Читать книгу Sorcerer’s Moon: Part Three of the Boreal Moon Tale - Julian May - Страница 5

With evening, the incessant warm rain that had plagued us for three days stopped, the sky cleared at last, and I caught a glimpse of the rising moon. Its position confirmed the fear that had haunted me since morning. We were traveling in the wrong direction, going north instead of south. We were lost.

Even worse, I was now positive that something was stalking us. It was very large, clever enough to stay hidden in the thick brush along the shore, and it betrayed itself only rarely by unnatural movements of the greenery or a slight sound –

Like that! The faint crack of a broken stick.

I stopped paddling and the skiff drifted to a halt. I peered into shadowy undergrowth a dozen ells away and cupped a hand about my ear, straining to listen. There was no wind. The waters of the lake were flat calm. Save for the faraway wailing cry of a black-throated diver bird, the silence was absolute. My normal senses perceived nothing. Once again, I tried without success to summon my talent, but my uncanny abilities were still too weak even to scry through the flimsy barrier of reeds and shrubs into the boreal forest beyond.

Yet instinct assured me that the stalker was there, watching us.

The sky overhead had turned to deepest blue, with a few scattered stars beginning to appear. On my right hand the full Harvest Moon rose, brilliantly white, through the raggedy ranks of spruce trees that topped the ridge alongside the narrow lake. I looked toward the opposite shore and beheld a wonderful thing in the sky above it – a great arc of pearly light spread across the retreating bank of rainclouds in the west.

I must have exclaimed at the sight of it, waking her. Induna stirred in the bottom of the boat, uncovered her head, which had been shielded from the rain by blankets and an oilskin cloak, and lifted herself painfully on one elbow.

‘Deveron?’ Her voice was low and anxious. ‘Is something wrong?’

For the moment, I dodged the question. ‘Look over there. It’s a moon bow.’

‘How beautiful. I’ve heard of them but never seen one before. They’re supposed to portend great good luck.’

I thought: We have sore need of that, beyond doubt!

Even as we watched, the marvel began to fade. It was gone almost as soon as it had appeared. I took up the water-flask and bent over the woman who should have been my wife sixteen years ago, who had already given up so much for my sake and who now might be rewarded only with gruesome death. Induna lay with her head pillowed on a pack. She had been asleep for hours, still recovering from the sacrifice made shortly after our arrival in this forsaken wilderness three days earlier.

I said, ‘Take some water, love. I’ll help you to sit up.’

The boat rocked as we shifted position. It was a flat-bottomed skiff of the unique Andradhian style, made of tough sheets of thin bark, pointed at both ends. The Boatwright I’d bought it from had intended it for the jungle streams of the distant Southern Continent; but being lightweight and easy to portage, it was also the perfect craft for voyaging among the bewildering maze of bogs, rivers and chains of lakes that comprised the forbidding Green Morass of northern Didion.

Induna drank only a little before sinking back onto her improvised cushion with a sigh. ‘I feel stronger. The sleep did me good. I think I’ll be able to eat something tonight. Will we be going ashore soon? My poor bladder is nigh bursting.’

I pointed to a small wooded island that lay off the bow. ‘We’ll camp there, rather than on the mainland. I…think something might be following the boat along the shore, keeping out of sight.’

Her eyes widened. ‘Is it an animal?’

‘Perhaps not. It tracks us very slyly. It’s best that we not take chances.’

‘So you can’t oversee what it might be?’

I began to paddle again, digging briskly. ‘My wind-sensibilities are still useless, even though my physical strength now seems completely restored, thanks to you.’

‘How long has this creature been trailing us?’

‘God only knows. I became aware of it this morning, shortly after we embarked from the last campsite, but it might have been pursuing us for longer, hidden by the mist and rain. It’s a sizable thing, probably much larger than a human being. I pray it’s only a curious brown bear or wandering tundra-lion. I can fend a beast off easily with a few firebolts from my crossbow.’

