Читать книгу A Song for Arbonne - Guy Gavriel Kay - Страница 13

Ademar, king of Gorhaut, slowly turns away from the diverting if extremely messy struggle taking place in front of the throne between the carefully maimed hound and the three cats that have been set upon it. Not even acknowledging the half-clothed woman kneeling on the stone floor in front of him with his sex in her mouth, he looks narrowly over at the man who has just spoken, interrupting this double amusement.

‘We are not certain we heard you correctly,’ the king says in his unexpectedly high voice. The tone however is one his court has come to know well in little over a year. Not a few of the fifty or so men assembled in the audience chamber in the king’s palace at Cortil offer silent thanks to Corannos that they are not the recipients of that gaze or that tone. The handful of women present might have different thoughts, but the women do not matter in Gorhaut.

With an elaborate casualness that fools no one, Duke Ranald de Garsenc reaches for his ale and drinks deeply before answering. To his credit, the more attentive eyes among the court note, de Garsenc’s hand is steady as he sets the heavy flagon down again. Looking across the wooden trestle table at the king, he lifts his voice. ‘I understand you were talking about Arbonne this morning. I simply said, why don’t you marry the bitch? She’s a widow, she’s heirless, what could be simpler?’

The king’s extremely large, ringless hands descend absently to first loop themselves in the long black hair and then to briefly encircle the ceaselessly working throat of the girl on her knees in front of him. He never actually looks down at her though. Beyond her, the old hound has now fallen; it is lying on one side panting raggedly, blood streaming from a great many wounds. The cats, starved for five days, are avidly beginning to feed. Ademar smiles thinly for a moment, watching, and then makes a sudden moue of distaste as the dog’s entrails begin to spill onto the floor. He gestures, and the handlers spring forward to seize the four animals and bear them from the room. The cats, ravenous and deranged, make high-pitched shrieking sounds that can be heard even after the doors at the far end have closed behind them. The smell of blood and wet fur lingers, mixed with stinging smoke from the fires and spilled beer on the tables where the high lords of Gorhaut are permitted by ancient custom to sit and drink in the presence of their liege.

Their liege closes his eyes at just that moment. His large, well-knit body stiffens and an expression of pleased surprise crosses his fair-skinned, full-bearded features. There is an awkward silence in the room as courtiers see reason to scrutinize their fingernails or the dark beams of the ceiling. With a sigh, Ademar slumps back on the throne. When he opens his eyes again it is to look, as he always does when this particular amusement reaches its climax, at the women of his court, gathered near the windows to the left of the throne. The more discreet among them are looking assiduously down and away. One or two are visibly discomfited. One or two others are equally flushed, but for what seem to be different reasons, and these are the ones whose eyes gaze boldly back at Ademar’s. Screening the king’s lower body with her own, the kneeling woman attends to the points and drawstrings of his garments and carefully smooths his breeches and hose before tilting her head up for permission to withdraw.

Slouching back in his throne, Ademar of Gorhaut looks down at her for the first time. With an indolent finger he traces the contours of her lips. He smiles, the same thin smile as before. ‘Attend to the duke of Garsenc,’ he says. ‘My father’s former champion seems a man sorely in need of the ministrations of a proper woman.’ The girl, expressionless, rises and paces gracefully across the floor towards the man who had interrupted the king’s pleasure a moment before. There is a ripple of coarse laughter in the room; Ademar grins, acknowledging it. Beside the window one woman turns away suddenly to look out over the misty grey of the landscape. Ademar of Gorhaut notices that. He notices a great deal, his court has come to realize in the short period of his reign.

‘My lady Rosala,’ the king says, ‘turn not away from us. We covet the sunshine of your countenance on a day so dreary as this. And it may be your husband will be well pleased to have you learn a new skill as you watch.’

The woman called Rosala, tall, yellow-haired and visibly with child, delays a long moment before obeying the command and turning back to the room. She nods her head formally in response to the king’s words but does not speak. The other girl has by now slipped under the long table and can be seen settling herself in front of Duke Ranald de Garsenc. The duke’s colour is suddenly high. He avoids looking towards the side of the room where his wife stands among the women. A few of the lesser courtiers, bright-eyed with amusement and malice, have strolled over to stand by his shoulder, glancing downwards with an intense simulation of interest at what is now taking place beneath the table. Ranald stares straight ahead, looking at no one. This amusement of the king’s has taken place before, but never with a lord of so high a rank. It is a measure of Ademar’s power, or the fear he elicits, that he can do this to a man who was once King’s Champion in Gorhaut, however many years ago that was.

‘Marry the bitch,’ the king repeats slowly, as if tasting the syllables on his tongue. ‘Marry the countess of Arbonne. How old is Signe de Barbentain now, sixty-five, seventy? An astonishing suggestion … how is she with her mouth, does anyone know?’

Several of the men and one of the women by the window titter with laughter again. None of the foreign envoys is in the room at the moment; given the current subject matter, an extremely good thing. Rosala de Garsenc is pale, but her square, handsome features betray no expression at all.

On the other side of the room her husband abruptly reaches for his flagon again. This time he spills some ale as he brings it to his lips. He wipes his moustache with a sleeve and says, ‘Does it matter? Would anyone imagine I speak of more than a marriage of acquisition?’ He pauses and glances, almost involuntarily, downward for an instant, and then resumes. ‘You marry the crone, pack her off to a castle in the north and inherit Arbonne when she dies of fever or ague or whatever else the god sees fit to send her. Then you follow through with your marriage to Daufridi of Valensa’s daughter. She may even be old enough to bed by then.’

Ademar has turned in his seat to look fully at him, his pale eyes unreadable above the yellow beard. He says nothing, chewing meditatively on one end of his long moustache. There is a stir at the far end of the room, made louder by the silence around the throne. The great doors swing open and the guards let someone through. A very large man in a dark blue robe enters, striding purposefully forward. Seeing him, Ademar’s face lights up. He grins like a mischievous child and glances quickly back at Ranald de Garsenc, who has also taken note of the man entering, though with a very different expression on his face.

‘My dear High Elder,’ the king says, his tone brightly malicious now, ‘you are narrowly in time to observe how we value our cousin, your son, and his wise counsels. Our well-beloved Mistress Belote is even now assuaging him with his lady wife’s full approval. Will you come make this a family affair?’

