Rose of the World (FOOLS GOLD)

by Fisher, Jude

  Bera came back to herself, set her jaw. ‘I have, yes, and there’s an end to it.’ She paused. ‘You have not heard anything about the expedition, have you?’ There was a note of yearning in her voice which did not pass her daughter undetected.

  But all Katla could do was to shake her head.

  They stayed in Cantara for a few days, resting and exchanging stories with the Eyrans and the women of the town, listening to the songs of the Wandering Folk and watching their puppetry, their dancing and their acrobatic feats. Katla learned to juggle, badly. Saro found he could carry a tune with the best of them. The two of them eyed one another nervously and could not find anything to say which would not make things more awkward between them. Guaya watched them, narrow-eyed, but with the sort of half-smile which might denote either regret or resignation. Bera fashioned herself a reed whistle for the first time in twenty-five years and joined in with the musicians. Dogo sought out the nomad woman who had bedded him for free and sampled her delights so noisily in the back of one of the wagons that he drew a crowd of curious children who, seeing him entering the wagon from afar, had thought him one of their number for his small stature. Mam got tipsy and tried to undress Persoa in the full view of the women of Cantara, who crowded around to stare at his strange tattoos, exclaiming and cooing. Some of the bolder ones even reached out to trace their fingers over the designs.

  ‘What does this show?’ asked one coyly, touching the black tail of a beast disappearing below the waistband of his breeches.

  ‘It is the tail of the Lady’s cat, Bast,’ he replied with all courtesy, and had to push Mam away when she offered to show them the rest.

  ‘And this?’

  An older woman with her hair braided in many plaits moved her fingers across a tattoo on his shoulderblade.

  Persoa considered. It was hard, sometimes, to remember the designs that had been inked on his back. ‘Tell me what you think it is,’ he said softly. The woman squinted. ‘Look like sword, but on fire.’

  ‘That will be the flaming sword, then,’ Persoa said, trying not to smile.

  ‘And this one, down here?’ She prodded him in the small of the back.

  ‘Coming out of the Mountain of Fire?’ Persoa knew that one: he checked its progress regularly, could tell by the itching of his skin when the designs began to change. Sirio must have found a way to exit the volcano if this was where the figure was now.

  But the woman frowned. ‘No, not coming out, going in.’ She leaned closer. ‘And his head all wreathed with flame.’

  Now Persoa looked alarmed. ‘Mam!’ he said urgently. He caught her by the wrist. ‘Mam, take a look and tell me what you see.’

  Mam grinned indulgently, the firelight flickering off the alarming points of her teeth, and extricated herself from his grip. Then she spun him around, her strong hands spanning his narrow waist. Cross-eyed with qat and araq, she bent to examine the area where the woman had pointed. She came back up spluttering.

  ‘That’s a new one!’

  ‘New?’

  ‘Well, there was a tiny mark there when I looked last, but I thought it no more than a mole. But now it’s as she says: it has hands and legs and hair like fire. And it’s running towards the volcano, not away from it.’

  ‘A mirror!’ Persoa cried to the gathered women. ‘Does anyone have a mirror?’

  Two of the women went bustling off, giggling and chattering. They had seen too much magic by now, too many illusions and tricks from the nomads: this was clearly more of the same. They returned a few moments later with a fine piece of Galian silverware polished to a high sheen. It took the eldianna a little while to position himself so that he could see the new design. When he did, the muscle of his heart clenched so hard he thought he might faint.

  ‘I must leave,’ he said in a low voice to the mercenary leader. ‘Tonight. I must leave tonight.’

  ‘Tonight?’ Mam was aghast. ‘I haven’t finished drinking yet.’

  ‘Well, then, I must leave without you.’

  Mam regarded him with a bleary eye. ‘Have it your own way,’ she said belligerently, and went to refill her goblet.

  By the time she came back, the hillman had gone.

  Persoa had covered his tracks well: a mule was missing, but there were no hoofmarks in the dirt road beyond the south gate; nor to the west nor the east. There was too much traffic on the road north to tell one set of prints from another; but none had seen a man fitting the eldianna’s description.

