The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (14 page)

Narala waited with the wolf. She left the small guest hut on the island of supplicants only once a day to buy food from the vendors who gathered in the noisy market at the north end of the island. They arrived every morning in a flotilla of gaily painted boats and set out their stalls just above the white sand beach among a grove of palms, laying their wares on fibre mats. Those who came first picked the prized spots around the path that led from the guest village, and sat behind their mats, palm trunks for their seat backs, ready to pounce on anyone who showed the slightest interest.

It was a gauntlet that Narala ran each morning. She needed food for herself, but also meat for the wolf. Meat was expensive, but the wolf did not like fish, and seemed not to understand that vegetables were for eating. It raised eyebrows, buying so much meat. The man that sold it did not do a great trade, and his place of business was close to the beach, a poor spot.

She remembered such markets from centuries ago. She had been a child not more than a hundred miles from here, and she had run behind her mother amazed and delighted by the colours and sounds and smells. Not much had changed. The men and women who sold still sat, still shouted the virtues of their wares at anyone less than twenty paces from their mats. They still picked on her.

But Narala was not the same Narala as that little girl. Now the Wolf stood behind her, and she was a formidable warrior in her own right. She had seen more summers than all these people put together, travelled the world from east to west, north to south, seen a thousand towns and cities. She’d eaten spiced glassfish on the docks of Afael, walked across the high passes of the Dragon’s back, thick with snow, stood in the presence of kings, princes, legends, and gods.

Yet for all that this was their place now, not hers. She was a stranger here. Wolfguard was her place, her home, never mind what her skin said.

She walked through the market with an even, confident stride, ignoring the eager cries of the sellers. She was not alone in this. Those who came to this island were all here to the same purpose: to see the Sei. Most were highly placed men seeking favour, asking permission, airing a grievance. They were of high rank or status, and they ignored the common people as a matter of course.

She stopped in front of the man who sold meat. He was a thin man, dressed in a traditional lemo, a simple brown wrap tied and tucked about his waist. He had portions of meat – “fresh today” – folded into palm leaves which he kept cool by means of an awning of coarse cloth that gave shade and a bowl of fresh water. He had a small scoop and constantly dribbled the water across the leaves to lessen the heat.

“Ah, the great lady honours me again,” he cried when she approached. “I am overcome with your beauty. It outshines the sun.”

This, too, was the common way. In the Green Isles the impertinence of the poor was matched only by the haughtiness of the rich. Respect dwelled only in the homes of friends.

“Enough of that,” she said. “Do you have anything edible today, or are you still foisting that week old rotten flesh on your patrons?”

“I am wounded, great lady,” the vendor shouted. “For you know that I only sell the finest goat meat, slaughtered by my own hand in the light of the blessed rising sun this very morning!”

She looked at the meat. What she could see of it seemed fresh enough. To be fair it had been good yesterday. The wolf had devoured it without hesitation. But it did not do to be too easy with these people. She pointed to a cut. “Turn it so that I may see the other side,” she said. The vendor sighed and did so, complaining at her lack of trust and protesting his unimpeachable honesty all the while. It still looked fresh and red. She went on, choosing pieces and examining them, and when she had enough she told him to wrap them in leaves and began to haggle over the price. They came out at about the same as the previous day, as she had known they would.

That task being complete she walked back through the other sellers, buying a fish and a scoop of rice for herself, as well as a selection of vegetables. By now the market was becoming busy, and quite a few wealthy men and their servants and wives strolled about, pointing and choosing things from the mats of the vendors.

“Narala!”

She turned and saw Salis Petraya, the portly merchant. Salis wore a boola, as he always did to hide his bulk. It was a simple enough garment, a square of cloth with a hole cut for the head and draped and belted to the body with a sash of cotton or silk. According to custom the tails of the cloth brushed the ground. Salis’s boola was red silk. His sash was white silk, and around it neck he wore seven strands of leather heavy with gold. Red silk also wrapped his head. He had four men with him; young men in his service, all bearing arms.

“Salis Petraya, I am glad to see you well this morning.” She was not glad to see him at all. She thought him a dangerous, greedy, selfish man.

“As always the sight of you brightens my day,” Salis said. He bowed. He was the sort of man who bowed without taking his eyes from your face. She bowed in return and made to step past him, but Salis put a hand on her arm, then snatched it away again before she could react. “There is something that I must tell you, Narala,” he said.

“Then speak it,” she said. “For I am here and I attend your words.” Polite to a fault.

Salis sidled closer. He dropped his voice. “The lord that you serve,” he whispered. “He who spoke with the Sei two days ago. He is in danger.”

“How so?” She felt a thrill of uncertainty, but Narak was not in danger. She was certain of that. No man here was able to harm him. There was no blood silver, and even if there was she could think of no man capable of surprising the Wolf.

“Sei Feras Tiar,” Salis said. “The King of Blood and Fire would have him dead, and by the king’s hand.”

“He wishes to test himself against Narak?” She was almost amused. The king might be a great warrior, but if he drew a blade on Narak he would learn only humiliation. There could be serious consequences, however. It would not be diplomatic.

“My lord is a great warrior,” she told Salis. “He does not fear the king, but he will not fight him, I am certain, because he seeks an alliance.”

