“Strange indeed,” affirmed Jewel.
The weathermaster took his bearings from the stars, and they set off again, only to find that there was no sign of the road where he had calculated it ought to lie. The horses were behaving in an extraordinary manner, swinging their heads this way and that, as if unseen presences were urging them in conflicting directions. This happened a second time, and then a third. Eventually they halted again, bemused.
“More than strange,” said Jewel. “I would say eldritch.”
Arran smiled. “Of course! You have the answer. We must turn our clothes!”
Laughing with relief and amusement at their own obtuseness, they shrugged off their cloaks, reversed them, and put them on inside-out. The moment they did so, a cacophony of chortling, guffawing, and tittering broke out on all sides, followed by a loud whirring noise that seemed to draw away, as if a crowd of small creatures was scattering into the desert on insect-like wings.
Beneath the feet of their horses the road had reappeared, its surface beaten flat, its borders marked at intervals with tall stones.
“I have been letting down my guard,” said Arran. “I ought to be more vigilant.”
“Do not blame yourself,” his companion answered. “I am equally at fault! ’Twas only pixies, in any case.”
He held his peace, but Jewel guessed he shared her thought: Worse things than pixies might be ahead.
Next evening they came upon a scene that reminded them, if they needed reminding, of the truly terrible dangers that might befall unwary or ill-prepared travelers on any road in the Four Kingdoms. Looking ahead they could see, strewn across and to either side of the road, a scattering of indefinable shapes, like discarded rubbish. On closer inspection these articles turned out to be smashed coffers, human corpses, torn garments, and various vandalized objects of little value. This was the appalling aftermath of a recent attack on a band of travelers. Having dismounted, Arran and Jewel began to search for survivors.
Many sets of hoof-impressions, not yet spiced with blowing sand, led away into the desert. A boiled-leather gauntlet, studded with iron, lay half curled on the ground, like some armored desert reptile. Arran picked it up. “An artefact typical of Marauders,” he said soberly, inspecting the glove. “And there are no beasts of burden in sight. All horses and dromedaries have been stolen, which confirms—as if it needed confirmation—this assault was not the work of malignant wights.”
They buried the bodies in the sand and repeated the water-chant at the grave-sides. Then they cleared the detritus from the road as best they could, before mounting up and riding on. Ever and anon they glanced vigilantly around, across the wide plains to the purple-headed ranges of the south, the shimmering wastes unrolling toward remote horizons in every other direction. Nocturnal desert-dwellers glided like halfformed concepts across the lilting dunes, and their eyes were sudden glints, like sequins, and swooping owls made the stars blink.
In Jhallavad, city of the whirling windmills, they could discover no information about Aonarán, or his sister, or Scorpion. Pushing on, they drew near the turn-off to R’shael ten days later.
It was very late in the afternoon and, as so often, the desert’s western sky was putting on a fine display. Jewel could not help but frequently turn around in the saddle to admire it. The diving sun was a brass daisy radiating shining petals, with veils of brilliant orchid and orange caught amongst them. Gently, it slipped beneath the horizon, leaving a hot golden trail. In the afterglow the lower edges of cloud-rows in the sky’s western quarter burst into puffs of pink spun sugar, stretched and torn across the gilt foil of the sun-path. Slowly the glory began to fade from bright tangerine to rose, streaked with soft brush-strokes of blue-gray, still smudged with rushing streams of pale amber. The rest of the sky, almost the entire bowl, solidified to silver.
The evening breeze was stirring up veils of dust, so according to the custom of desert-dwellers, Jewel and Arran wrapped scarves around the nostrils of the horses and the lower halves of their own faces, to keep out the airborne grit. As they approached the fork in the road they saw a band of horsemen traveling toward them from the direction of the village. By the time they spotted this phenomenon, there was no doubt the horsemen must have likewise spied them. They could choose to break into a gallop, but there was no guarantee their horses could outrun the steeds ridden by the strangers.
“Perchance they are Marauders,” said Jewel. Her tone betrayed no fear, despite that she was afraid. Despising cowardice, she steeled herself to face this new encounter. She was shielded by invulnerability, and Arran possessed the powers of a weathermaster. The odds, she told herself, were good.