  Mam went about grim-faced: partly on account of a thumping headache, mainly in self-recrimination. In the end, she set her pride to one side and went into the Footloose camp to find a scryer. She went first to Guaya, but the darkeyed girl merely shook her head and professed no knowledge of the crystals. Mam didn’t believe her, but allowed the girl to direct her to one of the old women. On the steps out of the wagon, she cannoned into Saro Vingo, looking a little green around the gills. An odd look passed between the two young people, then Saro darted off again. Mam looked sharply at Guaya.

  ‘Something going on between you two?’

  The girl regarded her askance, lips quirked, then bent her head. In her arms lay a tiny brindled kitten which regarded Mam with bold black eyes, then promptly buried its head in the crook of Guaya’s elbow and went to sleep.

  The old woman Guaya took her to had only one eye, and that clouded with cataracts. Mam opened her mouth to complain, but the crone cackled before she could get the first curse word out.

  ‘Come to see if I can find your man, have you?’

  Mam stared at her, dumbfounded.

  The old nomad winked, then offered her open palm and wiggled dry brown fingers like a bird’s claws under Mam’s nose. The mercenary leader tsked, but finally dug around in her belt-pouch and dropped a silver piece into the crone’s hand. The woman bit it – a pointless gesture as far as Mam could tell, since she appeared to have no teeth left in those sunken old gums – then shuffled off into the depths of the wagon and returned with a shrouded object.

  This she carried carefully down the steps and into the sunlit courtyard, spread a cloth on the ground, dusted the crystal with her sleeve and made the first hand-passes over the crystal. Within moments she had attracted a number of spectators.

  Mam frowned. She hadn’t been expecting an audience. But she didn’t appear to have much choice in the matter. With a sigh, she clumped down the steps and crouched beside the Footloose crone.

  ‘What do you see?’

  For a time the old woman said nothing, but the lights in the crystal spun, sending spectra of colour out into the air. They played over Mam’s blunt features, rendering them by turns softer and more feminine; then harsh and rugged.

  At last the scryer spoke. ‘Eldianni suthra ferinni, montian fuegi.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘South he goes, towards the Red Peak, the Mountain of Fire.’

  ‘What on Elda does he want to do that for?’ Mam fumed. ‘He can’t be. No one goes there. Look again.’

  The crone raised an eyebrow at the mercenary’s peremptory tone, but did as she was bade. Caressing the crystal, she spoke softly to it as if cajoling secrets from it, and gradually the colours inside the seeing-stone swirled and pulsed, the tones shifting to sea-greys and greens.

  ‘A ship, I see,’ she murmured. ‘No, many ships. Tattered and torn.’ She narrowed her remaining eye, came in close to the crystal as if to get a better angle on the vista it presented. Then she recoiled with a shriek.

  ‘What?’ cried Mam. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Manni kalom. Ces Issiani ealdanna kalom. The Lord Tycho Issian.’ She spat into the dust.‘That evil man, still alive, despite the good Goddess.’

  ‘And just where is my son?’

  The voice was patrician, demanding. The crone looked up to find Flavia Issian, Lady of Cantara, at the edge of the circle, watching her with hooded eyes.

  Two silver coins landed on the ground beside the old woman. The crone gazed at them in disbelief,
as if they might somehow vanish again, then scooped them into her skirt’s capacious pocket. ‘Sjanni, minna koni. He is at sea. On a ship.’

  ‘Where on a ship? Heading north for Eyra, or returning home?’

  The scryer made a face. ‘The sea is the sea, my lady, it all look the same to me.’

  ‘Look closer: has he a woman with him?’

  With a sigh the crone reapplied herself to the crystal, passing her hands across its surface, twisting her head this way and that, muttering all the while. At last she looked back up. ‘My poor old eye not good, my lady. Vision painful today.’ Another pair of coins landed in the dirt, but the old woman shook her head vigorously. ‘Cantaro nethri, minna koni. There is no need of more money, my lady. I mean what I say. My eye is clouded.’

  ‘Well, let me try, then,’ said Flavia Issian impatiently.