She spoke hesitantly. ‘Could it possibly be a Salka? You recall that I told you that the forces of the Sovereignty believed that the monsters’ main force was massed many leagues to the north of here, around Beacon Lake. But they might have sent out scouts.’

‘I think not. The amphibians move clumsily on land, as this thing does not. And Salka would be more likely to follow a small boat by swimming underwater. Our pursuer is something else.’

Induna and I both suspected what it might be. But neither of us wanted to name the dire possibility aloud, nor did we voice the uncomfortable thought that we might have been under observation by the supposedly extinct Morass Worms almost from the first disastrous moment of our arrival.

Like most citizens of Cathra, I’d known almost nothing of the giant horrors until I came to live in Tarn. Induna’s mother had told legends of them as we shared the folklore of our disparate homelands during long winter nights in the Deep Creek Cove manorhouse. No Tarnian had laid eyes on a Morass Worm for at least three hundred years, but their memory lived on through grisly tales relished by the simpler people of the northlands. The storytellers could not even agree upon the fabled creatures’ appearance, describing them variously as huge fanged eels, scaly serpents, slime-covered salamanders, or even colossal centipedes with writhing multiple limbs. Like the Salka, the Green Men, and the Small Lights, they were said to be prehistoric inhabitants of the island who were driven into the waste lands by invading humankind. The worms were intelligent, not mere animals. Supposedly they were able to appear out of nowhere and kill their prey by breathing fire. The hardheaded Didionite foresters who dwelt in the far northern parts of High Blenholme mostly scoffed at the old tales and were certain that the worms no longer existed – if they ever had. But then, humans almost never ventured into the trackless depths of the Green Morass…

After an interval of tense silence, during which I paddled as strongly as I could, I said to Induna, ‘In the tales your mother told back at our manorhouse, she said that the Morass Worms and the Salka were deadly enemies in ancient times. Would the amphibians dare to invade Blenholme from the north coast if their old antagonists still lived in the region?’

‘Perhaps the Salka leaders also believed the worms to be extinct,’ Induna said. ‘After all, their Eminent Four are natives of the Dawntide Isles, unfamiliar with Blenholme’s remote interior.’

It was something worth pondering, but we spoke no more about it, for we had finally reached the lake island. As the hull of the skiff grounded on the muddy bottom, I hopped into the shallow water and lifted Induna’s slight form in my arms, carrying her ashore. She insisted she was now able to walk. After she made a discreet detour into the bushes, we traveled a short distance inland until we reached a clearing among the trees that I deemed safer for a campsite than the beach. I planned to surround it with numbers of the magical turquoise warning-pebbles that I carried and make several large fires as well.

While she sat resting on a rock, still wrapped in the oilskin cloak, I snapped off deadwood from the lower trunks of the spruces until there was a sizable heap a few feet away from her, then set this reasonably dry small stuff ablaze with several tarnsticks from my waterproof belt-pouch. I was still incapable of summoning fire with magic.

Induna gave a sigh of satisfaction and held out her hands to the warmth. The flames emphasized her pallid skin and dark green eyes. Her hair, normally a lustrous red-gold aureole, had turned to dark tendrils from the prevailing dampness. She still suffered the effects of her soul’s diminishing, but her ability to walk and sit upright now without assistance seemed hopeful signs.

‘I’ll bring larger pieces of driftwood from the shore and build a better fire as soon as I get the boat out of the water and unload the packs,’ I said. ‘Will you be all right here alone for a few minutes?’

‘Don’t worry, Deveron. I’m really feeling much stronger.’ She smiled at me. ‘And I’m still very glad that I came with you.’

Her words sent a pang of guilt through my heart. ‘You should not have taken hold of me as I conjured the sigil,’ I muttered. ‘Who knows what will become of us now? The unknown thing that follows is only one of the dangers besetting us. We’re lost, Induna! The overcast skies and tangled waterways, combined with the quenching of my talent caused by moonstone sorcery, have muddled my wits completely. I have no notion where the castle might be. All we can do is reverse direction and travel southward in the morning, and pray that my abilities recover enough for me to scry the place out and conjure effective magical defenses that will get us there in safety. My Andradhian pebble-charms and other weapons can’t protect us for long against thinking adversaries – whatever their shape.’

