Ships from the West (25 page)

In the main antechamber a man of medium height stood warming his hands at the glowing charcoal of a brazier. He was dressed in black and his close-fitting tunic sat on him as trimly as on the torso of a youth. But when he turned Haratta saw that his hair was three parts grey and his eyes were sunken, though they gleamed brightly in the lamplight. He wore a simple silver circlet about his temples and no other ornament or decoration of any kind. King or no, Haratta had intended to upbraid him politely but icily for his presumption, but something about his eyes stopped her cold. She curtseyed in the Ramusian way.

‘You speak Normannic?’ the man asked.

‘A small piece, mine lord. Not very goods.’

‘Haratta your name is, I am told.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘I am Corfe. I am here to see the lady Aria. I apologise for my absence at your arrival, but I was detained by matters of state.’ He paused, and seeing the look of alarm and incomprehension crossing her face his eyes softened. In Merduk he said:

‘I wish only to speak with your mistress for a moment. I will wait, if that is necessary.’

Her face cleared. ‘I will ask her to come at once.’ There was something in this man’s gaze, something which even at first meeting made one eager to obey him.

When Aria entered the room a few moments later she was swathed in yards of midnight silk, the finest she possessed, and kohl had been applied to her eyelids, the lashes drawn out at the corners of her eyes with black stibium. Haratta followed her and took an unobtrusive seat in a shadowed corner as her mistress walked steadily towards her future husband, a man old enough to be her father.

The Torunnan King bowed deeply and she inclined her head in answer. He did not look as old as she had feared, and had in fact the bearing of a much younger man. He was not ill-looking either, and the first, absurd, girlish fears she had harboured faded. She was not to share a bed with some potbellied bald-headed libertine after all.

They exchanged inconsequential courtesies, all the while taking in every detail of the other. His Merduk was adequate, but not fluent, as though it had lately been studied in a hurry. They switched to Normannic at her request, for she was at home in both, thanks to her mother. He had a stern cast to his face, but when she made him smile she saw a much younger man beneath the Royal solemnity, a glimpse of someone else. She found herself liking his gravity, the sudden, unexpected smile which lifted it. His eyes were almost the same shade as her own.

He asked about her mother, turning away to poke at the brazier with a fire iron as he did so. She was very well, Aria told him lightly. She sent her greetings to her future son-in-law. This last thing she had invented as an empty courtesy, no more, but as she said it the fire iron went still, and remained poised in the burning red heart of the coals. The King went silent and she wondered what she had said to offend him. At last he turned back to her and she could see sweat glittering on his brow. His eyes seemed to have sunk back into his head and the firelight raised no gleam from them.

‘May I see your face?’ he asked.

She was taken aback, and had no idea how to deal with such a bold request. She glanced at Haratta in the shadows and almost called the older woman over, then thought better of it. Why not? He was to marry her, after all. She twitched aside her veil and drew back her silken hood without speaking.

She heard Haratta gasp with outrage behind her, but had eyes only for the King’s face. The colour had fled from it. He looked shocked, but mastered himself quickly. His hand came up as if he were about to caress her cheek, then fell away without touching her.

‘You are the very image of your mother,’ he said hoarsely.

‘So I have been told, my lord.’ Their eyes locked and something indefinable went between them. There was a great, empty hunger in him, a grieved yearning which touched her to the quick. She took his hard-planed fingers in her own, and felt him tremble at her touch.

Haratta had reached them. ‘My lord King, this is no way to be behaving. I am here as chaperone for the Princess, and I say that you overstep the mark. Aria, what are you thinking? Cover yourself, girl. A man does not see his bride’s face until their wedding night. For shame!’

Corfe’s eyes did not leave Aria’s for a second. ‘Things are done differently here in Torunna,’ he said quietly. ‘And besides, we are to be married in the morning.’

Aria felt her heart flip. ‘So soon? But I—’

‘I have communicated with your father. He has agreed. Your dowry will be sent on with your brother Nasir and the reinforcements he is leading here.’

Haratta seemed to choke. She dabbed at her eyes. ‘Oh my little girl, oh my poor maid. Are you ashamed of her, my lord, that you rush through this thing like - like a thief in the night?’

