Godless World 3 - Fall of Thanes

by Brian Ruckley

  He paused, already almost lost in the shadows behind Tara.

  "I don't think so," he said without looking around. The Chancellor laughed, and disappeared into the corridor.

  And with his departure, as the muted roar of the riot rose and fell like waves rubbing up against the walls of the palace, Tara's mask crumbled. Her hand covered her mouth, her brow tightened and creased into grief. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears.

  "My lady," Anyara said at once, walking quickly towards her, one arm outstretched in a calculated gesture of both sympathy and appeal. "I need your help. Something terrible is happening, to all of us. I know you see that. I know you do."

  Tara said nothing, her mouth, and whatever pain it might have expressed, still hidden behind that smooth hand. But her soft anguished eyes were firmly upon Anyara.

  "Take me to the High Thane," Anyara said. "Please. It's all I can think of to do, and I can't do it without your help."

  The Moon Palace was in a ferment. Servants ran hither and thither, every one of them wearing much the same expression of alarm and weary unease. The guards, who seemed to be posted at virtually every door, every junction of passageways, stared with intense suspicion at all who came within sight. A number of them watched with particular narrow-eyed attention as Coinach passed them, but none made any move to intercept him. He was in the company of the Chancellor's wife, after all.

  As she and Tara hastened into the palace's heart, Anyara noted several ladies of the High Thane's court rushing along, shepherding young children like a gaggle of geese. All of them were dressed for travel, in hooded cloaks and fur gloves and stout, if refined, boots.

  "People are running away," Anyara murmured.

  "Do you blame them?" Tara asked her.

  And Anyara could not, in truth. She had seen enough of the city's condition, during the brief but fraught journey from the Palace of Red Stone, to convince her of the absolute wisdom of leaving its confines. The earlier riot had died down but left its flotsam scattered through the streets. A few bodies. Many burned-out houses and workshops. Heaps of debris--broken pots, roof tiles, shards of wood--strewn everywhere. And fearful faces peering from windows.

  Tara had been inclined to turn back when a company of the High Thane's warriors had ridden at the gallop through a crossroads ahead of them. Anyara had prevailed upon her to continue, though not without some unease of her own. It was all uncomfortably reminiscent of what she had seen at Koldihrve, albeit on a grander scale.

  In the distance they had been able to hear fighting. Everywhere there had been the faint but persistent smell of smoke. Coinach's disquiet had become more and more pronounced, until he too had tried to insist on a return to the Chancellor's palace.

  "We're no safer there," Anyara had said sternly, angling her face to ensure he could see the livid bruise already blooming where Mordyn Jerain had struck her. The anguished expression on his face at the sight of it instantly made her feel profoundly guilty. Ashamed of her cruelty. It had been her choice alone to shed his protection.

  Now, struggling through the nascent chaos within the Moon Palace, she doubted her insistence on coming here. Not out of any fear for their safety, but because she was beginning to wonder whether any place so self-evidently veering towards panic could exercise enough will and authority to actually control events.

  They finally found their way to the chamber of some court official. Anyara was gratified by the fawning deference the man displayed towards Tara, though he was infuriatingly non-committal regarding the prospect of an immediate audience with the High Thane. Tara's demeanour changed markedly and instantly. She berated the man with stern authority, and he hurried off, suitably chastened, to make the necessary enquiries.

  They waited, tense, in that chamber for what seemed a long time. Anyara could tell, from Coinach's distracted manner and the way he chewed absently at his lip, that he was struggling with himself over his failure to keep her safe from harm. She longed to offer him some comfort, but it was something she did not want to discuss in front of Tara, so she held her tongue and made a point of smiling warmly at her shieldman whenever she caught his eye.

  The audience was granted. They were ushered, with all appropriate haste, along high, echoing corridors, to a side room adjoining one of the feasting halls. It was surprisingly sparsely furnished, though the wall hangings were exquisite and the rug one of the most obviously costly Anyara had ever seen.

  Gryvan oc Haig sat in a broad dark chair with high arms. There was no other seating. Anyara, Tara and Coinach were forced to stand in a line, on the centre of that luxurious rug. Kale, chief amongst the High Thane's shieldmen, stood to one side, staring fixedly and pointedly at Coinach. He looked to Anyara like a miserable, surly man.