‘All will be well. Remember the moon bow!’

Her attempt at good cheer only made me feel worse. Anger as well as dread rose like a hot tide in my soul and I could not help the bitter words that burst forth. ‘Moon bow luck is only a fairytale spun for gullible children, sweetheart, as you know very well. This venture is a failure before it has scarce begun, and I curse the Source for dragging you into it – for using you as the bait to lure me back into his demonic conflict. He knew very well that I’d be convinced by no one else, that my love for you had only strengthened after all the years spent apart and I’d do whatever you asked. The Source reunited us – but small joy we’ll have in one another! We’ll likely die in this cursèd Green Morass, while he and his immortal cohorts will live on and find more effective human pawns to fight their battles among the stars.’

She responded with spirit. ‘I’m no pawn, Deveron Austrey! No one forced me to bring the Source’s message. I enlisted in the New Conflict freely – as you once did. And it was my own free choice to accompany you to the morass in spite of your protests. Perhaps I was a fool to come. But what would have happened had I not been at your side to release you from Subtle Gateway’s pain-debt after we arrived here? Without me, your drowned body would now be lying on a riverbank, with wolves and swamp-fitches gnawing your bones.’

‘True,’ I agreed wretchedly. My eyes welled up at the loving fervor in the voice of this woman I had abandoned so many years ago, whose fate was once again linked inseparably with mine. ‘I am glad you’re here.’ I strode to her and clasped her to my breast. ‘How could I not be? Somehow, we’ll survive. And return together to the Barking Sands.’

She murmured a few words, lifting her face to be kissed. But even as I bent to comply she went stiff in my arms, and from her parted lips came a soft moan of terror. ‘Deveron…behind you.’

Still holding her tightly to me, I swung about and saw a huge thing looming amongst the dark spruces. Its sinuous body was thicker than a barrel and gleamed wet and smooth in the dancing firelight, appearing to be at least five ells in length. It had approached us without a sound. As we gaped, too stricken to move, it reared up and revealed strong limbs armed with scythe-like claws. In its own hideous fashion, it was quite beautiful. The gemlike green eyes set into its grotesquely ornate head shone with an inner radiance that betokened talent as well as intelligence. It opened its mouth slightly, showing yellowish fangs as lucent as topaz, and gave a soft hiss as it glided toward us, fraught with elegant menace.

The Morass Worm matched none of the trite descriptions of the old tales. Its glossy, longnecked body was apparently clothed in sleek wet fur or dark feathers rather than scales, and its exhalations, while fetid enough, lacked the hot sulphurous taint of its mythical namesake. It was no fire-breather, but rather a creature of flesh and blood. During my long exile in southern Andradh, I’d heard sailors from the Malachite Islands sing songs about such fearsome predators, giving them another name. The creature menacing us had no wings, unlike its Andradhian counterpart, but its frightful conformation was almost identical. It was a dragon.

It spoke, and we heard it not with our ears but with our minds.

I command that you shall not move. I command that you shall not use the Salka moonstones, nor conjure any other sorcery against me.

Its windvoice was silken-soft, almost languid, full of arrogant confidence. Induna and I were helpless, incapable of fight or flight. I was aware of an awesome talent inspecting us as though we were novel and unsavory specimens on an alchymist’s bench.

‘We mean no harm,’ I managed to say. ‘We are only lost travelers, trying to find Castle Morass –’

Silence!

The great neck arched downward and the talons reached out and seized both of us. We clung tighter to one another and prepared to die. The creature pulled us toward its opening mouth. Its eyes were like blazing emeralds with central pools of darkness that grew to enormous proportions and then swallowed us whole.