Galbert de Garsenc, High Elder of Corannos in Gorhaut, Chief Counsellor to the King, disdains to even glance at his son, nor does he appear to acknowledge the amusement in the room that takes its cue from the king’s brittle tone. He stops not far from the throne, a bulky, formidable presence, and inclines his large, smooth face towards Ademar, saying merely, ‘What counsels, my liege?’ His voice is deep and resonant; though he speaks quietly it fills the large chamber.

‘What counsels, indeed! Duke Ranald has just advised us to marry the countess of Arbonne, send her off north and inherit her sun-drenched country when she succumbs in her decrepitude to some lamentable pestilence. Would this be a thought you and your son have devised together?’

Galbert, the only clean-shaven man in the room, turns to look at his son for the first time as the king finishes speaking. Ranald de Garsenc, though very pale, meets his father’s gaze without flinching. With a contemptuous twist of his mouth, Galbert turns back to the king.

‘It would not,’ he says heavily. ‘Of course it is not, my liege. I do not devise with such as he. My son is fit for nothing but spilling ale on himself and occupying tavern sluts.’

The king of Gorhaut laughs, a curiously joyous, high-pitched sound in the dark-beamed, shadowed room. ‘Tavern sluts? In the name of our blessed god! What a way to speak of the noble lady his wife, my lord Galbert! The woman bearing your grandchild! Surely you do not think—’

The king stops, hilarity vivid in his face, as a flagon of ale hurtles across the room to strike the High Elder of Corannos full on his broad chest. Galbert stumbles heavily backwards and almost falls. At the long table Ranald rises, hastily pushing his semi-erect member back into his clothing. Two guards step belatedly forward but pause at a gesture from the king. Breathing heavily, Ranald de Garsenc points a shaking finger at his father.

‘Next time I might kill you,’ he says. His voice trembles. ‘Next time it may be a knife. Take note for your life. If you speak so of me again, anywhere where I might hear of it, it may mean your death and I will submit myself to whatever judgment of that deed Corannos makes when I leave the world.’

There is a shocked silence. Even in a court not unused to this sort of thing, especially from the de Garsenc clan, the words are sobering. Galbert’s rich blue robe is stained with dark ale. He fixes his son with a glance of icy contempt, easily a match for Ranald’s impassioned rage, before turning back to the king. ‘Will you allow such an assault upon your High Elder, my liege? An attack upon my person is an insult to the god above us all. Will you sit by and let this impiety go unpunished?’ The deep voice is still controlled, resonantly pitched, soberly aggrieved.

Ademar does not immediately reply. He leans back once more against the heavy wooden seat-back of the throne, stroking his beard with one hand. Father and son remain on their feet, rigid and intense. The hatred between them lies heavy and palpable in the room, seeming denser than the smoke of the fires.

‘Why,’ says King Ademar of Gorhaut, at length, his voice sounding even higher and more querulous after the High Elder’s deep tones, ‘is it such a foolish idea for me to wed Signe de Barbentain?’

Abruptly Duke Ranald sits again, a tiny smile of vindication playing about his lips. Impatiently he moves a knee to forestall an obedient attempt by the woman beneath the table to resume her attentions. On the far side of the room he notices that his wife has turned away again and is staring out the window with her back to the king and the court. It has begun to rain. He looks at Rosala’s profile for a moment, and a curious expression crosses his own features. After a moment he lifts his flask and drinks again.

The only thing I really don’t know, Rosala de Garsenc is thinking just then, looking out at the cold, steady, slanting rain and the mist-wrapped eastern moors, is which of them I despise most.

It is not a new thought. She has spent a remarkable amount of time trying to decide whether she more hates the erratic, usually inebriated man she’d been forced to wed by the late King Duergar, or the dangerously cunning, Corannos-obsessed High Elder of the god, her husband’s father. If she chooses, as today, to take the thoughts one small, very natural step further, it is easy to include Duergar’s son, now King Ademar of Gorhaut, in that blighted company. In part because she is uneasily, constantly aware that when the child she now carries is born she is going to have to contend with the king in a very particular way. She doesn’t know why he has singled her out, why her manner seems to have captivated him—goaded him, more likely, she sometimes thinks—but there is no denying the import of Ademar’s flat, pale gaze and the way it lingers on her, especially in that dangerous time of night here in Cortil after too much ale has been drunk around the banquet tables but before the women are permitted to leave.

One of the reasons, perhaps unfairly, that she despises her husband is for the way in which he will notice the king staring at her and indifferently turn away to his dice cup or his flagon. The duke of Garsenc ought surely, Rosala had thought, in the early months of her marriage, to have more pride in him than that. It appeared, though, that the only people who could arouse Ranald to anything resembling passion or spirit were his father and brother, and that, of course, was its own old, bleak story. It sometimes seems to Rosala that she has been part of their tale forever; it is hard to remember clearly back to a time when the lords of Garsenc have not trammelled her tightly about with their festering family griefs. It had been different at home in Savaric, but Savaric was a long time ago.

The wind is rising now, coming about to the east, sending droplets and then a gusty sheet of rain through the window to strike her face and the bodice of her gown. She doesn’t mind the cold, she even welcomes it, but there is a child to think of now. Reluctantly she turns away, back to the smoky, stale, crowded room, to hear her husband’s father begin to speak to the issue of forced marriages and conquest in the warm bright south.

‘My liege, you know the reasons as well as I, so, indeed does every man in this room, save one perhaps.’ The glance flicked sideways at Ranald is so brief as to carry its own measure of bone-deep contempt. ‘Even the women know my son’s folly when they hear it. Even the women.’ Beside Rosala, Adelh de Sauvan, who is venal and corrupt and newly widowed, smiles. Rosala sees that and looks away.

‘To wed the countess of Arbonne,’ Galbert goes on, his rich voice filling the room, ‘we would need her consent. This, she will not give. Ever. If she did, for whatever reason, maddened by woman’s desire perhaps, she would be deposed and slain by the assembled dukes of Arbonne before any wedding could take place. Think you that the lords of Carenzu or Malmont or Miraval would sit by and watch us so easily stake a claim to their land? Even a woman should be able to see the folly in such a fatuous thought. What, my liege, do you think the troubadour lord of Arbonne would do at such a time … think you that Bertran de Talair would stand by and let such a marriage take place?’

‘That name is forbidden here!’ Ademar of Gorhaut says quickly, leaning abruptly forward. Two spots of unnatural colour show in his cheeks above the beard.

