Ravens Shadow 02 - Tower Lord (22 page)

“I’ll see to it, my lord.”

Alornis appeared as the horses were being led into the courtyard, yawning and swaddled in furs. Even in summer the Reaches retained a chill for much of the small hours. “How far is it?” she asked. There was a redness to her eyes that made Vaelin suspect she had partaken of more wine than she should the night before.

“A few hours’ ride, usually,” Dahrena advised, climbing onto her own horse. “But we have a call to make first. I should like to show you one of the mines. If you are agreeable, my lord?”

“Certainly.” He inclined his head at Alornis, then at her horse. She yawned again, muttered something and hauled herself into the saddle with an audible groan.

As well as Orven’s guardsmen, they rode in company with Captain Adal and two of his men, taking the north road into heather-covered hills. The road had a well-maintained surface of hard-packed gravel and proved a busy route; they had to make way for several heavily laden carts along the way.

“When my father first took on the Lordship it was just a narrow dirt track,” Dahrena said when Vaelin commented on the quality of the road. “The stone had to be carried to the dock on packhorses. He used the King’s coin to build the road and the King’s Word to make the merchants pay towards its upkeep.”

They rode together at the head of the column. The mix of rigid neutrality and anger from the previous day seemed to have abated, but he could still sense a guardedness in her demeanour.
Probably still worrying over the drunken healer,
he thought.

“You don’t intend to stay, do you?” he asked.

She gave him a sidelong glance and he knew she was wondering what his song had told him, although his words came from nothing more than careful observation. “I had thought I might return to the forest,” she said. “For a time.”

“A pity, I should have liked to bestow a title on you.”

She arched an amused eyebrow at him. “Aren’t titles within the gift of the King?”

“And in this land I exercise his Word. How does First Counsel to the North Tower sound?”

She laughed then sobered when she saw his serious intent. “You want me to stay?”

“I’m sure the people of these Reaches would greatly appreciate it. As indeed, would I.”

She rode on his silence for a time, brows drawn in thought. “Ask me again when you’ve seen the mine,” she said, then spurred on ahead.

◆ ◆ ◆

The mine was a gaping wood-braced maw torn into the side of a squat mountain, around which a number of wooden buildings were clustered. The miners were mostly stocky, pale-skinned men with candles pressed into leather straps worn about their heads. They offered cursory bows to Vaelin and deeper ones to Dahrena, ignoring a barked command from the mine foreman to gather in ranks to properly greet the Tower Lord.

“Insolent hill-born dogs!” he shouted at them, although Vaelin had a sense his anger was a little forced. The foreman was somewhat taller than his charges, with a cleaner face and a thick Renfaelin brogue. “Ye’ll have to forgive them, m’lord,” he said. “Don’t know no better.” He raised his voice. “Been shagging goats and smoking five-leaf their whole lives, the scum!”

“Oh, fuck a rock ape, Ultin,” called a tired voice of unseen origin.

Ultin flushed and bit down on his anger. “My own fault, m’lord. I’m too soft on ’em. Anyhow, welcome to Reaver’s Gulch.”

“Lord Vaelin would like to see the workings,” Dahrena told him.

“Of course, my lady, of course.”

He lit a lamp and led them to the mine entrance. Alornis gave the inky blackness of the shaft a brief glance and promptly announced she would prefer to remain above ground, taking her ever-present parchment and charcoal off to find something interesting to draw. Dahrena and Vaelin followed Ultin along the shaft, the damp walls shining in the lamplight. They passed a pair of miners pushing a wheeled barrow laden with rock to the surface. The descent couldn’t have covered more than two hundred yards but the rising heat and musty air stirred a sense that they were descending to the very bowels of the earth. Vaelin was starting to wish he had followed Alornis’s example by the time they came to a halt.

“Here we are, m’lord.” Ultin lifted his lamp, illuminating a cavernous space where a dozen or so miners were chipping at the walls with picks, others roaming the cavern floor to heave the hewn rock into barrows. “The richest seam in the Reaches. Finest quality stone too. Despite what that liar at Myrna’s Mount might tell you.”

