Grand Conspiracy (12 page)

Mearn's mercurial laugh intermingled with the chime as he cast his own steel to sliding rest beside the dagger impaled in the trestle. Metal struck metal. The pealing clang reechoed to the wicked bent of his gambler's delight. ‘I have a much nicer idea. Why not sit down and stop bristling hackles? Let me extend an invitation: let's both drink beer to the Shadow Master's health over a certain chest of gold in the ducal hall at Alestron.' As an afterthought, he grinned. ‘We build ships there, too.'

Cattrick's brows furrowed upward. ‘Then you're Prince Arithon's covert ally?'

‘Since Vastmark,' Mearn admitted. ‘We, too, had our reasons for turning coat.' He hiked up one leg and perched on the edge of the trestle. ‘I can write my brother in coded state language and demand his swiftest galley to bear me homeward come the spring. First, I'll need to know what date to ask for, and which port of call will offer the most favorable rendezvous.'

‘The outer reefs, northwest of Orlest,' Cattrick said with scarcely a second's hesitation. ‘The timing, of course, must depend on the prince as he sets final plans for his wedding.'

Autumn 5653
 

On the snow-dusted moors of Araethura, the herbalist's cottage stands empty and cold, the enchantress who lived there gone north to ply her talents in the stews by the Morvain quay, where street children snatch life by robbery and wits; and knife wounds acquired by randy sailors and the unending afflictions of poor quarter harlots will take her mind far from the betrayal enacted through a black-haired shepherd boy's trust …

The day before Prince Lysaer's sealed orders reach Caithwood, the Sorcerer Asandir stands under the frost-turned crown of a great oak, his expression like chisel-cut granite; over his head, the winds of late autumn thrash the leaves to a song of rare fury, and the drumming of twigs and the moaning of pines transmit the tattoo outward through the forest like the ripples cast across a stilled pool …

In the teeming port city of Innish, on the south coast, a fair young man entrusted as merchant's factor sits by the wavering light of a candle, reading a letter in sharp, coded script that describes a specific tavern in Southshire where dispatches are to be left, and closes with the laughing, wishful observation, ‘Keep your harpy of a sister well clear of my affairs, or one better, tell her I'll play tasteless ballads for her wedding if she'll find the good grace to exchange feckless seafaring for marriage …'

T
he sealed orders from Avenor reached the small settlement known as Watercross in the shortened days of late autumn. There, the river route through Ilswater intersected the trade road that spanned Caithwood, linking Valenford to Quarn and the southern seaports of Tysan. Built at the threshold of the ancient stand of forest, the massive old land bridge, with its mossy stone pilings, spanned the river in the elegant arches which bespoke the masterful skill of centaur masons. Since the departure of the Paravians, mankind had made free with the axe. Five inns clustered by the verge, a congested accretion of multiple wings of timber raised three storeys high. These were fronted by a commodious barge dock, and boasted between them a post stable and a prosperous smithy. The streetside cluster of shops fanned into a disordered tangle of clapboard cottages, each with a cow and a garden patch. The steadings were inhabited by the families of serving girls who had married rivermen or drovers, and raised sprawling families whose lifeblood was tuned to the movement of commerce.

The summer's campaign to suppress Caithwood's clansmen had spurred wider change. The inns were jammed to screaming capacity, each room and attic housing crown officers and stockpiles of perishable supplies. In response to demand, every Watercross resident had rented out bedrooms and haylofts at
extortionist prices, then relocated their displaced and bickering offspring in the crannies of pantries and woodsheds. Talk of new building abounded, while tents and picket lines crowded the riverbank, and more timber fell to clear acreage. Amid the chewed ends of stumps and the trodden, pocked earth quilted over with flame-bright swatches of fallen leaves, the orderly tents of an Alliance encampment nestled into the river's south bank. Its hub of command was a sagging board building that, in springtime, had served as a pig shack.

The sow and her farrow had long since graced the pot. Under the damp thatch that had been their last shelter, Etarra's Lord Harradene snapped off his gloves and stamped the caked mud from his boots. The day officer delivered the most urgent news through the noise of his jangling impatience, while a gesture saw the wrapped packets of dispatches accepted by his breathless equerry. Harradene stilled as he heard the reports. His cliff-edged frown stayed quarried in place as he learned that the camp north of Caithwood had withdrawn in disorder back to Valenford.

‘No, don't repeat that,' he snapped. ‘I heard damn all the first time. Puling ninnies, every milk-nosed captain who let his company turn tail. Fact's known well enough. Fellowship conjury never kills.' He slapped the royal writ on the trestle with the maps and glowered at his ring of cringing officers. ‘I don't care
horse apples
if some fools have fled from a display of arcane posturing! Your prince wants a fire. Therefore, this stand of wood's going to burn! We're driving clan dogs out of hiding with singed tails, and the crown's bounties won't wait for the hindmost.'