‘And so it should be,’ Galbert says smoothly, as if he’d expected exactly that response. ‘I have as much reason as you my liege to hate that schemer and his godless, discordant ways.’

Rosala smiles inwardly at that, keeping her features carefully schooled. It was little over a month ago that de Talair’s latest song had reached the court of Gorhaut. She remembers the night; wind and rain then, too, a trembling, whey-faced bard obeying Ademar’s command, singing the duke of Talair’s verses in a voice like rasping iron:

Shame then in springtime for proud Gorhaut,

Betrayed by a young king and his counsellor.

And more, much more, and worse, in the creaking, barely audible mumblings of the terrified singer while a wind blew on the moors outside:

Where went the manhood of Gorhaut and Valensa

When war was abandoned and pale peace bought

By weak kings and sons long lost to their lineage?

Rosala can almost find a kind of warmth in her heart at the memory of the torchlit faces around her that night. The expressions of the king, of Galbert, the furtive glances that flitted about the hall from one newly landless lord or coran to another as the driving music brought the force of the words home, even in the timid voice of the singer. The bard, a young trovaritz from Götzland, had almost certainly owed his continued life to the presence in the great hall of Cortil that evening of the envoy from his own country and the undeniable importance of keeping peace with King Jörg of Götzland at this juncture of the world’s affairs. Rosala had no doubt what Ademar would have liked to do when the music ended.

Now he leans urgently forward again, almost rising from the throne, the two bright spots vivid in his cheeks and says, ‘No man has as much reason as we do, Galbert. Do not exalt yourself.’

The High Elder gently shakes his head. Again the rich voice encompasses the room, so warm, so caring, it can so easily deceive one into thinking the man is profoundly other than he is. Rosala knows about that; she knows almost everything about that by now.

‘It is not in my own name that I take umbrage, my liege,’ says Galbert. ‘I am as nothing, nothing at all in myself. But I stand before you and before the eyes of all those in the six countries as the voice of the god in Gorhaut. And Gorhaut is the Heartland, the place where Corannos of the Ancients was born in the days before man walked and woman fell into her ruin. An insult to me is a blow delivered to the most high god and must not be tolerated. Nor will it be, for all the world knows your mettle and your mind in this, my liege.’

It is fascinating, Rosala thinks, how smoothly, how effortlessly, Galbert has shifted the matter at hand. Ademar is nodding his head slowly; so are a number of the men in the hall. Her husband is drinking, but that is to be expected. Briefly, Rosala feels sorry for him.

‘We would have thought,’ the king says slowly, ‘that Daufridi of Valensa would share our attitude to this provocation. Perhaps when we next receive his envoy we ought to discuss the matter of Bertran de Talair.’

Daufridi has all our land north of Iersen now, Rosala finds herself thinking bitterly, and knows that others will be framing the same thought. He can afford to tolerate insults from Arbonne. Her family’s ancient estates along the Iersen River are right on the newly defined northern border of Gorhaut now; Savaric had not been so exposed ever before. And there are men in this room whose lands and castles have been given away; they are part of Valensa now, ceded by treaty, surrendered in the peace after being saved in the war. King Ademar is surrounded by hungry, ambitious, angry men, who will need to be assuaged, and soon, however much they might fear him for the moment.

It is all so terribly clear, Rosala thinks, her face a mask, blank and unrevealing.

‘By all means,’ Galbert the High Elder is saying, ‘raise the matter with the Valensan envoy. I think we can deal with a shabby rhymester by ourselves, but it would indeed be well to have certain other matters understood and arranged before another year has come and gone.’

Rosala sees her husband lift his head at that, looking not at his father but at the king.

‘What matters?’ Duke Ranald says, loudly, in the silence. ‘What needs to be understood?’ It is only with an effort sometimes that Rosala is able to remember that her husband was once the most celebrated fighting man in Gorhaut, champion to Ademar’s father. A long time ago, that was, and the years have not sat kindly on the shoulders of Ranald de Garsenc.

Ademar says nothing, chewing on his moustache. It is Ranald’s father who replies, the faintest hint of triumph in the magnificent voice. ‘Do you not know?’ he asks, eyebrows elaborately arched. ‘Surely one so free with idle counsels can riddle this puzzle through.’

Ranald scowls blackly but refuses to put the question again. Rosala knows he doesn’t understand; again she feels an unexpected impulse of sympathy for him during this latest skirmish in his lifelong battle with what his father is. She doubts Ranald is the only man here bemused by the cryptic byplay between the High Elder and the king. It happens, though, that her own father, in his day, had been a master of diplomacy, high in the counsels of King Duergar, and Rosala and one brother were the only two of his children to survive into adulthood. She had learned a great deal, more than women tended to in Gorhaut. Which, she knows, is a large part of her own private grief right now, trapped among the de Garsenc and their hates.

But she does understand things, she can see them, almost too clearly. If he is sober enough, Ranald will probably want her thoughts tonight when they are alone. She knows the heavy, hectoring tone he will use, the scorn with which he will quickly dismiss her replies if she chooses to offer any, and she also knows how he will go away from her after and muse upon what she tells him. It is a power of sorts, she is aware of that; one that many women have used to put their own stamp, as a seal upon a letter, upon the events of their day.

But such women have two things Rosala lacks. A desire, a passion even, to move and manipulate amid the fever and flare of court events, and a stronger, worthier vessel in which to pour their wisdom and their spirit than Ranald de Garsenc is ever going to be.

She doesn’t know what she will tell her husband if he asks for her thoughts that evening. She suspects he will. And she is almost certain she does know what his father’s designs are and, even more, that the king is going to move with them. Ademar is being guided, as a capricious stallion by a master horsebreaker, towards a destination Galbert has likely wanted to reach for more years than anyone knows. King Duergar of Gorhaut had not been a man susceptible to the persuasion of anyone in his court, including his clergy—perhaps especially his clergy—and so the High Elder’s access to real power dates back only to the precise moment when a Valensan arrow, arching through a wintry twilight, found Duergar’s eye in that grim, cold battle by Iersen Bridge a year and a half ago.

And now Duergar is dead and burned on his pyre, and his handsome son rules in Cortil, and there is a peace signed in the north disinheriting a quarter of the people of Gorhaut, whether of high estate or low. Which means—surely anyone could see it if they only stopped to look—one thing that will have to follow. Instinctively, a motion of withdrawal as much a reflex as a forest creature’s retreat from a tongue of flame, Rosala turns back to the window. It is springtime in Gorhaut, but the grey rains show no signs of ending and the damp chill can ache in one’s very bones.