Vaelin moved closer to the wall. He was surprised how clearly the bluestone stood out in the rock, small azure beads shining in the grey stone. “I once owned one as big as my fist,” he murmured. “I used it to hire a ship.”

“And the other matter, Ultin,” Dahrena said. “Lord Vaelin needs to see that too.”

Vaelin turned to find him giving her a questioning glance. She responded with a nod and he led them towards a small side tunnel leading off from the cavern. They followed him along the increasingly narrow passage for a good quarter hour, eventually coming to the end where Ultin’s lamp revealed a sloping length of rock about twenty yards long. At the foreman’s expectant look Vaelin moved closer to the slope, seeing something there besides bare stone, a thick yellowish vein running through it from end to end. He turned to Dahrena with a questioning glance. “Is it . . . ?”

“Gold,” she confirmed. “And Master Ultin assures me, for well he knows such things, it’s of the purest quality.”

“That it is, m’lord.” Ultin ran a hand along the yellow vein. “Grew up working the gold seams in west Renfael, and I’ve never seen so much of it in one place, nor so pure.”

Vaelin squinted at the seam. “Doesn’t look like so much.”

“You misunderstand me, m’lord. When I say one place, I mean the Reaches, not just this mine.”

“There’s more?”

Dahrena touched the foreman on the arm. “Master Ultin, if you could give me a moment with the Tower Lord.”

He nodded, lighting the candle in his head-strap and handing her the lamp before making his way back along the passage.

“We’ve found many such seams,” she told him when Ultin’s footsteps had faded. “These past four years, the deeper we dig the more we find.”

“Then I must confess my surprise King Malcius failed to mention such good fortune.”

Dahrena pursed her lips. “Good fortune for him could mean ruin for this land,” she said.

“Did your father know of this?”

“It was at his order that no word of it was sent to the Realm. To this day it’s known only to the Miners Guild, Brother Kehlan and myself.”

“An entire guild knows of this but says nothing?”

“The hill people are very serious in the oaths they give. They were here long before the first Asraelin ship appeared on the horizon. They know what will happen if word of this spreads to the wider Realm.”

“The wider Realm is greatly troubled at present. Such riches could alleviate considerable suffering, not to mention fund our King’s many ambitions.”

“That may be, my lord. But it will also bring the Realm down on us like a plague. Bluestone is one thing, gold is another. Nothing so inflames men to lust and folly like the yellow metal we find with every shaft we sink. Everything will change, and believe me, this land and its people are worth preserving.”

“Oath or no. A secret like this holds too much value to be kept forever. By accident or betrayal it will become known.”

“I am not suggesting we strive to keep it concealed for all the ages. Just the scale of it. The King can have his gold, build all the bridges and schools he likes with it, just not all at once.”

She was suggesting treason, and, judging by the intensity of her gaze, she knew it.

“You show great trust in me,” he said.

She shrugged. “You . . . were not what I expected. Besides, as you say, it was a secret you would have learned soon enough.”

He turned back to the seam, looking at the dull gleam of the yellow metal in the lamp’s glow. Greed had never been a preoccupation for him and he had always found its power difficult to understand, but it was an undeniable power nonetheless. He searched for the blood-song but found no music, no notes of either warning or acceptance.
This decision, seemingly of such import, may in fact be irrelevant.

“Lady Dahrena Al Myrna,” he said, turning back to her. “I ask you formerly to accept the title of First Counsel to the North Tower.”

She gave a slow nod. “I gladly accept, my lord.”

“Good.” He began to work his way back along the narrow passage. “When we return to the tower, I shall require your assistance in composing a suitably restrained letter to the King advising him of our good fortune in finding a new supply of gold, albeit of relatively small quantity.”

◆ ◆ ◆

They emerged blinking in the sunlight, finding Captain Adal waiting with a scroll in hand. Nearby a newly arrived North Guard was removing the saddle from an exhausted horse. The captain’s face was grave as he handed Vaelin the scroll. “From our northernmost outpost, my lord. The news is three days old.”