“Perchance,” Arran agreed levelly. “We might as well confront them with a brave face.”
They slowed to a halt and sat in their saddles, awaiting the strangers. Jewel noted that Arran had dropped the reins and his hands were moving, almost imperceptibly. He whispered a word, below the range of hearing, and she knew he was preparing to defend them both.
The strangers’ steeds were the wiry horses of the desert tribes, bridled with green leather, saddled with dark vermilion. As for the riders, they were men of middle age, clad chiefly in hues of saffron and ocher. Hooded cloaks covered embroidered tunics. Sheathed scimitars and daggers hung at their hips. Beneath their tunics, amulets depended from thongs about their necks. Knee-high, flamboyantly embossed boots were pulled up over their deerskin leggings. Some sported clinking ornaments of brass. Their faces, too, were partially concealed, wrapped with light cloths about the nose and mouth to keep the dust from their lungs, so that only their eyes could be seen. The little that showed of their visages was suntanned and spare, and the hair of each man, streaked with salt-gray, was folded in a club behind his head.
The leader was a coarse-browed man of powerful build. His shoulders were as bulky as a bullock’s, his chest as deep as a hogshead. He sat his horse with balanced and easy grace, even though his left leg had been severed below the knee. A wooden stump was strapped to his saddle.
“Hola!” he called out. “Be you friend or foe?”
A man who rode close by him said, amused, “How can they be foes, Caracal? Behold, one is a young woman and the other but a youth not much older than your own son!”
“Approach no further!” Stormbringer’s voice rang out. “Hold, and identify yourselves!”
“The youth is bold, I’ll grant you that!” the one called Caracal guffawed appreciatively. The horsemen brought their mounts to a standstill. The leader shouted, “We are liegemen of the Duke of Bucks Horn Oak in Narngalis, returning from our annual visit to our native village. What of you?”
Guardedly, Arran gave answer: “Our home is High Darioneth. We are bound for Cathair Rua.”
“Weathermasters, eh?” shouted Caracal, as a stir of interest rippled through his band of comrades. “Why not keep us company on the road?”
“We have had such an invitation before,” Jewel muttered to Arran, who grimaced. He deliberated before passing judgment. At length he called out, “Advance.”
The horsemen shifted their weight forward, and in response their horses resumed walking. As the strangers caught up, Jewel turned her head and stared intently at each one. Despite that they were masked with scarves, she fancied there was some familiar look about them. Her own scarf was loose, and as she looked around it had begun to fall away from her face. She tucked it in again, but in return for her stares it seemed the strangers could not take their eyes from her, and they gazed at her in wonder. Perceiving this, Arran scowled, steering his horse between Jewel and the men.
Noting Arran’s attitude, Caracal said to him, “Be not angered, young sir, for if we gawp unmannerly, it is not as you suppose.” Still seated in his saddle, he ducked his head respectfully to Jewel. “Lady, forgive me,” he said. “I mean no insult. In your countenance I see the countenance of another, who was dear to me long ago. His name was Jarred Jovansson.”
Jewel felt her eyes fly wide in shoc
k, before she mastered her demeanor. Who was this man? How could he have known her father? If she identified herself as a scion of the Jaravhor line, would she be in peril?
Averting her gaze from the Ashqalêthan’s scrutiny, she murmured hoarsely, “I know not of whom you speak. High Darioneth is my home.”
It was as if a lamp had been shedding radiance upon the big man and suddenly the light had been snuffed out. Hope faded from his eyes. He ducked his head a second time.
“Forgive me,” he repeated. Unaccountably, Jewel wanted to reach out and touch him, but she made no move.
His comrade, the one who had been amused at the notion of a young woman and a youth being a threat, said, “I am known as Quoll, and my friend here is Caracal. The others of our troupe are called Jerboa and Snake. Of course, you know that such names are but kennings of the desert-lands.”
“Naturally,” said Arran. “We have our own kennings. I am Salt, and my sister is called Lily.”
“Lily?” Caracal’s head snapped up, but upon meeting Quoll’s meaningful squint, he choked back his comment before it was uttered.