It will be warmer, she knows, warmer and softer and with a far more benevolent light in the sky, in Arbonne. In woman-ruled Arbonne, with its Court of Love, its wide, rich, sun-blessed lands, its sheltered, welcoming harbours on the southern sea and its heresy of Rian the goddess ruling alongside the god, not crouched in maidenly subservience beneath his iron hand.

‘We will have much to speak of yet,’ Galbert de Garsenc is saying, ‘before summer draws fully upon us, and to you my liege will rightly fall all decisions that must be made and the great burden of them.’ He raises his voice; Rosala does not turn back from the window. She knows what he is about to say, where he is taking the king, taking all of them.

‘But as High Elder of Corannos in this most ancient, holy land where the god was born, I will say this to you, my liege, and to all those gathered here. Thanks to your great wisdom, Gorhaut is at peace in the north for the first time in the lifetime of most of those here. We need not draw axe and sword to guard our borders and our fields from Valensa. The pride and the might of this country under King Ademar is as great as it has ever been in our long history, and ours is still and ever the holy stewardship through the six countries of the power of the god. In these halls walk the descendants of the first corans—the earliest brothers of the god—who ever bestrode the hills and valleys of the known world. And it may be—if you, my liege, should decide to make it so—that to us will fall a scourging task worthy of our great fathers. Worthy of the greatest bards ever to lift voice in celebration of the mighty of their day.’

Oh, clever, Rosala thinks. Oh, very neatly done, my lord. Her eyes are fixed on what lies beyond the window, on the mist rolling in over the moors. She wants to be out there alone on a horse, even in rain, even with the child quickening in her womb, far from this smoky hall, these voices and rancours and sour desires, far from the honey-smooth manipulations of the High Elder behind her.

‘Beyond the mountains south of us they mock Corannos,’ Galbert says, passion now infusing his voice. ‘They live under the god’s own bright sun, which is his most gracious gift to man, and they mock his sovereignty. They demean him with temples to a woman, a foul goddess of midnight and magics and the blood-stained rites of women. They cripple and wound our beloved Corannos with this heresy. They unman him, or they think they do.’ His voice sinks again, towards intimacy, the nuanced notes of a different kind of power. The whole room is with him now as in the toils of a spell, Rosala can sense it; even the women beside her are leaning forward slightly, lips parted, waiting.

‘They think they do,’ Galbert de Garsenc repeats softly. ‘In time, in our time if we are worthy, they shall learn their folly, their endless, eternal folly, and holy Corannos shall not be mocked in the lands of the Arbonne River ever again.’

He does not end on a rousing note; it is not yet time. This is a first proclamation only, a beginning, a muted instrument sounded amid smoking fires and a late, cold spring, with slanting rain outside and mist on the moors.

‘We will withdraw,’ the king of Gorhaut says at length in his high voice, breaking the stillness. ‘We will take private counsel with our Elder of the god.’ He rises from the throne, a tall, handsome, physically commanding man, and his court sinks low in genuflection like stalks of corn before the wind.

It is so clear, Rosala is thinking as she rises to her feet again, so clear what is to come.

‘Do tell me, my dear,’ Adelh de Sauvan murmurs, materializing at her elbow, ‘have you any late tidings of your much-travelled brother-in-law?’

Rosala stiffens. A mistake, and she knows it immediately. She forces herself to smile blandly, but Adelh is a master at catching one unawares.

‘Nothing recent, I fear,’ she answers calmly. ‘He was still in Portezza, the last we heard, but that was some months ago. He doesn’t communicate very much. If he does, I shall be most certain to convey your anxious interest.’

A weak shaft, that one, and Adelh only smiles, her dark eyes lustrous. ‘Please do,’ she replies. ‘I would think any woman would be interested in that one. Such an accomplished man, Blaise, an equal, a rival even to his great father I sometimes think.’ She pauses, precisely long enough. ‘Though hardly to your dear husband, of course.’ She says it with the sweetest expression imaginable on her face.

Two other women come up just then, blessedly freeing Rosala from the need to frame a reply. She waits long enough for courtesy to be served and then moves away from the window. She is cold suddenly, and wants very much to leave. She cannot do so without Ranald, though, and she sees, with a brief inward yielding to despair, that he has refilled his flagon, and his dice and purse are on the table in front of him now.

She moves towards the nearest of the fires and stands with her back to the blaze. In her mind she goes back over that short, unsettling exchange with Adelh. She cannot stop herself from wondering what, if anything, the woman could possibly know. It is only malice, she finally decides, only the unthinking, effortless malice that defined Adelh de Sauvan even before her husband died with King Duergar by Iersen Bridge. An instinct for blood, something predatory.

Rosala has a sudden recollection, involuntary and frightening, of the starving cats and the torn, dying hound. She shivers. Unconsciously her hands come up to rest upon her belly, as if to cradle and shelter from the waiting world the life taking shape within her.

The light was the extraordinary thing, the way in which the sun in a deep blue sky seemed to particularize everything, to render each tree, bird on the wing, darting fox, blade of grass, something vividly bright and immediate. Everything seemed to somehow be more of whatever it was here, sharper, more brilliantly defined. The late-afternoon breeze from the west took the edge off the heat of the day; even the sound of it in the leaves was refreshing. Though that, on reflection, was ridiculous: the sound of the wind in the trees was exactly the same in Gorhaut or Götzland as it was here in Arbonne; there just seemed to be something about this country that steered the mind towards such imaginings.

A troubadour, Blaise thought, riding through afternoon sunshine, would probably be singing by now, or composing, or shaping some quite unintelligible thought based on the symbolic language of flowers. There were certainly enough flowers. A troubadour would know the names of all of them, of course. Blaise didn’t, partly because there were varieties of extravagantly coloured wildflowers here in Arbonne that he’d never seen before, even among the celebrated, rolling countryside between the cities of Portezza.

