Читать книгу The Ships of Merior - Janny Wurts, Janny Wurts - Страница 8

The next event in the widening chain of happenstance provoked by the Mistwraith’s bane arose at full summer, when visitors from Rathain’s clan survivors sought audience with another high chieftain in the neighbouring realm to the west. Hailed as she knelt on damp pine needles in the midst of dressing out a deer, Lady Maenalle bent a hawk-sharp gaze on the breathless messenger.

‘Fatemaster’s justice, why now?’ Bloodied to the wrists, her knife poised over a welter of steaming entrails, the woman who also shouldered the power of Tysan’s regency shoved up from her knees with a quickness that belied her sixty years. Feet straddled over the half-gutted carcass, the man’s leathers she preferred for daily wear belted to a waist still whipcord trim, Maenalle pushed back close-cropped hair with the back of her least sticky wrist. She said to the boy who had jogged up a mountainside to fetch her, ‘Speak clearly. These aren’t the usual clan spokesmen we’ve received from Rathain before?’

‘Lady, not this time.’ Sure her displeasure boded ill for the scouts, whose advance word now seemed negligently scant on facts, the boy answered fast. ‘The company numbers fifteen, led by a tall man named Red-beard. His war captain Caolle travels with him.’

‘Jieret Red-beard? The young s’Valerient heir?’ Grim in dismay, Maenalle cast a bothered glance over her gore-spattered leathers. ‘But he’s Deshir’s chieftain, and Earl of the North!’

A state delegation from across the water, no less; and led by Prince Arithon’s blood-pacted liegeman, who happened also to be caithdein, or ‘shadow behind the throne’, hereditary warden of Rathain. Maenalle let fly a blistering oath.

Then, infected by spurious, private triumph, for she despised formality and skirts, she burst into deep-throated laughter. ‘Well, they’ll just have to take me as I am,’ she ended with a lift of dark eyebrows. I’ve got time to find a stream to sluice off? Good. The hunting party’s off down the gorge. Somebody ought to go after them and let my grandson know what’s afoot.’ She bit her lip, recalled to the deer, too sorely needed to abandon for scavengers to pick.

The young messenger offered to take the knife in her stead. ‘Lady, I can finish up the butchering.’

Maenalle smiled. ‘Good lad. I thought so, but really, this should be Maien’s problem.’

Her moods were fair-minded enough to let the boy relax. ‘Lady, if you both meet Prince Arithon’s delegation reeking of offal, s’Gannley might be called out for insult.’

‘Imp.’ Maenalle relinquished her fouled blade and took a swipe at the child’s ear, which he ducked before he got blood-smeared. ‘Titles aside, Rathain’s warden is very little older than you are. If he cries insult, I’ll ask his war captain to cut down a birch switch and thrash him.’

Which words seemed a fine and suitable retort, until Maenalle’s descent from the forested plateau forced an interval for sober thought. Chilled by the premature twilight of an afternoon cut off from sunlight, she entered the hidden ravine that held her clans’ summer refuge. In silence, she numbered the years that had slipped past, all unnoticed. Red-beard was not a childish nickname. Jieret s’Valerient in sober fact was but one season older than Maien; no boy any more, if not yet fully a man.

Small wonder the young scout had stifled his smile at her mention of birch canes and thrashing.

Hatefully tired of acting the querulous ruler, and greeting nobody she passed, Maenalle crossed the dusty compound with its stinks of sun-curing hide. She barged into the comfortless hut that served as her quarters, flicked up cuffs still dripping from her stream-side ablutions and slammed back the lid of her clothes trunk.

Her hand hesitated over the folded finery inside, then snatched in sharp resolve: not the indigo regent’s tabard with its glittering gold star blazon. Instead Maenalle shook out a plain black overtunic, expensively cut, and worn but once since its making. She would don the caithdein’s sable, by tradition the symbol of power deferred in the presence of her true-born sovereign.

If she still held the regency in Tysan, the office was not hers by choice; the s’Ilessid scion forepromised by prophecy had returned to claim his royal title. But the Mistwraith he had lent his gift of light to help subdue had avenged itself and cursed Prince Lysaer of Tysan to undying enmity against Arithon, Master of Shadow. For that, the Fellowship sorcerers entitled to crown him had withheld their sanction for his inheritance. Grieved beyond heartbreak for the betrayals which had forced their judgement, the realm’s lady steward tugged the dark garment over her dampened leathers. She belted on her sword, firm in this one defiance. Let black cloth remind the envoy sent by Arithon of Rathain that the final call on clan loyalty in Tysan was not fully hers to command, however desperate the cause they surely came here to plead.

A brisk knock jostled her doorpanel. Maenalle raked quick fingers through hair cropped close as a fighting man’s, then straightened in time to seem composed as Lord Tashan poked his white head inside.

‘Your visitors have passed the last check-point.’ The rotten old fox was smiling. As age-worn as she through long years of shared hardship, he would guess she was flustered; and in hindsight, the blighted black cloth was a mistake that would accent any pallor born of nervousness.

Tartly, Maenalle attacked first. ‘I could go and maybe lend a semblance of decorum if you’d make way and let me pass.’

Before Tashan could move, she brushed by, still shrugging to settle the tunic over her shoulders. Canny enough not to query her forceful choice of wardrobe, the old lord hurried his limp to flank her, while dogs barked and dust flew, and sun-browned children in scuffed deerhides ran in a game of hunters and wolves through the stream-threaded shade of the defile. Built under cover on either side, the rows of ramshackle cabins sagged with the wear of storms and weather. If unglazed windows and walls laddered green under vines seemed uncivilized, Maenalle held no bitterness. Here, surrounded by inhospitable terrain; abutments of knife-edged rock and slide-scarred crags where loose shale and boulders could give way and break legs, the persecuted descendants of Tysan’s deposed liegemen kept a grim measure of safety. Even the most fanatical town enemies were deterred from ranging too zealously for fugitives. Poor as her people were, at least the mountains allowed them the security to raise children under timber roofs and to keep horses in limited herds.

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.