The Ships of Merior (3 page)

The old blood clans elsewhere had far less in the centuries since the merchant guilds had overset kingdom rule, and headhunters rode to claim bounties.

None of Arithon’s envoy travelled mounted, which
explained the scout’s misleading first report. Maenalle reached the palings that served as the outpost’s main gate just as the arrivals from Rathain filed through. Except for the eastern inflection as one commented, ‘Ath, will you look? This place could pass for a village,’ the party might have blended with one of her patrols, Jieret’s band were weather-worn, observant to the point of edged wariness, and dressed in leathers lacking any dyes or bright ornaments. Their weapons had seen hard use, and every last man carried scars.

The rangy, tangle-haired red-head who stepped out to present his courtesies was no exception. Near to her grandson’s age he might be, yet when he arose from his bow and towered over her, Maenalle revised her assessment. The eyes that met hers were chilly and wide, the mouth amid a gingery bristle of beard, fixed and straight. This was no green youth, but a man of seventeen years who had seen his sisters and parents die in the service of his liege. Grief and premature responsibilities left their mark: a boy of twelve had grown up with the burden of safeguarding the north against the wave of vengeance-bent aggression that had dogged his people ever since the year the Mistwraith’s malice had overset Rathain’s peace.

In Tysan, where the feud between townborn and clan burned hotly enough without impetus from geas-cursed princes, Lady Maenalle shrank to imagine what extremity might bring this man to leave his native glens, to abandon his people and risk an overland journey through hostile territory to seek her.

‘My Lord Earl,’ she murmured. ‘Forgive the lacklustre welcome, but surely you bring us bad news?’ She accepted his kiss on her cheek and stepped back, unwilling to test her dignity too long against the younger man’s frightening sense of presence.

Jieret bent upon Tysan’s lady steward the unsettling intuition inherited from his late mother. ‘We’ve surprised
you.’ The blood on her boots did not escape him, nor the reserve behind her
caithdein’s
black. ‘Let me ease your mind. We didn’t call you back from the joys of the summer hunt to beg armed support for the sake of my liege lord, Arithon.’

‘Not hers to give, if you had,’ grumbled Tashan.

The comment fell through a misfortunate lull in the racket made by curious children. Stung into movement like a bothered bear, a grizzled, fifty-ish war captain with inimical black eyes elbowed past his young chieftain’s shoulder.

Don’t flatter yourselves for restraint.’ Caolle loosed a clipped laugh. ‘His Grace of Rathain’s quite vicious enough on points of pride without anybody’s outside help. He’d spurn even gold that fell at his feet, did it come to him struck with his name on it.’

Unsettled to learn the prince himself had not backed this surprise delegation, Maenalle forestalled the airing of issues more wisely discussed in private. ‘Your war captain sounds like a traveller sorely in need of a beer.’

‘Well, beer won’t help,’ Caolle groused. ‘Just a fair chance at gutting that blond-haired
prandey
who lounges in silk, and sends every trained sword in Etarra and beyond thrashing the countryside to harrow us.’

The trail scouts who guided the visitors stiffened, and a youngster close enough to overhear shouted, ‘Hey! That man called our lord prince the Shandian word for a gelded pleasure bo-’

Maenalle spun swiftly and grabbed the child by the shoulder. ‘Don’t say such filth. Your mother would thrash you. And you shouldn’t be concerned with your elders’ speech when to my knowledge you aren’t on my council.’

The miscreant gasped an apology, darted an enraged glance at Caolle, then sidled away as his lady chieftain released him. To the red-bearded
caithdein
and his grinning, insolent war captain, the steward of the Kingdom
of Tysan finished in flat exasperation, ‘By Ath, this visit of yours had better justify the aggravation.’

To which Earl Jieret s’Valerient said nothing. That the two gifted men who had restored Athera’s sunlight were entrapped in an enmity which bent their bright and deadly talents against each other was a havoc too heartsore for reason.

Neither was he inclined to dwell on ceremony. Minutes later, seated by an untouched glass of wine across the planks of the outpost’s scarred council table, he pulled a letter from the breast of his tunic. The dispatch was speckled with bloodstains. Since affairs between clans were never committed to writing, Maenalle’s eyes flicked at once to discern which town seal impressed the broken wax.

Deshir’s youthful earl saw her interest. ‘The seal was royal, and Tysan’s.’ A reluctant pause, then his quick movement as he offered the missive across the trestle. ‘This was captured from a guild courier riding the Mathorn Road under heavy escort. A state copy, you’ll see, bound for official record with the trade guilds at Erdane. Clan lives were lost to intercept it. We must presume the original reached its destination.’