It was plain to Arran that Caracal must have been acquainted with Jewel’s father, but it was also clear that these men meant no harm, and were endeavoring to show courtesy. Arran sensed they could be trusted, and besides, they might be of help along the road, should any further perils threaten. At the same time, he was not ready to invite strangers further into his confidence.
“If we are all introduced and agreed, pray let us ride on,” he said.
The horsemen readily complied, and fell in beside them.
To while the leagues away, all parties engaged in amiable conversation. The one called Quoll told how he and his friends had left R’shael many years ago, to seek their fortune in other kingdoms. He himself had secured a position as Conjuror and Entertainer with the noble Duke of Bucks Horn Oak, while Caracal and Jerboa had turned their hands to various trades that came their way, including horse-breaking, hay-making, grave-digging, and cart-loading. As time went on and the duke’s retainers declined into frailty or senility, or left his service, Quoll had recommended his friends as candidates for the vacated positions; however, they did not take to the idea of settling down in one place for too long, and were apt to skip between various employments.
“I was not amongst them when they first set out from our village,” said one who called himself Snake. He was somewhat younger than the rest, a cheerful youth. “I joined this band of good-for-nothings last time they visited R’shael, desiring to see if their stories of great deeds and high adventure were true. So far the greatest deed I have seen them perform is the lifting of heavy tankards.”
Caracal cuffed him good-naturedly.
“That accounts for all save for our old comrades Sand Fox and Gecko,” concluded Quoll. “In Narngalis, Sand Fox entered the service of King Warwick, becoming a member of the household troops at the palace in King’s Winter-bourne. He is now Captain of the Guard, while his brother Gecko is second-in-command.”
“And save also for Jovansson,” interjected Caracal. “He stayed at the Great Marsh of Slievmordhu, for he fell in love with a marsh-daughter, and they were wed.”
“Just as some of us found wives amongst the women of Narngalis,” said Quoll.
Jewel observed, “You are well employed, yet every year you return to your home village.”
“Every year,” explained Snake, “we grow homesick. We long to feel the dry winds of Ashqalêth again, and so we go back, albeit for a short visit.”
“Tell me about your friend who went to live in the marsh,” Jewel said, unable to restrain her curiosity any longer.
“Ah well, he wed a damsel with eyes like blue lightning frozen to stillness, and they had a child, a daughter.”
“What more of him?”
“He was brave and honest, strong and generous. His laugh would lighten anyone’s mood, and he could shoot down a fell-cat at a hundred paces.”
“He was skilled with both crossbow and sling,” put in Jerboa, “and he was apprenticed to a blacksmith in R’shael. Also, he learned much from his own father, who was a carpenter. He played music, Jarred did, on a lyre he had fashioned with his own hands, and he was a creditable poet, to boot.”
“A man of many talents,” said Snake sadly. “Alas, now gone.”
“By your words one would judge that he was dearly loved,” Jewel ventured.
“Dearly loved,” Caracal repeated for emphasis, “and we loved his family also.” Again he eyed Jewel with a puzzled air, but voiced no question.
Impetuously, and without regard to the suspicions of the Bucks Horn Oak liegemen, Jewel was driven to quiz them about their dear friend, and they gladly regaled her with tales of Jarred’s adventures in their company.
The dust settled as the breeze died, and the travelers were able to put aside their masks, yet in the starlit darkness it was difficult to discern facial features. Come morning, Jewel clearly saw the men from R’shael for the first time, and recognized them as her father’s old friends, yet, having become cautious from years of living with the fear of identification, she refrained from mentioning the fact.
Both she and Stormbringer felt at ease with these high-spirited wayfarers in a way they had never enjoyed with Scorpion and Lizard. Sharing tales, songs, and laughter, they put the leagues behind them. As they crossed the border into Slievmordhu and headed along the Valley Road they fell in with a couple of jovial traveling minstrels who, in return for a few copper coins, regaled the company with the first stanzas of an east-kingdom ballad titled “Ropes of Sand”:
“At Samradh Mile—the story tells—young student scribes at escritoires
Sat dipping quills in ink-filled wells, and studying their repertoires
Of runes and letters, toiling hard through hours of tedium each day.
