Читать книгу Dragonspell: The Southern Sea - Katharine Kerr - Страница 12

Although most people in Deverry thought of Bardek as one single country like their own, in truth it was an archipelago, and only the smallest islands were under the rule of a single government. The bigger ones, like Bardektinna and Surtinna, were divided into a number of city-states. Some of these consisted of only the city itself and barely enough surrounding farmlands to feed it; others controlled hundreds of square miles of territory and even other cities, either as colonies or as subject states. Myleton, on Bardektinna, was one of the biggest city-states at the time of which we speak, ruling the city of Valanth as well as a good half of the island. It was a beautiful city, then, too, perched high on a cliff overlooking a narrow harbour. Walking through the gates in the pure white walls was like walking into a forest.

Everywhere there were trees, lining the wide, straight streets and covering them with a shady canopy of interlaced branches, growing thick around every house and building: palms, both the tall date-bearing variety and the squat ornamentals, spicy-leaved eucalyptus, purple-flowered jacarandas, and a shrubby variety, with tiny red flowers like a dusting of colour over the leaves, known only in Bardek and called benato. Flowering vines twined around the trees and threatened to smother the various wooden and marble statues scattered in the small public squares or at the intersections of streets. Among the greenery stood the rectangular longhouses with their curving roofs like the hull of an overturned ship, some guarded by tall statues of the inhabitants’ ancestors; others, by pairs of wooden oars, large enough for a giant.

Sauntering down the streets or crossing from house to house was a constant flow of people, all dressed in tunics and sandals, men and women alike. The men, however, had brightly coloured designs painted on one cheek, while the women wore brooch-like oddments tucked into their elaborately curled and piled hair, but both ornament and paint identified the wearers’ ‘house’ or clan. Things were so safe then that the children could run loose in packs down the streets, playing elaborate games in the public spaces and private gardens alike without anyone saying a cross word to them or causing them a moment’s worry.

Of course, all this splendour was paid for dearly in human lives, because Myleton was the centre of the slave trade in the northern islands. With enough money and a little patience a buyer could find any sort of person there, from a scribe to a midwife to a labourer – even, on occasion, a barbarian from Deverry, though they were rare. The laws were very strict on such matters: Deverrians could be sold into slavery only for certain limited offences against the state, such as non-payment of very large debts, destruction of public property on a grand scale, or cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The archons of the various city-states had no desire to see a war fleet of blood-thirsty barbarians sailing their way on the excuse of rescuing some unjustly treated kinsman.

Thus, such exotic purchases were best made not in the public slave markets down near the harbour, where prisoners of war, criminals, and the offspring of state-owned slaves were auctioned off according to a registered bidding schedule, but in the smaller, private establishments scattered around Myleton. There was one such not far from the harbour, on the other side of the Plaza of Government, where a narrow, treeless alley twisted between back garden walls. As it went along, the walls grew lower until they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of huts and kitchen gardens, with here and there pigsties, each home to a clutch of small grey-haired pigs.

Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who played among them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a compound, with an iron-bound door in the middle. Although there was no sign or name carved into the soft wood, those who knew about such things would recognize the place as Brindemo’s market. Those who didn’t know were best off leaving it alone.

Yet, on the inside the compound was no dark and sinister house of horrors. There was an open yard with scruffy grass and ill-tended flowers where during the day the slaves could take the sun, and clean if somewhat shabby dormitories where each piece of valuable property had his or her own bed, and a wash-house where anyone who wanted could bathe at his or her leisure. Although the food was by no means of the same high quality as would grace a rich man’s table, there was plenty of it, and Brindemo and his family ate from the same batch as the merchandise. It was just that Brindemo was known in certain circles for buying slaves that other traders would refuse, slaves whose bills of sale were perhaps not quite in order, slaves who came to him drugged and unable to protest their condition – that sort of thing, perhaps legal, most likely not. Occasionally some unsuspecting beggar lad with no family to miss him had gone into Brindemo’s for a hand-out of bread and never been seen again.

It was, then, a good measure of the strictness of the laws governing the sale of barbarians that when one came his way with a bill of sale that was less than perfect, Brindemo hesitated to sell him. Ordinarily he would have shopped such a prize around to the great houses of Myleton straightaway and asked a good high price for him, too. The barbarian was in his early twenties, extremely handsome with raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes, courteous with a grace that bespoke some contact with the aristocracy, and best of all, he already knew a fair amount of Bardekian and was learning more with a speed that indicated a rare facility for languages. He would make, in short, a splendid footman with a chance to work his way up to majordomo someday, a valued member of the household who would eventually be given his freedom and adopted into the clan.

Unfortunately, there was that bill of sale, and the profoundly uncomfortable fact that the slave couldn’t even remember his own name. Taliaesyn, his previous owners had called him, but he readily admitted that the name meant nothing to him. He could remember nothing at all, not his family, not his home city – indeed, no more than a few scraps about his life beyond the day he’d been sold. Since his previous owners had been giving him opium to keep him docile, Brindemo made sure that he had plenty of nourishing food and all the sleep he wanted. Unfortunately, this decent treatment had no effect; Taliaesyn could remember no more than he had before.

‘You exasperate me, Taliaesyn of Pyrdon,’ Brindemo remarked, in Deverrian, one evening. ‘But then, no doubt you exasperate yourself.’