In the earlier volumes of this Boreal Moon Tale, I told of my first years of service to Conrig Wincantor, nicknamed Ironcrown, High King of Cathra and Sovereign of High Blenholme Island. I, Deveron Austrey, was born with powerful uncanny abilities that were strangely imperceptible to the Brothers of Zeth, who examine small children for such traits and compel the windtalented to join their Mystical Order. One of my gifts, which I hardly understood during my boyhood, enabled me to detect magical potential in others.

At the age of twelve, when I was a lowly apprentice leatherworker in the Cala Palace stables and Conrig was Prince Heritor of Cathra, I chanced to look into the royal youth’s eyes as I helped him mount his horse. There I recognized the faint but unmistakable glint that marks a person possessing magical talent. Not knowing its importance, I blurted out my discovery to the appalled prince. Fortunately for me, no other person was near enough to overhear. So instead of having me killed, Conrig made me his personal snudge (or spy) and called me by that name.

I kept his secret, which would have disqualified him for the Cathran kingship even though his talent was very meager. In time, with a good deal of assistance from the powerful sorceress Ullanoth of Moss – and, I must admit, from me – Conrig inherited his father’s throne.

After winning a war against the forces of Didion, Ironcrown declared himself the Sovereign of Blenholme. A few years later he fulfilled his ambition to unite the four quarreling states of our island into a single nation. But this was to be only a first step toward Conrig’s ultimate objective: to emulate his ancestor, Emperor Bazekoy the Great, and conquer the rest of the known world.

Conrig Wincantor was a brilliant politician and a warrior of immense valor. Nevertheless he possessed a ruthlessness and an icy expediency that often troubled my over-tender conscience; but in spite of these misgivings, I served him faithfully throughout my adolescence. When I entered manhood at the age of twenty, Conrig knighted me, named me his Royal Intelligencer, and almost immediately entrusted me with a crucial new mission.

I was sent to the land of Tarn to search for the king’s vengeful divorced wife, Princess Maudrayne. Believed to be drowned, she had reappeared after four years and posed a unique threat to the Sovereignty. Not only had she covertly given birth to Conrig’s eldest son – who by law would take precedence over the king’s heirs by his second marriage – but she also knew that her former husband possessed weak magical talent. If she revealed his secret and convinced the Lords Judicial of Cathra that she spoke the truth, Conrig would lose his throne. Even if she were not believed, her mere accusation might fatally undermine the already wavering loyalty of the vassal states of Tarn and Didion and plunge the island into chaos.

Ironcrown was adamant that I should do whatever was necessary to guarantee Maudrayne’s silence, as well as eliminate the dynastic menace posed by her young son Dyfrig. I balked at the obvious solution – assassination – and conceived a plan that I hoped might save the lives of the princess and her little boy while still satisfying the king.

As I undertook the difficult task of finding the pair, I discovered that the stability of Conrig’s reign had a more overreaching importance: High Blenholme Island was about to be invaded by a horde of Salka monsters. Incited by the young sorcerer Beynor ash Linndal, deposed ruler of Moss and brother to his successor Conjure-Queen Ullanoth, the enormous amphibians intended to take back the island from which most of them had been expelled over a thousand years earlier by Emperor Bazekoy.

Both Beynor and the Salka planned to use moonstone sigils, instruments of sorcery empowered by the supernatural Beaconfolk, to bring about the reconquest. The auroral Beacons, who were also called the Great Lights, comprised two opposing factions that were embroiled in a mysterious New Conflict of their own. I had been drawn into it against my will – as had numbers of other humans who are also part of this Boreal Moon Tale – but by the end of the mission involving Princess Maudrayne and her son, I mistakenly believed I had escaped the Lights’ thrall.

The mission itself was both a success and a failure. With the help of loyal companions – and my reluctant employment of two moonstone sigils, which the ‘good’ Light called the Source had compelled me to accept – I rescued Maudrayne and her child Dyfrig from a strange captivity. I was able to convince the princess to recant her spiteful revelation of Conrig’s secret to the Sealords of Tarn. In turn, the High King agreed that young Dyfrig might be placed third in the Cathran royal succession, behind his twin sons Orrion and Corodon, born of his marriage to Risalla of Didion. The boy was to become the adopted son of Earl Marshal Parlian Beorbrook, a Cathran peer of uncompromising honesty. To assure the child’s loyalty to the Sovereign, Dyfrig would never see or communicate with his mother again.