Vaelin looked down at the scroll and the meaningless scrawl it contained. “Perhaps you could just . . .”

“I agree, my lord, this lettering is appalling,” Dahrena said, reading the scroll over his shoulder, her eyes widening at the contents. “This is confirmed?”

Adal gestured at the new arrival. “Sergeant Lemu witnessed their transit himself. He’s not a man prone to excessive flights of imagination.”

“Transit?” Vaelin asked.

Dahrena took the scroll and read it through again. He was disturbed to note her hands shook as she held it. “The Horde,” she said in a soft murmur. “They came back.”

S
he awoke to find a little girl sitting on her bed, staring at her with wide blue eyes. Her head felt as if it were being pummelled from within by a tiny man with a large mallet and her mouth was so dry she could only croak a hello in Lonak at the girl. She angled her head and kept staring.

“It’s your hair, Queen.” Davoka was sitting on a neighbouring bed, naked save for a loincloth. “No Lonak with gold hair.”

Lyrna pulled back the furs that covered her and swung her legs off the bed, sitting up with a groan provoked by the multiple aches rippling from her back to her toes. Davoka rose and poured water into a wooden cup, holding it to Lyrna’s lips. Shorn of clothing, Davoka was an even more impressive sight, her body an epic of muscle, scars and tattooed flesh. She put the cup aside when Lyrna had drained it, holding a hand to her forehead. “Fever gone. Good.”

“How long have we been here?”

“Three days.”

Lyrna cast her gaze about the room, seeing walls of stone covered in decorated goatskins and complex hangings fashioned from strips of leather and wood carvings, some depictions of animals and men, others so unfamiliar as to be abstract.

“This is the woman’s hall,”
Davoka told her, slipping into her own tongue.
“Used for birthing. Men are not allowed here.”

Lyrna felt something teasing her hair and looked up to see the little girl tracing her fingers through the gold tresses, eyes still wide with fascination.
“What’s your name?”
she asked her in Lonak, smiling.

The little girl cocked her head.
“Anehla ser Alturk,”
she said.
Alturk’s daughter.

“She doesn’t have a name yet,”
Davoka explained. She shooed the girl away with a flick of her hand. She scampered to a corner and sat on the floor, still staring at Lyrna.

Davoka took a flask from her pack and handed it to Lyrna. “Redflower,” she recognised, sniffing it.

“Take your pain away.”

Lyrna shook her head and handed it back. “Redflower makes a slave of those who drink it.”

Davoka frowned at her then laughed, taking a small sip from the flask. “Queen makes things hard for herself. I see this.”

Lyrna rose from the bed, taking a few experimental steps. The slight chill to the air made for a not-unpleasant tingle over her naked flesh. “Brother Sollis and the others?” she asked.

“Unhurt but kept apart from the village. Only Alturk speaks to them, and no more than he has to.”

“He’s the leader of these people?”

“Clan Chief of the Grey Hawks. He holds dominion over twenty villages and their war-bands. No other save the Mahlessa can command so many.”

“
You trust his loyalty?”

“He has never questioned the word from the Mountain.”

Lyrna detected a slight hesitancy to Davoka’s tone.
“But will he continue to do so?”

“He has led many raids against your people, lost blood and kin to your gods-hating brothers. My people are taught to hate you from the day they are born.”
She nodded at the little girl in the corner.
“You think she doesn’t hate you? She’s probably only here so she can tell her father what words we speak.”

“
And yet the Mahlessa wants peace. Even though it threatens to break your nation apart.”

“Words from the Mountain are not to be questioned.”
Davoka threw a clay pot at the little girl, making her flee the hall.
“Tell your father that!”
she called after her.

She turned back to Lyrna, eyes surveying her nakedness. “Too thin, Queen. Need to eat.”

