‘How many do you know? Don’t tell me, I have this mysterious power that lets me guess what you’re thinking. A feitschac!’
‘If that means what I think it means, you should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘But it’s right?’
‘F—I mean, none. Well, yes, none I know personally, but then it’s not a talent women often possess very strongly.’
‘Or don’t get a chance to develop?’
‘Look, you need strength too, you know! How many women want muscles like Olvar’s, or like mine, even?’
‘It depends where and how, exactly,’ she said demurely, and ruined it with an explosive giggle. He raised his eyes to the Powers.
‘After all,’ she added apologetically, ‘I really do want to marry him, you know. He’s handsome, he’s rich, he’s kind, the most marvellous man I’ve ever met, and I’ve known him so long, I know he loves me too. He’s a bit serious-minded, but maybe I need a touch of that – or would you disagree?’
‘Sounds perfect to me. But he’s much older, isn’t he?’
She chuckled. ‘He’ll do. Oh, marriage, children – I’m looking forward to all that. I don’t mind it at all. It’s not a prison. I shall be a great lady, and such a one can even exercise some power on her own here, if she has the wits. And I think I might, don’t you? He does. He’s promised me as much.’
‘And that’s enough?’
‘Feitanallac!’ she spat suddenly. ‘Sorry. It ought to be. It is. Only it isn’t – and if you repeat that I will personally give that tattle-tale bracelet of yours a whole new direction! I shouldn’t want more. Only I do – but what? What else is there? Except dreams, and those I can still have, can’t I?’
‘Maybe you want what you’re getting, only not quite so overwhelmingly, and so soon.’
‘Maybe,’ she said morosely, hunching in on herself. ‘Thank you for letting me say it to you, Master Kunrad. There’s nobody else in the world I dare to – only you, because you’re so far from my everyday world, so remote. Wish me well when you’re back in your lonely glen or wherever, surrounded by all those beefy blacksmith ladies.’
‘I wish you well now. And I can keep silent. But not even Nanny?’
She cringed at the thought. ‘Oh Powers, her least of all! She thinks I’m still a babe in arms.’
Kunrad nodded sympathetically. ‘I don’t like being babied, either. Women always seem to …’
She stared. ‘You? I’d as soon baby the Sea Devourer! It must be your fault. You’re really inviting it, probably. All men do.’
Kunrad did not like being compared to the monstrous Amicac. ‘Well, aren’t you any better? Stepping right into the open cage door. Suppose this power turns out not to be so very meaningful? I don’t know much about how noble ladies live here, but I’ve seen the wives of wealthy guildmasters and such made trophies or dolls. Or simply dull gossips with nothing to do but badger servants and so on.’
She pulled her horse closer, and jabbed a long finger into his arm. ‘Got you! So that’s how you do things better in the North, is it?’
He waved a hand irritably. ‘No, really, that’s rare. Most men treat women better – equals, as I said, not servants. None of this—’ he almost added nobility nonsense, but caught himself just in time.
‘Equals, is it? Get the privilege of the hard work, more like. I’m not that fond of this nonsense about nobility and privilege, little though you may credit it; but at least it’ll save me being thrust into a kitchen or a nursery and left to get on with it.’
‘Or a bed?’ suggested Kunrad, and was rewarded by a flood of spectacular red in her face. He found himself enjoying her high colour, so unlike any Northern beauty’s.
‘Right!’ she said, with venomous force. ‘You say you’ve heard of some women smiths – how many was that, exactly? And how easy did they find it? Testify, smith, or something awful is going to happen to you!’
He drew a deep breath. ‘Well – they’re most of them jewellers, you see, and I’ve never really … The older men in the profession are often a shade conservative …’
Some way behind, Gille and Olvar exchanged looks. It was perfectly obvious to both of them how much these two were enjoying one another’s company. ‘And to the old nurse or whatever she is,’ whispered Olvar. ‘Look at the sour face on her!’