The land here was beautiful, he conceded, without grudging the thought this time. He wasn’t in a grudging mood this afternoon; the light was too benevolent, the country through which he rode too genuinely resplendent at the beginning of summer. There were vineyards to the west and the dense trees of a forest beyond them. The only sounds were the wind and the chatter of birds and the steady jingle of harness on his horse and the pack pony behind. In the distance ahead Blaise could see at intervals the blue sparkle of water on a lake. If the directions he’d been given at last night’s inn were correct, the lake would be Dierne and Castle Talair would be visible soon, nestled against the northern shore. He should be able to make it by day’s end at a comfortable pace.

It was hard not to be in a good humour today, whatever one’s thoughts might be about country and family and the slowly darkening tenor of events in the world. For one thing, Blaise’s leave-taking at Baude four days ago had been a genuinely cordial parting. He’d worried for a time about how Mallin would receive his defection to the ranks of the corans of Bertran de Talair, but the young lord of Castle Baude seemed to have almost expected Blaise’s announcement when it came, two days after En Bertran rode off, and even—or so it seemed to Blaise—to almost welcome it.

There might, in fact, have been pragmatic reasons for that. Mallin was a comfortable but not a wealthy man, and the expenses of aspiring towards a place of honour on the higher ramparts of the world might have begun to give him pause. After a fortnight’s extravagant entertainment of the troubadour lord of Talair, it was possible that Mallin de Baude was not averse to some measures of economizing, and seasoned mercenary captains such as Blaise of Gorhaut were not inexpensive.

On the morning of Blaise’s departure, Mallin had wished him the blessing of the god and of Rian the goddess as well; this was Arbonne, after all. Blaise accepted the one with gratitude and the other with good grace. He’d surprised himself with the degree of regret he felt bidding farewell to the baron and to the corans he’d trained: Hirnan, Maffour and the others. He hadn’t expected to miss these men; it seemed as if he was going to, for a little while at least.

Soresina, in the last days before he went, was a different, more unsettling sort of surprise. The simple truth was, however much Blaise might want to deny it, that the lady of Castle Baude, always an attractive woman and aware of it, seemed to have grown in both dignity and grace in a very short period. Specifically, the short period since Bertran de Talair’s visit to the highlands. Was it possible that a single furtive night with the duke could have effected such a change? Blaise hated the very notion, but could not deny the poised courtesy of Soresina’s subsequent treatment of him, or the elegance of her appearance at her husband’s side in the days that passed between Bertran’s departure and Blaise’s own. There was not even the shadow of a hint in her expression or manner of what had taken place on the stairway below her chambers so little time ago. She did seem pensive at times, almost grave, as if inwardly coming to terms with some shift in her relations with the world.

Soresina was with Mallin when the baron and his corans rode part of the way with Blaise on the morning he took leave of the western highlands. She’d offered him her cheek to kiss, not merely her hand. After the briefest hesitation Blaise had leaned sideways in his saddle and complied.

Soresina had glanced up at him as he straightened. He remembered a glance she’d offered him shortly after he’d arrived, when she’d told him how she liked men after the older fashion, warlike and hard. There was an echo of that now, she was still the same woman after all, but there was also something else that was new.

‘I hope some woman elsewhere in your travels through Arbonne persuades you to remove that beard,’ she said. ‘It scratches, Blaise. Grow it back, if you must, when you return to Gorhaut.’

She was smiling at him as she spoke, entirely at ease, and Mallin de Baude, visibly proud of her, laughed and gripped Blaise’s arm a last time in farewell.

There had been a number of farewells in his life during the past few years, Blaise thought now, three days after that morning departure, riding amid the scent and colours of wildflowers, past the green and purple beginnings of grapes on the vines, with blue water in the distance beckoning him with flashes of mirrored sunlight. Too many goodbyes, perhaps, but they were a part of the life he’d chosen for himself, or had had chosen for him by his birth and his family’s rank, and the laws, written or unwritten, that guided the country of Gorhaut through the shoals of a rocky world.

There had been regret, anger at twists of fate, real pain in Portezza the last time he was there, but it seemed that in the end he truly was most content as he was now, on his own, answerable to no man—and certainly no woman—save for service honourably owed by contract freely entered into. There was little that was greatly unusual about any of the patterns of his life. It was a well-enough trodden path in the lives of younger sons of noble families in the world as they knew it. The eldest son married, fathered other children, inherited all: the lands—fiercely guarded, scrupulously undivided—the family goods, and whatever titles had been earned and not lost as one monarch succeeded another in Gorhaut. The daughters of such houses were expensively downed pawns, though often vital ones, married off to consolidate alliances, expand holdings, lay claim or seige to even higher rank for the family.

Which left little enough for the other sons. Younger sons were a problem, and had been so for a long time, ever since the dwindling sizes of partitioned estates had changed the system of inheritance. All but barred from a useful marriage by virtue of their lack of land or chattels, forced to leave the family dwellings by friction or pride or sheerest self-protection, many entered the clergy of Corannos or attached themselves to the household corans of another high lord. Some followed a third, less predictable course, going out into the world beyond the country of their birth, alone on the always dangerous roads or more often in smaller or larger groupings to seek their fortune. In a season of war they would be found at the battlefields; in the rarer times of tranquillity they would be stirring up strife themselves with a restless champing at the bit of peace, or maiming and hammering each other in the tournament mêlées that moved with the trade fairs from town to town through the known lands of the world.

Nor was this pattern only true in Gorhaut. Bertran de Talair, until his older brother died childless and he became the duke, had been among this roving number in his own day, one of the most celebrated, bringing a sword and a harp, both, and later a joglar expensively outfitted in his livery, to battlefield and tournament in Götzland and Portezza and watery Valensa in the north.

Blaise of Gorhaut, years later, and for a variety of reasons, had become another such man, ever since he’d been anointed as a coran by King Duergar himself.

He’d left home with his horse and armour and weapons and his skills with them, skills that had travelled well and not without profit—most of it banked in Portezza now with Rudel’s family. It was a life that had left him, riding alone under the sun of summer in Arbonne, untied and untrammelled by the bonds that seemed to ensnare so many of the men he knew.

He would have scorned the question and the questioner both, but if asked that day, Blaise would have said that he was not an unhappy man, for all the bitterness that lay behind him at home and among the dangerous cities of Portezza. He would have said he knew the future he wanted for himself, and that for the foreseeable future it was not unlike the present through which he rode, in whatever country it might chance to fall. He wasn’t particular about that, he would have said. If you kept moving there was less chance of putting down roots, forming bonds, caring for people … learning what happened when those men or women you cared for proved other than you had thought them. Though he would never have said that last aloud, however assiduously a questioner pursued.

