“I congratulate you, sir, on your newly conferred magehood,” said the seneschal to Arran. “Indeed, the Four Kingdoms must rejoice, that the Maelstronnar’s son is now licensed to govern the winds of Tir.”
The young man inclined his head as acknowledgment of the compliment.
“My liege wishes to offer his felicitations in person,” continued the seneschal. “He regrets that duty has called him to matters of urgency so that he was unable to greet you upon your arrival, but he has left word that you are to be seated by his right hand at the dinner table this evening.”
“I am honored,” said Arran formulaically. Privately, he wished himself out of the palace and instead staying at some hostelry in the Red City, but it would appear discourteous to refuse to spend a single night with his hosts. He glanced with distaste at the garish curios arranged all around, glittering harshly, studded with gems in such a cacophony of jarring colors they threatened to induce nausea.
He had visited this chamber many times before, accompanying his father or any of the other weathermages with whom he had studied. The décor had hardly altered since his first visit in boyhood; it remained much as it had been during the reign of King Maolmórdha Ó Maoldúin. After the king’s demise his son Uabhar had not bothered to change it in any way. Only a fine layer of dust now sifted over the bric-a-brac, where in earlier days every surface had shone speck-free.
Out of the window, the crown of the deflated sky-balloon finally sank from view. Arran’s contemplation switched back to Jewel and his sister. He burned to know what they were doing at that instant. . . .
Darkness had gathered across the land by the time Jewel and Galiene reached the Fair Field. Clouds lidded the sky. Cathair Rua was wrapped in twilight, the expanse of ground beneath the city’s walls illuminated only by innumerable campfires. A brisk breeze was coursing through the grounds, catapulting sparks from the flames, shaking tents, puffing dust and detritus into the air. The wind slapped at the woolen skirts of the two friends as they walked together amongst the campfires. On all sides the stallholders were packing away their wares. A rough-looking man was leading away a mangy dancing-bear on a chain. The air smacked of smoky spice and roasted meats.
These familiar sights and smells evoked images of childhood for Jewel. She found herself in a ferment of agitation. Reflections danced in her wide-open eyes. “Look, over there is the head of the Rushy Water,” she said, tugging at Galiene’s sleeve. “You can see the willows lining the bank. My grandfather always set up his stall near the water, with the others of my people. We must direct our steps that way. Come!”
Galiene needed no urging, being infected by the enthusiasm of her companion, although she laughed and said, “Do not hasten so! ’Twill make us careless, and we will likely encounter some mishap in this gloaming!”
A moment after she uttered this gentle rebuke Jewel, in her hurry, stepped on a loose stone and stumbled against a stallholder’s covered wain. A commotion arose from within the parked vehicle, as of multitudinous metallic implements crashing down on top of one another. From the shadows nearby, a man’s guttural voice snarled, “Hey, you! What are you about? You’ve knocked down every knife in my stock!” A face, broad and thick-lipped, was suddenly lapped into sight by lantern-glow.
“My apologies, sir,” Jewel said hastily. She and Galiene exchanged guilty glances, then scooped up their skirts and fled into the windy darkness, the stallholder’s curses winging after them like vindictive bats.
Nonetheless, this accident did nothing to dampen Jewel’s exhilaration. “We’re almost there,” she called to Galiene. “I’m sure we shall find him!”
“In that case, go with caution now, and not so precipitately,” advised the Maelstronnar’s daughter in murmurous tones. “Confine yourself to our plan, or be discovered by every marshman and marshwoman at the fair.”
Acknowledging the wisdom of these words, Jewel slowed to a walk. Approaching close beside Galiene, she said in her ear, “There. You see those booths whose canopies are strung with goat-hides and braces of smoked fish? Those are the booths of the marshfolk.” By now she was unable to stand still, jiggling with impatience even as they abated their pace further.
Observing a narrow alley between two carts piled high with barrels, Galiene said, “Now you must wait here in this dim aisle, while I go alone to find your grandfather. Remind me—how shall I know him?”