‘Oh, just intent, I think,’ chuckled Gille. ‘Seeing they don’t accidentally ride off into the bushes or something. Little does she know! If the mastersmith did that, he’d just –’ He became aware that the old woman was looking at him now, although mercifully too far away to hear. He bowed politely, with his most sincere look, and she gave him a smile as fragile as ancient parchment.
‘She doesn’t seem to mind overmuch,’ he whispered to Olvar. ‘It’s the captain I’m not so sure of. He’s taken to the master, I think, but he’s not looking too happy now!’
Olvar glanced across, and shrugged.‘Let him! Another day or two and we reach this Warden’s castle, and then our ways part. He’ll let ’em be for now!’
He did indeed, though even Kunrad noticed his disquiet eventually. But the captain remained polite and amiable, the old nurse smiled benignly, and the two rode together all that long day, and never ceased their disputations. They ate together again that night, under the nurse’s kindly eye, and Kunrad returned to his blanket under the stars, with the cool wine coursing moonlight in his veins. For once in his life he had managed to forget the future, forget his plans and projects and simply live for what was, here and now. In part it was the stark contrast with the nightmare of the Marshes, now an age away as it seemed; but it was also sheer enjoyment of a kind he had never before known. He suspected Alais was enjoying it just as much.
The very impossibility of it all was a help. Neither need worry about entanglements, appearances, outcomes; it was impossible, and that was all there was to it. The gulf between them was already open, the end to their time together was set, and curiously that made them free. They spoke more openly, each to another, than they would have to some more lasting acquaintance, and revealed their hearts more freely; although they both found a curious reticence in themselves about the impending marriage.
The ground was rising again now, and they rode over low hills and along paths in deep pinewood that reminded Kunrad of the North, drinking in the moist resinous air and listening to the cries of birds among the trunks, darting this way and that in such scattered shafts of hazy sunlight as could pierce the cool green gloom. Their talk had left the place of women, by now, to their mutual relief, and gone on to the arts of men. He extolled the carving and modelling of the North, she the limning of the South, making him promise he would seek out the vast painted murals of Ker Bryhaine. He tried to show her something of the same love of shape in the less realistic style of the North, with the swooping energy of its lines and the symbolic shadings based on human features; she found that crude but fascinating. She read him the great epics of the South, in sonorous, lilting phrases that her voice turned to music by the subtlety of metre and inflection. He told her the romances and sagas of the North, in language that rolled and beat on the shores of the mind, and stirred the heart like a sea breeze. His was all from memory, which greatly impressed her, even when he pointed out the subtle storyteller’s trick by which forgetfulness might be concealed and missing lines padded out. It seemed to him he had never enjoyed his own heritage so much as when she took delight in it, and he guessed she felt the same. Disputation filled the air again when they talked of state and the affairs of state, and of the meaning of freedom; yet it was a dispute neither would gladly have cut short.
As the riverside oakwoods had given way to the pines and the hills, so the hills in their turn passed by to lower slopes, and the woods changed again. Great stands of white birch appeared, of a taller and whiter kind than Kunrad knew in the North, and elsewhere hazels and tall maples tossing in the wind, and other trees he did not recognise. These woods were not as solid as the pines; they opened out here and
there, in small patches of blue sky at first, and later in wide clearings, some dotted with stumps that were clearly sawn, the first work of man he had seen in all this wide land. ‘Nature still holds its sway here,’ said Alais, ‘and we are only the latecomers. In the great unbroken forests elsewhere in the land Tapiau still rules, so men believe, whom they say loves humans little better than does the Ice. That may be why this old road curves so far and roundabout, through the lesser woods for the most part and avoiding when it can the greater tracts of pines and redwoods.’ She shivered. ‘Mile upon mile through that green shadow! Pleasant enough at first, but after a few hours one might imagine anything!’
He looked at her. ‘You say men believe, as if you didn’t.’
She shrugged. ‘I do not disbelieve, not as such. The forces you see in metal, the evils you saw in the Great Marshes – I would no longer deny that there is something to those, and to many other things we cannot explain. The Ice destroyed Morvan the Great – perhaps ancient Kerys also, since we have heard nothing for so long. Perhaps that was merely mindless nature in action, perhaps something more. There may well be powers in the world, even the Powers men believe in; but they may not be all men believe. More benign, even – who knows?’