Unknown to me, Ironcrown was too cynical to trust his former wife’s promise not to publicly reaffirm his secret talent. After having agreed that Maudrayne would be allowed to live in quiet exile with her Tarnian relatives, he arranged for her murder by poison, which was passed off as suicide. I was so disillusioned by the king’s perfidy that I left his service without permission. I fled to a remote region of western Tarn, accompanied by a young woman named Induna of Barking Sands, an apprentice shaman-healer who had earlier saved my life and also assisted in the rescue of Maudrayne and her son. For a few months I lived with Induna and her mother in a tiny village near Northkeep.

In the best of romantic endings I should have married Induna and made a new life for myself, secure from the Sovereignty’s tumult and intrigues as well as from the more subtle machinations of the Beaconfolk.

The reality was messier.

Shortly after my abrupt resignation from the intelligencer post, I sent a message to Conrig via his elder brother Vra-Stergos, Cathra’s Royal Alchymist, who had been friendly toward me during my years of service to the king. In it I apologized for my affront to the regal dignity (but gave no reason for my dereliction of duty), swore that I intended to continue guarding Conrig’s secret with my life, and said that I wanted only to be left in peace. I also returned the considerable sum of money vouchsafed to me by the Crown when I was granted knighthood.

There was no reply to my message, and none of my later attempts to windspeak Lord Stergos were successful. He and Conrig were occupied with more urgent matters. The king’s domestic enemies, Cathra’s Lords of the Southern Shore, had demanded that he defend himself against persistent Tarnian accusations that he possessed magical talent, was thus not the legitimate High King of Cathra, and therefore was unworthy of Tarn’s fealty.

The official inquiry was as brief as it was dramatic. No member of Cathra’s Mystical Order of Zeth could swear that they detected talent in the king. (The scrupulously honest Vra-Stergos was saved from having to condemn his brother because of the precise wording of the oath, even though he knew well enough that the accusation was true.) Maudrayne was believed dead and unable to renew her denunciation, and I was shielded by sorcery and refused to testify. Since there were no other witnesses against Conrig who had status under Cathran law, he won his case easily.

The Sealords of Tarn cursed all lawyers and grudgingly continued to pay the heavy taxes imposed by the Sovereignty. The wealthy Lords of the Southern Shore did the same, thwarted in their attempt to put Duke Feribor Blackhorse, their ringleader, on the Cathran throne in place of Conrig.

In the devastated little kingdom of Moss, far from the tranquil cottage on the edge of the Western Ocean where I dwelt with Induna and her mother, the Salka hunkered down in the lands they had overrun and pondered the next big step in the reconquest of ‘their’ island. They owned numbers of minor moonstone sigils which they had already successfully used as weapons, and hatched plans to obtain others that were more potent. Conjure-Queen Ullanoth, who had ruled Moss before the Salka invasion, was believed by most people to have perished through imprudent use of her sigils. Her scheming younger brother Beynor had dropped out of sight after quarreling with the victorious monsters, his former secret allies. No one knew (or cared) what had become of him.

With the security of the Sovereignty now his primary concern, Conrig garrisoned troops at crucial points along the Dismal Heights from Rainy Pass to Riptide Bay, supposedly making a land invasion of Didion by the Salka impossible. At the same time the formidable Joint Fleet of the Sovereignty, equipped with tarnblaze cannons, patrolled the waters off the island’s eastern coast in a show of strength designed to keep the amphibians in check. In spite of the blockade, the monsters made several waterborne forays against coastal settlements of Didion and Cathra. But finally, in a single decisive battle, the Salka stronghold in the Dawntide Isles was completely destroyed by the Sovereignty, and an interval of peace settled over High Blenholme.