‘Of course.’ The slave gave him one of his oddly charming smiles. ‘What man wouldn’t want to know the truth about himself?’

‘Hah! There are many men who hide the truth about themselves deep in their hearts, where they will never have to face it. Perhaps you are one of those. Have you done somewhat so horrible that you wipe the mind clean to forget?’

‘Mayhap. Do I look like that sort of man to you?’

‘You don’t, though I think for all your charm you are a dangerous man. I would never give you a sword nor a dagger neither.’

Taliaesyn looked sharply away, his eyes gone cloudy, as if his thoughts had taken a strange turn.

‘A dagger,’ Brindemo whispered. ‘The word means somewhat?’

‘Somewhat.’ He spoke slowly, almost reluctantly. ‘I can’t find the memory. It just twitched at my mind, like.’

Brindemo sighed with deep drama.

‘Twenty-five zotars! Easily I could sell you for twenty-five golden zotars if only we could find the truth. Do you know how much a zotar is worth?’

‘I don’t, at that.’

‘It would buy ten pigs, and five of them fertile sows, even. So twenty-five zotars … ai!’

‘My heart bleeds for you.’

‘Ah, the sarcasm, and how can I blame you? It is a good sign. Your mind is coming back to life. But, I tell you, I have a guest coming tonight. He has spent many years in Deverry as a wine merchant. He might recognize you, or know somewhat to jog your mind. I cannot stand this. Twenty-five zotars, and here you sit, unsaleable. It aches the heart, as you say in your country.’

While they waited for Arriano to arrive, Brindemo taught the slave the proper method of pouring wine and passing a tray of cups around to guests. Taliaesyn took the lesson with a grave interest that had a certain charm, rather like an intelligent child who has decided to please his parents by doing something they want even though it strikes him as ridiculous. Yet Brindemo was always aware that he was docile only because his memory had gone. Taliaesyn moved like a knife fighter (the professional athletes of the arena were Brindemo’s only cognate for that particular gliding walk, the stance that was both relaxed and on guard at the same time), so much so that seeing him fussing over the silver tray was unsettling, as if a lion were wearing a collar and padding after its mistress like a pet cat. I never should have bought him, he thought miserably; I should have told Baruma no. Yet his misery only deepened, because he knew full well that he was in no position to deny the man known as Baruma anything.

Arriano came promptly when the temple bells were chiming out the sunset watch. Brindemo met him at the door himself, then ushered him into the main hall, a long room with a blue-and-white tiled floor and dark green walls. At one end was a low dais, strewn with many-coloured cushions arranged around a brass table. After they settled themselves on the cushions, Taliaesyn passed the wine-cups around, then perched respectfully on the edge of the dais. Arriano, a wizened little man who hid his baldness under a white linen skullcap, looked him over with a small, not unfriendly smile.

‘So, Taliaesyn,’ he said. ‘Our Brindemo here says you come from Pyrdon.’

‘So I’ve been told, master.’

One of Arriano’s bushy eyebrows shot up.

‘Talk to me in Deverrian. Oh, what … ah, I know. Describe this room.’

As Taliaesyn, somewhat puzzled, obligingly gave him a catalogue of the furniture and colours in the room, Arriano listened with his head cocked to one side. Then he cut the list short with a wave of his hand.

‘Pyrdon? Hah! You come from Eldidd, lad. I’d wager good coin on it – the Eldidd sea-coast, at that.’ He turned to Brindemo and spoke in Bardekian. ‘They have a very distinctive way of speaking there. As you might have expected, Baruma was lying like a scorpion.’

‘May the feet of the gods crush him!’ Brindemo felt sweat run down his back. ‘I don’t suppose you recognize this supposed slave?’

‘Not as to give you his real name, no. From the way he moves and all, I’d say he was a member of their aristocracy.’

‘What? I was thinking of him as a knife-fighter or boxer or some other performer like that.’

‘You forget, my dear old friend, that in Deverry, the aristocrats are all warriors. They start training for it when they’re little children.’

Brindemo groaned, a long rattle that gave him no relief. Taliaesyn was listening with an understandable intensity.

‘One of the noble-born?’ the slave said at last. ‘Here, this Baruma fellow said I was a merchant’s son.’

‘Baruma lies as easily as the rain falls,’ Arriano said. ‘If I were you, Brindemo, I’d stop babbling about zotars and get rid of this man as fast as you can – but to a decent master, mind. If his kin come storming through here with blood in their barbarian hearts …’

‘I know, I know.’ Brindemo could barely speak out of sheer frustrated greed. ‘But twenty-five zotars! Ai!’

‘Will all the gold in the world sew your head back onto your shoulders if …’

‘Oh shut up! Of course you’re right. Baruma wanted me to sell him to the mines or the galleys, but that’s completely out of the question if the man’s an aristocrat.’

‘I should think so! May Baruma’s sphincter loosen and his manhood plug itself!’

‘And may diseased monkeys feed some day upon his heart! Very well, then. I’ll sell him as soon as I can find the right sort of buyer. If you hear of someone, let me know – for a commission, of course.’

‘Of course.’ Arriano held out his hand. ‘More wine, Taliaesyn.’

Even though Taliaesyn served the wine exactly as he’d been taught with all the proper courtesies, the harsh, brooding look in his eyes made Brindemo profoundly uneasy. I’d best get him out of here soon for my own sake, he thought, but ai! twenty-five zotars!