Cresting the last of a series of ridges, Blaise saw the blue waters of Lake Dierne clearly for the first time. He could make out a small island in the lake with three plumes of white smoke rising from fires burning there. He paused a moment, taking in the vista that spread before him, and then rode on.

No one had cautioned him otherwise, or offered any warning at all, nor had he asked any questions, and so when he went forward from that ridge Blaise took what was clearly the more direct, less hilly road, riding straight north towards the lake and the beginnings of what was to be his destiny.

THE WELL-WORN PATH went along the western shore of Lake Dierne, with faded milestones of the Ancients along the way, some standing, some toppled into the grass, all testifying mutely to how long ago this road had been laid down. The island wasn’t very far away—a good swimmer could cover the distance—and from the path Blaise could now see that the three white plumes of smoke were carefully spaced along the midline of the isle. Even he was sufficiently aware after a season in Arbonne to realize that these would be holy fires of Rian. Who else but the clergy of the goddess would burn midday fires in the heat of early summer?

He narrowed his gaze across the dazzling blue water. He could make out a handful of small boats at anchor or pulled up on the sands of the island’s nearer shore. One boat with a single white sail was tacking back and forth across the lake into the breeze. Watching, Blaise’s thoughts went back to the High Priestess with her owl in the blackness of night on Rian’s other island, in the sea. After a moment he looked away in the bright sunshine and rode on.

He passed the small hut that held and kept dry wood and kindling for the signal fires that would summon the priestesses when those on the shore had need, whether for childbirth or healing or surrendering the dead. He resisted the impulse to make a warding sign.

A little further along the path he saw the arch.

He stopped his horse again. The pack pony trudging behind with his goods and his armour bumped up against them and then placidly lowered its head to crop at the grass by the road. Blaise was staring at that arrogant, monumental assertion of stone. The soldier in him understood it at once, and admiration vied with an inward disquiet.

There were figures carved along the top of the arch, and there would be friezes along the sides as well. He didn’t need to go nearer to study them; he knew what the sculptor’s art had rendered there. He had seen such arches before, in northern Portezza, in Götzland, two in Gorhaut itself near the mountain passes, which seemed to be as far north as the Ancients had established themselves.

The massive arch offered its own clear testimony as to what those who built it had been. Where the milestones by the long, straight roads told of continuity and the orderly, regulated flow of society in a world now lost, the triumphal arches such as this one spoke to nothing but domination, the brutal grinding down of whomever had been here when the Ancients came to conquer.

Blaise had been to war many times, both for his country and for his own purse as a mercenary, and had known both triumph and defeat on widely scattered battlefields. Once, by the frost-rimed Iersen Bridge, he had fought among ice and blowing snow past the bitter death of his king through to a twilit winter victory that had then been alchemized into defeat in the elegantly phrased courtiers’ treaty of the spring that followed. That one had changed him, he thought. That one had changed his life forever.

The arch standing here at the end of a procession of planted trees told a hard truth that Blaise knew in his soldier’s bones to be as valid now as it had been centuries ago: when you have beaten someone, when you have conquered and occupied them, you must never let them forget the power that you have and the consequences of resistance.

What happened when the arches remained but those who had so arrogantly raised them were dust and long departed was a question for milk-fed philosophers and troubadours, Blaise thought, not for a fighting man.

He turned his head away, unsettled and unexpectedly angered. And it was only when he did so, wresting his attention from the massive arch, that he became aware, belatedly, that he was no longer alone on this shore of Lake Dierne under a westering sun.

There were six of them, in dark green hose and tunics. The livery meant they were unlikely to be outlaws, which was good. Rather less encouraging was the fact that three of them had bows out and arrows to string already, levelled at him before any words of greeting or challenge had been spoken. What was even more ominous was that the obvious leader, sitting his horse a few feet ahead and to one side of the others, was a rangy, dark-skinned, moustachioed Arimondan. Experience in several countries, and one sword fight he preferred not to remember except for the lesson it had taught him, had led Blaise to be exceptionally wary of the swarthy warriors of that hot, dry land beyond the western mountains. Especially when they appeared at the head of men who were aiming arrows at his chest.

Blaise held out his empty hands and lifted his voice into the wind. ‘I give you greetings, corans. I am a traveller on a high road of Arbonne. I mean no offence to anyone and trust I have given none.’ He was silent, watching, and left his hands out to be seen. He had defeated four men once at a tourney in Aulensburg, but there were six here, with arrows.

The Arimondan twitched his reins and his horse, a genuinely magnificent black, moved forward a few restive paces. ‘Fighting corans carrying armour sometimes give offence merely by their existence,’ the man said. ‘Who is it that you serve?’ He spoke Arbonnais flawlessly, with scarcely a trace of an accent. He was clearly no stranger to this land. He was also observant. Blaise’s armour was well wrapped under cloth on the pack pony; the Arimondan would have deduced what it was by shape.

But Blaise, too, was used to watching men closely, especially in a situation such as this, and out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the archers lean forward with the question, as if hanging upon the answer.

Blaise temporized. He had no real idea what was happening here. Outlaws on the roads were one thing, but these men were clearly trained and just as clearly asserting control over this part of the road. He wished he’d studied a map more closely before leaving Baude. It would have helped to know whose lands these were. He ought to have asked more questions at last night’s inn.

He said, ‘I am travelling in peace on an open road. I mean no trespass. If such is your complaint, I will gladly pay a fair toll.’

‘I asked a question,’ the Arimondan said flatly. ‘Answer it.’

Hearing that tone, Blaise felt his mouth go dry, even as a familiar anger began rising in him. He had his sword, and his bow was ready to hand in the saddle quiver, but if the three men behind the Arimondan knew how to shoot there was little hope in trying to fight. He considered cutting the rope that tied the pony to his grey and making a run for it, but he hated leaving his armour behind almost as much as he hated fleeing from an Arimondan.

‘I am not in the custom of detailing my affairs to strangers with bows drawn,’ he said.

The Arimondan smiled slowly, as if the words were an unexpected gift. He gestured with his left hand, a negligent, graceful movement. All three archers loosed arrows. An instant later, with a queer, grunting sound, Blaise’s pack pony collapsed behind him. Two arrows were in its neck and one was just below, near the heart. The pony was dead. The archers had already notched three more arrows.

