Across the fire, surrounded by the jostling clansmen won through quick wit and competence, Arithon rummaged through his satchel for the remedies suited to ease stomach cramps. Dakar watched through slitted eyes. One way or another, he would know Rathain’s prince for what he was: compassionate bard, or the guileful master of subterfuge. Upon Dakar’s sole judgment lay the power to forewarn, when winter sleeted rains on the sere hills of Vastmark and the Shadow Master faced his last reckoning.
Deep in the night, the Mad Prophet lay wakeful, wrung limp and ill from the aftermath of his seer’s trance. Arithon had not slept, but sat wrapped in a blanket against the hazed coals in the firepit. At each turn of the breeze, the embers flared. Hot light fanned over his die-cut features, and the fine, musician’s fingers laced in repose at his knee. The green eyes were stilled in fathomless thought, until Dakar stirred and ventured the question he had never before dared to ask.
‘Why not take Khetienn and slip off to sea as you’d planned? Why this furore with ransoms and abductions? Why bother to close with this war host of Lysaer’s at all?’
Arithon turned his head. He regarded his impertinent inquisitor, tucked into muddled bedding like a caterpillar lapped in a leaf. Then he sighed. His knuckles tightened against themselves, no longer content or relaxed. ‘Your question has no straight answer.’ A plangency to his tone suggested underlying anguish, as if the point circled to haunt him. ‘There’s a warhost, I could say, descended upon Shand and determined to wreak havoc to undo me. They’ll march for their prince. They’ll plunder bread from the villages and tumble farm girls whether I’m present or no. Could I sail on the tide and abandon hapless people to suffer their supply, and finally, the bloody price of their frustration?’
‘So,’ pressed Dakar, remorseless. ‘You would lure those misguided thousands into Vastmark and ruin more lives for the cause of disbanding Lysaer’s alliance?’
‘Shand’s villagers never asked to take part in this feud.’ Arithon moved, reached, hooked a moss-grained stick of brush, and broke it in sharp, short cracks between his fists. He pitched the bits in fierce bursts at the firepit, and flames leaped up, greedy, to consume them. ‘If you’re wanting to weigh how much Desh-thiere’s curse affects my decisions, I admit, to my sorrow, I don’t know. I had friends at Innish and in Merior. Each one came to suffer for my acquaintance. Wherever I go, pain and trouble will follow. I can wear out my conscience trying to sort what’s best until I’ve lost the will to keep living.’
Dakar waited, unrelenting; and the anger he expected bloomed finally and spurred the s’Ffalenn prince to his feet. ‘Why not keep things simple,’ Arithon said in that cutting malice that could jab, and distance, and raise hackles. ‘Let’s say when Khetienn sails, I’d rather know for certain just what sort of weapon I’ll be leaving unsheathed at my back!’
The Mad Prophet closed his eyes, euphoric enough to feign sleep. After years of being bullied and made wretched through his shortfalls, he had gained his sweet opening for revenge. His enemy’s planned future lay proscribed by fate. Whether the brigantine built at Merior ever crossed uncharted waters to buy a reprieve from Desh-thiere’s curse, she would never depart now, except through Dakar’s personal leave.
The next morning, the sheared edge to Arithon’s temper rousted comatose scouts from their blankets. The task of marking out the herd’s culls was framed as a contest, the winning team to gain the task of delivering the prime breeding stock to specified tribesmen in the Kelhorns.
‘The losers will stay on as herdsmen until a task force arrives to relieve them,’ Arithon finished.
Eager for rough action after uneventful weeks away from clan sweethearts and family, the scouts scrambled to catch and bridle their mounts. They called jibes and brandished sticks tipped in rags, and laced sticky jacks of dye to their saddle packs. Insults flew freely as they divided into teams, then swooped screaming through the morning to roust their unsuspecting hoofed charges.
Amid bawling cattle and choking dust, and more than one adversary unhorsed out of spite, many an animal received more than its allotted blaze on the rump. Several riders returned splash marked. While the ecstatic victors were engrossed in collecting wagers, and the losers paid up, grumbling, Dakar and the Master of Shadow saddled themselves fresh mounts. They departed over the hills toward the coast with forty choice mares from Alland and one stallion hazed before them in a bunch.
The pair vanished before anyone mustered the presence to protest.