Taliaesyn had been given a cubicle of his own to sleep in, because Brindemo was afraid to have him gossiping with the other slaves. If Baruma came back, neither the slave nor the slave merchant wanted him to know that they’d been trying to unravel his secret. Although the cubicle had room for nothing more than a straw pallet on the floor, and a tiny niche in the wall for an oil-lamp, it was private. After he’d been locked in for the night, Taliaesyn sat on the pallet for a long while, considering what Arriano had told him. Even though the lamp was out of oil, he could see perfectly well in the moonlight that streamed in the uncurtained window. It occurred to him, then, that it was peculiar that he could see in the dark. Before he’d been taking it for granted.

A few at a time, Wildfolk came to join him, a gaggle of gnomes, mostly, all speckled and mottled in blue and grey and purple, quite different from the ones in Deverry, or at least, so he remembered. At the moment, he was disinclined to trust anything he ‘remembered’ about himself. Who knew if it were real or some lie of Baruma’s? He did, however, have a clear memory picture of solidly coloured gnomes, in particular a certain grey one who was some sort of friend. Apparently he’d been able to see these little creatures for some time.

The ability to befriend spirits was so out of character for what he knew of Deverry aristocrats that he considered this strange fact for a good long time. Although he remembered little about himself, his general knowledge of the world seemed to be intact, and he was certain that your average warrior-lord did not go around talking to Wildfolk. Yet here was a particularly bold gnome, a dirty-green and greyish-purple with an amazing number of warts running down its spine, who was climbing into his lap and patting his hand with one little clawed paw as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Well, good eve, little brother.’

The gnome grinned to reveal bright purple fangs, then settled into his lap like a cat. As he idly stroked it, scratching it behind the ears every now and then, Taliaesyn felt something pricking at his mind like a buried splinter trying to force its way out of a finger. The Wildfolk, the very phrase, ‘little brother’, both meant something profound, something that would give him an important key to who he was if only he could find the lock. It was a secret, a very deep, buried secret, hidden even from Baruma, perhaps.

‘I wish you lads could talk. Do you know who I am?’

The pack all shook their heads in a collective yes.

‘Do you know my name, then?’

This time the answer was no.

‘But you somehow recognize me?’

Another yes. He wondered if he’d ever been an introspective man – probably not, if he reminded people of a warrior-lord or a knife-fighter. The bits of truth he was finding made less sense than all the lies. One of the noble-born, or an athlete, but either way, he saw the Wildfolk, and they considered him a friend. Again came that twitch at his mind. One of their friends or one of their kin? The hairs on the nape of his neck prickled as he said it aloud.

‘Or one of their kin. I should know what that means, curse it all to the third hell!’

But he couldn’t remember. All at once he was furious, furious with his mind, with Baruma, with the twisted fate that had stripped him of himself and dropped him here, a piece of human trash in Brindemo’s market. He slammed his fist into the wall, and the pain and the rage mingled to force a brief moment of clarity out of his maimed consciousness. The Westfolk. The Elcyion Lacar, the elves. They saw the Wildfolk; they called them little brothers. He’d known the elves once – hadn’t he? Hadn’t he ridden to war with some of them for allies? Once, a very long time ago.

‘Or one of their kin,’ he whispered like an exhalation of breath.

He went cold all over in the warm night. It was a hard thing, after all, for a man to realize that he wasn’t completely human.

Taliaesyn stayed at the market for two more days of drowsy boredom. Although he did his best to probe his mind, he found the work hard going, confirming his own thought that he’d never been a man who paid much attention to his mind. He did, however, remember one small thing, the matter of the piece of jewellery. Although he couldn’t remember exactly what it was, Taliaesyn was sure that Baruma had stolen a valuable piece of silver jewellery from him, some heirloom, handed down to him by some member of his clan or by someone he admired – he wasn’t sure which. He did know, however, that having lost that piece of jewellery was a shameful thing, that he would be dishonoured forever if he didn’t find Baruma and get it back. The shame fed his hatred until at times he daydreamed for long hours about killing Baruma in one or another hideous way.

On the mid-morning of the third day he was sitting out in the grassy courtyard when Brindemo brought a customer to see him. He was a tall man, quite dark, with close-cropped curly black hair and two green diamonds painted on his left cheek. The straight-backed way he stood suggested that at some time he might have been a soldier, and his shrewd dark eyes often flicked Brindemo’s way in contemptuous disbelief as the trader chattered on, singing Taliaesyn’s praises and creating a false history for him all at the same time.

‘Very polished manners, sir, a merchant’s son and very well-spoken, but alas, he had a terrible taste for gambling, and fell in among bad company over in Mangorio, and …’

‘Are you good with horses?’ The customer broke in, speaking straight to Taliaesyn. ‘Most Deverry men are.’

‘I am. I’ve been riding all my life.’ As he spoke he remembered another scrap of his earlier life: a sleek black pony that he’d loved as a child. The memory was so vivid, so precious that he missed what the customer said next while he groped and struggled to remember the little beast’s name.

All at once the customer swung at him, a clean hard punch straight at his face. Without thinking Taliaesyn parried with his left wrist and began to swing back. Brindemo’s horrified scream brought him to his senses. He could be beaten bloody for swinging on a free man, but the customer only laughed and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

‘I think you’ll do. I’m leading a caravan into the mountains. One of my muleteers fell ill, and I’ve no time to hire a free man to take his place.’