Feeling the colour leave his face, Blaise heard the Arimondan laugh. ‘Tell me,’ the man said lazily, ‘will you preserve what you call your customs when you are naked and bound face down in the dust to serve my pleasure like a boy bought for an hour?’ The two other men, the ones without bows, had moved without visible instruction in opposite directions, cutting off both paths of flight for Blaise. One of them, Blaise saw, was smiling broadly.

‘I asked a question,’ the Arimondan went on softly. The wind had dropped; his voice carried in the stillness. ‘The horse dies next if I am not answered. In whose service do you ride, Northerner?’

It was his beard, of course; it labelled him like a brand marked a thief or blue robes a priest of Corannos. Blaise drew a slow breath and, fighting hard to hold down his anger, sought shelter in the shade of the great—as Rudel had more than once put it.

‘En Bertran de Talair has hired me for a season,’ he said.

They shot the horse.

But Blaise had had his clue from the one archer’s straining manner the first time the question had been asked, and he had kicked his legs free of the stirrups even as he spoke. He landed on the far side of the screaming stallion and pulled his bow free and the dying horse downwards towards him in the same motion so that it offered protection when he dropped behind it. Firing from an almost prone position he killed the northernmost coran and, turning, shot the one guarding the southern path in the neck before the three archers could loose another volley. Then he dropped flat.

Two arrows hit his horse again and the third whizzed above his head. Blaise rose to one knee and fired twice, at speed. One archer died, screaming like the horse, and the second dropped in silence with an arrow in his throat. The third man hesitated, his mouth falling open with dismay. Blaise notched his fifth arrow and shot him calmly in the chest. He saw bright blood stain the dark green tunic before the man fell.

It was suddenly extremely quiet.

The Arimondan had not moved. His magnificent black thoroughbred was still as a statue, though with nostrils flared wide.

‘Now you have given offence,’ the dark-skinned man said, his voice still silky and soft. ‘I see that you can shoot from hiding. Come now and we will see if you are a man among men with a sword as well. I will dismount.’

Blaise stood up. ‘If I thought you a man I would do so,’ he said. His voice sounded oddly hollow to his own ears. The too-familiar pounding was in his head and his rage was still with him. ‘I want your horse. I will think of you with pleasure when I ride it.’ And with the words he loosed his sixth arrow and took the Arimondan through the heart.

The man rocked violently backwards with the impact, clinging to his last seconds of life under the brilliant sun. Blaise saw him draw a dagger then, one of the wickedly curved, bejewelled blades of his own country, and plunge it, even as he began to topple from his saddle, deep into the throat of his black stallion.

The man hit the ground as his horse surged high into the air on its hind legs, screaming in rage and fear. It came down and rose again immediately, trumpeting, lashing out with its hooves. Blaise notched a last arrow and let it fly, with passionate regret, to put the glorious creature out of pain. The stallion dropped and then rolled on one side. Its legs kicked out one more time and then were motionless.

Blaise stepped forward, moving around his own dead horse. The stillness in the clearing was eerie, broken only by the nervous whickering of the archers’ mounts and the sound of the breeze picking up again. He realized that no birds were singing now.

A short while ago he had imagined that the wind of Arbonne in the leaves and vines whispered of refreshment and ease, of easy grace here in the warm south. Now there were six dead men in the grass by the side of the road. Not far away, looming in silence at the end of its avenue of elms, the massive arch looked down upon them all, keeping its secrets, bearing its own grim friezes of battle and death carved long ago.

Blaise’s anger began to drain away, leaving behind the disorientation and nausea that seemed always to follow combat. Battle seldom fazed him now after so many years of it, but the aftermath left him vulnerable for a long time, trying to come to terms with what he was capable of doing when the fury of war swept over him. He looked across the grass at the Arimondan and shook his head. He had wanted, for a moment, to walk over and cut the dead man into pieces, to make things easier for the carrion dogs when they came. He swallowed and turned away.

As he did he saw a small boat with a white sail pulling up to the stony shore of the lake on the far side of the road. There was a grating sound as the craft grounded itself, and Blaise saw two men help a woman to alight. His heart thumped once, hard. The woman was tall, robed in crimson fringed with silver, and she had an owl on her shoulder.

Then he looked more closely, and with a second glance, undistorted by memory or fear, he saw that this was not the High Priestess from Rian’s Island in the sea. This one was much younger and brown-haired and, manifestly, she had eyes with which to see. Nor was her bird white, as the one on the other island had been. She was a priestess, though, and the two men with her and the one other woman were also clergy of Rian. The boat was the one he’d seen tacking into the wind before. Beyond them, on the isle, the three plumes of smoke still rose into the summer sky.

‘You are fortunate,’ the woman said, walking steadily across sand and gravel to stand before him on the grass beside the road. Her voice was mild but her eyes, appraising him, were steady and unreadable. Her hair was heavy and hung down her back, not covered or pinned. Blaise endured her scrutiny impassively, remembering the blindness of the High Priestess who had seen right through him nonetheless. He looked at the bird this one carried on her shoulder and felt an echo of the anxiety he’d felt in the forest on the island. It was almost unfair; the aftermath of combat left him susceptible to this.

‘I daresay I am,’ he said, as calmly as he could. ‘I could not have expected to prevail against six. It seems the god has favoured me.’ That last was a challenge of sorts.

She didn’t rise to the bait. ‘And Rian as well. We can bear witness for you that they attacked first.’

‘Bear witness?’

She smiled then, and that smile, too, took him back to the High Priestess in her night forest. ‘It would have served you better, Blaise of Gorhaut, to have been more curious about affairs in this part of the world.’

He didn’t like her tone, and he didn’t know what she was talking about. His uneasiness increased; the women in this country were unimaginably difficult to deal with.

‘How do you know my name?’

Again the secretive, superior smile, but this time he had expected it. ‘Did you imagine that once having been allowed to leave Rian’s Island alive you were free of the goddess? We have marked you, Northerner. Thank us for it.’

‘Why? For following me?’

‘Not following. We have been waiting for you. We knew you were coming. And as to the why … hear now what you should have learned already for yourself. A fortnight past, the countess in Barbentain had an edict proclaimed that any further killings among the corans of Talair or Miraval would result in property of the offending party being ceded to the crown. The troubadours and the clergy are carrying the tidings, and all the lords of Arbonne have been cited by name and formally bound to impose the edict by force if need be. You might have cost En Bertran a part of his land today had we not been here to give a report in your defence.’