  Tara executed a tidy curtsy for the Thane of Thanes. Anyara copied her, aware that she made the gesture appear entirely graceless by comparison.

  "I would have received you in more pleasing surroundings, my lady," Gryvan growled at Tara, "had you not come in such disreputable company."

  To her credit, the Chancellor's wife betrayed no hint of discomfiture at such a gruff welcome. Her poise, given the extremity of the distress Anyara knew very well she was controlling, was remarkable.

  "The times seem most disreputable, sire." Tara smiled. "One can't always choose one's company as freely as one would wish in such circumstances."

  Anyara ignored the subtle insult. Nothing mattered save inducing Gryvan to listen to what she had to say. Impatience was rampant in her, but that too she strove to ignore and silence.

  "I like to think I may choose mine," Gryvan said. He still had not looked at Anyara. "What is wrong with your hands?" he asked Tara.

  She glanced at the discreet bandages that protected the worst of her burns.

  "It is nothing, truly. A slight accident, that is all. I can be unaccountably clumsy on occasion."

  Gryvan nodded. He had all too evidently lost interest in the subject as soon as he asked the question.

  "We will be brief, sire," Tara assured him. She kept that smile perfectly in place, and not for an instant did it look anything other than entirely natural and sincere.

  Gryvan appeared far from satisfied, but he lapsed into a heavy silence. There were dark, sagging bags of skin under his eyes, Anyara noted. A tremor, perhaps a tic, in his cheek that she had never noticed before. A latent accusatory anger in his gaze. None of these struck her as promising signs. Tara glanced at Anyara and nodded.

  "Sire," Anyara began, then paused to gather herself, for she realised her voice had sounded a little too urgent and assertive. "Sire, I know you will not be inclined to give credence to anything I say..."

  Gryvan grunted a dry affirmation to that.

  "... but I beg you just to hear me out. There's something wrong about everything that's happening, you must agree to that."

  "I must do nothing," Gryvan interrupted her. "High Thanes are permitted to make their own choices about what they do."

  "Of course, sire," Anyara said hurriedly. "Forgive me. I mean only that something seems amiss in the sudden rising to the surface of so many tensions, so much dissent. I believe I know the cause of some of it at least, perhaps all of it. That is all I came to tell you, sire, for though you doubt the loyalty of my Blood to yours, I can assure you --"

  "What nonsense is she prattling about?" Gryvan asked Tara.

  The Chancellor's wife inclined her head sympathetically, projecting complete understanding of Gryvan's irritation.

  "Well," Tara murmured, "I have a suspicion there may be just a grain of truth in her ideas, sire. We may--we do--disagree, she and I, on the details, but I fear... I fear there is indeed an... an issue that may have to be resolved."

  "An issue?" Gryvan said, frowning.

  "Your Chancellor, sire," Anyara said. "He is not himself. Entirely and completely not himself. I think he has... may have been bound by a na'kyrim. As Tarcene was, sire. Orlane Kingbinder. There is a man, Aeglyss, who marches with the Black Road..."
/>
  "Bound?" Gryvan cried incredulously. "Have you come here to mock me?"

  "Perhaps not bound, sire," Tara said quickly. "Perhaps not that. But... my husband is behaving strangely, sire. Ever since his return. Much that he has done and said is... confusing."

  "Are you accusing your own husband of treachery?" Gryvan demanded.

  "No, sire." Tara's edifice of control and good humour was at last crumbling. Anyara could see, and hear, the chinks in her armour widening. "No, not that. But something ails him. It might be wise to place less weight upon his advice than you have been accustomed to do in times past."

  "Oh, believe me," said Gryvan in dark and threatening tones, "I already have ample reasons of my own to do just that. And doubts, lady. I have doubts. But binding. This... this prisoner is talking of binding. That would be... something else entirely."

  "You've no more cause to make a prisoner of me than you have to..." Anyara cursed herself for the sharp retort, but it was too late. Gryvan settled his full, glowering attention upon her.

  "Your brother is outlawed."

  Anyara could clearly hear the danger in the High Thane's voice, yet she could not stop herself.

  "The accusations against him are lies," she said bluntly.