‘What, honoured sir?’ Brindemo’s jowls were shaking in indignation. ‘A valuable barbarian, used as a muleteer?’

‘Only for a while. I’m quite sure I can resell him at a profit later on. Arriano told me that he needed to disappear, for your sake and his, and I can manage that.’

‘He told you what?’ The trader’s voice rose to a wail.

‘You can trust me. Eight zotars.’

‘You have larceny in your heart! You wish to drive me out of business!’

The haggling was on in earnest. For a good long time they insulted each other’s motives and ancestry at the top of their lungs until at last they settled upon sixteen zotars. Out came the original bill of sale, which Taliaesyn’s new master read over quickly with a bitter twist to his mouth, as if he were amazed at the clumsiness of the forgery.

‘I’ll make out a new bill, of course,’ Brindemo said.

‘Of course. My name is Zandar of Danmara.’

When Brindemo waddled off inside the house to write out the new bill, Zandar crossed his arms over his chest and considered Taliaesyn carefully and coolly.

‘You deal honestly with me, boy, and I’ll do the same with you. When your relatives catch up with us I’ll sell you back for little more than I paid – provided you work hard and cause me no trouble. Is it a bargain?’

‘Yes. I don’t suppose free men shake hands with slaves here, or I’d offer you mine.’

‘No one shakes hands the way you do in your country, so don’t take it as an insult. Unsanitary custom, it always seemed to me, rubbing palms with someone you barely know. You’ll have a quarterstaff like the other men. Will you swear to me you won’t turn it against me?’

‘On the gods of my people.’

‘All right, then. We won’t mention it again.’

In spite of himself Taliaesyn felt a grudging respect for the man. He would have liked him, he decided, if they’d met in other circumstances. Zandar went on with his slow scrutiny.

‘Silver dagger,’ he said abruptly. ‘That mean anything to you, boy?’

Taliaesyn felt his head jerk up like a startled stag’s.

‘I thought it might. You look the type. It would fit what little I’ve been told about your mysterious circumstances.’

‘So it does. Oh by every god!’ He spun around on his heel and began to pace back and forth in sheer excitement as memories crowded at the edge of his mind. He could feel the weight in his hand, the perfect balance of the dagger, see the pommel with the three silver knobs, the device graved on the blade, a striking falcon. All at once tears sprang to his eyes, as he saw another picture in his mind, the grim, scar-slashed face of a man with grey-shot blond hair and ice-blue eyes, a cold man, hard as steel, but one who loved him. ‘I think I remember my father, and by the hells, he was no merchant.’

‘We were all sure of that, boy. What’s his name? Think.’ He let his voice drop to a whisper. ‘Try to remember his name.’

Taliaesyn felt it rising, just out of reach, tried to remember, and lost the memory cold.

‘I can’t.’ Then he felt the stomach-wrenching cold of a loss of hope. ‘Well, if I was a silver dagger, you don’t need to worry about my kin coming to ransom me back. Doubtless they’ll be glad enough to be rid of me forever.’

‘Many a man’s worked his way out of slavery, you know. All it takes is a little shrewdness and a willingness to take on paying jobs after your duties are done.’

Taliaesyn nodded in agreement, but in truth he barely heard him. He was remembering the dagger again, and he knew now what Baruma had stolen from him, knew what he had to take back at the cost of Baruma’s life. Although he would never harm Zandar, he’d sworn no vow against escaping the first chance he got. Even though he would be torn to pieces as an escaped slave, he would take his revenge first, then die knowing he’d earned his manhood back again.

On the other side of the city from the harbour, Myleton sprawled along a shallow though broad river. Beside the water lay a tangle of alleys, tumbledown warehouses, and wooden jetties, where brightly-coloured punts bobbed in the flow. Beyond this disorderly district was a flat open pastureland where merchant caravans could camp with their pack-animals. Zandar’s caravan was waiting there, camped around two stone fire-circles and a pair of rope corrals. It was a big caravan, too: thirty pack mules and twelve riding horses, tended by nine freemen and now, of course, one slave.

Eking out his knowledge of the language with gesture and pantomime, the men introduced Taliaesyn to his new life. The extra horses were his responsibility, as well as all the odd pieces of work unworthy of freemen: cutting firewood, fetching water, stacking gear, and serving the food at meals, though one of the other men did double as the cook. Although everyone treated him decently, no one spoke to him unless it was to give him an order. As a slave he seemed to be almost invisible, like a tool or a cook-pot, hung up out of sight when not in use. When dinner time came, Taliaesyn was fed last and sat behind the others at a respectful distance. Afterwards, while they lounged talking around the fire he scrubbed out the cooking pots and washed the bowls. Even though he’d had some days at Brindemo’s to recover, he was still so weak from the long ordeal in the ship that by the end of the evening his head was swimming with exhaustion. As he fell asleep, he realized that it would be some time before he could seriously consider escape.

When the caravan broke camp the next morning, it headed out to the southeast, following the line of the river. After a few miles Taliaesyn realized why Zandar didn’t seem worried about his new slave escaping. The countryside ran perfectly flat, perfectly featureless, mile after mile of small farms with only a few shade-trees to break the monotony. Before noon they turned away from the river to head straight south and soon left the settled farms behind to follow a narrow caravan track through grassland. A runaway slave would have no place to hide, no food to forage, no true road to follow. Well, by the gods of my people, Taliaesyn thought, I’ll have to wait and see what the mountains bring me, then.

