‘The damaged tomcat better make himself scarce!’ Kerelie turned her unmarked cheek and warned, ‘Forbye, who said the basket was brought for your sake?’
Tarens laughed, boyish dimples and handsome features rugged with the sunburn peel on his hawk nose. ‘Never claimed, did I, that you had good taste.’ Sheepish, he ducked Efflin’s fraternal cuff and avoided being knocked off the wagon seat.
‘You randy louts!’ Kerelie shrieked. ‘Your manners alone will wreck my last hope of netting a decent husband!’
But Efflin wheezed because he was chuckling. The three of them never could stay at odds for long. ‘Doused in beef juice,’ he quipped, ‘your smell’s about right.’
‘To impress someone’s hog? Good thing, then, we need to,’ Tarens said, suddenly serious. As his sister glared back, fair brows pinched with outrage, he winked. ‘Lure ourselves a stud pig, that’s the issue, directly. Her highness at home’s stopped producing.’ Owlish, he added, ‘That’s been true since the night Efflin downed uncle’s stash of rye whiskey. Did you know he mistook the stall with the cow? I caught him shoved in with the farrow, his lewd mitts busy squeezing the sow’s udder.’
The chickens were left their free take of the fruit as Kerelie groaned, giggles muffled behind her chapped palms. She tried not to imagine what might have prompted that odd bout of maudlin drunkenness.
‘Oink,’ Tarens gasped, then dodged like a weasel, aware he had earned another black eye from his brother’s punitive fist.
But no trouncing rejoinder hammered him flat.
Efflin was too busy, hauling back on the reins to slow the yoked plod of the ox. Abused leather harness squeaked in complaint. The trundling wagon slewed in the ruts and jerked the bullock on its short tether. Through the bucketing creak as stout wood took the strain, the vehicle ground to a stop just in time to avoid the odd fellow whose aimless stance blocked the roadway.
‘Light’s grace!’ exclaimed Kerelie, above the distressed cackle of upended hens. ‘Is that someone’s lost child?’
But the drifting mist unveiled a grown man, mistaken by his slight stature. Back turned, unaware that his loitering obstructed traffic, he wore a laborer’s seedy clothes. The hard-worn cloth had been repeatedly mended, the original color lost beneath a tatterdemalion motley of patches. His stained knee breeches, napped hose, and holed shoes were dirt-caked, their style beyond recognition. Filthy hair nested with snapped twigs and leaves hung in snarled hanks to his shoulders.
Efflin’s shout did not chase him out of the thoroughfare but raised a flinch that near startled him out of his skin. His unkempt face turned. An unshaven black tangle of beard buried most of his features. Not the whites of his eyes, distinct with alarm as he stared in blank shock. Despite his sad state of frightful neglect, his manner seemed too confused to be dangerous. His empty hands dangled, unthreatening.
Nonetheless, Efflin reached for the cudgel wedged behind the cart’s buckboard.
‘That’s no marauding bandit.’ Tarens’s urgent grip on his brother’s wrist checked the move to brandish the weapon.
‘You’re that sure he’s not been sent out as bait?’ Brass chinked, as Efflin tipped his hatted head towards the wood, where late-season briar laced the dense undergrowth, dank with fog, and impenetrable. ‘If that’s a tinker, then someone unfriendly’s already lifted his pack.’
‘Here?’ Kerelie scoffed, too riveted to brush out the hen feathers snagged in her sleeve. ‘Don’t be a fright-monger!’ Astute when it counted, she gestured towards the tipsy stone finials that loomed through the murk a stone’s throw to the left. Those moss-splotched markers were well-known, even feared, where the overgrown track branched off the trade-route.
Efflin’s ruddy face flamed. The site was no place for wise folk to linger. Travellers avoided the tangled lane, which led into the ancient ruin. Oftentimes, Koriathain practised their uncanny rituals there. When the enchantresses pitched their silken pavilions amid the tumble-down walls of the grounds, or if birch smoke rose from the crumbled chimneys, the charcoal men who cut trees for their kilns did their rough-house drinking in taverns, safe behind Kelsing’s brick walls. They spoke of queer doings in whispers, while the ivied remains of the Second Age hall were reclaimed by the order’s sisters. Nobody dared to stray past the wood or till the rich soil of the fallow pastures.