Through a spattering of cheers, someone's raspy question prevailed. ‘Is this wise?'

The boldest of the sergeants appended a protest. ‘The Sorcerer claimed he would waken the trees.'

Lord Commander Harradene spun back, his spiked brows still furrowed, and the shoulders under his sunwheel surcoat bristled as a bear's before a charge. ‘Oh, did he indeed?' His rankling, Etarran sarcasm thundered, sifting fine dust from the thatch. ‘And what will that mean, do you think? That hundred-year-old oaks are likely to rise up and
walk?
That greenwood is going to bear steel?' He turned in a tight circle, leaving no officer unwithered by his scathing contempt. ‘Is there anyone else present with the brains of a chicken?'

No one spoke or moved. Pent silence expanded like poison,
sawn through at a distance by barking dogs and the wailing of some mother's toddler.

‘Good!' Lord Harradene slapped the wet ends of his gloves against the dulled mail of his byrnie. ‘Now show me you've kept the two bollocks Ath gave a newborn. In one hour, I want ten relays of messengers assembled. They'll bear my orders the length and breadth of Taerlin. By dawn on the day of the new moon, every man marching in the service of the Light will be in position to torch trees. We'll have archers in line to take down the flushed clansmen. Hereafter, these roads will be safe enough for a naked virgin to travel unscathed!'

Ahead of all argument, Lord Harradene snarled his ultimatum. ‘Any man who fears trees may turn in his insignia right here, right now, and go home stripped of all honors. Ones who run later, or ones who drag feet will be burned and run through by the sword as no less than Fellowship Sorcerers' collaborators!'

The pig shack emptied to a stampede of boots, and the last couriers streamed away well ahead of the hour allocated for their departure. Some galloped north and east, mounted upon fast horses and given escort by tried veterans in sunwheel surcoats. Others ducked spray from the oars of swift boats, commandeered from trade service by crown authority. These careened downriver into the wilds, their course sped by the winding ribbon of the Ilswater's lower branch in its rush to meet the sea estuary.

The trees dripped and brooded in the mist-heavy air. They exhibited no change as their sovereign territory became invaded by the Alliance couriers, who dispersed the written orders for Lord Commander Harradene's campaign of fire and sword. Their stillness magnified the trepidation of the men, who rode with ears tuned to the wind in the leaves and heard nothing, only autumn's chorus of dying vegetation as the unmoored foliage chattered and danced in the gusts. In the boats, beneath breaking cloud, sweat-drenched oarsmen watched the shadowed deeps on the bank, prodding at waterbound roots with unease as they moored to make camp for the night.

Yet no living tree displayed any sign of an uncanny movement. The fiery pageant of changed maples unveiled at each bend in the river, their outlines punch-cut and serene. The hollows wore carpets of scarlet and gold, turned by the furtive brush of night's frosts presaging the advent of winter.

Whatever the Sorcerer Asandir threatened, no Alliance scout's sharpened vigilance detected anything untoward or amiss. Mice
continued to nest in blankets and stores, seeking shelter against the chill; the hunting owls sailed the starry dark, silent and sleek as lapped silk. Days, the hawks circled and called from a blue enameled sky. Geese clamored south in straggling chevrons as they had for time beyond memory. No one saw oak groves tear up roots or talk. If every place a man trod to seek firewood, his steps felt stalked by hidden watchers, that unease more likely stemmed from the clan scouts who shadowed their movements, unseen.

The spate of outrageous speculation peaked and subsided, restored to a general complacency as Lord Harradene's orders reached the far-flung Alliance encampments, and the days waxed and waned without incident. The rank-and-file troops who occupied the deep wilds were experienced and staunch. They curbed all explosions of foolish hysteria lest they draw in the prankish attention of iyats, the invisible fiends that played living havoc with a man's kit and gear. Evenings were spent wrapping fire arrows with cotton, or binding oiled rag to pine billets. The casks of pitch and resin that would fuel their brands were drawn from supply, and tallied in readiness for action.

Across Caithwood, the ordered companies marched into position, unmolested beyond the nipped flush of cold fingers and the paned skins of ice on the bogs. No signs appeared of arcane workings. The only change any troop captain could pinpoint was the scarcity of traps set by the lurking bands of clansmen.

‘Well enough, they know when to tuck tail and run,' dismissed Lord Harradene when the duty officer drew the oddity to his attention. ‘We already know they were warned by that Sorcerer. Should they stay, do you think, just to burn?'

The eve of new moon arrived in due course. Over the jittering light of night campfires, tucked under cloaks against the wind, the archers waxed longbows and cracked bawdy jokes lest the silence be claimed by the rush of tossed leaves, or the bared scrape of oak twigs find voice. Dawn would see all of Caithwood aflame, by the grace of Prince Lysaer's dispensation. If some men who had families lay awake out of pity for clan children and wives destined to fall in the carnage, Tysan's headhunters celebrated. Other scarred, grizzled veterans recalled the bloody knives that had dispatched their wounded with no mercy given at Tal Quorin.