That time of year, when winter was already howling through Deverry, the Southern Sea was so rough that the small bark was forced to tack its way across to Bardek. Of a morning it might run miles out of the direct course before a strong west wind only to laboriously turn back in the afternoon when the wind changed. All around the ocean stretched wintry-blue and lonely, an endless swell off to a grey-mist horizon. Considering the time of year, it was doubtless the only ship out to sea. Its tattered crew of fifteen sailors grumbled at their captain’s decision to make the trip south, but then, they were usually grumbling about one thing or another. A rough lot, they went armed with swords and squabbled like the winds themselves, but they were quite respectful of the ship’s two passengers. Whenever Salamander the gerthddyn and his bodyguard, a young silver dagger with the supposed name of Gilyan, took the sea air or stood at the ship’s railing of a morning, the pirates bowed politely, left the deck to give them privacy, and made the sign of warding against witchcraft as they did so. If they had been able to see the small grey gnome that frisked along with the pair of them, they would have outright run away.

‘Ah, the call of the sea!’ Salamander remarked, one frosty morning. ‘The vast and wind-swept sea, at that, and then, far ahead of us, an exotic land and strange clime.’ He leaned against the rail and watched the white water foaming under the prow. ‘Bracing salt air, the creak of ropes and sails – ah, it’s splendid.’

‘I’m cursed glad you think so,’ Jill snarled. ‘I’d rather have a good horse under me any day.’

‘Spoken like a true silver dagger, Gillo my turtledove, but you’re overlooking a great advantage to shipboard life: spare time. Time to plan, to scheme, to brood revenge for the evils done our Rhodry, but best of all, time for you to learn Bardekian.’

‘Is it hard to learn?’

‘Oh, not at all. I picked it up in a couple of weeks the first time I was there.’

Salamander was forgetting, however, that he was not only half Elvish, with that race’s natural proclivity for language, but also a man with a highly-trained and disciplined mind. Jill found her studies maddening. Although she submitted to Salamander’s endless drills, after hours of sitting in the stuffy cabin her stubbornness began to wear on him. It only took a couple of days before his patience snapped.

‘Now here!’ he snarled one morning. ‘You’ve got to put the adjectives before the nouns, you little dolt! If you say “orno mannoto”, you’re saying “the dogs are ten”. Ten dogs is “mannoto orno”.’

‘Why can’t these idiots speak properly? If putting those ad-things after a name is good enough for the king, it should be good enough for them.’

Salamander heaved an unnecessarily loud sigh.

‘Mayhap we need a bit of a rest,’ he said. ‘I’ve been meaning to look over our coin, anyway. How much of Gwerbret Blaen’s bounty do we have left? These pirates are both bestial and of repellent aspect, but they do not come cheap.’

After Jill barred the door, they pooled their coin and counted it out. His long nose quivering, the gnome hunkered down to stare at the precious gold. When Salamander set aside the second instalment on their passage, the pile left looked inadequate indeed.

‘Even if we find Rhodry right away, we’re going to have to stay in Bardek all winter,’ Jill said. ‘Is it an expensive sort of place?’

‘It is, but men like a good tale no matter where they live. I shall ply my humble trade, but it’s going to look truly humble in the sophisticated islands. The rich folk won’t pay much for a storyteller, deemed fit only for farmers and slaves.’

‘Well, as long as we eat regularly, we don’t have to live in luxury.’

‘You may not have to live in luxury.’ With a decidedly mournful sigh, Salamander began making the coins disappear into hidden pockets in his clothing. ‘Besides, if I’m not rich, how can I buy an exotic barbarian slave?’

‘What? Who’s going to be buying any slaves?’

‘We are, my turtledove – Rhodry. What did you think we’d do? Demand him back by force or steal him with the sword? This is a civilized country. You can’t just take someone’s property.’

‘By every greasy hair on the Lord of Hell’s black ass, I want revenge, not haggling in a marketplace.’

‘Do you also want to be arrested for armed robbery? Jill, please, for the sake of every god of both our peoples, follow my orders when we get there. If we cause trouble, we could rot in prison for years, and that won’t do our Rhodry one jot of good.’

Once the coins were hidden, Salamander leaned back on his narrow bunk and idly stroked the blanket with his long, nervous fingers while he thought something through. All at once he laughed, his smoky-grey eyes snapping with delight.

‘I have it, my sweet, my eaglet! I shall be a wizard, not a gerthddyn.’ He waved one hand in a flourish, and blue fire danced and sparked from his fingertips. ‘Krysello, the Barbarian Wizard from the Far North!’ Another snap of his fingers sent a small shower of bright red sparks flying. ‘Come one, come all, and see the marvels of the northern lands! Bring the children, bring the aged grandmother, and see if you can discover if it’s done with powders and mirrors, or if the barbarian wizard is everything he claims to be.’ When he waved both hands, a sheet of purple flame stippled with gold drifted across the cabin to dissipate harmlessly against the wall. ‘By the hells, they’ll be throwing coin at us by the handful.’

‘No doubt, since they’ll be seeing real dweomer. But what would Nevyn say about this?’