This had been true well before the Light’s avatar had tamed the Mistwraith’s malevolence. Older legends held that the place harboured haunts from the days before Mankind settled Athera.
Like most Taerlin crofters, Efflin and his family were blessed for the Light since their birth. They went out of their way to avoid the wild places where the mysteries were believed to linger. Such arcane trouble as walked in the world was best left to the dedicate priests. Sound sense suggested their wagon ought to be set rolling at once.
Except the bewildered man in the way displayed no inclination to move.
Efflin shook off his brother’s clamped hold. ‘Why not make yourself useful? Step down and shift that seedy fellow aside.’
‘I say he isn’t right in the head.’ Tarens flexed his shoulders to mask his uneasiness. Deliberate, as if nonchalant, he arose, ahead of the moment his sister lost patience and fetched him a kick on the backside. He slid to the ground. His solid build should deter anyone’s urge to pick a fight or try robbery.
‘Don’t place undue trust in mild appearances,’ Kerelie blurted, concerned.
‘Who’s the fright-monger, now?’ Yet Tarens honoured her anxious prompt and lifted his quarterstaff from the wagon-bed. Step by easy step, as though stalking a poised hare, he closed on the befuddled stranger.
The brazen creature regarded him, motionless. Close up, his eyes were a startling green, brilliantly clear, and focused to a frenetic intensity. Drilled by that keen survey, Tarens felt the bristle of hair at his nape. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, cautious.
The stranger presented his opened hands. If he understood language, he chose not to answer. His fixated regard never left Tarens’s face. Diviners who owned arcane Sight had that look: as though they could read a man, past and present, then project the unwritten course of his fortune and sense his future demise.
‘Who are you?’ Tarens repeated.
The man’s uncanny regard showed him emptiness. As though human speech chased his thoughts beyond desolate, he seemed absorbed by an unseen inner vista that stretched forlorn and unutterably lacking. He might stand on two legs as a man. But the rapt poignancy of his expression suggested he grasped no firm concept by which to define himself, or anything else in the world he inhabited.
Tarens shivered. Distrust dissolved to heart-rending pity, he pronounced in swift reassurance, ‘He’s a lack-wit.’
The queer fellow listened, head tipped to one side, but without sign of comprehension.
‘I mean you no harm,’ Tarens added, contrite. ‘I only thwap others who cross me, besides. Mostly, after my brother hammers me, first.’ Aware that his purpled eye lent him a frightening aspect, Tarens slowly shifted the quarterstaff into the crook of his elbow. By nature, he was prepared to be gentle as he eased the odd vagabond clear of the road.
‘Any idea where he came from?’ Kerelie ventured from her anxious seat in the wagon-bed.
‘No.’ Tarens grasped the man’s ragged shoulder. The unsavoury shirt was too thin for the season, and the bony frame, disgracefully underfed. Outraged, he exclaimed, ‘Wherever that was, naught can forgive the wrongful fact someone was starving him.’
‘We’re not hauling a stray!’ Efflin bellowed, at once shouted down by Kerelie’s protest.
‘For shame! Would you turn a blind eye on misfortune? If the man’s a simpleton, how can we not show him kindness?’
Efflin grumbled, unmollified, ‘You’re that sure he’s not one of the ungrateful orphans, scarpered from the witches’ protection?’
‘Nonsense!’ Kerelie batted his arm. ‘Since when has a boy ward of theirs grown a beard?’ Truth disarmed the argument. Kor
iathain always placed their male charges with an honest apprenticeship before they reached virile manhood.
‘Worse,’ Efflin persisted, ‘we could be caught harbouring one of their order’s half-witted servants.’
Which cruel guess was the more likely prospect. Rumors and grannies’ tales said Koriathain coveted idiots for the brainless service of fetching and carrying. Coin endowments, word held, were awarded for deaf-mutes. Ones unable to read or write could not betray the order’s secretive business. ‘If that creature’s stumbled away from such keepers, we’re not safe assisting a runaway.’
Tarens overheard. Susceptible to soft-heartedness, he jumped at fresh cause to brangle with his older brother. ‘I wouldn’t leave my worst enemy, here!’ If his prized bull must be condemned to the knacker’s knife, he had never allowed better sense to abet any form of mistreatment. Nor would he stand for the callous abuse of a person luckless enough to be moonstruck.