  "Lies? Then where is your brother?" The High Thane's face was abruptly contorted by rage, stretched like a freshly scraped hide pegged out to dry. "Where is your brother?" he howled, spittle flying, a red blush of anger spreading through his cheeks, his neck. "I don't see him here, where he belongs. Now, in time of crisis, in time of crisis... where's the boy?" He stabbed a stiff finger in Anyara's direction. Like a weapon. "We fight wars, we are beset by enemies, by traitors, and where is he?"

  "I --" Anyara began, but there was to be no voice in this echoing chamber save one.

  "Traitors!" Gryvan snarled. He looked like a dog, Anyara thought. A dog hauling at its leash, all teeth and fury and foam. "This city... this city was founded by sailors and fishermen, before the Gods left this world. Long before the Kingships, there were markets here, and watchtowers, and granaries. The Aygll Kings kept a winter palace here for a time. The... the... Before the War of the Tainted, there were Kyrinin here, in these streets. They had huts down by the river. You see? Do you see how old this place is? How ancient?

  "But it was my grandfather who built the wall. It was my father who raised the Moon Palace. It was us, our line, that made it great. I'll not yield it now, if that's what you think. I'll not let everything be taken away from us. Not as long as I've strength in my arm and a fire in my heart."

  "Sire," Tara began in a placatory manner, but Gryvan shouted over her.

  "Out! Get out!"

  Tara bowed and began to back away immediately. Anyara could not surrender quite so readily.

  "Sire..."

  "Out," hissed Kale, the shieldman. The unexpected sound startled Anyara, as did what she saw in his eyes. She allowed Coinach to gently pull her out into the corridor.

  *

  "Mad?" Torquentine grunted. "Is she sure?"

  "She seems so." Magrayn nodded. She was watching with a somewhat sceptical, concerned expression as a dozen burly men attempted to ease her prodigious master sideways from his bed of thick cushions onto the massive trolley standing ready to receive his weight.

  "And do we have any faith in her judgement in such matters?"

  "Well, she is only a maid. But she has served in the Palace of Red Stone for some time. She should be capable of recognising... unusual, perverse behaviour on the Shadowhand's part."

  "The man engages in little else," Torquentine observed. "Move your hand, man. I've some... a rash, shall we say."

  The wheels on the trolley creaked ominously as the first of Torquentine's buttocks was allowed to rest upon it. Magrayn grimaced. Torquentine noted this and frowned.

  "You assured me this has been tested," he pointed out.

  "Indeed. It has."

  Torquentine found her tone considerably less reassuring than he would have hoped. But he had committed himself into his doorkeeper's capable hands once he had made the decision to depart for pastures new. It was too late to lose faith in her competence.

  "Do we trust her? This maid?" he asked. "She is not some ploy of the Shadowhand's, turning our curiosity against us?"

  "I think it unlikely. We have convinced her, I am sure, that her father's life is forfeit should she fail us."

  "Hmm. The mattress on this trolley is distressingly thin. How long must I remain perched upon it?"

  "Not long."

  He recognised her imprecision as predictive of extended discomfort. If not suffering, indeed. He chose not to press the matter, as the only alternative would be to remain here in his Vaymouth cellar, and that prospect pleased him still less.

  "No reason, I suppose, that the Chancellor should be excused from falling prey to the malady of the mind claiming so many others, merely by virtue of his wit and title. When an entire city plunges into disorder and rapine and pillage, nothing should surprise us."

  "Particularly if the Chancellor concerned helped the plunge along himself," Magrayn said. With Torquentine settled upon his unconventional transport, she nodded to the men standing ready by the far wall of his subterranean lair. Obedient to her command, they began to remove the false stones set in the wall, slowly exposing a tunnel running off south-westwards.

  "Indeed, indeed," Torquentine mused as he watched the men work. "There's the most disquieting element in the whole affair. Still, I suppose if we conclude the Chancellor is mad, it clarifies a good deal. A madman may do anything. He may wantonly arrange the torture and murder of a rival Kingship's Ambassador, thereby all but inviting them to make war. He may arrange for the escape of a rebellious minor Thane, thus practically ensuring the renewal of the rebellion so recently crushed.

