Western Shore ac-3

by Juliet E. McKenna

  'The heavenly compass had been indicating some threat to our household.' Redigal Coron continued as if Safar hadn't spoken. 'I turned all my attention to ensuring that my wives and children were safe.' Coron shook his head

  with apparent regret. 'I never imagined catastrophe would befall my counsellors.'

  Did you have travelling seers visit the islands around Ocal with such ominous prognostication that no one dared pluck the drowningzamorin to safety?

  'There is seldom opportunity to avert disaster, if the heavens decree it,' Kheda lied evenly, 'as we know only too well in Chazen. Just as we know those who suffer misfortune and survive it are in no sense to blame for what has befallen them.'

  Which is simple truth, and if you want my support in whatever you 're plotting, my lord of Redigal, you'1l do all in your power to give the lie to rumours of had luck still hanging around Chazen waters like foul air.

  Coron promptly swept a hand around to encompass the islands of the residence, the lagoon and the whole domain beyond. 'The good fortune that has blessed Chazen since you drove out the curse of magic makes that plain.'

  'Let's see what the new year brings.' There was a hard edge to Ulla Safar's words as he tucked his kerchief back in his belt.

  The rest of us will be more than satisfied to see a permanent breach in the long alliance between the two of you.

  Kheda smiled cheerfully at both warlords. 'Let's see what refreshments await us.'

  Redigal Coron turned to indicate three armoured swordsmen drawn up a few paces apart from the Redigal honour guard. 'I know this visit is to read the new-year omens and to welcome your daughters, but we've brought you a gift, Kheda.'

  'We know you've been looking for a new body slave.' Moni Redigal dimpled a smile at the warriors anonymous behind the face plates and chain-mail veils of their helms. 'Your lady Itrac bade us bring the best of our warrior slaves for your consideration.'

  'I'm honoured,' Kheda managed to reply with barely any hesitation.

  'Prai has tested them all in single combat.' Coron glanced at his own new body slave with guarded affection. 'He vouches for their skills, though you'll have your own guard captain verify that, of course.' -

  Kheda inclined his head to the young warrior, who was grinning with open satisfaction. 'See they are suitably accommodated, Ridu.'

  Ulla Safar subjected the three warriors to scornful examination. 'I could have brought you an excellent selection of slaves, had you only asked.'

  'I'm sure I mentioned it to Mirrel.' Itrac held out a hand to Redigal Litai, who was watching the three warlords with some trepidation. 'Let's retire to my audience hall.'

  Stiff with courtesy, the warlord's son offered her his i arm and the two of them led the other Redigal nobles away from the landing stage, Coron with one wife on either arm. Ulla Safar stumped up the path alone after them, scowling blackly. Kheda offered Moni his own arm and followed. As the slaves formed an armoured phalanx behind them, Kheda saw Moni Redigal's slave shoot a conspiratorial grin at Jevin. The younger man answered with a knowing half-smile. Redigal Litai's slave looked as nervous as his young ' master as he fell into step beside Jevin.

  If the boy has his own attendant, he can travel to other domains without his parents. Coron is serious about training him in his duties as heir. He looks a promising lad; he won't equal his father's height but there's an encouraging breadth to his shoulders. I wonder how much Sirket will have changed when I see him—

  'My lord Chazen.' As they reached the shade of the nut palms beyond the landing stages, Beyau reappeared to inter- rupt Kheda's painful thoughts. He promptly subjected the three unknown armoured slaves to a penetrating scrutiny.

  'I take it the Ulla contingent are all settled in?' Kheda prompted after a moment.

  'Indeed, my lord.' Beyau recollected himself and handed Kheda a fine slip of paper. 'A courier dove brought word from Daish Sirket. They expect to arrive early tomorrow morning.'

  'We shall be very glad to see our friends of Daish,' Moni said warmly.

  'Indeed.' Kheda glanced down at the message slip and schooled his face to immobility as he realised it said something else entirely.