  Puzzled looks were exchanged amongst the growing crowd, but they parted to allow the Lady of Cantara through. By the time she reached the old woman, the two coins in the dust had vanished, but she made no sign of acknowledgement of this theft but instead knelt down on the spread cloth beside the scryer and studied the crystal intently.

  ‘Rose quartz,’ she said softly. ‘Not bad; but not one of the finest I have seen.’ She brushed it with a finger, shivered. ‘Out of the black hills south of Farem?’

  The old woman looked impressed. ‘Havthi konnuthi, minna koni. Havthi seith.’

  ‘Sa, sa, havtha seith. Jeg i Faremi brin.’

  ‘You were born in Farem?’ Mam had learned just enough of the Footloose language to make some sense of this exchange.

  Flavia Issian looked around the circle of fascinated listeners, her aquiline features serene. She had made a decision, and there was no going back on it. ‘Yes, you have heard correctly. I was indeed born in the Farem Hills. My father was a tribesman and my mother one of the Wandering Folk. I am not proud of having hidden my heritage all these years. I will admit I was afraid to do so at the start, and it became more difficult to acknowledge as the years passed and my circumstances changed. I have been cowardly, I know. The lords of Istria have been cruel to my people, none more so than my adopted son, for all that I have tried to raise him as my own and in the true faith. Too well, I fear, did that lesson take hold.’ She sighed. ‘Better that I speak the truth late than never at all. Now let me see if I can tell where Tycho is, so we may all choose which path we should take.’

  Now she laid hands on the stone and bent all her concentration upon it, and the crystal responded with a burst of light.

  The first thing she saw was an expanse of sand dunes stretching away to a horizon hazy with fumes, dark with the silhouette of distant hills. A shambling collection of folk trudged across this unforgiving landscape, led by a small figure on a vast black stallion. Annoyed by this irrelevance, she rubbed her palms across the sphere and watched as the scene dissipated and gave way to one of water and dark cloud. Twilight was falling somewhere far to the north of Cantara, twilight which enveloped the sails of a dozen ships. Behind them, Falla’s Eye had risen, bright and unblinking. They sailed away from it, heading directly towards the scryer.

  ‘They come south,’ she said, to no one in particular. ‘And their ships have seen battle.’ The marks of conflict were clearly observable: hacked strakes, charred sails, missing crew. Even she could see there were not sufficient men deployed aboard the lead vessel, for great swathes of open deck were apparent, which should have been swarming with busy seamen.

  Something caught her eye. She tilted the stone a little, leaned in for a better look, and became very still. Her hands came away from the stone as if burned. She closed her eyes and her mouth worked silently. Bera, standing close to her, recognised the lovely prayer the Lady of Cantara had been teaching them in the past weeks, and frowned.

  When Flavia raised her head again, tears stood in her eyes.

  ‘Forgive me, my Lady. Forgive my son: he knows not what he does.’

  She scanned the watching faces. ‘We must go north,’ she said. ‘The Goddess is returning to Elda.’

  The horses pawed the ground in an aggravated manner, for their riders were impatient to be gone and they knew it.

  ‘Come on, Saro,’ Katla Aransen muttered under her breath.

  ‘Where’s he got to?’

  Mam shaded her eyes and stared down into the harsh light striking the imposing sandstone battlements of Cantara’s castle walls. Down below, all was hubbub and chaos. Yeka, horses, wagons, carts and people milled around in the dust outside the gates; yet more streamed out of the town minute by minute. It was an extraordinary sight: and an even more extraordinary occurrence. The women of Cantara, guided by that indomitable matriarch, Flavia Issian, had made a grand decision. They would set out on a great journey, north, to the coast, to where the Goddess would make landfall, even though they had no idea of what they would do when they got there, or of the hardships which might attend them on the way; but, oddly, none of them cared. All their lives they had entrusted their fate to the will of others: the decisions they had made had amounted to choosing which sabatka to don of a morning, what colour to paint their lips; for others no more than what to buy from the market that day, what to bake that evening. Many of them had never before left the confines of the town and had no conception of what such an undertaking might entail; others had been transported across the continent, but under the guardianship of men – to be sold, or wed or used in ways over which they had no control. It was a mad, heady decision: it made them giddy with fear and noisy with laughter and chatter. It was like stepping off the edge of a cliff. Except that, if they fell, the Goddess would surely catch them. Wouldn’t she?