Corfe’s cold stare shut her mouth. ‘We are at war, woman, and this kingdom buried its Queen this morning. My wife. It is not how any of us would have wished, but circumstance dictates our actions. I must leave for the war myself very soon. Forgive me, Aria. No disrespect is intended. Your own father recognises this.’

Aria bowed her head. ‘I understand.’ She still held his fingers in her own and she felt the pressure as he squeezed them, then released her.

‘A covered carriage will be waiting for you in the morning, and will convey you to the cathedral where we are to be married. You may bring Haratta and one other maid, but that is all. Are there any questions?’ He seemed to think he was briefing a group of soldiers. His voice had become hard and impersonal; the tone of command. Aria and Haratta shook their heads silently.

‘Very good. I will see you in the morning then.’ He raised Aria’s hand to his lips and kissed her knuckle, a dry feather touch. ‘Good night, ladies.’ Then he turned on his heel and strode away. When the door had closed behind him Aria covered her face with her hands and fought the sudden sobs which threatened to burst free.

The bells woke her. There had been a late spring snowfall a few days before, probably the last of the year, and Aurunga-bar’s usual clatter and clamour had been muffled by the white tenderness of the snow. But now all over the city this morning the bells of every surviving Ramusian church were tolling, and chief among them the mournful sonorous pealing of Carcasson’s great bronze titans. Heria threw aside the piled coverlets, and shrugging a fur pelisse about her shoulders she darted to the window and tugged aside the ornate shutters.

The cold air made her gasp and the whiteness was blinding after the gloom of the room. The sun was still rising and was nothing more than a saffron burning glimpsed through thick ribands of grey cloud. Some kind of emergency? But the people trudging through the streets seemed unafraid. The wains heading to market in great clouds of oxenbreath trundled obliviously, their drovers yawning, muffled figures unpanicked by any news of war or fire or invasion.

A knock on the door, and immediately after her maids entered bearing hot water and towels and her clothes for the day. She closed the shutters without a word and let them undress her; they might have been deaf for all the notice they took of the tolling bells. When she was naked she stepped into the broad, flat-bottomed basin in which the water steamed and they dabbed at her with scented sponges brought up from the jewel-bright depths of the Levangore. They wrapped warm towels about her white limbs and she stepped out of the basin to peruse the garments they had brought for her to choose from.

The Sultan entered the room without fanfare or ceremony, rubbing his ring-bright fingers together. ‘Ah! I caught you!’

The maids all went to their knees but Heria remained standing. ‘My lord, I am at my ablutions.’

‘Ablute away!’ Aurungzeb was grinning white out of the huge darkness of his beard. He settled himself on a creaking chair and arranged his robes about his globular paunch. The curved poniard he wore in his sash jutted forth as though it had been planted there. ‘It is nothing I have not seen before, I am sure. You are still my wife, after all, and a damned fine figure of a woman. Drop those towels, Ahara; even queens must not stand on their dignity all the time.’

She did as she was told and stood like a white, nude statue while the maids cowered at her feet and Aurungzeb eyed her appreciatively, ignoring or unaware of the blazing hatred in her eyes.

‘Splendid, still splendid. You hear the bells? Of course you do. I thought I would be the one to tell you. The union I have long sought is concluded. This morning our daughter weds Corfe of Torunna, and our kingdoms are indissolubly linked for posterity. My grandson shall one day rule Torunna. Ha ha!’

Blood coloured her face. ‘This was not to happen so soon. We were to be at the ceremony. I -1 was to give her away. We agreed.’

Aurungzeb flapped a hairy-knuckled hand. ‘It proved impossible in the event - and what is a little ceremony, after all? They have just buried their queen. Corfe wanted a quiet wedding, without fanfare. He is to leave for the war very soon, and had best try and plant a seed in Aria ere he goes.’

Heria snatched a dressing robe from one of the frozen maids, wrapping it about her. Her eyes were blazing but vacant, as if they gazed upon some cruelty only she could see. ‘I was to be there,’ she repeated in a murmur. ‘I was to see them. I was …’

Aurungzeb was becoming irritated. ‘Yes yes, we know all that. Matters of state intervened. We cannot have all we wish in this world.’ He hauled himself out of the chair and padded over to her. ‘Put it out of your mind. The thing is done.’ He raised her chin and regarded her face. She stared through him as though he did not exist, and he frowned.