  Who does Velindre think she is, summoning me to her presence? Why is this wizard woman here? Where is Risala? I need to know what she's heard about this breach between Redigal and Ulla, about Coron 's drastic removal of all his zamorin, and if she's heard any rumour of Ulla Orhan being unwell. What I don't need is any more dealing with wizards and certainly not with so many inquisitive eyes around here. He screwed up the ciphered slip of paper and smiled at Moni Redigal as they continued on their way towards Itrac's pavilion. The sun's glare struck up from the white sand of the paths as the shimmering sea's inadequate breezes played with the fronds of the nut palms. As the path split into branches leading to Itrac's pavilion and away to the other islets of the residence, Kheda forced himself to halt, feigning sudden recollection.

  'Moni, that mishap on your voyage here might just make sense of an omen that's been puzzling me for days. Will you make my excuses while I just go and reread the record? I'll rejoin you all as soon as I can.' Just as soon as I've sent Velindre on her way. 'Of course.' Moni Redigal looked at him with lively curiosity before going on alone readily enough.

  'My lord?' Ridu paused with the hopeful newcomers at his heels.

  'Get yourselves to the barracks and out of all that armour before you faint in the heat.' Kheda waved the swordsmen away with a careless smile. He waited, looking expectant, until Ridu had no choice but to obey. Then Kheda took a deep breath and made his way towards the distant observatory isle as fast as he could without attracting too much attention. He waved an absent hand to acknowledge the bows of the servants on the steps of his own pavilion before disappearing into the cool hall at the base of the tower.

  It's all very well Beyau and Ridu and Itrac all expecting me to find myself a new slave, but how can I encumber myself with some unsuspecting shadow? How would I explain this meeting, never mind my more lethally incriminating secrets?

  He went through the open archway into the west-facing room where closely packed bookcases stood back to back in a line broken by tall sloped reading desks of carved russet wood. 'Velindre, I didn't expect to see you here.'

  'No, I don't suppose you did.' The wizard woman was examining a cabinet of black lacquered wood packed with rows of tiny drawers. As self-assured as ever, she was as tall as Kheda, and much of an age with the warlord. Her blonde barbarian hair had been bleached to palest silk by the Aldabreshin sun, in striking contrast to her deeply tanned skin. Only her brown eyes could suggest she had any Archipelagan blood in her, along with her fluent mastery of the language. 'Congratulations on the birth of your new daughters, my lord.'

  'Where's Risala?' Kheda asked, peremptory.

  'I know where they came from, Kheda.' Velindre stuck her hands inelegantly in the pockets of her creamy cotton trousers. Cut from the same cloth, her baggy tunic hung loosely on her spare frame, effectively concealing any hint of femininity about her.

  Kheda glanced involuntarily over his shoulder to be quite certain there was no one to overhear them. He looked back at the magewoman. 'The savages? The dragon?'

  'Both. At least, there's no reason to think they came from different places,' Velindre amended.

  Kheda folded his arms obstinately. 'Make this quick. I have to rejoin my guests.'

  'As soon as the last rains ended, Isailed for the westernmost reaches of the central domains.' Velindre gazed out of the window, one hand idly resting on the Chazen dagger she wore on her plaited sharkskin belt. 'I've been making the most of this disguise you foisted upon me. You'd be amazed what people will tell a travelling zamorin scholar.'

  I'm still amazed that no one's seen through your disguise. Then again, everyone knows to givezamorin due privacy lest their condition is the result of particularly savage mutilation.

  'What did the people of the western reaches tell you?' demanded Kheda.

  'Sailors' leg
ends of men from ships thought long lost washing up on their shores on rafts of broken timbers,' Velindre mused. 'Some telling stories of escaping a distant perilous land that no one could ever find. Those who sailed in search of it were generally never seen again.'

  'What makes you think that's anything more than a poet's fiction?' Kheda asked sceptically.

  'Strange trees have fetched up on outlying reefs after deadly storms have lashed the deep,' countered the magewoman. 'Unknown birds are occasionally blown ashore by those same storms. Those aren't stories - they're taken as omens and recorded as such. I've seen talismans made from such wood and feathers plucked from the birds and they're like nothing else found in the Archipelago.'

  'You've visited each and every domain to be certain of that?' interjected Kheda.