As for myself, Induna and her mother Maris, a much-admired shaman in Tarn’s coastal Stormlands, had invited me to stay with them indefinitely in order to learn the healer’s art, since I no longer had any taste for spying. Using part of the fortune she had inherited from her late grandsire, the renegade wizard Blind Bozuk, Induna purchased a fine manorhouse and lands that lay in a pleasant place called Deep Creek Cove, backed by grasslands. For my sake the manor was fortified with ingenious magical defenses. Rumors persisted that High King Conrig still thought I was even more of a threat to his Iron Crown than Maudrayne had ever been. Induna and I both feared he’d eventually send someone to eliminate me, and we resolved to be ready.

Maris was a kind person endowed with singular wisdom, who helped me to a deeper understanding of my uncanny abilities. (Up until then, I had been entirely self-taught in magic.) She also gave me valuable advice concerning the two moonstone sigils, Concealer and Subtle Gateway, that were still in my possession. I yearned to cast those soul-destroying tools of the Beaconfolk into the deep sea so I’d never again be tempted to use them; but Maris counseled against it. In one of her trances, she’d had a puzzling vision concerning me and the stones and an enigmatic black creature bound with sapphire chains who dwelt beneath the icecap of the Barren Lands. Maris had no notion of the dark thing’s identity – although I had! – but she was certain that my destiny involved both the creature and the two sigils. When Induna added her pleas to those of her mother, I finally agreed to keep the moonstones.

Induna…

She later admitted that she had loved me almost as soon as she first saw me lying senseless in a rock shelter on the Desolation Coast, at the point of death after having rashly used the Subtle Gateway sigil to transport me and my companions and all our gear to the place where Maudrayne and Dyfrig were imprisoned. Induna realized at once that my mortal illness was the result of Beaconfolk sorcery. The terrible beings of the Sky Realm were feeding on my pain, and no groundling remedy could heal me.

So she shared with me a small portion of her own soul, in a manner that only northland shamans are capable of. It left her diminished even as it cured me. Later, she performed the same mystical operation once again, shortly before I decided to renounce my fealty to King Conrig. Her selfless acts of generosity did not immediately inspire my love. On the contrary, I was left with vague feelings of discomfort and indebtedness that only melted away during the long months when we worked together and began to really know one another.

I was amazed when it finally occurred to me that life without her would be unthinkable. The emotion I felt toward Induna at that time was no overwhelming passion: I was then, as I am now, a man plagued by an aloof and calculating nature. But she was my best friend, my teacher, and my comforter, and if I did not yet love her as wholeheartedly as she loved me, I still wanted none other for my wife.

We were solemnly betrothed according to Tarnian custom, and planned to marry in the summer of 1134, in Blossom Moon, when I was one-and-twenty years of age and Induna was eighteen. But the Cathran warship arrived in the waters off Deep Creek Cove three weeks before that, and our happy plans came to nothing.

Commanded by Tinnis Catclaw, the same debonair but unscupulous Lord Constable who had agreed to murder Princess Maudrayne on Conrig’s orders, the vessel carried a coven of mercenary Didionite wizards. Six of the disguised magickers came stealthily ashore and combined their talents to overpower Induna and Maris while they were beyond our home’s magical defenses, visiting the byre of a local small-holder to attend the difficult birth of a foal. I myself had been working with them, until I was sent back to the manorhouse to fetch a special physick to soothe the suffering mare. I was there when the wizards announced their ultimatum.

I was ordered to row out to the warship lurking just beyond the cove’s northern headland and surrender to the Lord Constable, who carried the Sovereign’s warrant for my arrest…or else scry my womenfolk as they were burnt alive in a tarnblaze holocaust that would leave behind nothing but a heap of charred bones.

The horrific tarnblaze chymical was impervious to any sorcerous intervention I might have attempted, nor had I any hope of reaching Induna and Maris before it could be ignited. I had no choice but to comply.