‘Queen or no, you are my wife, and you will bend to my will. You think the world will stand still to suit you?’ When he released her his fingermarks left red bars on her cheek.

Heria’s eyes returned to the room. After a moment, she smiled. ‘My Sultan, you are in the right of it as always. What do I know of matters of state? I am only a woman.’ Her hand sought his, raised it, and slipped it inside the loose collar of her robe so that he cupped one of her full breasts. Aurungzeb’s face changed.

‘Sometimes I must be reminded that I am a woman,’ Heria said, one eyebrow arching up her forehead. Aurungzeb licked his upper lip, wetting his moustache.

‘Leave us,’ he growled at the maids. ‘The Queen and I desire a private word together.’

The maids rose to their slippered feet and backed out of the room with their heads bowed. When the door had shut behind them Aurungzeb smiled. He reached up and twitched Heria’s robe aside. It fell to her waist.

‘Ah, still beautiful,’ he whispered, and grinned. ‘My sweet, you always knew how—’

Her hand, which had been stroking the sash about his voluminous middle, fastened upon the ivory hilt of the poniard tucked away there. She drew it forth with a flash.

‘But you never knew,’ she said. And she stabbed him deep, deep in the belly, twisting the blade and slicing open the flesh so that his innards bulged out and blood flooded with them. Aurungzeb sank to his knees with an astonished gasp, trying vainly to press his lacerated flesh together.

‘Guards,’
but the word came out as little more than a strangled whisper. He fell over on his side in a widening pool of his own blood, his eyes bulging white. His legs twitched and kicked uselessly.

‘Why—?’

His Queen looked down on him contemptuously, with the bloody knife still gripped in one small fist. ‘My name is Heria

Car-Gwion of the city of Aekir, and my true husband is, and has always been, Corfe Cear-Inaf, one-time officer in the garrison of Aekir, now King of Torunna.’ Her eyes bored into Aurungzeb’s horrified, dying face.
‘Do you understand?’

Ostabar’s Sultan gurgled. His horror-filled eyes seemed to dawn with some awful knowledge. One hand left his terrible wound and reached for her like a claw. She stepped back leaving bare footprints in his blood, and watched in silence as his movements grew feebler. He tried again to shout, but blood filled his mouth and came spitting out. She dropped her robe over his contorted face and stood naked, watching him struggle ineffectually under it. At last he was still. Tears streaked her face, but her features were stiff as those of a caryatid.

She blinked, and seemed to become aware of the weapon still clenched in her hand. Her arm was crimson to the elbow. There was a soft, insistent knocking at the door.

She looked around the room through a blaze of tears, and smiled. Then she thrust the keen blade deep into her own breast.

Fifteen

The Royal bedchamber was something of a forbidding place, the vast four-poster dominating it like a fortress. The bed seemed to have been sturdily built to accommodate duties rather than pleasures. Corfe had slept alone in it for fourteen years.

He stood before a fireplace wide enough to roast a side of pork, and warmed his hands unnecessarily at the towering flames. The same room, the same ring on his finger, but soon a different woman to warm the bed. He reached for the wine glass which glinted discreetly on the tall mantel, and drank half its blood-red contents at a gulp. It might have been water for all he tasted.

A quiet ceremony indeed. Only Formio, Comillan and Haratta had been present as witnesses, and Albrec had been brief and to the point, thank God. Aria had removed her veil and hood, for she was a Torunnan now, and she had bowed her head as the Pontiff placed the delicate filigree of a queen’s crown upon her raven tresses.

Corfe rubbed his chest absently. There had been an ache there since this morning which he could not account for. It had begun during the wedding ceremony and was like the dull throb of a bruise.

‘Enter,’ he said as the door was knocked so softly as to be barely audible.

A miniature procession entered the room. First came a pair of Merduk maids bearing lighted candles, then came Aria, her black hair unbound, a dark cloak about her shoulders, and finally Haratta bearing another candle. Corfe watched bemused as the three women stood around Aria as though shielding her. The cloak was dropped by the bedside, and he caught only a candlelit glimpse of a white shape flitting under the covers before Haratta and the maids had turned again. The maids left like women in a trance, not flinching as the wax of their candles dripped down the back of their hands, but Haratta paused.

‘We have delivered her intact, my lord, and have fulfilled our duty. We wish you joy of her.’ The look in Haratta’s eye wished him anything but. ‘I shall be outside, if anything is needed.’