Efflin understood well enough when to humour his brother’s obstinacy. ‘Lead the wretch here, then. We’ll grant him a ride into Kelsing and leave him the coin to buy a hot meal.’ He set the brake, resigned, looped the reins, and climbed down to restrain the bull, while Kerelie pulled the latch pins and lowered the tail-board.
If the creature had been a witch’s familiar, he stayed docile as Tarens boosted him into the wagon. He curled up by the chicken crates, knees hugged to his chest, soothed by the ponderous rumble of wheels, and contentedly pleased to watch the autumn landscape pass by. When the ox-wain trundled into the sprawling farm market, shadowed beneath Kelsing’s walls, he observed with bright eyes as Efflin hauled the ox to a stop. Before Tarens could hitch the draught beast to a rail, the fellow leaped out, saw where he was needed, and with no one’s asking, helped Kerelie unload the baskets and poultry. His small size masked an unexpected, fierce strength. He hefted the heaviest crates without difficulty and arranged them as she directed for display and sale.
While Efflin took charge and untied the bull, Tarens dug into his scrip. The last silver left to his name, he placed in the vagabond’s hand. Sadness struck him afresh, that the man’s nails were dirt-rimed, and his palm, welted over with callus.
Peculiar, how those oddities niggled. Tarens had never heard mention that Koriathain worked the land or kept destitutes for field labor. He shrugged off curiosity, aware by the heat on his back that the risen sun burned through the mist. Already he risked being late to nose-lead the beeve to its fate at the butcher’s. Loose half-wits were scarcely his problem, besides. At large in the open market, someone might recognize the mute stranger and claim him.
If not, surely the industrious fellow might find some sort of menial labor in town. Aware he was unwanted, he moved off unasked, to assist an old woman who struggled to lift hampers of yarn from a neighbouring wagon. Diligent as he seemed, the local tavern might hire him to scrub tankards and sweep.
‘He will be better off,’ Efflin snapped, and dealt Tarens a shove to break his reverie. ‘Anything here offers much better prospects than blocking the trade-road for shiftless amusement.’
Autumn 5922
Hard Reckoning
The Fellowship Sorcerer entered the order’s sisterhouse at Whitehold empty-handed, his purpose to close the terms of an ancient score, declared in an hour of bitter defeat on a morning well over two centuries ago. He came clothed in formality. His robe of immaculate indigo velvet brushed the marble floor, while the silver braid that bordered his sleeves gleamed in the early sun shafted through the hall’s sea-side windows. Pale steel were his eyes, steady as he took the measure of the Prime Matriarch of the Koriathain, enthroned in state panoply to meet him.
Always dangerous, the enchantress sat above everyone else in the room. Her coquette’s beauty was regaled in the deep purple gown and red ribbons of her supreme office, and her massive chair, atop a canopied dais, overshadowed the initiate sisters selected to witness the momentous audience. Where the Sorcerer was required to stand at her feet, his immense strength leashed in stilled patience, she glittered in extravagant triumph. Pale aquamarine were her eyes, hard as her jewels of amethyst and diamond, and just as stone cold, while she savoured her moment to hound him to humiliation.
She had cornered his game, or so she believed. The flicker of gilt thread in the gloves worn to mask her grotesquely scarred hands all but shouted her defiant scorn. Peremptory, invigorated by the thrill of her victory, she gestured for him to open the proceedings.
‘Prime Matriarch,’ he greeted, too self-contained to sound cowed, though the grandiose hall with its stone-vaulted splendour had been staged for demeaning spite. Lean and tall though the Sorcerer was, the soaring pillars that upheld the domed ceiling diminished his upright stature. More, the silent regard of the ranked Senior sisters picked to share his Fellowship’s demise seared the atmosphere to contempt.
The weathered lines on the Sorcerer’s features might have been quarried, with his hawk’s profile straitly expressionless. ‘I have come in accord to confirm the reckoning owed by our mutual promise.’