Maenalle accepted the folded parchment, its ribbons and gilded capitols done in the ornate style of Etarran scribes. She verified her kingdom’s star blazon in its couch of indigo wax. Her glance at the flamboyant heading raised a flash-fire rush of antagonism. ‘But our prince was disbarred from royal privilege! Why should he presume to write under Tysan’s crown seal importuning the Mayor Elect of Korias?’

‘Read,’ growled Caolle.

White in dismay, Maenalle scanned down the lines, growing tenser and angrier, until even Lord Tashan’s drywitted tolerance snapped. ‘What’s in that?’

‘A petition.’ Jieret all but spat on the beaten earth floor. ‘From a prince denied right of sovereignty
demanding title and grant to lands and city. By claim of birth, Lysaer s’Ilessid seeks leave to restore Tysan’s capitol at Avenor.’

‘He’ll never get it,’ Tashan said, halfway to his feet in indignation. ‘Never mind that the merchant guilds won’t stand a royal presence, the palace is in ruins, now. Not one stone stands upright on a foundation since the rebellion wrecked the old order. Past fears will prevail. Not a townborn mason would set foot there, haunted as they believe the site to be. And no clan in this kingdom can endorse a s’Ilessid claim without lawful sanction from the Fellowship.’

‘But that’s half the point,’ Jieret said, too emphatically calm for a man under twenty years of age. ‘The trade guilds in West End have nothing to lose. If the old land routes are rejoined with the Camris roads, they’ll gain profits. The Mayor Elect in Korias will draw up the documents just for the chance to slight royalty. He’s isolated enough not to know your deposed prince has the finesse to create the impossible. Daelion as my witness, in just five years Lysaer’s reconciled Etarra’s stew of rival factions. He’s got guild ministers and town councilmen kissing like brothers, and every independent city garrison in the Kingdom of Rathain conniving to exterminate my clansmen. If Lysaer can whip up armies to challenge a shadow master and a sorcerer, do you think he can’t get walls and barbicans built around the shades of a few thousand ghosts?’

‘Royal sanction or not, your prince won’t lack funds for his enterprise,’ broke in Caolle. ‘The towns are bothered to panic. To curry favour with the man whose gift of light offers protection against wild fears of Arithon’s shadows, every trade guild owing notes to Etarra has offered their gold to fund armies. What townsman would pause to sort the difference between Arithon’s feal liegemen and clanborn everywhere else?’ Caolle slammed opened hands on the table, causing the
thick planks to jump. ‘Fiends! They’re not so damned stupid, citybred fools though they be. If his Grace of Rathain turned up in any clan haven asking guest right, what chieftain would refuse him hospitality?’

‘Havish’s, under High King Eldir, would be wise to.’ Maenalle shut her eyes, her fist with the letter bunched hard at her temple, and her free hand nerveless on the tabletop.

Unless and until the Fellowship sorcerers unriddled a way to break the blood feud engendered by Desh-thiere’s revenge, the perils were too dire to deny.

These men at her table had seen the forefront of the war unleashed between the cursed princes. Even heard at second hand, the ruthless scale of the conflict was enough to bring cold sweats. When Prince Lysaer had raised the Etarran garrison to cut down Rathain’s royal heir, one battle had seen two thirds of Deshir’s clansmen fight to the death, despite the unstinting protections of sorcery and shadows lent by the liege lord they defended. Losses to the attackers had been more devastating. Fears of further retaliation by magecraft had drawn Lysaer to stay on in Rathain to unite its merchant guilds and quarrelsome, independent city governments. Against the rifts of old politics, he had seen stunning success. Every summer, headhunters rode out in greater force to hunt down and slaughter clan fugitives in their search for the Master of Shadow.

For centuries, townsmen had killed clansmen on sight; the stakes now were never more dangerous. The beguiling inspiration of the Prince of the West lent city mayors powerful impetus to pool resources and systematically exterminate enemies already driven deep into hiding.

Having met Lysaer s’Ilessid only briefly, Maenalle still sighed in regret for a gifted statesman’s skills twisted awry by Desh-thiere’s curse. Through the course of just one past visit, her most reticent scouts had warmed to
their prince enough to sorrow rather than rage over his treacherous alliance with town enemies. As for Arithon of Rathain, he was mage-trained: secretive, powerfully clever, and too fiendishly innovative to crumple before whatever odds Lysaer would raise against him.