‘Does elven skin make good leather? Let us most profoundly hope that Nevyn never finds out about this little show, or the question will be put to the test. But don’t you see, Jill, how perfect this’ll be? Our enemies won’t suspect a thing, because they won’t believe for a moment that anyone would show off real dweomer in the marketplace.’ He rubbed his hands together in glee, making a small fountain of silver flames. ‘Now, let’s see … aha, you can be my beauteous barbarian handmaiden. Come see the fair Jillanna, a savage princess of far-off Deverry! See how she carries a sword like a man! You’ll be a draw in and of your lovely self.’

‘My very humble thanks. I suppose it’s better than being known as your fancy lad.’

Salamander wiped his smile away and considered her for a moment.

‘I’m sorry, Jill. I know your heart is sick with worry. It’s a hard quest we’re on, but we’ll save Rhodry yet. Try not to brood.’

‘Not brood? Ye gods, with him in the hands of the Hawks of the Brotherhood?’

‘He may not be that, remember. Snilyn the pirate was as clear as clear, they were going to leave him alive and then sell him.’

‘So they told Snilyn.’

‘Well, true spoken.’

Cold fear swept between them like another wind from the sea. With a dog-like shudder Salamander roused himself from what threatened to be despair.

‘Let me amuse you, my turtledove. The Great Krysello had best practise his astounding repertoire of marvels.’

As it turned out, with the aid of the Wildfolk of Fire and Aethyr Salamander could put on an amazing show of true magic disguised as false. He sent balls of blue fire dancing, sheets of red flame drifting, sparks glittering down in fire-falls and miniature lightning bolts shooting and blazing. In the dark, the show would be absolutely dazzling. Once he had his visual effects coming easily, he added snaps, booms, crashes, and sizzles, courtesy of the Wildfolk of the Air. At the end, he threw a golden fire-fall up far above his head and made miniature thunder roll as it came cascading down. As the booms died away, there came a timid knock on the door. When Jill opened it, she found a white-faced pirate.

‘Oh here,’ he said, with a lick at nervous lips. ‘Be all well with you?’

‘It is. Why?’

‘We heard them noises.’

‘It was merely my master, studying his dark arts. Dare you intrude?’

With a yelp, the pirate turned and fled. As Jill shut the door, Salamander broke out into howls of wild laughter.

‘That’s the spirit,’ he said between gasps. ‘I think me this ruse will work splendidly.’

Baruma the merchant leaned onto the windowsill of his inn and looked out over the twilit city of Valanth. Far below down the hill, the last of the sunset sparkled on the broad river; here and there, lantern light bloomed in the windows of the houses or glittered among the trees of a garden. The sound of donkey-bells drifted up to him from the distant streets. On this lovely evening he was inclined to be in a good mood. Not only had he successfully finished his job for the Old One, but his own affairs were progressing well. Sewn inside the hem of his tunic was a small cache of diamonds, far more portable than gold. Although he traded in goods that couldn’t be displayed in any market or spoken of openly in any guild hall, they fetched a steep price for the man who knew where to sell them, and Baruma’s poisons were all of the highest quality. He’d personally tested them on slaves to ensure it. While he considered which of his select group of customers to visit next, he scratched his hairy stomach, idly hunting for the tiny black fleas that were one of the hazards of travelling in the islands. It was time for him to leave Bardektinna and sail across to Surtinna; his ultimate goal lay on that island, far up in the hills where the Old One lived.

When the night grew cool, Baruma closed the shutters and turned back to his chamber, a luxurious one with white walls and a blue and green tiled floor scattered with velvet cushions and set about with tiny oil-lamps. In one corner lay his travelling gear and two big canvas-wrapped bales which he never allowed out of his sight. Any customs officer who went through his goods would find heavily embroidered linen tablecloths, napkins, and decorative bands for tunics and suchlike, made by barbarians in Deverry for sale to the wealthy ladies of Bardek. Unknown to those who made them, however, once Baruma brought their work back to Bardek it underwent a subtle change. He used the various traditional patterns as labels, indicating the name of the poison in which the cloth had been soaked. Put the cloth in water or wine, and there was the poison again, safe from the prying eyes of the archon’s men.

In one of his saddle-bags he carried Rhodry’s silver dagger. He’d kept it for no real reason, more as a souvenir of those intensely pleasurable hours he’d spent breaking his prisoner’s mind and will, but it did make scrying him out easier. Out of boredom as much as anything, Baruma took it out, then sat down on an enormous cushion and centred his mind by staring into the flame of an oil-lamp. Since he was holding a semi-magical object of great meaning to Rhodry, the image built up fast. In the yellow dancing glow of the burning wick he saw Rhodry sitting near a campfire and eating stew out of a wooden bowl. Although he looked tired, he was far from exhausted, and he was unchained, unshackled, obviously a well-treated member of what seemed to be a large caravan. His flare of rage cost Baruma the Vision. That fool Brindemo! Why hadn’t he sold Rhodry to the mines or the galleys as he’d been ordered? Hardly aware of what he was doing he drove the dagger hard into the cushion.

This lapse of control forced him to his feet. As he put the dagger away it occurred to him that Brindemo was going to have to pay for his failure. The guilds would show the fat trader what happened to men who cross the will of the Dark Powers. As for Rhodry himself, since the Old One had said nothing about where he should be sold – the agony of the mines or the galleys was Baruma’s own refinement – Baruma supposed the job was done well enough. Then he remembered the threat, the cold hatred in the silver dagger’s eyes and voice as he stood on the deck of the ship and told Baruma that someday he’d escape and kill him. Just stupid braggadocio, Baruma told himself. Slaves can never escape here in Bardek. Yet he felt a cold sweep of fear up his spine. Rhodry was just the desperate sort of man who might risk everything for revenge, simply because he wouldn’t care if he lived or died after he killed his prey.