I left the place that had become my only true home and allowed myself to be shackled and hauled aboard the Cathran man o’ war. Lord Catclaw awaited me on deck, an oddly apologetic expression on his handsome countenance and his long blond hair tied in a tail. Two armed seamen gripped me. He ordered a third to slice off my clothing and footgear with a keen varg sword, using great caution. When I stood stark naked, the constable smiled in satisfaction as he saw the moonstone sigil called Concealer hanging on a thin chain around my neck. Properly conjured, it would render me invisible. Conrig knew about it, of course. I had used it in his service.

‘Don’t think to call upon your devilish Beaconfolk amulet,’ Catclaw warned me, ‘or I’ll have this fellow here bespeak the other wizards on shore to ignite the tarnblaze.’ He beckoned to a black-robed magicker standing nearby, who held a golden goblet and a pair of nippers. ‘You! Get the sigil off him. I’ve been told it cannot be conjured unless it’s next to his skin. Be very careful not to handle it yourself, except with the cup and tool. The High King himself has warned me of its perils.’

The wizard eased the translucent small pendant into the goblet, then severed its chain. Had he touched the moonstone with his own bare flesh, he would have been hideously burned. Concealer was bonded to me, and no one else could use it or even handle it with impunity.

‘Where is the second sigil?’ Catclaw demanded. ‘The one called Subtle Gateway, which transports a person instantly from place to place? I have been commanded by the King’s Grace to seize both amulets from you and bring them back to him.’

In spite of all my warnings, sigil sorcery obviously still held an unhealthy fascination for Conrig.

I responded in a near-whisper, which was all I was capable of without betraying myself. ‘I threw the thing into deep water months ago. His Grace knows full well how much I abominate moonstone magic. Concealer is a minor sort that causes only insignificant discomfort to the user, but Gateway was one of the so-called Great Stones. Conjuring it induced an appalling agony and put my very soul in peril to the pain-eating Beaconfolk. When I rescued Princess Maudrayne and completed my mission, I had no more need of it. I was glad to get rid of the thing.’

I was lying. But Catclaw was not about to find that out until I learned what he planned to do with me – along with Induna and Maris.

One of the ship’s officers stepped forward. ‘Shall we go ashore and search for the stone in his house, my lord?’

‘Why bother?’ I told the Lord Constable. ‘The sigils are worthless to the High King, whether he realizes it or not. When I die – and I presume my fate is sealed – any sigil owned by me becomes inactive: a worthless piece of rock. I learned how to use them only by a lucky accident. No one knows how to bond them to a new owner save the Salka who made them in the first place. Once, Queen Ullanoth of Moss and her lunatic brother Beynor also knew the secret. But she’s dead and he has disappeared.’

Tinnis Catclaw frowned and appeared to be considering the matter.

Emboldened, I asked the all-important question. ‘Do you now intend to kill my betrothed and her mother as well as me?’

The constable waved a dismissive hand. ‘The threat was only a bluff, a ploy to bring about your capture. Not even the Sovereign would dare harm a well-known shaman-healer such as Maris of Barking Sands, nor her daughter – who is an anointed Sealady of Tarn, albeit one of minimal rank. Such deeds might provoke the touchy Tarnian leaders beyond endurance. At this moment the girl and her mother are harmlessly sleeping off their enchantment, lying in the straw beside a mare and her newborn colt. The hireling wizards have followed my orders and scattered to the four winds. All they care about is how they’ll spend their bags of Cathran gold.’

I sighed in relief. The only persons that I had ever taken to my heart would be safe now from Conrig’s revenge…but only if I abandoned them.

‘How do you intend to dispose of me?’ I asked.

Catclaw pulled himself up in a dignified huff. ‘Your just punishment will be meted out strictly according to Cathran law. Once this warship rides the high seas, you’ll be tried for treason. Your disavowal of fealty meets the legal criterion. As Lord Constable, I have the judicial authority to order your summary execution. You’ll hang from a yardarm.’

