Haven atobas-4

by Joel Shepherd

  Kessligh nodded, and sipped tea. “Isn't it,” he agreed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Sofy found the feast more surreal than anything she'd seen since coming to Saalshen. There were tables of amazing food, and after eating, music, acrobats, and performers Sofy knew of no word to describe. Always at her elbow there was some Jahndi nobility (or however such people were described, as there was no noble title here) telling her the exquisite meaning of this dish, or that performance. Jahndis seemed to take great pride in being unique to all humanity and Saalshen too. An island of uniqueness in a serrin sea, and oh-so-sophisticated for it.

  Sofy was astonished at her own cynicism. Jahnd was an amazing city, and at any other time she would have been delighted at all that she saw. But there was about to be a great war for the survival not only of Jahnd, but of Saalshen too, and so many people here seemed to barely notice. And shouldn't all this food be stored for the coming siege?

  Perhaps it was the dark looks that she received from many Jahndis, born of the fact that she was still Princess Regent, and whatever the moral victory of her defection to this side of the Lenay divide, ongoing bonds of marriage meant as much to most Jahndis as elsewhere in human lands. She was the wife of the man who attacked them, and that was that.

  And there were very few serrin. Jahnd only existed as a city on the tolerance of serrin, who had extended far more kindness to humanity here than humanity's treatment of serrin might have warranted. Yet this great feast in opulent halls atop the Jahndi slope was an almost entirely human affair, with the only serrin Sofy could see being those there on official invitation.

  It was Jaryd who rescued her from her little corner of Jahndis who would talk to her, and hovering servants.

  “Your sister wishes to speak with you immediately,” he lied, with grave earnestness. Mention of Sasha brought wide-eyed looks and murmurs from those surrounding, who bowed graciously as Sofy apologised and excused herself.

  “Oh, thank goodness,” she gasped as they emerged into the courtyard, and the warm summer night. “I've been so free the past weeks, I don't know how I can ever tolerate court again.”

  Travelling through Saalshen with Jaryd, and a few curious serrin guides who changed every few days, had been one of the more wonderful times in Sofy's life. Serrin did and dressed as they pleased, and seemed bound by little of convention as humans understood it. Now, to be back, even in some place as liberated as Jahnd, seemed stifling.

  “I've found a place far more entertaining,” said Jaryd with enthusiasm. “Come with me.”

  “But I can't go anywhere in this stupid gown!”

  “You're beginning to sound like Sasha. Come on, stop at the quarters and get changed first.”

  Sasha's quarters were Sofy's, now that Sasha had decided to stay with her army down in the valley. Sofy changed into the plain clothes she'd been travelling in, and followed Jaryd's lead.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Downslope,” said Jaryd, limping a little on his bad leg. “The thing I've discovered since becoming Goeren-yai is that you have to get away from the money and nobility to find the really good stuff.”

  “Here,” said Sofy, and put his arm about her shoulders for support.

  “I'm not going to lean on you, don't be stupid.”

  “Then put your damn arm about me like some wench you met at a tavern,” Sofy retorted with amusement. “At least you'll make it less likely I'll be recognised.”

  But there was little chance of that in common clothes, as so few Jahndis knew her face. Jaryd took her all the way down the hill, and slowly the stately silence of grand buildings gave way to the livelier clusters of smaller ones. At one shoulder in the road, they gained a wide view of the Ilmerhill Valley below, a sprawl of lantern lights and small fires. Down narrower lanes they passed night markets doing a busy trade, many of their customers soldiers. There were inns with great balconies overlooking the lower defensive wall, and crowded with revellers. Conversation roared and music played, and Sofy stared about in delight at all there was to see, hear, and smell.

  They bought delicious pastries at a roadside stall, laughed at a street performer's tricks, and stared at amazing glass baubles on sale at a stall. There were serrin here, some talmaad, others not, seeming to enjoy this human confusion as much as anyone. To them, Jahnd was an amazing place they would occasionally take their children to visit, as Lenay villagers had often taken their families to see the wonders of the nearest city. This was an odd place where the humans lived and made all kinds of colourful things.