  'I have ways of being sure of such things. Would you like me to explain in detail?' Velindre's hazel eyes challenged him.

  Kheda answered with a curt shake of his head.

  What must it be like, to be able to read the very essence of nature and have the ability to warp it to your will?

  'Such occurrences are all precisely recorded as omens of the earthly compass.' Velindre gestured towards the accumulated records of every event Chazen warlords had deemed significant throughout the turning aeons. 'Along with unknowable lumps of scaled and spiny creatures washing up in stinking pieces when the currents shift north for no readily apparent reason. Not readily apparent, that is, to anyone unable to read the elemental currents of air and sea,' she added with satisfaction.

  What trouble will it bring down on our heads if you're discovered to be a wizard while you We here?

  'Just tell me what you think you know.' Kheda found his throat was dry and not just from the heat of the day.

  'There's a sizeable piece of land far out to the south and west of here,' Velindre stated with absolute certainty. 'In the ordinary course of things, ocean currents and the prevailing winds make it nigh on impossible to reach the Archipelago from there.'

  'Those savages managed it,' Kheda reminded her bitterly, 'on rafts and boats made from hollowed-out logs.'

  'Because they had their crude but undeniably powerful magic to help them.' Velindre was unperturbed. 'And latterly, the winds and currents have swung to the north. Otherwise those wild men would have been eaten by the ocean sharks and no one would have been any the wiser.'

  Kheda shrugged. 'Then let me know as soon as the currents shift back so we can all sleep easier in our beds.'

  'That's all you want to know?' A brief smile deepened

  the crow's-feet around Velindre's eyes. 'When you have how many questions about those wild men and their wizards and just why they came to plague you? The only way we'll find the real answers is to go there; you know that.'

  Kheda shook his head stubbornly. 'I cannot leave Itrac. I owe her—'

  'Don't you think you owe it to Dev to see this through?' Velindre's words were icy cold. 'After he died in your service, saving your domain from the destruction that dragon was wreaking?'

  'I didn't ask him to sacrifice himself,' Kheda retorted.

  'What has that to do with anything, my lord of Chazen?' Velindre countered with infuriating confidence. 'I've learned every custom governing obligations great and small while I've been sailing the Archipelago. That debt lies on the ledger, Kheda, until you've repaid it by securing the future Dev laid down his life to protect.'

  'So I'll honour him by guarding Chazen's islands and people and not leaving them unprotected,' said Kheda with some heat.

  'How do you propose to protect Itrac or get your newborn daughters to safety if another wave of wild men washes up on your islands?' Velindre asked bluntly. 'I'll tell you for nothing that those wind and ocean currents are still curling north out of their usual paths and I see no sign that they'll revert to the south any time soon. What will you do against another dragon landing on your beaches?'

  'What will happen to my wife and daughters and to Chazen, if I'm away on some half-witted hunt for an unknown land with you?' Kheda shot back.

  'If you're here and taken unawares like last time, you'll have just as little chance of defeating savages or dragons as you did before,' Velindre overrode him. 'Certainly

  without me or some other wizard to fight their fire with magic of our own. If you come with me now, we'll know if there's any such danger heading this way long before it even darkens the horizon. I can use my magic to send you back here in the blink of an eye, faster than a dragon can fly. You know that. Forewarned, you can be forearmed. And while you're getting your people out of immediate danger, I'll go straight to my own people in the north. I told you - we barbarian wizards take grave exception to the abuses of magic that these savages obviously delight in. All things being equal, all you'll see of the savages is a few corpses washing up in the westernmost isles of the Archipelago.'

  'Then carry the fight to them on your own account,' Kheda protested. 'Don't involve me.'

  'You involved yourself when you bound Dev's fate to Chazen's.' Velindre looked at him, unblinking. 'If you don't come, I won't go either. You can deal with whatever comes your way on your own. I'll go home to the north and not look back.'

  'Do all barbarians do business with threats and coercion?' Contempt curled Kheda's lip. 'Or is it just wizards? I don't believe you.'