‘But do you solemnly swear to me that Induna and Maris will be spared?’

‘I’ve already said so,’ Catclaw retorted testily, ‘and I’m a man of honor.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I hissed. ‘Did Princess Maudrayne find you honorable?’

His face drained of color. He gave a sharp command to the seamen who held and surrounded me. ‘All of you – move away from the prisoner! Draw your swords and stand ready, but step back. Farther yet! If he stirs, slay him where he stands.’

The astonished men retreated a good eight feet away. Catclaw stood very close to me and his voice would have been inaudible to the others.

‘Since you are to die within the hour, I’ll tell you how I dealt with Princess Maude. I was indeed commanded to kill her. I confess that I wrote her suicide note. It stated that she could not bear to live if she would never be allowed to see her son Dyfrig again, as the High King had decreed. I offered her poison…but gave her instead a potion that rendered her senseless and slowed her heart. She lay cold and still as a dead woman on the deck of my frigate, which was docked at Donorvale Quay, ready to return to Cathra with the boy. The Tarnian authorities bore witness to the sudden and tragic demise of the princess. Her body was placed in a lead coffin and kept in my own cabin, covered with a blanket of roses, until it could be buried at sea. This was High King Conrig’s command, following my own suggestion. Poor little Dyfrig was devastated by his mother’s suicide and could not bear to watch the ceremony. But the coffin my crew consigned to the depths of the Western Ocean was empty.’

I nearly choked upon that which I held inside my cheek. ‘Alive?’ I gasped.

‘She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known,’ Tinnis Catclaw said. ‘Conrig Ironcrown cast her off when it seemed she could not bear him a son. He declared her an archenemy of the Sovereignty and commanded her death. But I had long loved her from afar. I still do – even though I am now able to visit her only on rare occasions in my hunting lodge north of Swan Lake, where she willingly remains hidden for the sake of Prince Dyfrig. Maude is a proud and spirited soul. But she is…kind to me. And kings do not live forever.’

‘Great God,’ I murmured. ‘You are as much a traitor as I.’

He smiled. ‘And yet, I don’t believe you’ll use your windspeech to reveal my secret before you die.’

‘No,’ I agreed. It was the farthest thing from my mind. ‘Conduct your trial, my lord. Prepare the rope. But I ask a favor, as one turncoat to another. Dress me in decent clothing beforehand, restore my knight’s belt and purse, and forgo shackles. I swear I’ll behave with dignity. And as I go to my death, let your wizard stand a few ells away holding the chalice with my sigil. It would give me a melancholy comfort to have it near me.’

He agreed.

Later, while the great ship sliced the waves on its southerly course, and those members of the crew who were not on watch gathered in solemn ranks to witness my dispatch, I mounted the improvised scaffold unfettered.

‘Do you have any last words?’ the Lord Constable asked me.

‘My lord, I bear you and the King’s Grace no malice,’ I told him. Tell Conrig that. And now, farewell.’

He stepped back to accommodate the hangman. I lifted my arm and cried out, ‘Concealer – to me!’

The sigil flew out of the cup and into my waiting hand. A roar of surprise rose from the astounded crew. But before a man of them could move, I intoned the brief spell that conjured the tiny door-shaped carving called Subtle Gateway, hardly larger than a thumbnail, which had been concealed in my mouth since I quit the manorhouse.

Agony smote me like a thunderclap. I knew that it was going to last for a long time, disabling me profoundly – perhaps even fatally – and this time there’d be no respite vouchsafed by Induna. The Great Lights would eat their fill of my pain without hindrance.

But if I survived, I’d open my eyes in the southernmost region of the continental nation of Andradh, over two thousand leagues away, far beyond the reach of Conrig Ironcrown, Sovereign of High Blenholme Island, and perhaps even beyond that of the Beaconfolk themselves.

I did survive.

And dwelt in Andradh among the Wave-Harriers for the next sixteen years, until Induna came knocking on my door and, against all odds, convinced me to become the Royal Intelligencer once again.