by L J Chappell
‘How long will your hair take to grow?’ Lisamel asked him. She pointed to his hood, which he was wearing indoors: although he could feel short, rough stubble when he ran his hands over his head, it was still so short and regular that it would attract attention. There were other Humans, lots of other Humans, eating and drinking around them; but obviously no mages.
‘I don’t know. It’s growing all the time. Maybe it’ll be long enough in another week or two.’
‘Oh,’ she nodded.
‘We’ll be heading south again in a few days,’ Tremano told him. ‘It will be far warmer there, and you may not be able to hide your head under a hat and a hood like that.’
‘Heading south?’ Magda had mentioned that they had passage booked away from Tremark.
‘You’ll like Captain Redwolf,’ Lisamel told him. ‘Four days from now, he will meet us again here in Stormhaven, and we will sail at high tide. We chartered him to bring us here and take us away again.’
‘You’re not from here? Not from Tremark?’
‘This desolate wilderness! Gods, no,’ Tremano shook his head. ‘From much further south.’
‘You can’t have come all this way to rescue me, though?’ he was confused.
Lisamel laughed. ‘For you? No. We came here for another job, but Kiergard Slorn heard about you after we landed, from a skipper fresh in from Lanvik. His whole journey across the mountains to rescue you was a last-minute distraction. But don’t worry: we’ll reach Darkfall Ness in time.’
‘Darkfall Ness?’ He had heard them use the name several times earlier today, but the name wasn’t familiar. ‘In time for what?’ he asked.
‘In time for the Festival, of course.’
‘Festival?’ He looked at them blankly.
‘You really don’t remember anything, do you?’ Tremano said. ‘The Festival of the Crown. The Emerald Crown.’
‘Never mind,’ Lisamel told him: ‘You’ll find out.’
‘And that’s why we’re going to Darkfall Ness? For this Festival?’
‘We will be there during the Festival,’ Kiergard Slorn joined them, ‘but we are going there for a job, a commission. Your first job as part of our Company.’
‘What kind of job is it?’ he was concerned, almost afraid to ask. He’d formed a high opinion of Kiergard Slorn and his Company, but that could all come crashing down depending on what kind of work they were actually employed to do.
‘Well, it’s a sort of rescue. We have to rescue someone, if you like, and take them away from here.’ Kiergard Slorn thought for a moment, and added: ‘There’s a chance that he won’t want to come with us, though. So I suppose you might be better thinking of it as a kidnap.’
‘Kidnap?’
‘Yes, but don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.’
Chapter Three
Darkfall Ness
1
‘Ow!’ Ethryk pulled his hand away for the second time.
‘I’ve said it before, we need someone who’s good at this kind of thing,’ Vorrigan complained. ‘Rather than a mage with no magecraft, we need someone who can use a hammer without striking their own fingers.’ In addition to purchasing a large length of canvas, he had tried to find hoops to fit it over the top of the wagon, but had compromised on ten wooden poles instead. If these could be nailed to the sides of the wagon, then they could simply lay the canvas over the top.
Ethryk had volunteered to fit the poles, and when he was done, after half a dozen self-inflicted injuries, the Company agreed that the end result looked exactly as required. They harnessed the buffalo again and left the stable, but it became obvious that none of them had considered the wind. Even in the sheltered courtyard, their canvas roof lifted off almost immediately and needed retrieved by Bane, Ubrik and Thawn. They modified their original design with the addition of ropes around the middle, and four holes cut in the canvas to better secure it to the corner poles rather than simply draping it over them.
Nothing they did could persuade the whole covering to sit evenly: it sloped obviously towards one corner. Even once the wagon was ready and they rode out, it looked half-finished or broken, but at least the canvas didn’t blow away again.
There was room for ten of them to sit in the back, just. The simple wooden bench at the front was wide enough for a further two or three, keeping each other awake, so one or two of the Company had to walk beside the wagon in shifts, to stretch their legs and keep watch for trouble. For the first stretch in their newly adapted wagon, Kiergard Slorn would ride up front with Ethryk while Thawn and Garran walked. The others sat inside.