‘Damn him to Sithaer!’ cried an outraged scout, a shocking, purple cheek turned toward his dumbfounded companions. ‘We’ve all been most foully enchanted! Two days past, not even Dharkaron’s fell vengeance could have kept me here, and now look! We’re stuck nursemaiding cows through another blighted month for a prince who holds none of our allegiance!’
Passages
Under dank evening fog in the straits of the Cascains, Arithon’s trusted seaman awakens aboard Talliarthe to a gagging weight of blankets and the bruising clamp of fingers which pin him helpless. ‘Go on, tie him,’ whispers Tharrick to the widow, then adds rough apology to the victim: ‘I’m sorry, man. You’ll have the sloop to sail back. It’s not fair to Feylind, but Mistress Jinesse wants her children beyond reach of Arithon’s design …’
In another remote cove far north of Perdith, under cover of blown clouds, the brig Black Drake rides at anchor to take on fresh water; and the man on watch screams warning, too late, as against unlit shores, five armed galleys from Alestron sweep down, to close in and entrap her bold captain as the known cohort of Arithon s’Ffalenn…
One month prior to summer solstice, under fair winds and clear skies, a fleet of galleys flying the s’Ilessid royal star sails for King Eldir’s court at Ostermere, and under bristling armed guard, locked chests belowdecks contain the named sum of five hundred thousand coin weight, fine gold, raised by Tysan’s merchants to deliver Princess Talith from the hands of the Master of Shadow …
VI. OSTERMERE
Twenty-five days before the hour appointed for Talith’s ransom, the fishing smack Royal Freedom tacked a harried course through the merchant vessels moored in the harbour of Los Mar. Her passage up the shores of the westlands had been rough, battered through the last weeks by squall lines. In salt-crusted stays and sprung caulking, in peeled paint and tattered sails, she showed the rough wear the angry sea could mete out as she reached the end of her voyage.
Mewed up in a hold still redolent of mackerel, and tired of salt meat and green cheese, Lady Talith knelt on damp blankets and combed her fingers through the dirty, cropped ends of her hair. By nightfall, she would be free. She could find a room at an inn, and ask for hot food and soak out her itches in a bath. To be clean again, to walk on plank floors that did not heave at each step; anticipation made her want to sing aloud. Laced through the taint of tar off the ships’ rigging, fugitive gusts through the hatch wafted tantalizing scents of baking bread. She picked out heavy incense, and the ripe, earthy smell of dry land. Through the slosh of rank water in the bilges, she drank in the sounds of a harbourside beyond view. The indignant slang of fishermen vying for right of way wove through the wind-snatched cries of hawkers, each with his baskets of salt crabs, or trinkets, or ripe cherries, ferried between ships in oared lighters.
Los Mar was a worldly port built at the junction of a land route. Although the settlement had been but a fishing village at the time of the high king’s downfall, when the royal port of Telmandir downcoast had been overset into ruin, the caravan trade brought in wealth. The city had libraries and scholars, and learned men from across the continent knew the beauty of its illuminated manuscripts.
A woman alone should have no trouble hiring horses and an escort, and finding suitable lodging at an inn.
The Freedom’s patched canvas at last rattled slack. When the splash of her anchor dragged the rode smoking through the hawse, Talith savoured her triumph. She had bested the Master of Shadow. By her own design she would see herself restored t
o her husband’s side at Ostermere.
A thump sounded topside. The hatch cracked and the burly seaman who captained the Freedom slithered down the ladder into the closed space of the hold. ‘Princess,’ he greeted, and gave a small bow, ‘we’re secure in the harbour of Los Mar.’
‘Well done.’ Talith dug under her blankets and drew out her cache of jewels. ‘With my thanks, take the payment I promised.’
The sailhand cupped the silk pouch in a calloused hand, picked open the drawstring, and peered inside. He gave an admiring whistle. ‘My lady,’ he said, ‘the price is by far too generous.’
Before she could protest, he upended the hoard. Rubies, sapphires, citrines and pearls spilled in a tumbling swathe across the rude ticking of her berth. The uneven flare of the tallow lamp nicked sparks out of dimness, each stone a fleck of coloured fire as the seaman stirred through the collection. ‘You’ll need to hire yourself a retinue,’ he chided. ‘You can scarcely travel, either, clad in the pitiful rags of one gown.’