“The Sei will provoke him, I am sure.”

“I thank you for this warning, Salis Petraya. I shall speak to my lord of it, and bloodshed will be avoided.”

Salis shook his head. “There will be blood if the Sei wills it,” he said.

Narala took her leave of the merchant. She walked slowly back along the path to the village, trying to measure the fat man’s mind. Why had he warned her? Was the warning genuine? If he had hoped to provoke a confrontation then it would not work. Narak would not be so easily moved if he knew their intent. But Salis was linked to Sei Koshan Burdenna, and it might be that the King of Storms and Woes believed Narak, wanted alliance with the north. That would be motive enough to warn him. Yet it was not her place to judge. She would tell Narak, tell him what she had been told and what she knew, and he would decide.

She stepped into the hut, pushing aside the thin curtain that served as a door, and saw the wolf lying on the floor, its tongue lolling, panting in the heat. This was not a place for such an animal. In the heat of the southern isles its thick coat was an instrument of torture. She fetched a jug of water and a bowl made of a broken sea shell and filled it, placing it with reach of the beast. She spread the leaves beside it and put the meat on them. The wolf rose and sniffed at the food. The two pounds of meat that she had bought vanished in less than a minute, and the animal stood and stared at her as though willing her to produce more. When she did not it lapped at the water in the bowl, gave her another reproachful stare and circled back down to the floor, its eyes pointing to the door.

So much for her duty.

She sat on the bed and closed her eyes. She was not tired, but if she went out of the hut there would be people, people like Salis who wanted to engage her in conversation, to sound her out and pry at her secrets. She preferred privacy. Instead of going about the island she tried to remember what it had been like here when she was a child.

She had never come to this island, of course. Children were not permitted here. But the Green Isles were blessed with many similar islands. The taller islands were in the north where winds were cooler, and their slopes teemed with life. The soils there were good for growing, and there it was that most of the nation’s crops were grown. This far south the land was poorer. It was sandy and washed in salt, and only palms and hardy grasses thrived here. This was where her people fished. The reefs that fringed many of the southern isles were alive with fish.

Her father had been a fisherman. He owned his boat, owned a small house that he had built himself, and paid two men to work for him. He was prosperous, hard working, kind; a father that any daughter would be proud of. She was happy. She loved her mother and Passala her sister. But her memories were vague and clouded with later imaginings. Eight hundred years is a long time to remember. There was one image that she held, clear as a starry night. Her father jumping off his boat into the surf, the sun shining, the smell of salt and fish and sweat, the smile on his face as she ran beside her sister into his strong, brown arms, the sandy feel of his beard on her face, his smell. Her mother had been behind her, and Narala knew that she was smiling, indulgent, happy. That was all; just a brief moment that she played over and over in her head like a sacred chant. It was her image of perfect happiness.

Those were not peaceful days, though. In that distant time slavers had sailed the isles, Telans as she knew them now, fierce men with long swords and long boats driven by white sails who had come down the coast to attack villages, kill men and women, and seize the children.

The trade was long dead. It had faded away even before the Great War, but she had been a victim, her parents and sister too. She remembered nothing of the day she was taken. She only knew that it must have happened, and her years of slavery were just a blur of misery. Narak had rescued her. She learned later that he had asked for her as a gift, and men rarely denied Narak what he asked for. He knew this, and rarely asked for anything, but he had asked for her.

She remembered nothing until he set her free. Before freedom was darkness, but that day was another bright memory. She had been his for less than a week, and he had asked nothing of her, simply travelled south through Telan lands until he came to the sea, the western sea where she could see the dark, cloud hatted peaks of the Green Isles, her home. He bought a small boat. He told her to get into it.

“You are free to go,” he said.

She had not believed, not at first. It was some cruel trick, she was sure, but he gave her a piece of gold and a ring with a wolf’s head sigil and told her again that she was free, that if she ever wanted to serve him, not as a slave but a free woman, she could seek him out and there would be a place for her at Wolfguard. Show the ring, he said, and people will know.

She had gone. She knew boats and had not forgotten her father’s art.

She did not believe, not truly, until she was out of bowshot, out of hearing, out of sight. Narak stood alone on the beach and watched her sail away, not waving, not calling out, but standing silently, his arms at his sides until he was a speck on the great southern shore of Terras with the mountains of the Dragon’s Back rising up beside him. That was how she still thought of Narak: alone, silent, honest.

It took eleven days for her to make her way home. She stopped at islands and exchanged small pieces of her gold for clothes and food, sleeping in the boat, launching every morning to ride the breezes past isle after isle, barely seeing the bright water, the sun, the occasional rain and thunder.

But home was gone. She ran her boat up onto the beach on the island where she had lived, ran through the palms and grasses to the familiar streets of her village, but the house where she had lived was gone, and a new house stood on the spot. The people who lived there were strangers to her, could tell her nothing of her father and mother, nothing of her pretty sister.

It was the same at the neighbours’ houses, and the rest of the tiny street. The whole village was a stranger, as though a great hand had swept up all she knew and replaced it with something similar yet completely changed. The well was still there, and she sat by the well and wept until a familiar voice spoke to her.

“Narala?”