The road north towards Darkfall Ness started from the very centre of Stormhaven. They had expected to struggle with other traffic heading north and to make only slow progress, but hardly anyone else was leaving at this hour. Most of the pilgrim traffic had set off early in the morning, after breakfast; even late stragglers, who had business to attend to first, had still managed to set out during daylight hours. The only other people heading north in the darkness were those whose ships had recently arrived and who were reluctant to spend the night in Stormhaven, either through religious zeal or simply because of the cost of accommodation.
The road to Darkfall was wide and level, stone built, and had seen enough recent traffic that there was no lying snow. Everyone around them was travelling north on foot, and there were no other vehicles in sight.
‘If this is a holy pilgrimage route, do you think that riding in a wagon might seem disrespectful to the Gods?’ Tremano wondered. ‘Might we be set upon by the Faithful, on account of … well, not being Faithful enough?’
‘Are you suggesting that we walk?’ Ubrik asked him.
‘If the alternative is being stoned to death for heresy or blasphemy, then perhaps yes.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Vrosko Din, the priest, assured him. ‘We’re not pilgrims, so no-one will expect us to walk. Even among the pilgrims, there will have some who are not walking – the infirm, and the wealthy.’
‘They’ll probably assume we’re locals,’ Ubrik assured him: ‘traders or something. And even if we attract any unwelcome attention, it won’t matter: in this weather, they have more to worry about than us.’
The pilgrims around them, however, were not in any mood to criticise or condemn. On the contrary, they had left Stormhaven and were presumably one stage closer to whatever they hoped to experience in Darkfall, so they were mostly in a mood to party and rejoice.
“Gods watch over you!” they called: “Bless you!”, “Go with the Gods!” and a host of other reassuring greetings. Some sprinkled the wagon with water, and others with the damp petals of flowers, presumably as some kind of blessing. Given the season, and the complete absence of any flowering plants locally, they had presumably carried these petals with them for hundreds of miles.
In addition to invoking various Gods and intermittently blessing each other, a surprising number of the pilgrims were singing and dancing. There were songs that were particular to this Festival, it seemed, and the dancing seemed mostly to involve gyrating in circles rather than progressing along the road. The Company ended up staring at the pilgrims dancing through the snow far more than the pilgrims stared at them and their lop-sided wagon.
Vrosko Din had made a point of pushing in and sitting next to the mage. ‘So, my new friend Lanvik, what do you know about the Festival of the Crown?’
‘Nothing at all. If I’d even heard of the Festival before last week, I can’t remember it now. Not even the name.’
‘It’s a winter festival,’ he explained: ‘They have them all across northern Mehan’Gir, around the shortest day of the year. People come together to celebrate the coming year and the expected return of the sun: light and heat, banishing the darkness, that sort of thing. The further north you travel, the darker the skies are and the harsher the winters, so the more important such festivals become. Most involve sacrifices – something to appease the Gods of darkness and turn them back, or else something to encourage
the Gods of light and ensure that they smile upon you in the coming year. So people travel north, they make their sacrifices to whatever Gods they worship, and then they return home.’
‘And that’s what’s happening here?’
‘Partly, yes. Darkfall has always been the biggest of these festivals – it’s far enough from the rest of the world that simply getting here is a pilgrimage in itself: a sacrifice. And it’s on the northernmost tip of the northernmost inhabited island, so it holds a mythic significance. Beyond Darkfall Ness, there is nothing but emptiness: no more land except a few tiny jagged rocks in the Northern Reach.’
‘Then why is it called the Festival of the Crown?’