‘You will not,’ Corfe snapped. ‘You will return to your quarters at once. Is that clear?’ Haratta bowed soundlessly and left the room.

The chamber seemed very dark as the candles were taken away, lit only by the red light of the fire. Corfe threw back the last of his wine. In the huge bed, Aria’s face looked like that of a forgotten child’s doll. He tugged off his tunic and sat on the side of the bed to haul off his boots, wishing now that he had not had so much wine. Wishing he had drunk more.

The boots were thrown across the room and his breeches followed. Kaile Ormann’s circlet was laid with more reverence on the low table by the bed. Corfe rubbed his fingers over his face, wondering at the absurdity of it all, the twists of fate which had brought himself and this girl into the same bed. Better not to dwell on it.

He burrowed under the covers feeling tired and vinous and old. Aria jumped as he brushed against her. She was cold.

‘Come here,’ he said. ‘You’re like a blasted icicle.’

He put his arms about her. He was warm from the fire but she was trembling and chilled. She seemed very slim and fragile in his grasp. He nuzzled her hair and the breath caught in his throat. ‘That scent you’re wearing. Where did you get it?’

‘It was a parting gift from my mother.’

He lay still, and could almost have laughed. He had bought that perfume as a young man for his young wife. The Aekir bazaars sold it yet it seemed.

He rolled away from the trembling girl in his arms and stared at the flame light dancing on the tall ceiling.

‘My lord, have I offended you?’ she asked.

‘You’re my wife now, Aria. Call me Corfe.’ He pulled her close. She had warmed now and lay in the crook of his arm with her head resting on his shoulder. When he did not move further she began to trace a ridge of raised flesh on his collar bone. ‘What did this?’

‘A Merduk tulwar.’

‘And this?’

‘That was … hell, I don’t know.’ ‘You have many scars, Corfe.’ ‘I have been all my life a soldier.’

She was silent. Corfe found himself drifting off, his eyes struggling to shut. It was very pleasant lying here like this. He laid a hand on Aria’s smooth hip and traced the curve of her thigh. At that, something in him kindled. He rolled easily on top of her, supporting his weight on his elbows, his hands cupping her face. Her mouth was set in an O of surprise.

That face within his hands, the dark hair fanning out from it. It smote him with old memories. He bent his head and kissed her mouth. She responded timidly, but then seemed to catch fire from his own urgency and became eager or, at least, eager to please.

He tried not to hurt her but she uttered a sharp, small cry all the same, and her nails dug into his back. It did not take long. When he was spent he rolled off her and stared at the ceiling once again, thinking
it is done.
His eyes stung and in the dimness he found himself blinking, as though he faced the pitiless glare of a noon sun.

‘Does it always hurt like that?’ Aria asked quietly.

‘The first time? Yes, no -I suppose so.’

1
must bear you a son. My father told me so,’ she went on. She took his hand under the covers. ‘It was not as bad as I thought it would be.’

‘No?’ He smiled wryly. He could not look at her, but was grateful for her warmth and the touch of her hand and her low voice. He tugged her into his arms again, and she was still talking when he drifted off into black, blessed sleep.

A hammering on the door brought him bolt upright in bed, wide awake in an instant. The fire was a volcanic glow in the hearth. The slats of sky beyond the shutters were black as coal; it was not yet dawn.

‘Sire,’ a voice said beyond the door. ‘News from Ostrabar. Tidings of the utmost urgency.’ It was Felorin.

‘Very well. I’ll be a moment.’ He pulled on his clothes and boots whilst Aria watched him wide-eyed, the sheets pulled up to her chin. He hesitated, and then kissed her on the lips. ‘Go back to sleep. I will return.’ He smoothed her hair and found himself smiling at her, then turned away.

The palace was dark yet, with only a few lamps lit in the wall sconces. Felorin bore a candle-lantern and as the two men strode along the echoing passageways it threw their shadows into mocking capers along the walls.

‘It is Golophin, sir,’ Felorin told Corfe. ‘He is in the Bladehall and refuses to speak to anyone save you. Ensign Baraz brought me word of his return. He has been to Aurungabar, by some magic or other, and something has happened there. I took the liberty of rousing out General Formio also, sir.’

‘You did well. Lead on.’

