopped in his tracks, turned and cast a scathing look at Saro. ‘Stork, boy, for goodness’ sake. Stork.’ Leaning against the daybed in the middle of the room, he lifted one leg and demonstrated the position. ‘Virelai is a far more competent scribe than you, for all your long ancestry and fine schooling. But even a sorcerer cannot be in two places at once.’

  Saro sighed and scratched out the word.‘Where is Virelai?’ he asked, hoping to gain himself a short rest.

  ‘Engaged on a project for me. In fact, he is remarkably tardy in discharging his duties.’ The Lord of Cantara straightened up and went to the door. ‘Go fetch the sorcerer,’ Saro heard him tell the guard in the corridor. ‘And the girl. Whatever state she is in. Tell him I will not take no for an answer. He should know better than to argue.’

  Another girl. Saro grimaced to himself. Despite all Virelai’s best efforts none of them came out looking much like the Rosa Eldi. Istrian women were too rounded, too dark and lush for any illusion to hold for long, let alone one so demanding of its subject. Or perhaps, he thought, remembering how their likeness to the prison guards had faded, it was just that the pale man’s magic was not strong enough. He wished it was otherwise. He had grown to despise the Eternal City, this castle, these chambers. But more than anything, he had grown to despise himself: for his weakness, his lack of grit, his failure. And it was hard to forgive Virelai for saving him, however good his motives.

  To distract himself from these damaging thoughts, he reached over and picked up the glass paperweight holding down the sheaf of parchments on the desk. It weighed heavily in his hand, a pretty thing – blown glass in classic Jetran blue, with the image of a swan, its neck arched into an extravagantly submissive bow, set at its heart. Candlelight flickered in the depths of the orb, catching the eye, carrying the watcher into what seemed another world.

  There came the sound of voices out in the corridor, then the Lord of Cantara re-entered the chamber and threw himself down on the day-bed – a man filled with too much energy and no outlet upon which to expend it. Saro noted with some repulsion that the lord’s robe was tented out in a most obscene fashion: clearly he had removed the bandages he wore for propriety. Behind him, the guard held the door open to admit Virelai and a figure swathed in a fine azure sabatka. The pale man’s gaze swept over Saro, then away again at once, as if he was embarrassed. There was a spot of hectic colour in both his cheeks, something Saro had never seen before. He seemed agitated, excited. His hands would not stop moving. They fluttered up to his face, then knotted themselves together, then flew apart like birds. He was trembling.

  ‘I think I have achieved the task your lordship set for me at last,’ he said, and his voice was unsteady with some unreadable emotion.

  The guard hovered at the door, intrigued.

  Virelai took the swathed figure by the arm and brought her, unresisting, to stand before Tycho Issian.

  ‘Behold, my lord!’ he cried, and swept the shimmering robe away.

  The Lord of Cantara sucked in his breath. ‘It cannot be . . .’

  His dark eyes flooded black with desire, he pushed himself upright on the couch.

  Saro watched the tableau before him with little interest. In these past weeks, he had seen too many naked women and transcribed too many lewd descriptions of what might be done to them to retain much sense of the erotic when confronted by these odd displays. In any case, from his position behind the woman, all he could see was a long sweep of silver-gold hair, almost brushing the backs of her knees, shapely calves and a pair of elegant, long-boned feet with shell-pink nails. Then she turned around.

  The body was perfect: slim, white and glowing, with the most extraordinary breasts – round, uptilted, rose-tipped. His hands longed to cup them. The lines of the face were delicate, yet strong; alluring, yet ethereal, even if the expression was exquisitely blank. He scanned the etched lips, the aquiline nose, the arched brows with growing amazement at Virelai’s skill. A pair of dark-fringed, sea-green eyes looked back at him dispassionately, the eyes of a victim resigned to whatever dreadful fate might await her.

  Then those eyes flashed with a sudden, unmistakable shock of recognition.

  Saro frowned. He had encountered the Rosa Eldi amid the killing fields of the Moonfell Plain; but this was not she. This was but a simulacrum, manufactured by a sorcerer in the confines of his hellish laboratory from whatever unpromising material today’s merchant had brought in. There was no possibility that this creature could know him. Unless, he thought gloomily, the man had travelled up from Altea with some poor servant girl from the Vingo home.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked suddenly, even though he knew it would displease Tycho Issian to have the girl speak and ruin the illusion.

  ‘The island of Rockfall,’ the figure replied tersely, and a sudden hardness had come back into her. He watched her fists ball at her sides and a tremor run through her thin frame as if she would launch herself at him then and there and rip his heart out with her fingernails.

  And then he knew her . . .

  All at once, a great surge of adrenalin crashed back into him. He grinned stupidly, a man reprieved from his own death sentence. ‘Katla Aransen,’ he said softly, his voice almost a whisper. ‘Is it you in there? Are you truly alive?’

  At this moment there was a commotion at the door, as if the guard there was scuffling with someone. A moment later, a tall man strode into the entrance. He glanced at the naked form standing on the rich Circesian rug and recoiled.

  Virelai hurriedly bundled the woman into the encompassing sabatka and drew her away to the door. It would not do to show his handiwork too freely: the Lord of Cantara might not have him burned for witchcraft, but there were many others who would have no hesitation in sending him to a pyre.

  The man stared at them, then shook his head as if collect
ing himself and came forward. ‘Lord Tycho Issian?’ he said, addressing himself to Saro.

  Saro, seated behind the great desk, stared at him, bewildered.

  The Lord of Cantara unwound himself sinuously from the day-bed, adjusted his robe and stood before the visitor, his face like thunder.‘I am Tycho Issian. Who are you and what business do you have with me?’

  ‘I have some information for you,’ the hooded man said.

  The Lord of Cantara frowned harder. ‘Come and talk to me tomorrow,’ he said curtly. ‘I have other matters to attend to now.’

  ‘So I saw,’ Erno returned smoothly. ‘This information is about your daughter.’

  Tycho bridled. ‘My daughter?’

  The guard, having retrieved his composure, stood awkwardly by the door. Tycho afforded him a single, scathing glance. ‘Get yourself gone, Berio. Attend my orders.’ He waited until the man had closed the door, then asked smoothly, ‘How could you possibly know anything about my daughter?’

  ‘I have seen her.’

  The Lord of Cantara sucked his breath in between his teeth. ‘Where?’

  Erno smiled. ‘I have a proposition for you, my lord,’ he said and watched with dismay as Tycho Issian’s attention wandered to the shrouded woman behind him. He looked impatient, distracted, utterly uninterested.

  ‘I heard that your lordship may have taken delivery of a woman from the Northern Isles this day,’ Erno persisted loudly.

  Those sharp black eyes swung back to focus on him. They were brimming with malice. ‘What of it?’ he snapped.

  ‘I would buy her from you.’

  ‘I will not sell her!’ the Istrian lord said flatly.

  ‘Not even for information as to your beloved daughter’s whereabouts?’

  Tycho Issian gazed at him with narrow eyes. ‘I will make a bargain with you,’ he said softly. ‘Tell me what you know and I will allow you to live.’