  Infected by their gaiety and recklessness, the Eyran women determined to travel with the women of Cantara. Some went out of curiosity, or newfound faith, or to cement the bonds of friendship only recently acquired, some because the far south of Istria was too foreign and strange to their eyes, and the farther north they travelled, the closer to their lost homeland they would be.

  Dogo, Doc and Joz had decided to go north for another reason entirely. There was no money to be made in this emptied-out waterskin of a region, and if their leader had decided to eschew money for the sake of love (or whatever she might call the strange attachment she had to the hillman) that was her lookout. Where there was war, there was opportunity. Every sellsword knew that.

  As for the nomads – well, who knew what prompted them to retrace their weary footsteps north? They were travelling folk, wanderers, footloose: they never stayed long in one place.

  A sense of great change was in the air: but whether such change would bring disaster or miracle in its wake was impossible to tell. Besides, life could hardly be much worse for many of those packing up their belongings and setting off into the unknown.

  For her part, Katla envied them their optimism and sense of purpose. Her own decision had been more complicated by far. Part of it involved the feeling that she was a lode-stone drawn not to the Navigator’s Star but to the south, where a distant voice called her in her sleep. Partly, she had a hunger for adventure which could never be answered by retracing her steps; and, though she could not admit it, she could never have ridden off with her mother and left so much unspoken between herself and Saro Vingo. The unquestioning hostility with which she had regarded him since the death of Erno Hamson had dissipated, to be replaced by something more nebulous and mutable. After coming upon him naked in the nomad girl’s wagon, her dreams had been both rude and confusing: she had woken from them flustered and sweating and extremely bad-tempered. It made her uncomfortable in his presence: it made her want to hit him. But sometimes it made her want to do something else entirely. Katla was not a person who enjoyed such contradictions. A long ride south with only Mam and the Istrian for company would surely clear the air.

  She watched a small figure detach itself from the melee down in the valley below and resolve itself gradually as Saro Vingo astride a tall bay gelding. As they breasted the hill, Saro’s
long dark hair and the gelding’s tail streamed out behind them like war banners, and her heart hammered hard – once, twice, before settling back into its normal rhythm.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said tightly to the mercenary leader. Wrenching her mount around with ungentle hands, she galloped off across the ridge.

  Thirty-four

  The Rosa Eldi

  As the grey cliffs of Istria’s north coast came into view on the far horizon, Tycho Issian felt a rapture enter his soul. In a day – less – they would dock in Cera and he would commandeer the fallen lord’s castle for his own pleasure. He would lead the Rose of the World into the most famed of all Istrian castles, with its marbled halls, fanned pillars, vaulted ceilings and sumptuous hangings. He would lead her perfect feet along silken Circesian runners and glorious woollen carpets; he would take her hand and bring her to the chambers of the dead Duke himself, where the spotted skins of Skarn lions overhung the exquisite furniture, where the walls were lined with beaten silver and stacks of lilies in Galian pots scented the air. If he closed his eyes, he could smell the sandalwood and safflower the slavegirls would strew in the hot bath in which he would immerse himself before claiming at last the most beautiful woman in the world.

  He had been most punctilious on the voyage home: had barely laid eyes on his prize for fear he would be unable to master his passions and fall upon her, grunting like a hog. Which would never do. No: first he must have her shriven and purified, have the priests release her from the foul taint of the northman’s touch. Have the bonds of that most barbaric marriage slaked away by blood sacrifice and have himself joined to her, flesh to flesh in place of that rutting, stinking stallion.

  Clearly the Goddess smiled upon his venture, for their passage home had been swift and safe. There had been no sign of pursuit: he had had a lookout posted on the rakki and the stern throughout their voyage south, and neither had seen anything more threatening than a breaching whale. Could a war be won so quickly? It could, he breathed: it was a holy war, a true cause.