‘Who indeed?’ he said. ‘But I have looked upon the Ice at its merest edge, and I never wish to more. And I have seen the face of a friend struck to solid ice, all in an instant. I have little room for doubts. And again, when we were attacked, and Olvar entrapped in ice as in a wolf-snare—’
A shadow fell across his eyes, and he looked up sharply. The gap in the tree-roof was wider; and above it, dwarfing the highest of the swaying trees, a mighty mountain-crest rose purple, far nearer than he had imagined it could be in so short a time. It was what whirled against it that caught his eye, wings wide and black, two pairs, larger than any bird he had seen in these parts. A single croaking cry drifted back down the wind. ‘Those? Eagles, maybe,’ said the girl, narrowing her eyes against the blue brightness. ‘Or the great scavenger condors. I have seen them above my father’s walls, gliding like clouds made solid. Never so far into the open lands, though. And the cry sounded different. Like a raven’s.’
‘Very like a raven’s,’ said Kunrad.
They rode on later that evening, and camped at dark in what again looked like a man-made clearing around a small clear spring, naturally sheltered by low rises and a tall screen of wind-bent oak and ash. The scars of other fires still showed here and there, though none were new. Again Kunrad guested with the ladies, and talked long with Alais, so that the prentices wondered if he would come back to them. Back he came, though; and did not sleep at once, but tossed and turned, although the grass was soft and the night-breezes mild.
The next day, though, he rose at first light full of vigour, and strode up to the highest rise. Alais saw him there, and came running to join him. ‘Well?’ he inquired. ‘I’m here as you asked!’
‘I didn’t want you to see it for the first time without me!’ she said, and led him out of the screen of trees on to the rounded crest of a long sloping hill.
To the east, beyond the mountains, the sky was still red; but between the sawtoothed peaks, still young and unworn by wind and weather, its beams fell through air far clearer than mere crystal, across a wide land of green and blue, in many shades and hues. Very dark green were the gently waving forests, whose vastness he could only guess at, lying like fallen cloaks around the mountain-roots, fading away into hazy distances to the south. Blue shone the rivers that threaded out between them, fed by the mighty mountain torrents, into a lower, wider land, rolling and open. Lighter green were the trees here, and lighter still the wide open spaces between them, the hue of sunlit grass and ripening grain. Even at this remove Kunrad could see the ripples pass across them, like a golden sea; he guessed they must be divided into fields, widespread ones such as might surround large homesteads or small villages. Bluer still, and shimmering silver, were wider expanses, little lakes scattered here and there about the land, swallowing many small fast streams and giving birth to still more, wider and meandering. Here and there he made out wisps of duller yellow that threaded from clearing to clearing; wide roads, maybe, but barely significant among the expanse of wood and field around them. But then, as he turned from the mountains westward, the perspective changed; and he saw the hand of man set firm upon the land, turning all its richness, with a grim artistry a smith could only admire, into the mere setting of a single stone.
This was his first sight of Ker an Aruel, the Castle of the Winds. Its fashion is known as he saw it, set upon many works and designs; for save the Citadel of Ker Bryhaine itself, the Seven-Crowned, there was no greater stronghold in all the Southlands, or all the lands he knew of. Only in Morvan had it been surpassed, ground to dust beneath the Ice, and in the Old Lands of the East and Kerys; and who knew what had befallen their strength?
The lake that held it lay in a wide circle of low hills, capped by the one on whose brow he stood. Its dark waters glinted like cut glass in the breezes that blew constantly about it, blowing off the sea over marsh and forest, warmed by the sun and turned back by the mountain-slopes to swirl around its shores. There rose at its heart a broad island of grey-brown rock, in great slanted striations that formed low but savage crags. Yet these could hardly be seen save from very close, for the island had been levelled to the water as though by the sweep of a giant’s hand, and from end to end a massive fortress raised upon it, so that scarcely a sure foothold was left beyond the base of its long walls, and the lake lapped deep beneath.