“By his grizzled hair and beard,” said Jewel, “and the scar cutting across his left eyebrow, where a fish-hook raked him long ago. He is of middle stature, and his marshman’s garb forever exudes the odor of fish and vinegar.”
Galiene wrinkled her nose.
“Show him this,” said Jewel, pressing the amulet of bone into her friend’s palm. “By this token, he shall know I am nigh.”
Her companion nodded and went silently forth. Unobtrusively, she flitted past the outskirts of the marshfolk’s campsite, scanning all the faces that flickered into view. In this enclave, the stalls were already shuttered and secure. Sheltered from the breeze in the lee of their booths, the marshfolk sat around a large fire, drinking from tankards, conversing, waiting for their supper to cook.
The damsel could spy no man whose description corresponded to that of Earnán. She passed to and fro, advancing from varying angles in order to be certain she had not overlooked him. At last, conscious that repeated passage must invite attention, she gave up and began to return to the shadowy place where Jewel waited. No sooner had Galiene taken ten paces, however, than she came face-to-face with the man she sought. There could be no doubt of it; there was the broad and weathered face, the grizzled beard, the berry-round nose, and the weal distinctly interrupting the hoary eyebrow. Furthermore, to her gratification, he was alone. As he stood back to allow her to pass, she said quickly and softly, “Is your name Earnán Mosswell?”
Startled, he threw her a quizzical look, but said, “Aye.”
Relief and gladness enveloped Galiene. “Your granddaughter Jewel is nigh,” she said, discreetly displaying the amulet in her open hand. Turning her back toward the camp of the marshfolk, she used her body to shield her actions from their line of sight. The old marshman dithered, as if her news were too much to comprehend. At length, he said huskily, “Who are you?”
“I am a journeywoman weathermaster, a daughter of the Storm Lord himself.” Pulling aside her flapping cloak, Galiene showed him the insignia embroidered on her shoulder. “Accompany me. I will lead you to her straightway.”
The humble eel-fisher was quite taken aback, greatly awed by the presence of such an eminent personage and baffled by her announcement. Dazedly, he followed the damsel through the dim-lit maze of campsites, tents, booths, stalls, barrows, and animal pens. The breeze whipped their hair across their faces and pulled at their garments. Disturbed air currents, the aftermath of the windstorms, rattled chattels and makeshift edifices. Somewhere, two sheep called out in quavering tones.
When Jewel stepped out of the murk Earnán halted as if he had walked straight into a stone wall. He did not speak, only looked upon this well-dressed young friend of the weathermasters with the expression of a man who, for the first time in his life, beholds some wildly improbable eldritch phenomenon. Disbelief jostled with wonder, confusion, and eventually a dawning gladness.
Jewel, balanced between joy and uncertainty at his reaction, said, “Seanathair!” and moved forward. Next moment tears were pouring from the eyes of Earnán, and she ran into his embrace.
Galiene walked a few paces away, allowing them time for reacquaintance without intrusion. She was smiling to herself, pleased to have glimpsed Jewel’s happiness at the reunion, delighted to have facilitated it. Presently, from the corner of her eye she saw Jewel reach into her bag and produce one of the gifts she had brought for her step-grandfather. Then a glimmer from overhead attracted Galiene’s attention, and she looked up to see the clouds breaking apart. Moonlight shone down, silvering the looming walls and roofs of the Red City, and the towers of the
palace.
Within those towers the royal dinner table was ranked with regiments of goldplated cutlery, whose handles were all stamped with the burning-brand emblem of Slievmordhu. Arran, seated beside the young as-yet-uncrowned king—Uabhar was the senior by a year, having lived for twenty-two Winters—scrutinized the length of the white cloth, arrayed with ostentatious tableware.
At work on the seafood course, the royal carver was panegyrizing the mystique of his art by calling out the names of the cuts as he performed them: “Chine the bream; gobbet the trout!” he declared. “Unmail the crayfish, and as for the crab, tame and mime him, for the crab be a slut to carve and a froward creature! Give honor to the cod’s head and shoulders, especially the palate, the sound, and the tongue. Spoon out the jelly parts with goodly temperance, for they be the most succulent!”