  'I don't know about other wizards.' Velindre's sudden smile almost disarmed him. 'But I know I can't do this on my own and I won't risk it. I'll need more than magic on such a voyage. I need you,' she continued ruefully. 'You're used to reading the slightest signs of something amiss in the flight of birds or the run of the sea's fishes, even if you assign them entirely spurious meaning. You may well see things that I'll overlook just because they have no elemental significance. You're also used to foraging and hunting, which I'm certainly not, and you're an expert swordsman while I'd be dead inside a few strokes of a knife fight if 1 couldn't use my magic' She looked

  at him, wholly serious. 'I don't want to use my magic unless I absolutely have to on an island where our experiences suggest wizardry would draw every wild mage and any dragons straight to me.' She shrugged. 'Besides, I (rust you more than anyone else I can think of taking on such a voyage.'

  'I don't find your flattery any more convincing than your threats,' Kheda said coldly.

  'Don't you want to know what prompted that dragon to fly and drove those savages to come here?' the mage-woman challenged him. 'Whatever that was, it happened around this time of year. Don't you Aldabreshin believe that fateful things come in threes?'

  Kheda looked down at the russet tiles cool beneath his bare feet and then back up at the tall barbarian in her androgynous garb. 'Where's Risala?'

  'Waiting for you and me to join her and sail for the west,' Velindre assured him. 'All I'm proposing is that we find this island and go ashore discreetly to learn a little more about these savages. If we can determine just what their relationship might be with any dragon still there, we can come back and decide what to do with such knowledge at our leisure.'

  'Why can't you just use your magic to learn what you need to? Or to take you to this island?' Kheda asked stubbornly.

  'Because, as I know I have told you, I cannot use magic to go to a place I've never actually visited. No wizard can.' Her composure wavered just a little. 'And as for scrying, you do recall that fire dragon insinuating itself into my spell when I came looking for Dev? I don't want to risk (hat happening again.'

  'You don't suppose there might just have been the one dragon?' Kheda wondered with faint hope. 'And we killed it?'

  'Possibly.' Velindre ran a hand over her cropped golden hair with a grin that lifted the years from her angular face. 'But I wouldn't wager my hide on it.'

  She risks her hide sailing these waters. If she is ever discovered to be a wizard, she will be flayed alive. Her skin will be nailed to some warlord's gates to turn aside the evil of her magic lest it distort the omens of the earthly compass.

  'I have to entertain Chazen's
guests. I certainly can't leave without arousing suspicions. I'd come back to find I've no domain to rule.' Kheda scowled. 'I don't want to risk that happening again.'

  'Do you want to risk wild men or dragons assailing Chazen with no time to do anything about it?' demanded Velindre. 'I'm not leaving here until you agree to come with me, Kheda.'

  Curse her, and curse all wizards. But she's right, and curse her thrice for that. If there's any chance murder, fire and magic could threaten Chazen again, I have to know about it in time to defend the domain. There's no one I can send in my stead, not with a mage. But how can I find an excuse to leave here for some voyage into the unknown ocean?

  'We'll see about that,' said Kheda curtly. 'Very well, I'll consider what you've said. In the meantime, you stay here in the observatory or on the Reteul. I'll tell my steward you're a visiting scholar who's to be fed and watered and left alone in the library. With everything else he's got to keep an eye on at present, he won't look beyond your disguise. Others might. Go nowhere else. And don't count on me coming with you.'

  He turned and walked back out into the warm sun and the clean salt scented breeze playing over the island. The freshness wasn't enough to rid him of the sour realisation that the magewoman had powerful arguments on her side.

  Where is Risala? Would she think it was her duty to go on this voyage alone, if I refuse and Velindre is determined to go regardless? I truly believe all wizards are mad. Some just hide it better than others. Mad and perilous to know.

  CHAPTER THREE

  They would come for her. The old woman knew it. Not tomorrow, with the old man's death still a raw wound for the whole village. Perhaps not while the younger men recalled his stories of hunts long ago and still used the knives that he had shaped. But knives didn't last for ever.

  The women would spare her what scraps they could. Until the weather turned hotter and drier and they must save what little they could forage for their hungry children. They would forget that she had helped them through the travail of bringing those children into the light.