Immensely thick were those walls, twice the measure of a man, taller than a house of many storeys and topped by thick battlements; save at their corners, where sturdy red-roofed towers, round and massive, rose as high again. Between these towers the walls ran straight and angular, following the edges of the rock; and its white stone was smooth and flat and sheer, featureless as sawn alabaster, without so much as a window to be seen. At one inset angle, where the rocks surfaced for a moment, opened what must have been a mighty gate; but beneath those overlooking battlements it seemed diminished, and it opened on to nothing but what looked like a narrow jetty, and the lake.
Ker an Aruel shone defiantly over the waters, quite alone and apart from the land. A bridgehead was built across two little rocky islets by the shore, but beyond that the lake lay wide and open, with nothing at all between it and the long pier. Long banners were the only sign of life, green and gold, whipping in the wind. As Kunrad first looked upon that great stronghold from the heights, it seemed to him as bright and faceted as a cut jewel, as fair and precious, and as hard.
‘I haven’t seen this view for years!’ panted Alais, leaning a hand on his shoulder. ‘This is Yn Aruel, the Hill of the Winds! I grew up here when my father was castellan to the last Warden, I used to ramble all over these lands! I wanted to be the one to show you!’
‘Thank you!’ said Kunrad abstractedly. He was wondering how the art of either North or South could ever capture this. This one was too abstract, the other too literal. Work of man as it was, jewel and setting together defied man and became something greater.
For once she did not seem inclined to argue, when he said this. ‘This was Lord Vayde’s work, after all. The first great fortress he built, to claim this land for the South-kingdom, and to be a base for his exploration of the North.’
‘He had some foresight, that man,’ agreed Kunrad. ‘He saw the coming quarrels, and that the Northern kind must have their own land. A shame he could not use his wisdom to quell those quarrels. They have never seemed more foolish to me than now!’
She smiled at him, but before she could say anything the old nurse was calling to her, and with a light laugh she went capering away down the hill as eagerly as she had come. He stayed a little longer, rejoicing in the fresh breeze that swept the hill so constantly that it had shaped the trees, shaking his head in wonder; but the camp was packing up below him, and he came unwillingly down.
They
could have ridden down the long slopes to the shore directly; but the road was made for cart and carriage, and led them around the hill towards the south, through vale well shrouded in trees, so that even from sunlit clearings they saw nothing of the wide lands and hardly even the mountain-peaks. Kunrad rode with the Lady Alais, and in greater harmony at first; for he was as deeply impressed by Ker an Aruel as she could wish. ‘You could fit many a Northland village between those walls, whole and entire. I have to admit it, though you sothrans may have less skill in metal, yet your mastery with stone is well-nigh as great!’
‘And,’ she said innocently, ‘we don’t even need to chant hocus-pocus over it …’
Kunrad was too serious to be drawn thus. He shook his head. ‘I am less sure, lady. It’s said on good authority that the duergar, the Mountain-people, can imbue stone with powerful virtues, as well as they can metal.’
She laughed. ‘The duergar? The little people? Come now, that’s too much! Only our simplest peasants and children will credit those. Oh, perhaps some tribe of mountain-lurking savages gave rise to the legends, that I’ll gladly allow you. They say some peasants still slay outlivers and wild men whom they catch, taking them for duergar; a cruel custom I’d see forbidden. But magic-workers, fairytale folk! Why, you’ll be telling me next the Forest People exist, or the Ageless Ones, or the Sea People!’
Kunrad had never mentioned the duergar in his tales, and he was wondering how he might deliver this revelation without endless teasing when he was saved the trouble. Without their noticing, the forest around them had been changing, growing thinner; and they found themselves riding into yet another sunny clearing, and its floor was almost level. Its far side was scarcely more than a screen, through which they could easily see the glitter of water, and within it something mirrored.
There was a cheer from the riders, and the captain rode up to the fore. He saluted the Lady Alais, and bowed to Kunrad, not without something a little puzzling in his face. ‘Your leave to be your herald, my lady?’
The Castle of the Winds Page 22