When work was done—so says the bard—the lads were wont to lark and play.
But, as they idled at their ease, there came a knocking from below
The hearthstone. Thinking it some tease, they laughed and yelled, ‘Who’s there? Hallo?’
No voice replied, but rat-tat-tat, the beat drummed from beneath the stone.
The grinning boys scoffed, ‘Who is that who tries to fright us to the bone?’
Once more the knocking sounded from some sub-floor cave. ‘Pray, let me in!’
A loud voice cried. Then, with aplomb the students answered, ‘Hush your din!
Your prank grows stale. Three times you’ve knocked. Your game palls. ’Tis no longer rare.
Show us your face! The slab’s not locked. Now, fellow, enter if you dare!’
“The stone arose into the air, revealing a horrific sight—
Up from the hole that opened there clambered a monstrous, hairy wight.
The lads were petrified with fear, all save for one, who slipped away
Unnoticed, in the atmosphere of disbelief and stunned dismay.
‘You asked me in!’ the sprite declared. ‘Your invitation left no doubt.
Well might you tremble, meek and scared! Now that I’m in, I won’t go out.
I’ll cause you mischief night and day; I’ll trick and taunt and harass you.
You won’t be rid of me. I’ll stay! There’s nothing that I cannot do.’
“ ‘They’re braggarts’ words!’ a man’s voice cried. ‘Words bow to deeds, you boastful elf!’
The voice’s owner strode inside the door, the schoolmaster himself.
He’d heard the tidings from the youth who stole away, and come to try
To save the school from this uncouth malignant troll, so foul and sly.
‘You say there’s nothing you can’t do?’ the schoolmaster did boldly say.
‘Prove that your claim is fair and true; if not, then you must flee straightway.’
‘The wager’s on!’ the goblin howled. ‘And I shall win! I’ll guarantee!
Set me three tasks,’ he shrieked and growled. ‘I will perform them. You shal
l see.’ ”
Jewel was intrigued by the verses and begged the minstrels to name the three tasks without further ado, but the balladeers said, “For a coin or two, Mistress Lily, we shall sing you the second part!”
Close beside Jewel, Arran leaned and whispered, “They have got enough coin from us already. I know the song, and will later sing it to you for nothing.”
Increasingly as they left behind the desert regions and passed deeper into Slievmordhu they came amongst acres of undulating grasslands. To the north, the land rose to become the low green hills of Bellaghmoon, while in the east a line of peaks stood sentinel, towering out of a sea of bluish fume. Here, many leagues from the stone deserts south of Ashqalêth, protected by two mountain ranges from the scouring winds of the Fyrflaume and well watered by the runoff from the Great Eastern Ranges, the landscape waxed lush and mellow.
It was late in Otember. Half-lost in the long grass, brown hares loped across the pastures, their fur gilded, and their whiskers fired into stiff wires of electrum by the slanting rays of the equinoctial sun. In the hedgerows along the margins of the road blackberries and hawthorns were ripening, turning from hard green nubs, to red globes, and then to carbuncles of deep, glossy black. Birds fed on them: song thrushes, redwings, blackbirds, and bullfinches. Kestrels hovered over meadows of maturing seed-heads, in search of harvest mice performing acrobatic feats amongst the stalks. Wooded areas were sparse, and no trees grew closer to the road than the distance of a bowshot. Villages were also rare in these outlying regions, but those through which the travelers passed were engaged in goose fairs, sheep fairs, and hiring fairs.
Early one evening, the travelers crossed a rickety wooden bridge over a brook that meandered away through the violet-studded wayside. Farther from the road, the waterway was lined with birches and beeches. Their foliage had begun to take on the rich tints of treasure, but the extravaganza of Autumn colors had not yet evolved. The clinging beech-leaves were heart-shaped shavings of gold. As if unattached to any twig, they hovered over the shimmering stream, whose dim banks of moss seemed as soft and inviting as couches of emerald velvet.
The Well of Tears: Book Two of The Crowthistle Chronicles Page 36