Perfect with youth, though she was in fact aged, her vitality engineered by dark spellcraft that had repeatedly cheated mortality, the Prime Matriarch tipped her coiffed head to acknowledge his careful greeting. ‘Asandir.’ Her coral lips turned, a smile made cordial by poisonous satisfaction. ‘We accept, by your presence, the promised acknowledgement that your Fellowship’s debt is now due. The last invasive free wraith from Marak has been duly banished by Athera’s Masterbard. The event occurred yesterday. This dawn, by the covenant carved onto stone in the King’s Chamber at Althain Tower, the stay of execution your Fellowship demanded on behalf of Prince Arithon of Rathain is named forfeit. Our order’s sovereignty requires his death. By the pledge held and sworn by Crown auspices to Koriathain, and sealed by the prophet apprentice under your Fellowship’s oversight, we choose to reject a further hearing.’
Asandir said nothing.
Stung, perhaps, by his dead-pan silence, Prime Selidie sat forward and jabbed. ‘My order will seize its deferred satisfaction! Did you really believe our initial demand would be softened by your past effrontery when you forced our hand?’
Malice spiked the Prime’s anger. The sweet hour of ascendancy heated her blood, all the more rich since the vicious riposte thrust upon her by the Fellowship Sorcerers’ underhand tactic: a deadly influx of wraiths unleashed on the world as their ruthless weapon in counter-threat. Unconscionably, they had gambled! The survival of Mankind on Athera had been callously tossed on the board as their bargaining chip, with the innocent populace placed at risk under a lethal threat to buy Arithon’s chance for reprieve. Centuries she had waited for the deferred moment to exact her treasured revenge. She fully intended to relish this long-sought, moral requital.
‘Such arrogance!’ Selidie chided, drunk on the precedent that the Sorcerer stood at her mercy. ‘Did you lie awake night after night, all these years, hopeful that time would soften our committed stance?’
Asandir only inclined his head, hair glinted white in the unkind glare that stabbed down from the lancet window.
‘Well, our terms have not changed.’ The Prime restated, crisp, ‘I will have the Koriathain released from the tyranny of your compact. Grant our demand. Or Prince Arithon dies before sundown. For his life, and the continuance of Rathain’s royal lineage, how will your Fellowship plead?’
‘We choose not to plead,’ Asandir stated, quiet. ‘The old law that grants humanity’s right to exist on Athera remains intact. And enforced! We stand upon principle. My dear!’ he exclaimed, not amused as the Matriarch stiffened. ‘Should my ultimatum surprise you? This world’s future has never been mine to bequeath! Mankind dwells here by the grace of our surety. That interest is our charge to balance and never set under your order’s purview to negotiate!’
Selidie’s eyes narrowed. Her malice had roots. Beyond question, she knew: Arithon s’Ffalenn was the linch-pin on which the Fellowship’s purpose depended; also, the cipher to leverag
e her gain. If Asandir would not bend his terms, if his Fellowship’s stance remained obdurate, she would follow through. Arithon would be killed, and with no mercy, if only to void the old prophecy that forecast the failure of her succession.
‘I live for the day!’ the Matriarch pronounced. ‘Your stubborn ethics have just signed the death warrant for your captive prince.’
Asandir raised open hands. ‘So be it.’ Like rinsed granite, his face, as he added, ‘My course of noninterference is hereby confirmed. Expect me to remain as the Fellowship’s witness. I will stay present only until the bitter ending’s accomplished.’
Selidie regarded him, dissecting his manner to gauge the hidden depths of his discomfort. Field Sorcerer to the Fellowship, he would keep his adamant poise, along with the letter of his spoken pledge: no record in history ran contrary. Nonetheless, the air trembled, taut as a roughly plucked string. The breadth of raw power in his contained presence could have broken the natural rise and set of the sun.
Selidie laughed until the hall echoed. ‘Your Warden should have sent someone more inventive! How the collar and leash must chafe your proud neck! Or is this a novelty? A twisted attempt to pique your jaded nerves? Are you grown tired enough in your dotage to find relief as a passive observer?’
‘I am waiting,’ said Asandir, clipped impatient. ‘My word, struck in closure, is all you require.’
‘Do as I say, and be done here?’ Prime Selidie laid the swathed stumps of her hands on the purple silk over-dress, artfully draped over her lap. Her sharp focus heightened like a hunting cat’s toying with a pinned mouse. ‘Should I rush the moment? When every exchange made with you before this has demeaned our needs as a pittance?’ Emotion leaked through, the first tremor of rage, transmitted by volcanic fury. ‘How does it feel, now the tables have turned? Should I not enjoy watching your years of planned strategies flicked hither and yon, hapless as chaff in a storm wind?’