‘Where is your liege?’ Maenalle asked. ‘Does Arithon know his adversary now looks to claim ancestral lands in Tysan?’

Because her eyes were averted, only Tashan saw the exasperated look that flashed between the earl and his war captain. To Jieret’s staunch credit, he found courage to answer her directly. ‘We came to give warning. Of Arithon’s intent, we’ve no clue. When he left us, he made his will plain. He would not have his presence become a target to encourage the geas that drives him and Lysaer to war.’

Still bluntly irked over a clash of wills fully five years gone, Caolle knotted ham fists on the trestle top. ‘We haven’t seen or heard from our liege since the rite sung over our war dead. Ath knows where he is. His Grace himself won’t deign to send word.’

Which explained the hardness behind Jieret’s focused maturity, Maenalle concluded in silent pain. To him alone had fallen the task of guarding his people from Etarra’s seasonal purge by headhunters. The woman in her ached for her grandson, who might come to taste the same griefs.

If Lysaer won title to Avenor, the rift engendered by Desh-thiere’s ills, that had sundered Rathain and sparked old hates to furious bloodshed, must inevitably sweep into Tysan.

‘Our clans will prepare for the worst,’ Maenalle concluded in bitterness. She arose, let the wrung parchment fall on the tabletop, then offered the beleaguered young earl the courtesy due to an equal, for whether he had gained the privilege of swearing fealty to a lawfully sanctioned prince, like her, he was
caithdein
to a realm
without a king. His liege lord did not back him; by himself, Jieret had shouldered the risk, had left Rathain’s shores with the fourteen companions who were his last surviving peers to bring word of Lysaer’s false intent.

For all her sixty years, Maenalle felt tired and disheartened; beaten down with sorrow enough to contemplate what this red-bearded stripling would not, even for grief since the slaughter of his family: break down and give way to hatred, abandon himself to vindictive killing.

‘You don’t resent your prince for going,’ she found herself saying in unabashed awe. Tashan turned around to stare at her, while Caolle looked on, nonplussed.

Their reactions passed unheeded as Jieret gave her the first true smile she had seen. ‘I admire Arithon, much as my father did, though my line’s gift of Sight warned us both that my family would die in royal service.’

‘I met your liege once,’ Maenalle admitted. ‘Though I never saw him work shadows or magecraft, Ath grant me grace, I wish never to cross wits with him again.’

Rueful in grim understanding, Jieret said, ‘Never mind Ath. If my liege has his way, you probably won’t. I believe he finds contentment in obscurity.’

Neither cynical Caolle nor Tysan’s lady steward wasted breath to belabour the obvious: that Prince Lysaer’s public presence and insidious charisma must eventually come to prevail. Arithon of Rathain would awaken one day, else be battered from his complaisance.

Talith, sister to Etarra’s Lord Commander of the Guard, could recall when early autumn had filled the city with the smell of ripe apples. Hauled in on the farm-wains that toiled up the winding roads through the passes, the fruit had been unloaded in piles on burlap in the raucous expanse of the markets. In imitation of the pranks of older gallants, bored, rich young boys once delighted in upsetting the stacks to the detriment of passing traffic. Birds squabbled over the cidery crush milled under by the cartwheels, and winds whisked their burden of scraping, flying leaves, sharpened by frost off the peaks.

But if the sunlight restored since the Mistwraith’s captivity had increased the orchards’ bounty, Etarra held widespread change.

Spurred to fears of attack by shadows and sorcery, and through promise to aid armed resource with the powers over light that alone could protect and counterward, the brilliant statesmanship of one man had annealed strained politics into alliance. Due to Lysaer s’Ilessid’s dedication, the disparate city governments inside Rathain’s borders now stood united in common cause. The miracle of their accord brought unprecedented
co-operation. Against the barbarian clans who had harboured the fugitive Master of Shadow, every garrison in the north levied troops to support Etarra’s campaign.

Apples were now stacked in barrels to discourage pilfering, and the season’s turn jammed streets built wide enough to accommodate the heaviest caravans with shipments of provisions and arms for the bursars. Arranged like a hub in the Mathom Pass, the wealthiest trade centre on the continent spent its treasury to house and maintain a war camp through the winter. The hay-fields nearest to the walls sprouted a muddy, trampled maze of officer’s shacks, supply tents and barracks, each block marked off like street signs by standards with sun-faded banners. Grown yearly more familiar, the taint of coal from the armourers’-fires wrapped the rooftops in haze that deepened with dusk to blue mist.