The Bladehall was a vast cavernous darkness save at one end where a fire had been lit in the massive hearth and a table pulled across upon which a single lamp burned. Golophin stood with his back to the fire, his face a scarred mask impossible to read. At the table sat Formio with parchment, quills and ink, and standing in the shadows was Ensign Baraz.

‘Golophin!’ Corfe barked. Formio stood up at his approach. ‘What’s this news?’

The wizard looked at Baraz and Felorin questioningly.

‘It’s all right. Go on.’

Golophin’s face did not change; still that terrible mask empty of expression. ‘I have been to Aurungabar, never mind how. It would seem that both the Sultan and his Queen were assassinated this morning.’

No one spoke, though even Formio looked stunned. Corfe groped for a chair and sank into it like an old man.

‘You’re sure?’ Baraz blurted.

‘Quite sure,’ the old mage snapped. ‘The city is in an uproar, panicked crowds milling in the streets. They managed to keep it quiet for a couple of hours, but then someone blabbed and now it is common knowledge.’ He faltered, and there was something like disgust in his voice as he added: ‘It is all wearily familiar.’

They looked at Corfe, but the King was sitting with his elbows on his knees, his eyes blank and sightless.

‘Aruan?’ Formio asked at last.

‘That would be my guess. He must have wormed an agent into the household.’

She was dead. His Heria was dead. Finally Corfe spoke. ‘This morning, you say?’

‘Yes, sire. Or yesterday as it is now. Around the third hour before noon.’

Corfe rubbed his chest. The ache had gone, but something worse was settling inexorably in its place. He cleared his throat, trying to clear his mind.

‘Nasir,’ he said. ‘How far along the road is he?’

‘My familiar is with him now. He is ten leagues east of Khedi Anwar at the head of fifteen thousand men - the army he was to bring here.’

‘He knows?’

‘I told him sire, yes. He has already broken camp and is marching back the way he came.’

‘We need those men,’ Formio said in a low voice. ‘Ostrabar needs a sultan,’ Golophin replied. ‘He’s a boy, not yet seventeen.’

‘The army is behind him. And he is Aurungzeb’s publicly acknowledged heir. There is no other.’

Corfe raised his head. ‘Golophin is right. Nasir will need those men to restore order in the capital. We must do without them.’ Heria was dead, truly dead.

He fought the overwhelming wave of hopelessness which was trying to master him.

‘Nasir will be five, maybe six days on the road before he reenters Aurungabar. Golophin, are there any other claimants who could make trouble before he arrives?’

The wizard pondered a moment. ‘Not that I know of.

Aurungzeb has sired other children by concubines, but Nasir is the only son, and he is well-known. I cannot foresee any difficulties with the succession.’

‘Well and good. Who is in authority in Aurungabar at the moment?’

Golophin nodded at Ensign Baraz who stood forgotten in the shadows. ‘That young man’s kinsman, Shahr Baraz the Younger. He was a bodyguard of the Queen at one time, and remained a confidant. It was he who took charge when the maids discovered the bodies.’

‘You have spoken to him?’

‘Briefly.’ Golophin did not relay his own suspicions about Shahr Baraz. The most upright and honourable of men, while he had told the wizard frankly of the assassinations he had nevertheless been holding something back. But, Golophin was convinced, not for his own aggrandisement. Shahr Baraz the Younger was of the old
Hraib,
who held that to tell a lie was to suffer a form of death.

Corfe stood up. ‘Formio, have fast couriers sent to Aurungabar expressing our support for the new Sultan. Our wholehearted and if necessary material support. Get one of the scribes to couch it in the necessary language, but get three copies of it on the road by dawn.’

Formio nodded, and made a note on his parchment. The scrape of his quill and the crack and spit of the logs in the hearth were the only sounds in the looming emptiness of the Bladehall.

‘We will be short of troops now,’ Corfe continued steadily. ‘I will have to weaken Melf’s southern expedition in order to make up the numbers for the main operations here.’ He strode to the fire and, leaning his fists on the stone mantel, he stared at the burning logs below.

‘The enemy will move now, while our ally is temporarily incapacitated. Formio, another dispatch to Aras at Gaderion. He should expect a major assault very soon. And get the courier to repeat the message to Heyd on the road north. Henceforth he will move by forced marches.