‘'Tweren't natural,' those whispered. ‘Our wounded all died, throat-cut and choking, done in by the hands of mere boys.'

Two hours before the new moon's pale dawn, at chosen locations across Caithwood, every man not on watch as a sentry sharpened and readied his weapons. The archers checked arrows and quarrels, and positioned the casks of oil and pitch. No one sensed any flare of worked sorcery. Trees loomed dumb as they always had, amid their shed mantles of leaves. Against black, forest stillness and a nagging, keen chill, troops bolstered their courage with whatever cruel memories could fan their passion for vengeance.

The graying east sky brought a scouring north breeze that promised an auspicious campaign. In the posted positions set forth by Lord Harradene, the most hardened veterans wolfed down cold bread. They teased laggards with jokes as they girded on mail and weapons in the steadily strengthening half-light. By horn call and barked order, they formed ranks and fanned out, the forefront to wield torches and fire arrows, and the rest set at strategic points to intercept whatever might flee from the heart of the lethal conflagration.

‘On time, and no quarter,' read Harradene's last orders. The fires would be kindled at sunrise, with no reprieve given for clan prisoners, grown man or woman, child or newborn. The Etarran field troops blew on chilled fingers. They eyed the dense trees, their ink-blown branches entangled against the brightening skyline. The gusts smelled of dead leaves, and cookfires, and oiled metal; ordinary, even surreal before the butchering bloodshed to come. Today, fair retribution for the long string of massacres at Tal Quorin, at Minderl Bay, and at Dier Kenton Vale, each one the design of murdering clan war bands in collusion with the Master of Shadow.

Now came the fierce reckoning for so many dead, and a long-overdue salve for the interests of trade. Caithwood was to be cleansed of barbarians by decree of the Prince of the Light.

The Alliance ranks stilled in the mist-laden gloom, prepared with tinder and steel. They fingered the honed edges on their knives and drew swords; tested the grip on halberd and lance and soothed their restive horses, sweating in anticipation. A long-sought, elusive quarry would be theirs to bring down. The sunwheel banners fluttered in the stiffening north breeze, and the leaves spoke, scratching, against the eaves of the forest.

One moment rushed into the next. Under light turned pearlescent, the eastern sky brightened into a sheer, cloudless citrine. The black borders of Caithwood limned in silhouette, the wind-tossed verge
of an ocean of linked trees, their collective awareness and their language dumb noise to more limited human ears. On that poised instant, a Fellowship Sorcerer spoke a word:
the Paravian rune that
meant
one
and which tied all things in Ath's creation into the prime
chord of unity
.

The next second, the reddened edge of the sun sliced above the horizon.

Illumination speared the heavens. At each of two hundred and eighty locations, Alliance horn calls rang out; the cried order clove through the burn of chill wind, to execute Prince Lysaer's sealed order. Men steadied drawn steel. Excited fingers grasped flints, began the decisive move to strike sparks and set pitch-soaked arrows and cressets alight.

There came no connection. On one Sorcerer's word, a wave of awareness crossed time and space, sped fleeting as light on the cognizant tide that passed from one tree to the next. The moment lagged into an unnatural sense of hesitation. The stir of the wind gained a surreal impetus, and the susurrant scratch of dead leaves acquired a magnified roar of wild sound. That nexus of vibration caught the conscious mind and sucked human thought into a whirlpool that overwhelmed all reasoned continuity. No live thing was exempt. The deer ceased their browsing with wide, glassy eyes. Hawks on the branches mantled and blinked, for the moment too muddled for flight. Among the two-legged, whether clansman or soldier, that pause gripped the heart like old roots. Busy purpose made no sense. Logic lost meaning. A peace deep and vast as the slow turn of seasons, the ordered dance of a planet's annual journey round its star grasped and drowned every shred of animal identity.

For that one given instant, the speech of the trees reigned in smothering supremacy. The staunch patience of fixed roots and the wine taste of sun rinsed warp and weft through the weave of all breathing, warm-blooded awareness. Iron prejudice shattered. Those Alliance-sworn men who were townbred and ignorant now learned what the hawk, and the deer, and the insect had always known, and what Caithwood's clans kept alive by tradition. Their unbroken, old ways reaffirmed the immutable truth through words that gave thanks, and through timeworn, small rituals which renewed by expression of gratitude. That trees were
alive
. Their gifts and their bounty might be taken at will. They could be raped and robbed, or they could be acknowledged, a trust of consent sealed in the language of
humility, granting each bough and trunk its due recognition for generous sacrifice.