‘Since the days of legend, beside the town of Darkfall there stands a Statue in a tall cave. And the Statue wears an Emerald Crown. Supposedly, this Crown will give the wearer powers – magical powers – but it is fixed to the Statue and cannot be removed. Everyone who comes to Darkfall tries to take the Crown from the Statue. Needless to say, no-one has been successful, and the Emerald Crown remains in place, exerting its own magical attraction upon the weak-minded and the gullible.’ He smiled: ‘Speaking as one of the gullible, I shall certainly try to remove the Emerald Crown while I am here, and I suggest you do the same. I suppose you, more than anyone, would welcome having magical powers. Unfortunately, legend says that only the Dukes of Pevensal can take the Emerald Crown, and only during the midwinter festival.’
‘Which is now.’
‘In a couple of days, yes. Every midwinter, thousands of people travel here to make sacrifices and to try to remove the Crown. Every third year they hold the Festival: I have no idea why it’s considered more holy than the two years in between, but if you’re ever going to come to Darkfall then the Festival of the Crown is the time to come.’
‘What about these Dukes of Pevensal? Haven’t they tried to take the Crown?’
‘The Dukes of Pevensal are the Imperial family: the most ancient lineage of the Madarinn. But the Lords of Tremark guard their Statue with some zeal, and members of the Imperial family are banned from even landing on these shores.’
‘Could you stop chatting?’ Ubrik demanded. ‘We might be walking after the next stop, so let’s try to get some sleep if we can.’
‘Quite right,’ Vrosko Din agreed. ‘We can talk about this later, if you like.’
As they slowly pulled further away from Stormhaven, they discovered that the wind whipped snow right through the middle of their wagon, from front to back. They hadn’t bought any additional canvas to block it out so they used nails to fit two blankets and a shawl across the front: that performed surprisingly well. Then they huddled into each other, sharing their body warmth and their blankets, and dozed sitting upright as the buffalo trudged north.
A few hours later, they were shaken awake as the wagon pulled into a huge camping ground.
There were a number of giant fires and pitching grounds near the road, maintained by opportunistic local farmers. They had passed two or three already, since leaving Stormhaven, but had reached this one at about the time they wanted to rest the buffalo.
There was a surprisingly inexpensive fee to pay to stop and park for a while, and for a little more money they could spend the night in one of the endless rows of tents. This nominal fee, which lured people in and guaranteed that the site was busy, was presumably offset by the wide range of additional opportunities that existed to spend money.
There were stalls selling oil and fat, for light and heat; and there were stalls selling food and drink: there was also fodder and water available for the buffalo. A number of huge latrines ringed the outskirts of the site, not sufficiently far away to completely mask the smell.
It transpired that they were not the only wagon making this journey after all, but all the others had set out much earlier. There were numerous animals being stabled and cared for here, presumably resting overnight before carrying on tomorrow: they saw teams of regular oxen, and at least one team of horses, but mostly the local winter buffalo seemed to be the preferred choice. They were stronger, better adapted to this weather and easier to care for.
In addition to having their own transportation, a few of the pilgrims seemed equally well-provisioned with servants, guards and bearers. Most, though, had come in small groups of threes and fours, sharing tiny tents in the chill night.
Around half the Company stayed with the wagon: the others wandered among the crowds. Despite all the tents, hardly anyone was trying to sleep: instead, the whole site was like a giant festival or party. There were musicians and dancers and small companies of actors who were simply walking around and performing impromptu plays. Everyone was outside, either actively singing and dancing, or else clapping or swaying in time to the music. Lanvik wondered how many of them would lose fingers and toes to frostbite before they returned home.
‘This is a stupid time to go on a pilgrimage,’ he remarked.
‘They only choose the worst places and times to do these things,’ Garran shrugged. ‘If the journey was easy, I suppose there wouldn’t be any point in making it.’
‘I expected more priests and holy men,’ Thawn said.
‘Oh, there will be hundreds, thousands, like a swarm of parasites,’ Vrosko Din assured her. ‘But they probably arrived last week or the week before, when the routes were not so busy and expensive. They will have opened their temples in Darkfall, set out their icons and their relics, and are now no doubt tending to their believers.’
‘Is that what’s in Darkfall?’ Lanvik asked. ‘Temples?’