At Talith’s exasperated silence, he gave a sly chuckle. ‘Your Grace, for plain truth, we were leaving the Cascains anyway to try our fortunes elsewhere. Your plans fell in through sheer luck. We’ll take due reward for the service, but not all the jewels you own.’
The snarls of gold braid, the thread ends which napped the strands of pearls that had once roped the sleeves and waistlines of her state gowns vanished back into the sack; the finer pieces set as jewellery in gold bezels; the rings, the pins, the gold wire bracelets and shimmering necklaces remained in a twinkling array on the blanket.
‘Keep your baubles,’ said the deckhand. ‘For the leavings off your dresses, we’re content.’
Touched by the unexpected sense of honour shown by the seafaring rogue, Talith scarcely minded that his hurried, last instructions involved patience and more waiting aboard the Royal Freedom.
‘An associate of ours will come under cover of darkness, your Grace. He’ll bring decent attire and see you safely on your way.’
So began the slow crawl of the hours. Shut in confinement until sundown, Talith fretted in the dimness. She endured the slosh of the bilge, stirred to noisome vapours by the swing of the Freedom on her cable. Too excited to rest, she counted the chime of the watch bells on the galleys. The dip burned low and smoked in puddled tallow until the weak, streamered flame flickered out. The needle of sunlight shot through a checked board in the hatch faded from gold to magenta, then faded with the glow of twilight.
Night fell over the harbour at Los Mar to the tireless refrain of wavelets slapping wood and the distant grind of drays. Nearer at hand came an off-key warble of lewd song, or the shouts of hired lightermen as sailors departed for shore leave.
The list of Freedom’s hull as a boarder caught her rail was scarcely more than the rocking tug stirred by the change in the tide. Talith started up from her berth, head tilted to listen. Soft footfalls crossed the deck: too regular for the burly joiner who had captained, and too assured for a common seahand. The next instant the hatch opened with all the deft speed of someone familiar with its fastenings.
The princess glimpsed a male figure in dark clothing pass in silhouette against the sky. Despite the encumbrance of a package beneath one arm, he slipped into the hold with a grace that stunned for its dreadful, uncanny familiarity.
Talith’s foreboding exploded to viperish anger. ‘You!’
There’s a greeting that could never be mistaken for a fish.’ The intruder paused, his negligent fingers left braced on a rung as he sketched her a courtier’s bow. ‘Welcome to Los Mar, princess.’
Riled pink in humiliation, Talith snapped, ‘You presume rather much, your Grace of Rathain! Tell me, what would you have done if I’d lacked the courage to escape?’
‘Courage? Escape?’ Arithon paused through a soundless breath of surprise. ‘But the format was your own device. My men had simple orders. They were to bring you and your private stock of jewels here to Havish by my appointed date. Since they were bound to leave my service for reasons of their own, I asked them to take you willingly. Am I to blame if your enterprising nature made their crossing a joy to carry out? It’s nobody’s dark secret that Ivel’s entertainment is snide observation and deceit.’
Masked in darkness though he was, his stifled ring of humour was unmistakable. ‘Keep your driving obsessions as you like, lovely lady. But if you stay angry and hard bent on hatred, you’d best be prepared to become somebody else’s ready tool.’
‘Yours, do you think?’ Stiffened back to coolness, Talith retorted, ‘Your usage of people is ungenerous, if not unforgivably base.’
‘I exploited what faults you presented to hand,’ Arithon corrected, unruffled. He tossed his burden on the blankets, then moved on by touch and spiked a fresh candle on the dribbled bracket of the sconce. The new flame he kindled lined his lingering, wry malice as he added, ‘I know of no ties that bind you to mistrust. Don’t confuse me with your husband, my dear. I’ve never loved a weakness that can be nurtured into dependency.’
Stung deep by that unpleasant truth, Talith endured the stilted interval as her tormentor bent to her rumpled berth, retrieved his parcel, then slipped the knots of its wrapping.
Inside, folded neat from the tailor’s, lay a dress of magnificent tawny silk, roped in sapphires and pearls. To the last gem and setting, the ornaments were the same ones she had paid to the seamen as reward for her passage. Arithon plucked up a fold of saffron fabric and let it slide in a sensuous ripple from his fingers. ‘You’ll receive the rest of your bullion and gems along with a wardrobe to replace the one you mangled. I will not be accused of petty thievery,’ he finished. ‘It’s demeaning. Your ransom will cover the seamstress’s fees, and leave plenty left for my mercenaries.’