  Jaryd exchanged cheerful salutes with passing Lenay soldiers, and more formal yet equally friendly ones with Enorans, Rhodaanis, and Ilduuris. Everywhere were little groups of soldiers, stopped to chat or direct each other to the nearest interesting thing. Some singers on a corner made a wonderful chorus, with harmonies utterly foreign to Sofy's ear. Some teenage boys showed off a serrin barehanded fighting technique, with flying fists, leaps, and spinning kicks.

  “This is the Low Quarter,” Jaryd explained in her ear, “where the entertainments for the common folk are held. They're kept open so even the labourers working through the night can take a break now and then, and come here to relax for a while. I spoke to some hellfire brewers earlier. I reckon they could use a break.”

  “Hellfire! Where is that made?”

  “Out of the city, away from houses so no one else gets hurt when it goes wrong. People die making it-it's very dangerous. Most folks only work a few years making hellfire, then do something else. Even then they get a medal, and some inns grant a hellfire brewer free meals. Lots of poor folk do it-it means they won't ever starve.”

  They came to a small courtyard where a crowd gathered beneath a big tree. Music was being played. Sofy and Jaryd went and found a spot on a stone ledge to sit amongst the other listeners. There were three drummers, all Lenay, with hand drums not so dissimilar to the Lenay kind. And there were three serrin musicians, one with a long, woody-sounding pipe, another with a middle-sized, seven-string guitar, and the last seated with a huge, four-string bass.

  Sofy found what they played both familiar and utterly strange at the same time. The rhythms were Lenay, yet the serrin had put them to haunting, lilting harmonies and melodies that had never accompanied such rhythms before. The bass guitar played an underlying, repeating pattern, and the two other serrin played competing melodies over the top of it all, sometimes duelling, and sometimes coming together in apparently spontaneous harmonies. The effect was utterly mesmerising, and the rhythm infectious. Even Jaryd, whom Sofy had never known to be the greatest appreciator of music, was soon swaying back and forth and tapping his feet.

  “What do they play?” Sofy asked a talmaad warrior seated alongside.

  “Nothing I have ever heard before,” the woman admitted with amazement. “The serrin musicians play traditional serrin forms, yet I have never heard them put to such amazing rhythms.”

  “I think they've discovered a new musical form,” said Sofy. “Wonderful things happen when your people and ours come together.”

  The serrin smiled at her, a flash of turquoise eyes in the lamplight. Serrin had travelled to Lenayin for many centuries, Sofy thought. Strange that it took this great gathering, and a war, to produce such a fusion. The Army of Lenayin had been in Jahnd for many days now. Who knew what new wonders would emerge, should they stay longer?

  Then she saw it, what Sasha had seen, and Kessligh well before her, in coming to fight for Saalshen. Koenyg saw that the future of humanity must be Verenthane, and strictly so, for that was what humans had built themselves, and was native to them. What the serrin built and inspired in cities like Jahnd was deadly to that, and must be destroyed if Koenyg's vision was to thrive.

  But here was a new possibility, for all humankind. It was not so much a question of what the serrin could do for humans, but rather what they could inspire humans to do for themselves. Serrin were really quite simple beings. They did not build much, and much of what they did
build was as individuals, not collectively as humans did. But what serrin had were ideas, forms of thought and wisdom shaped over the centuries, born of minds that knew little of primeval human hatreds and emotions. And where humans came to embrace those ideas, it unleashed something in humans, too. Something creative and dynamic, as humans had always been creative and dynamic in war, bigotry, and death, but now directing that dynamism upon something far more positive.

  Saalshen was humanity's well in a dry desert. There was little doubt that humans could fill in the well, if they chose, for it was fragile and its waters finite. Yet if managed with care and love, the well could be sipped from for many generations to come, and make a better future for all. Koenyg thought to make the strictest teachings of the Verenthanes the rock upon which to build the future of Lenayin. Sasha and Kessligh insisted that that foundation was here, in the very place that Koenyg's vision sought to destroy. Jahnd was not perfect. Even Saalshen was not. Spirits knew, Lenayin was not either. But what they could make together, in the spirit of fusion and not annihilation, was worth fighting, and even killing, for.