◆ ◆ ◆

The next three days were spent in isolation at the woman’s hall, eating the food Davoka prepared and slowly rebuilding her strength. She was allowed to wander a few steps from the entrance where two Lonak warriors stood, regarding her in scowling silence and ignoring whatever greetings she offered. Davoka was never more than six feet from her side, and always armed. She caught a glimpse of Sollis at the far end of the village, practising a sword scale with Brother Ivern outside a small stone hut ringed with ten more warriors. She waved and the Brother Commander stopped, pausing for a moment then raising his sword in a brief salute. Brother Ivern followed suit, albeit with more of a flourish to the flash of his blade. She laughed and bowed in return.

Despite being repeatedly chased away by Davoka, Alturk’s daughter continued to return, her wide blue-eyed stare unwavering. Lyrna showed her how to work poor Nersa’s tortoise-shell comb through her hair, an activity she seemed to find tirelessly engaging.

“You have brothers and sisters?”
Lyrna asked her, sitting on her bed with her back to the girl, whose small hands were guiding the comb through the long mane, still damp from washing.

“Kermana,”
the girl replied.
Any large number not easily counted. “And ten mothers.”

“That’s a lot of mothers,”
Lyrna observed.

“Used to be eleven, but one joined the Sentar so Alturk killed her.”

“That’s . . . very sad.”

“
No it’s not. She beat me more than the others.”

“Must’ve been her blood mother,”
Davoka commented.
“They always beat you more.”

“How many mothers for you, Queen?”
the girl asked Lyrna. Like Davoka she was unable to comprehend the difference between a queen and a princess.

“Just one.”

“Did she beat you?”

“
No. She died when I was very young. I have little memory of her.”

“Was it on the hunt or in battle?”

“Neither. She just got sick.” Like my father, although she died too soon whilst he died too late.

A woman appeared at the entrance, young in years but no less fierce in aspect than the warriors outside. Davoka had marked her as Alturk’s eldest daughter, charged with bringing them food and fuel, a task she usually performed in stern-faced silence.
“You are to bring the Merim Her to the Tahlessa’s fire tonight,”
she told Davoka. Her gaze tracked to Lyrna, taking in the sight of her younger sister tending hair. She barked a harsh command, beckoning to the girl who grimaced in annoyance but obediently slid off the bed to trot to her side.

“Leave that,”
the young woman commanded, seeing the comb she still held in her hand.

“She can have it,”
Lyrna said.
“A . . . queen’s gift.”

“The blood of Alturk need no gifts from you,”
the woman snarled back, twisting the comb from the girl’s grasp, drawing a pained sob.

“I said let her keep it!”
Lyrna got to her feet, meeting the woman’s gaze.

The Lonak woman was almost shaking in rage, her hands inching towards the antler-handled knife in her belt.

“Mind the word of the Mountain,”
Davoka told her in a quiet voice.

The woman seethed for a moment more then tossed the comb back to her sister, her furious gaze never leaving Lyrna. The little girl looked at the comb in her hand then threw it on the floor and stamped on it.
“Merim Her are weak!”
she hissed at Lyrna then ran from the hall.

The young woman gave Lyrna a final sneer of disdain before following.

“You are not queen here,” Davoka said. “Never forget they hate you.”

Lyrna looked down at the fragments of tortoise-shell. “They do,” she agreed, then turned to Davoka, smiling faintly.
“But you don’t, sister.”

◆ ◆ ◆

Predictably, Alturk’s dwelling proved the largest in the village, a stone-walled circle some twenty paces in diameter with a slanted roof of slate. Night had fallen by the time Davoka led Lyrna inside, finding the clan chief seated before a raging fire, the flames rising from coals heaped into a pit in the centre of the floor. He was alone save for a young man who stood at his shoulder, arms crossed and favouring Lyrna with the customary glower, and a large hound which sat at his feet gnawing on an elk bone.

“I understand,” Alturk began in Realm Tongue, apparently finding the offer of a greeting a pointless affectation. “My first daughter gave offence to the queen.”

“It was nothing,” Lyrna told him.

“Nothing or not, she showed weakness in failing to properly mind the Mahlessa’s command. I whipped her myself.”

“We are grateful for your consideration,”
Davoka told him in Lonak before Lyrna could say anything.