Blaise scowled, in part with relief, in part because this was indeed something he should have made a point of knowing before. ‘You will forgive me if I do not express dismay,’ he said. ‘I must admit I would not have valued his vineyards over my life, however much he proposes to pay me in wages.’

The priestess laughed aloud. She was younger than a first impression had suggested. ‘Our forgiveness hardly need concern you … in this, at least. But Bertran de Talair is another matter. He might have fairly expected an experienced coran to avoid giving provocation before even arriving at his castle. There is an eastern way around the lake if you hadn’t noticed, one that does not pass by the vineyards of Miraval.’

The situation was, Blaise had to admit, becoming belatedly clear. And indeed, had he known these lands belonged to Urté de Miraval—or taken some pains to know—he would certainly have gone the other way. It was no secret, even to Blaise after a short time in Arbonne, that for reasons that apparently went years back into the past, the present lords of Miraval and Talair had no love for one another.

Blaise shrugged, to cover his discomfiture. ‘I have been riding all day, this path seemed easier. And I thought the countess of Arbonne stood surety for the safety of the roads in her land.’

‘Barbentain is a long way off, and local hatred will usually overmaster larger laws. A wise traveller will know where he is, particularly if he rides alone.’

Which also was true, if arrogantly spoken by someone so young. He tried not to dwell on the arrogance. Clergy of all kinds seemed to have it as a collective quality. One of these days, though, he was going to have to try to sort out why he was so reluctant to pay more attention to the gossip, or even the geography and divisions of land here in Arbonne.

Behind the priestess he saw three other small boats being drawn up on the shore. Men and women in the robes of Rian disembarked and made their away over the grass to where the dead were lying. They began lifting the bodies and carrying them back to the boats.

Blaise glanced over his shoulder to where the Arimondan lay beside his slain horse. He turned back to the priestess. ‘Tell me, will Rian welcome such as he?’

She did not smile. ‘She waits for him,’ the priestess said calmly, ‘as she waits for all of us. Welcome and grace are other matters entirely.’ Her dark eyes held his own until Blaise looked away, beyond her, past the isle in the lake, to where a castle could be seen on the northern shore.

She turned and followed his gaze. ‘We will take you if you like,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Unless you want one of their horses for yourself?’

Blaise shook his head. ‘The only one worth having was killed by its rider.’ He felt a sour amusement suddenly. ‘I will be grateful for passage. Doesn’t it seem apt … that I should arrive at Talair Castle in a craft of the goddess?’

‘More apt than you know,’ she said, not responding to his tone at all.

She gestured, and two of the priests moved to collect Blaise’s armour and goods from the dead pony. Blaise himself took his saddle from his mount and, following the tall, slender form of the priestess, walked over grass and stone to her boat.

They put his gear on board as well, and then the craft was pushed free of the shore and with the west wind in the one sail and the sun low now behind them it went skimming across the waters of Lake Dierne.

As they approached the castle, Blaise registered with a practised, approving eye how well defended it was, poised on a crag above the lake with the water coming around on three sides and a deep moat carved to the north. A cluster of men had come down to the pier to wait for them. There was another boat already there, with two priests and a priestess in it; tidings would have preceded them then. As they drew near Blaise recognized Valery, Bertran’s cousin, and then, surprisingly, Bertran himself stepped forward to neatly catch the rope thrown by the priest at the prow.

The duke of Talair crouched to tie their craft to an iron ring set in the wooden dock, then he straightened, looking expressionlessly at Blaise. There was no hint in his gaze of the eerie, late-night intimacy of their last conversation. Twenty-three years, Blaise remembered, suddenly. The last thing he’d heard this man say, in the dark of a stairway, speaking of a woman long ago: So much longer than I thought I would live.

‘Welcome to Talair,’ Bertran said. The scar on his cheek was prominent in the clear light. He was dressed much as he had been when he came to Baude, in a coran’s clothing made for the outdoors. His hair was uncovered, disordered by the wind. He smiled thinly, a crook of his mouth. ‘How does it feel to have made an enemy before you even report?’

‘I have my share of enemies,’ Blaise said mildly. He felt calmer now; the ride across the lake and the memory of that dark stairwell in Baude had taken away the last of his battle mood. ‘One more or one less should not matter greatly. The god will take me when he is ready.’ He raised his voice slightly on that last, for someone else’s benefit. ‘Do you really think the duke of Miraval will bother hating me for guarding my life when attacked?’

‘Urté? He could,’ Bertran said judiciously. ‘Though it wasn’t him I was thinking of, actually.’ He looked for a moment as if he would explain, but then he turned instead and began walking towards the castle. ‘Come,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘there is meat and drink inside and after we will help you choose a horse from the stable.’

Broad-shouldered, greying Valery stepped forward and extended an arm. Blaise hesitated a moment, then grasped it, pulling himself forward onto the dock. His gear had already been lifted up by three other men. Blaise turned back to the boat. Already the line had been untied and the small craft was beginning to glide back out over the water. The young priestess had her back to him, but then, as if aware that he was looking, she turned.

She said nothing, nor did Blaise as the distance between boat and shore slowly increased. Her hair gleamed in the still warm light of the setting sun. The owl on her shoulder gazed away to the west. More apt than you know, she had said on that western shore, responding with weighty sobriety to an attempted irony. He didn’t understand what she’d meant, he didn’t understand it at all, and within him a spark of rekindled anger blazed. He’d meant to say goodbye and to thank her, but instead he watched for another moment and then turned away impassively.

Valery was waiting for him. Bertran’s cousin had a wry expression on his face.

‘Six men?’ he said. ‘Fair to say you aren’t arriving quietly.’

‘Five, and a catamite from Arimonda,’ Blaise said tersely. His anger was mostly gone though; he felt tired more than anything else. ‘I was riding quietly enough, and on the road. They shot my horse.’

‘The Arimondan,’ Valery murmured, looking out to sea after the withdrawing boat. ‘Remind me to tell you about him later.’

‘Why bother?’ Blaise said. ‘He’s dead.’

Valery glanced curiously at him a moment, then shrugged. He turned and began walking. Blaise fell into step beside him. The two men went along the length of the pier and then up the narrow, increasingly steep path towards the castle of Talair. They came to the heavy doors, which were open, and they passed within to the sound of music playing.