  The music played on, in endless variety. Musicians and drummers sparred back and forth, sometimes reaching a crescendo that brought spontaneous applause and cheers from watching humans, and gasps of delight and expansive hand gestures from the serrin. Sofy watched the crowd, as intrigued by their willing acceptance of this strange new thing as by the music itself.

  Suddenly she spotted a young, familiar face. It was Andreyis, Sasha's long-time friend from the ranch in Baerlyn. With him was a striking serrin girl, with pale skin and flaming red hair. They sat intimately, arms about each other, her head on his shoulder as they swayed with the music.

  Jaryd followed her gaze. “Her name is Yshel. She was his captor when he was prisoner after Shero Valley.” Sofy looked at him, impressed. Jaryd shrugged. “I came to this war partly because I swore to Sasha I'd look out for him. But he no longer needs looking out for.”

  “Sasha will need messengers,” Sofy suggested. “I heard men say. They said it's best to have people who know her well, so there is no possibility of miscommunication.”

  “She has Daish, the lad from Tracato.”

  “And on this battlefield, how many do you think she'll need?”

  Jaryd thought about it. Then nodded. “Interesting,” he admitted. “You know it's no safer a position than the one he'd be leaving?”

  Sofy nodded. “But it is prestigious. None of us will be safe. If we are to fall, best we fall with honour.”

  “Now you're thinking like a warrior.” Jaryd put his arm about her and they swayed together in time with the rhythm.

  Alfriedo Renine wandered the road in the serrin town called Tormae. How his people knew its name, he did not particularly want to know. The Army of Northern Lenayin, as it was now being called by some, had come through here earlier, having ridden the forest road to reach the eastern end of the Dhemerhill Valley. Thankfully, they did not seem to have destroyed anything yet. General Zulmaher walked at his side, in the full armour of a Rhodaani Steel officer. That disconcerted some of the Rhodaani nobility, a few of whom also walked with them.

  There were no serrin to be seen. Again, Alfriedo thought that probably a good thing. He turned off the road and walked up a path beneath great stands of trees that he could not identify, and emerged onto the shore of a small lake. Several houses flanked the lake, the nearest with a decking that crept across the water. Gardens surrounded.

  “Not a natural lake,” Zulmaher observed, shielding his eyes from the glare of sun on water. “I don't see how any of these water features can be natural.”

  A fish jumped in the water. Ducks paddled, and a heron stalked through reedy banks. Alfriedo walked along the bank to the house, and climbed stairs to the decking.

  There he found something odd. A wooden chair faced the stairs, flanked by potted flowers. From a roof beam overhead overgrown with vines dangled a small object that glinted brilliantly in the sun. Upon the chair itself was draped a lady's dress.

  Alfriedo looked up as Zulmaher came beside him. “What do you think? Some sort of offering?”

  Zulmaher frowned, and walked forward to examine the dangling object. It was glass, yet it gleamed like a jewel. There was a sphere, with a gold pin through the middle and circled by metal bands. The metal bands in turn held a smaller jewel, also spherical, or nearly. A diamond. Zulmaher suddenly retreated a step and made a holy sign as he recognised the object.

  “What is it?” Alfriedo asked, frowning.

  “It is a serrin representation of the world,” said Zulmaher. “The serrin world, spherical. The diamond is the moon.”

  “Hand it to me. It is high, I cannot reach.”

  “You should not touch it.”

  “Hand it to me,” his young lord commanded. “I aim to be a learned man, and I have no regard for your silly superstitions.”

  Zulmaher reached, and touching only the suspending cord, removed the object. Alfriedo took it, and examined it closely. The glass sphere was inlaid with many colours, in different kinds of glass. He did not see how it was possible. For humans, it was not. He recognised the shape of one outline-the coastal map of Rhodia itself. This jewel was the world, complete with all known coastlines. Serrin had many ships, he knew, and sailed far. In recent readings he had discovered references to serrin maps of all the world, yet those books he had not found, and all the serrin who might direct him to them had fled from Tracato.

  “Magnificent,” he pronounced. He placed the globe in a safe belt pouch and turned his attention to the dress. Serrin women did not wear dresses any more than serrin men did. Those robes were called ki'jo, to be worn indoors and at leisure by serrin of either sex. But this was clearly a dress, as human women wore, and tailored to a woman's shape. Why would serrin make such a thing?