He accepted the words with a nod, looking Lyrna up and down. “You are strong enough to travel.” There was no question in his tone.

“We will depart on the north-eastern trail come the dawn,”
Davoka said.
“
I require ponies and an escort. A full war-band should be enough.”

The young man standing at Alturk’s shoulder gave a scornful laugh, falling to silence at a glare from the clan chief.
“You can have the ponies, but there is no war-band to send with you,”
Alturk said.
“The hunt for the Sentar has taken all my warriors save the few I can spare to guard the villages.”

Davoka’s jaws bunched and her response was edged with suppressed anger.
“I have counted over two hundred warriors in this village.”

Alturk shrugged.
“The Sentar are many, and your sister’s blood-thirst insatiable. The Grey Hawks look to their Tahlessa for protection, I will not deny them.”

“
But you would deny the word from the Mountain.”

Alturk got to his feet. He wore no weapons but the power evident in him was threat enough.
“The Mahlessa sends no command for me to muster arms for your onward journey. I have honoured the word of the Mountain by providing succour to this gold-haired quim you fuss over like a nesting she-ape.”

Davoka gave a shout of fury, hefting her spear, a war club appearing in the hand of the young Lonak as she did so.

“NO!” Lyrna said, raising a hand and stepping in front of Davoka.
“No, sister. This will do no good.”

The Lonak woman looked away, nostrils flared as she fought the desire for battle, then slowly lowered her spear. Lyrna turned to Alturk. “Tahlessa, I thank you for your hospitality. I, Princess Lyrna Al Nieren of the Unified Realm, am in your debt. We shall be on our way come morning.”

◆ ◆ ◆

The pony they gave her made Lyrna pine for poor slaughtered Sable. It was an ill-tempered beast, prone to unbidden trotting and likely to rear in protest at the slightest provocation. It also had the boniest back she had ever encountered, the thin goatskin saddles the Lonak used offering little protection for her behind which now perched on what felt like a jumble of rocks covered with a thin blanket. Smolen seemed similarly discomfited by his mount, squirming somewhat as they trekked away from the Grey Hawk village, whilst Sollis and Ivern were fairly at ease on their ponies and Davoka, of course, rode hers as if she had known it for years. She led them on at a brisk trot, keen to cover as much distance as possible before nightfall. Lyrna glanced back at the village before they crested a rise at the north end of the valley, wondering if Alturk’s daughter would find the lock of golden hair she had hidden in the women’s hall, deep in a gap in the stone walls, only reachable by small hands.

“I trust you were not mistreated, good sirs,” Lyrna said to the three men as they traversed a shallow stream.

“Only if silence is a form of torture, Highness,” Ivern replied.

“For you it usually is,” Sollis muttered.

“No time for talk,” Davoka told them. “Need to be at the rapids by sun fall.” She kicked her pony to a canter, obliging them to follow suit.

As always, Lyrna found the relentless hours in the saddle irksome, but not quite so miserable an experience as before. Her back and legs didn’t ache so much and her thighs seemed to have become more resistant to chafing. She was also aware her ability as a rider had improved, where before she had struggled constantly to stay in the saddle at the gallop, now she moved in concert with the horse, even experiencing a small thrill in the exhilaration of speed as her hair trailed in the wind and the pony’s hooves drummed on the earth.
Perhaps I’m becoming Lonak,
she thought with a grin.

They came to the rapids by late evening, a raging torrent some fifty paces wide, stretching away on either side as far as they could see. Davoka led them eastward, following the course of the river until they found a deeper stretch where the current was not so fierce.

“This is not a ford,” Sollis observed.

“Ponies can swim,” Davoka said. “So can we.”

“Erm,” said Lyrna in a small voice.

“The current’s too swift,” Sollis insisted. “We should press on, find a better spot.”

“No time,” Davoka said, dismounting and leading her pony to the riverbank. “Sentar will already have our trail. We swim.”

“I can’t,” Lyrna said, eyeing the swirling eddies churning the river’s surface.

“No choice, Queen,” Davoka said, making ready to leap into the water.