Outflanked for the first time in her life, Talith had no words to strike back for this latest ingenious indignity. ‘Am I allowed to bathe before I change?’
‘But of course,’ said Arithon s’Ffalenn, and gave her his arm without comment for the miserable, shorn state of her hair. Talith could do little else but bear up and allow his escort from her squalid accommodations aboard the Royal Freedom.
In quiet ceremony and impeccable style, she was installed in quarters befitting her station back on the Khetienn. The brigantine lay anchored under s’Ffalenn royal colours to the restive, drumming thuds of the bloodstock loaded on at Vastmark.
On the flood of the next tide, she re-embarked to complete the last leg of her passage to Ostermere. Invited on deck, the princess watched the gabled slate roofs of Los Mar vanish into the haze of grey dawn. Given her first clear view of the harbour, an anomaly snagged her attention: the dilapidated fishing smack, Royal Freedom, had departed during the night.
A disagreeable chill ruffled her skin where she stood, hands clenched to the dampened rail. Her plight was sealed. There could be no further opportunity to exploit, not on an offshore passage. When next the Khetienn made port, her captivity would fall under the capable arbitration of the Fellowship of Seven. Upon neutral ground and in stylish hospitality, she and her abductor would become the guests of the High King of Havish.
Seven days before the summer solstice, under limestone cliffs snagged in fog, Arithon docked his brigantine at the central wharf in Ostermere. The rampant leopard pendant of the s’Ffalenn royal line slapped in plastered folds at her masthead, weighed down by smoking veils of drizzle. The crew of the Khetienn were no less handy in the wet. Brisk teamwork saw the heavy, tanbark canvas stripped from the yards and the lines dressed shipshape on deck. The gangway thudded into place, dripping silvered rungs from rope railings.
Present at the quayside, bunched under cerecloth awnings sagged awry by the damp, King Eldir’s delegation waited to acknowledge the arrival. The young king had his pride. He maintained propriety despite unfavourable conditions. Beside the equerries attendant upon their liege, and the muscled bulk of the realm’s champion in his ankle-length surcoat and mail coif, the welcoming party consisted of Havish
’s High Chancellor, lean as a hard run hound, and distinct in his disdain for sodden velvets. To his left, the ministers of Ostermere’s trade guilds flocked in ruffles of wilted lace, three of them stiff as sticks, and the fourth, merry-faced and corpulent, but sniffling and blotting his reddened nose in the unkind gusts off the sea. The caithdein of Havish, Lord Machiel, stood a half pace aside. Least troubled by wet, he presented a broad-chested, imposing presence in the traditional unrelieved black. He had a wedged, balding head that once had been blond, and about him still the wary stance of a man unforgetful of his forests and the threat of stalking headhunters.
The sovereign he stood steward for was square-jawed and serious, a brown-haired young man of twenty-two. Eldir’s straightforward nature set small store by the dragging weight of Havish’s royal tabard, with its gold hawk blazon and embroidered pleats of scarlet silk. The king might have worn a labourer’s woollens, for all the care he paid his massive jewels. An heirloom band of ancestral rank crowned an earnest brow, lined now in a faint, troubled frown.
To meet him, Arithon s’Ffalenn was clad in the costly restraint he had displayed for Talith’s landing at the Cas-cains. Since he had not descended the switched-back thoroughfares from the upper citadel through the weeping, inclement morning, he was dry, his expression all scorching irony as he appeared with the captive princess on his arm.
They descended the gangway together, his step all but lost in the billow of the lady’s lavish silk. Runoff from the awning fringed the air in between as he made his bow, acknowledged prince to foreign sovereign, before King Eldir’s staid person. The pair could not have been more unlike: Havish’s crowned ruler all stuffed finery and unpolished, granite directness; the Shadow Master before him slim and poised as killing steel, his green eyes glinting with self-mockery.
At his shoulder, the Lady Talith, her beauty heightened by a carriage that made of any artifice an afterthought. Etarran-born, scornful of the courtesies exchanged by old blood royalty, she waited, a monument of victimized pride.