  “For the Jahndis,” he guessed, lifting the dress across an arm. The fabric felt like silk, yet it was interwoven with golden thread, and in no simple pattern either. These patterns were like flowers, curling and intricate, gold lines through rose-red fabric. “This is also impossible,” he said with wonder. “How do they make such arts? Even in Tracato I have not seen the likes of this. It must be worth a fortune. I am surprised the Lenays have not taken them.”

  “The men of Northern Lenayin are not here for loot. They fight for the holy cause, and will regard such objects as cursed.”

  “So the serrin have abandoned their town, but left such objects as these for us to find.” Alfriedo gazed across the lake. “Do they seek to make peace?”

  “I think they merely wish to be remembered,” Zulmaher said sombrely.

  Alfriedo gazed up at his mentor. He gave him the dress to examine, and leaned upon the railing. Below, the water was thick with lilies.

  “Do you believe the serrin are evil?” he asked the general.

  “No,” said Zulmaher. “But I did not believe the Elissians were evil, and I made war upon them all the same. It was necessary, for Rhodaan. As this is necessary, for the same.”

  “I have read on many of the things that were suggested to me by Kessligh Cronenverdt, since we met.”

  “I would not place too much store by the word of Kessligh Cronenverdt,” Zulmaher said warily.

  “He challenged me to consider my position. A brave man does not shirk a challenge. And I should not like a Lenay warrior of his station to think me a coward.”

  “My lord is no coward.”

  “No,” Alfriedo agreed. “He said that Rhodaan's rulers have not always been wise and just. The serrin have many books and records that do suggest so, and that much of what my mother taught me of the history of my illustrious family is not true.”

  “The Family Renine has always ruled fairly.”

  “Always?” Alfriedo frowned up at Zulmaher. “Always is a long time.”

  “And Saalshen's councils of the past two centuries have been scarcely more just.”

  “A different matter,” said Alfriedo. “Kessligh tol
d me that men losing an argument always change the subject.” Zulmaher was displeased. “My family has not always ruled wisely, this is plain. Brave men, and wise men who aspire to leadership, must be prepared to separate their personal desires from their quest for truth. The two are not the same, he said.”

  “It is very difficult,” Zulmaher said acerbically, “to argue against both you and Kessligh Cronenverdt, particularly when he is not here.”

  “Oh, I think he is,” Alfriedo replied with a faint smile. He pointed beyond the lake, to the west. “Just down the valley, in fact. We'll meet him shortly, and regret it.”

  Alfriedo and Zulmaher returned to where armoured riders waited, holding their horses, mounted, and rejoined the road. They made greater speed through the rest of Tormae, and emerged into the beginnings of the Dhemerhill Valley. There awaited the Holy Army of Rhodaan, as it was now called. They had needed to call it something, as the only army Rhodaan had known in the past two centuries had been the Rhodaani Steel, and they fought now on the other side.

  All the men were mounted, and stood in ranks as Alfriedo, Zulmaher, and their accompanying lords approached. These were the great families of Tracato and Rhodaan, now restored to nobility by the Regent's victory. Their banners flew high against the green of the valley walls, and to a man they sat proudly in the saddle. Most had dreamed of this day since they were old enough to understand the tales their parents told them, of god-given entitlements unfairly stolen, and of destinies to be fulfilled. Alfriedo shared their joy and pride in part, for it was his own, born in him as it was in them from the moment he was old enough to understand his mother's stories. And yet the cost had been immense. He did miss the serrin libraries of Tracato. And in light of what he had lately been challenged to read, he rather missed the serrin themselves.

  Ahead of the Rhodaanis massed Torovan cavalry. All who had come along the forest road were cavalry, as foot soldiers would have taken too long, and been exposed to serrin ambush at night camp in the forests. The Torovans gathered in their various provinces, none of which seemed to enjoy each other's company. Many Torovans had fought with the Army of Lenayin in the Battle of Shero Valley, and some Alfriedo had spoken with were resentful that the Lenays had used them more as a reserve, save for some heavy cavalry action on one flank. Others were exasperated that the Lenays, their previous allies, had divided against themselves, as though such an event were as predictable as dogs fighting over a bone.