In case the carving display was not of sufficient interest to the assembled diners, an expert sand-artist was dribbling his colored sugar powders and tinted marble dust onto plateaux, designing exquisite pictures, which he then covered with transparent panes of glass. On and around his finished creations he placed dough and sugar statuettes, miniature topiaries, urns and fountains, in simulation of a formal garden.
The guests looked on without much curiosity. They included the purser of the weathermasters, the royal seneschal and other officials of the king’s household, Uabhar’s wife, the Lady Saibh, the Ambassador for High Darioneth in Cathair Rua, and the king’s two brothers, as well as three druids from the Sanctorum.
Uabhar was renowned as a clever young man, but Arran had no love for him. His own estimation of the king-in-waiting was augmented by the opinions of several other weathermasters who were acquainted with the son of Maolmórdha. Uabhar, they opined, was sly and manipulative, self-serving and callos to the extreme. His persistent self-righteous declarations of his own integrity belied—and to Arran’s mind confirmed—his deceitful nature. He was fond of wearing fur, and kept a private farm on which ermines, minks, and other fur-bearing creatures were confined in cages and eventually slaughtered in agonizing internal ways, so that their pelts would remain unmarked. This, in combination with Uabhar’s manner toward his family and his abuse of servants, disgusted the son of the Storm Lord. He could not help but dislike his host intensely, and therefore treated him with the utmost civility, to conceal his distaste. Diplomacy was an obligatory requirement of any weathermage. The unwritten statutes of High Darioneth demanded political harmony with the Four Kingdoms, unless the maintenance of that concord should bring peril upon the weathermasters.
Arran toyed with the food in his dish.
Across the chamber the king’s mother reclined upon a couch, dining separately. She was clad all in shades of red: scarlet damask, crimson velvet, carmine silk. At her throat, ears, and fingers burned rubies, garnets, and carnelians. Her fingernails had been painted with cerise enamel. Even her meticulously coiffed hair blushed like fever. There was no relief from the redness save for her papery skin and her eyes, teak-brown, yellow-rimmed. On her feet she wore slippers of sanguine satin, and beside those dainty shoes sat an absurdly short-legged dog on a chain, its collar barnacled with carbuncles, its coat auburn, its selectively bred physique destined to be forever plagued with pains of the backbone. The chain was of reddish gold. The dowager queen was occupied with eating from dishes of the same material, and the food she placed between her poppy-painted lips consisted of strawberries, cherries, plums, and raspberries. From a goblet of rubicund glass she sipped wine the color of blood.
When the carver ceased his chant the old queen’s minstrel, Luchóg, struck up on his lyre:
“Tra la la la, oh, merrily we go, yea, merrily we go along.
Tra la la la, we’re merry as can be, so merrily we sing our song.”
Prince Páid, brother to Uabhar and third in line for the throne, peered over the rim of his drinking vessel. “Luchóg, you are demented,” he observed, before upending the goblet and draining it. No one else commented. As the seafood dishes were presented, the lead-panes rattled in the fitful breeze, and Arran glanced up at the window.
At the Fair Field, in the doubtful shelter of the carts Earnán and Jewel were deep in animated conversation, endeavoring, within the space of an hour, to describe all that had happened to them during the past few years. Galiene stood on watch, warning them if anyone approached, so that they might lower their voices to escape attention.
“There is one last question I wish to ask, dear seanathair,” Jewel said earnestly. “It concerns my mother. How came she beneath that curse of madness, which proved her undoing?”
At Jewel’s last parting from her father, Jarred, there had been no time for him to reveal the entire story of her background.
Then the marshman told her all he knew: how, some eighty years before, the beauteous Álainna Machnamh had been abducted by Janus Jaravhor, the Sorcerer of Strang; how the three sons of the House of A’Connacht had sought to rescue her and two had perished in the attempt; how Tierney A’Connacht, the youngest son, delivered Álainna Machnamh from her captor with the aid of Fallowblade, the golden sword, and the two were later wed; how in revenge for this thwarting of his ambition, Janus Jaravhor had set his malediction of madness upon them, and upon all their descendants.