Briefly he considered tracking Rhodry down himself, but the Old One had specifically forbidden him to kill the barbarian. If Rhodry were to die, Baruma would have to ensure that no one knew of his part in it. He could, he supposed, simply buy Rhodry back from his new master and sell him to the mines himself – but the dangers of that were entirely too obvious, considering the strictness of the laws governing barbarians and slavery. The Old One posed the worse threat. If he came to consider Baruma reckless and thus no longer completely dependable, then he’d dispose of his erstwhile student in a way that made the archons’ long, slow methods of execution look merciful. He would be better off facing a loose and well-armed Rhodry than risking his teacher’s judgment. There remained, however, Brindemo’s insolence. Baruma could take some solace in seeing him well-punished.

Down near the river in Valanth, on a narrow, dead-end alley, stood a house that was crumbling into decay. The stuccoed outer walls of its compound were peeling and cracking; the courtyard within, so tangled with a garden gone riot that the ancestor statues were completely hidden. The longhouse itself had lost a good portion of the shakes on its roof, and the outer wall gapped and cracked in places. The citizens who lived nearby thought that it belonged to an old merchant who had lost both his fortune and his only son to pirates and who, thanks to the resulting madness, refused to go out or see anyone but his pair of slaves, as ancient as he. Baruma knew better. Late that night he left his inn and went to the compound, knocking on the splintery gate in a pattern of sound that few people knew.

In a few moments the gate opened a cautious crack. Lantern in hand, an aged slave peered at him.

‘I wish to speak to your master. Tell him Baruma of Adelion is here, come from Deverry.’

The slave nodded.

‘Is he in? Will he see me?’

The slave shrugged as if to say he didn’t know.

‘Answer me, you insolent fool!’

The slave opened his mouth and revealed the scarred stump of a tongue long ago cut from his mouth.

‘Huh. Well, I should have realized that. Are you allowed to show me in?’

The slave nodded a yes and ushered him into the weed-choked garden. They picked a careful way across on a path where the flagstones had cracked and tilted treacherously, then went into the house and down a musty corridor lined with cobwebbed statues – all stage dressing for the neighbours and tradesmen who might come this far in. Near the back of the house were the master’s real quarters. The slave motioned Baruma into a high-ceilinged chamber, bright with lamplight, that was furnished with cushioned furniture and red-and-gold carpets laid over the tiled floor. On one wall was a fresco showing a pony and a barbarian woman engaged in a peculiar kind of sport; he was busy examining it when he suddenly realized that he was no longer alone. He whirled around to find the master towering over him. It took all his will to keep from yelping in fear. As it was, something must have shown on his face because the master laughed. A tall man, with bluish-black skin, he was wearing a plain white tunic, and over his face was a hood of the finest red silk. Tattooed around his right wrist was a striking hawk.

‘If you were one of my pieces of work, you’d be dead, Baruma. Have you come to show me your wares? I’m most interested in seeing them.’

‘I’m honoured that you are. Perhaps we can strike a bargain, then. You see, one of the little rats who scurry at our bidding has disobeyed me. I can’t go back to Myleton to tend to the matter myself, but he needs to be punished. Not killed, mind – merely taught a painful lesson.’

‘Nothing could be easier to arrange.’ The master hesitated briefly. ‘This fool lives in Myleton, then.’

‘Brindemo the slave trader.’

‘Ah.’

In the flickering lamplight Baruma could see nothing but the coarsest silhouette of the Hawkmaster’s face through the fine silk, but he received the impression that he was being studied. The hair on the back of his neck pricked in a perfectly reasonable fear at the thought.

‘One of my men accompanied you to the barbarian kingdom,’ the master said at last. ‘I believe he was calling himself Gwin.’

‘Yes. I didn’t realize that he was attached to this particular guild.’

‘It wasn’t his place to tell you.’ There was a trace of humour in his voice. ‘He made, of course, a full report on what happened.’

Baruma’s fear deepened when he remembered the Hawk’s insolence. He was painfully aware that no one in the world knew where he was at the moment, that he could disappear forever if the Hawkmaster should choose.

‘I’m very interested in this Rhodry of Aberwyn.’ The master laced his fingertips together and seemed to be studying them. ‘Although Gwin and Merryc are convinced that he was noble-born, we know little about him. I wonder why the Old One found him so important.’

‘I wonder myself.’

There was no way of telling if the master believed him or not. After an agonizing wait of some minutes, the Hawkmaster spoke again.

‘Soon you’ll be completing the third ring of your studies, won’t you?’ His tone of voice was perfectly conversational, which was, oddly enough, more frightening than any sinister whisper or suchlike would have been. ‘A man like you could use a little backing in the Brotherhood.’

‘No doubt.’ Baruma picked his words carefully, wondering if he were being sounded out for a weakness. ‘When he walks the paths of power, a man needs to know who’s walking behind him.’

The master laughed, a cold sharp bark.

‘I like the way you express yourself, my friend, and you’re speaking the exact truth. What if I offered myself as one of your backers?’

‘I’d be honoured beyond dreaming, of course, but such support is far too valuable to come for free.’