  "He may, if rumour is true, persuade the High Thane to withdraw a portion of his army from the field on the very eve of what consequently proved to be our Blood's greatest defeat in battle. Leaving those intolerable Black Road creatures considerably closer to Vaymouth than to their own borders and with notably little between them and us to distract them. He might even, absurd as it sounds, find someone--some insufficiently cautious and rightly regretful fool--willing to set a few fires, and use said fires as a lever to break apart the bonds which held together our city's evidently fragile arrangements of power and patronage and mutual restraint."

  The widening portal in the wall revealed a straight tunnel with walls of soft, muddy earth supported by an extensive framework of struts and beams and planking. It smelled bad down there, and Torquentine wrinkled his nose. It also looked unpleasantly wet. There was water trickling down the walls, and lying in slack pools as far as he could see.

  "Not an attractive view," he said. "Still, I cannot bring myself to remain in a city become so distressingly unpredictable and violent. It's impossible to conduct any kind of useful business. Particularly when one is about to give quite possibly mortal offence to one--possibly more--of the most powerful men in the land."

  "You have decided, then?" Magrayn asked.

  Torquentine nodded. "One last task for you, my dear, before we fly from this sadly precarious nest. Take our inconvenient prisoner to the Moon Palace and leave an appropriate message. If Mordyn Jerain's the rot at the heart of all this trouble, we may as well give some assistance to those who might be able to cut it out. There'll never be another coin to be made out of this city, illicit or otherwise, unless someone does."

  "I will meet you at the docks," Magrayn said.

  A number of hands gently but firmly pressed against his back had Torquentine trundling indecorously forward. He felt like a morsel being wheeled into the waiting gullet of a giant snake.

  "The boat is fully prepared?" he asked Magrayn as she moved towards the door.

  "It is. The captain has all the specified supplies on board for the journey."

  "Good, good." Torquentine tapped his chin with a single stout finger. A certain despondency was s
ettling over him at the thought of what lay ahead. "I must admit, I do not look forward with much glee to the process of boarding ship."

  "Don't worry," Magrayn said lightly. Had he not known better, Torquentine might almost have thought he detected the contours of a smile struggling to emerge upon her lips. "They have strong ropes and nets. I checked."

  "Ropes and nets," Torquentine muttered glumly, shaking his head, as his doorkeeper disappeared to prepare Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig for one further, and likely final, journey. "Ropes and nets."

  VI

  On the best days, Jaen Narran could imagine, to look out from a high window of Kolkyre's Tower of Thrones would be to see views truly fit for a Thane, and once for High Thanes. Westward, the city sweeping down to the sprawling harbour teemed with life, and beyond it lay Anaron's Bay with its lines of gentle waves marching in one after another. Perhaps, she imagined, on a clear and sharp day, it might even be possible to glimpse Il Anaron itself, the great island out in the distance. Eastward, the long curve of the city wall and then the broad expanse of the plains--thick with rich green grass in high summer, those--mounted gradually in successive ranks of ridges and hills until finally they merged into the very foothills of the Karkyre Peaks.

  But the best days had long been absent from Kolkyre. Now the view to the west showed a silent and moribund harbour. That to the east revealed not immense fields thick with grass but the huge black and brown stain of the besieging forces of the Black Road, arcing around the city like a scar.

  A scene rather closer to hand held Jaen's attention now, though. She stood beside Ilessa oc Kilkry-Haig, staring down at the violence being done within the Tower's own encircling wall. The Steward's House, where Lagair Haldyn, Gryvan oc Haig's mouthpiece, resided, abutted that wall, down at the foot of the mound on which the Tower of Thrones stood. It was in fact built into the fabric of the wall.

  Now, the Steward's House was under assault. Crowds of Kilkry warriors milled about, some battering at its door with a heavy wooden beam, others tearing at the wooden shutters closed over its windows. Marshalling these disorderly and frenzied forces was Roaric, the Thane himself. He sat astride his finest warhorse, his Shield arrayed about him, further up the mound. Now and again he would shout some command or encouragement. Jaen and Ilessa were too far above to hear what he said, but his words never seemed to have any significant effect, in any case. The warriors he thought to guide were in the grip of their own fury. Once he had given them a target for their simmering resentment and frustration, in the form of the Steward and his household, they had followed their own instincts and hungers, not their Thane's instructions.