“But,” concluded Earnán, “when your father, the heir of Jaravhor, wed your mother, the heir of A’Connacht, the curse was destroyed by the sorcerer’s own arts, which conferred immunity on his own lineage.”
Jewel remained silent for some while.
“This tale is told among the weathermasters,” she said at length. “Yet never before this moment have I fully understood my own connection to it. I am astonished. How curious, that my own history should be doubly entangled with that of the great sword Fallowblade. Now I detest that execrable sorcerer more than ever. If I could, I would tear out the part of me that springs from him.” She laid her head upon Earnán’s shoulder, and for a while he stroked her hair consolingly, as he used to do when she was a little child, while they desultorily discussed the story of the curse and its repercussions. “I wish someone would violate the foul Dome of Strang,” Jewel said vehemently, “and seize the hoard the sorcerer hid so cunningly there. It would serve him right, if his precious monument were to be sacked.”
“Be at peace,” murmured the eel-fisher. “Do not be troubling yourself with notions of revenge. The man is dead. You are alive. Let that be retribution enough.”
Jewel brooded awhile. “I have kept safe my father’s gift all this time,” she said eventually, lifting her head, “although I know full well it has no power as an amulet.” Reaching her hand beneath a fold of her raiment, she drew out a handful of spangles on a chain. Somehow, the jewel snagged radiance from the gloom, and multiplied it, and shot it forth in glistering rays.
“Cry mercy, but ’tis a rare and beauteous thing, a muirnín!” said Earnán, looking upon it wonderingly. “Valuable, too, no doubt.”
A distant commotion started up. By the racket, it sounded as if a saucepanstall had collapsed, blown over by the wind.
“You should take it,” said Jewel, impulsively proffering the stone. “You might sell it, and live well off the proceeds.”
The marshman shook his head. “Put it away, a cailín. Such a treasure is not for me. I am content enough with my life.” He did not qualify “except that I am lonely,” but she could see it in his eyes. “Hide away your bauble,” he urged again, “lest it attract thieves.”
Jewel knew him well enough to take him at his word. It would be useless to press him. Besides, it suddenly occurred to her that the sale of such a rare prize might attract unwelcome attention to the vendor, bringing danger upon Earnán.
As she tucked away the clinquant inside her clothing, a flicker of movement caught her eye. A man in tradesman’s garb was slouching down the narrow way between the carts. She was uncertain whether he’d had the opportunity to glimpse the gem. He greeted her grandfather as he went by.
“How now, water-ma
n!”
“Wassail, sand-man,” answered Earnán.
The stranger continued on his way.
“I wonder if he saw my father’s gift,” said Jewel anxiously.
“He did not mention it,” replied her grandfather. “In any case, he is quite well known to me. He is a stallholder, an Ashqalêthan by the name of Feroz Sohrab.”
“Is he trustworthy?” Jewel tried to conceal her alarm.
“If high humor and good fellowship are a measure of trustworthiness, then yes, he is so. Ever since our erstwhile camp-neighbors ceased their seasonal visits some four years ago, Feroz and his comrade have made a habit of setting up their stalls next to ours at fair-time. The two of them are exceeding goodnatured and jovial, always joking and singing. They have formed friendships with us. And they keep company with Cathal Weaponmonger, who grinds our knives cheaply because of the connection.”
“I am relieved to hear of his good reputation,” said the girl, glancing down the aisle in the direction the man had vanished. “Why did our camp-neighbors depart?”
“The knowledge is not at me, a muirnín,” answered her grandfather. “They simply ceased to appear, with no explanation or farewell. The campsite was empty, so the desertmen filled it.”
Uneasily banishing the intruder from her thoughts, Jewel delved inside her bag and produced the other gifts she had brought for Earnán. Together they exclaimed over the gifts and exchanged memories, while Galiene hopped from one foot to the other, her agitation increasing.
At length she rejoined the pair, saying, “Our isolation cannot last. Someone is sure to come this way soon. Make haste! We must depart forthwith!”
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 19