‘I think it will mostly be endless shops and accommodation, but there will also be delegations from the main families and governments, as well as all the religions. Everywhere you can think of maintains some presence in Darkfall, even if it’s hardly ever occupied.’
‘Have you been here before?’ Thawn asked him.
‘No, I haven’t. I’ve been to similar places at similar times but much, much smaller than this.’ He looked around. ‘There must a thousand people here, only in this one campsite.’
From time to time they passed groups of Humans, and Lanvik found himself staring at them: part of him wanted to go over and talk, but he was too wary. How much had he forgotten about his own people? How to interact, how to greet people, what to say and what not to say? And they were bound to ask too many questions, about who he was and where he came from; about his hood and his hair – they would be less easy to fool.
And what if someone recognised him, greeted him by name?
He had become so used to hiding himself over the past few days, hiding what he knew and didn’t know, that his lack of memories suddenly left him feeling exposed and afraid. He told himself that these weren’t people that he would want to talk with anyway. If they were here, at this time of year, then they were surely devoted followers of some cult or religion. Simple, ignorant people. But that was only an excuse.
He shivered: down here beside the ocean it was not as cold as in the mountains, but the wind made it feel much worse. He had been tempted to wander among the musicians and listen to their songs, to stop and watch one of the little dramas: even with all the people and the dozens of campfires, it was simply too cold to stand and spectate. He found the wagon again, climbed aboard, and spent most of the rest of the stop in the back with Menska, Lisamel and Tremano, trying to stay warm.
As he sat and waited for the others, he wondered about his new friends and their mission in Darkfall. “Rescue”, they had said, or “Kidnap”. Who would be here for the Festival that was worth kidnapping? That someone would have offered money to have kidnapped? From what he had heard, there would be senior religious and political figures from all across the Three Lands. Maybe they would be too difficult to be targets: too well-protected and too visible.
Perhaps the Company had been hired to kidnap one of the faceless pilgrims, whose value was known only to their employers. For blackmail, perhaps, or ransom; or maybe for some kind of revenge: the latest chapter in a lo
ng-running and deadly feud? Would they deliver their victim, even suspecting that they might face a brutal and unpleasant death? Did Kiergard Slorn seek assurances about such things before he accepted commissions, or was it all simply work and he was happy to be complicit in whatever came after? Was the financial benefit the only thing they considered, and not any moral aspects?
He felt uncomfortable with that idea, but also uncomfortable with the idea of judging them before he knew what he might have done himself, in his earlier life.
After half an hour, the others returned, crusted in thick snow that crumbled off their clothes. Ethryk harnessed the buffalo once again and they set out on the road north at a decent walking pace. Even through the snow, Lanvik could still see the road ahead and behind them, lit up by the weaving torches and lights of the pilgrims that packed it. He tucked in his head, pulled his clothes around him, and stared down at the small uneven chunks of snow and ice that had fallen from their boots and clothes and now gradually melted, forming puddles of water on the floor of the wagon before dripping through the gaps in the wood to the road beneath.
He tried to sleep and kept his hat on and his hood up, just in case anyone caught sight of him.
2
They broke their journey twice more before reaching Darkfall. The second stop was still in the darkness, at a wayside camp indistinguishable from the first. Despite the hour, there were people eating, dancing, playing instruments, singing and praying. The trail of lights stretching behind them along the coast to Stormhaven as well as north, winding uphill towards Darkfall, showed how many people were still walking through the night.
Dawn broke while they were on the road, around three hours from Darkfall.
‘We should stop again,’ Ethryk said.
‘Yes,’ Kiergard Slorn agreed, ‘and it’s a good time to enjoy some breakfast.’
Although there was mist in the air and their every breath clouded in front of them, in the morning sun this camp was warmer than the first two. People were just waking or had recently woken: standing outside their tents, yawning and stretching and preparing themselves to walk the last stretch to Darkfall. Fires were being lit or built up again, and the air was full of odours from cooking – exotic smells from unfamiliar spices.