‘Just so.’ The red silk rustled as the master nodded his head. ‘Some of us in the various guilds wonder what the Old One’s up to. We wonder greatly. He is vastly old, my friend, well over a hundred at least, maybe two hundred for all we know. We wonder how the years have affected his mind. You’ve seen him recently?’

There was no use in lying.

‘Oh yes, fairly recently. He seemed as sharp and smooth as a well-oiled scythe. Physically he’s very slow, of course. But his mind still seemed … let us say, formidable.’

‘Ah. A fine choice of words, indeed. Now let me make one thing clear: I mean the Old One no harm, none whatsoever. If the blood guilds wished to dispose of him, we wouldn’t bother to take the risk of bringing you into our confidence. Is that clear?’

‘Very. Yet something’s troubling you?’

‘Oh yes. Why did he want Rhodry of Aberwyn kidnapped, then just set adrift here in the islands?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘I was afraid that he hadn’t told you. He’s working on something, all right, something very convoluted and strange.’ The master got up abruptly. ‘I smell danger.’ He began to pace back and forth in front of the fresco. ‘And no one reaches my position in a blood guild without knowing danger when he smells it. All I want from you is this, that you go on to the Old One’s villa, just as you planned to do, and see if you can find out anything about this mysterious scheme. That’s all for now – just information. Later, who knows? But I promise you this, if anyone has to confront the Old One, that someone will be me, not you.’

‘Very good, because you know perfectly well that I could never stand against him.’

‘Just so.’ The way the hood twitched gave the impression that the master was smiling. ‘And in return, we put you forward as a candidate for the Outer Circle. Our backing carries great weight, you know.’

‘Oh yes, and as I say, I’m honoured beyond dreaming.’ One thin trickle of fear-sweat ran down Baruma’s ribs, but he forced himself to smile. ‘And I suppose someone will be keeping track of this mysterious Rhodry?’

‘Of course. The man you know as Gwin, actually. He’s the logical choice. He knows what the slave looks like after all.’

Baruma hesitated, wondering if Gwin were really trustworthy where Rhodry was concerned, but arguing with a Hawkmaster’s decisions ranked very low on his list of enjoyable pastimes.

‘Excellent. I have reason to believe that Rhodry’s a much more dangerous man than the Old One realizes.’

‘Indeed? Because he swore he’d kill you?’

The humour in the master’s voice made Baruma furious, but he kept his own voice steady and light.

‘I should have realized that Gwin would mention that little incident. Well, yes, partly because of that. Do you blame me? You know as well as I do that barbarians are more than willing to die if it’ll salvage their precious honour. No sensible, civilized man would try to escape his owner, but Rhodry of Aberwyn is neither civilized nor sensible.’

‘You’ve got a point. You know, I think it might be safer all round to have Rhodry in our hands rather than wandering round the islands with this spice trader.’

Baruma’s heart pounded once. The Hawkmaster already knew a great deal more than he’d realized.

‘I agree of course,’ Baruma said. ‘I suppose it’ll be easy enough for your men to take Rhodry alive. The Old One was adamant: we had to leave him alive.’

‘Oh, was he? That’s an interesting piece of news. Very well, kidnapping it is. I’ll put Gwin and some of my men on the trail on the morrow. We can probably learn a great deal simply by asking this Rhodry the right questions. He might be unwilling to answer, but then, we have ways of dealing with the recalcitrant.’

‘You certainly do, yes.’ Baruma was by now thoroughly frightened, but he knew that he had to speak the truth now rather than let the master find it out on his own later. ‘But Rhodry can tell you nothing. The Old One ordered me to crush his mind.’

The master spun around and stared straight at him. The lamplight struck the hood at an angle, allowing Baruma to get an impression of narrow eyes and a sneering mouth. Showing fear or grovelling now would be fatal.

‘I followed my orders, of course. I wish you’d come forward earlier with this proposal.’

‘So do I.’ The master’s tone was ironic rather than angry, and Baruma could breathe more easily. ‘I don’t suppose there’s any way to restore his memory?’

‘None. No human being could possibly break the ensorcelment I put upon him. No matter how long he lives, he’ll never remember so much as his own true name.’

‘That’s a pity, but well, we’ll have to work round it.’

‘Let me see, the man who was calling himself Merryc is still in Eldidd, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, and working out very nicely, too, judging from his last letter.’

‘And we at least know that Rhodry originally came from Aberwyn.’

‘You know, my friend, you and I might be able to work very well together. You think, and I like that. Curse this winter weather! There won’t be another ship across in months now, and that means no news from Merryc till spring. But at any rate, what do you think of my bargain?’

Since answering too quickly would be suspicious, Baruma made a show of considering. After all, he reminded himself, gaining the Old One’s backing was only hypothetical, while the Hawkmaster’s offer was very real indeed – for better or for worse.

‘I think that it’s a crucial turning of my Fate, and that I’d be a fool to refuse it.’ Also a dead man if I refuse it, he added to himself. ‘How shall we seal it?’

‘The way these things are always sealed, my friend: in blood.’

‘Very well.’ Although he went ice-cold, he managed to keep his voice calm. ‘Whenever you wish to begin.’

Zandar’s caravan was working its way through hill country as they headed southwest along the spine of the island. On either side of the dusty road, field after field of dark green vegetables nestled in the valleys, criss-crossed with tiny irrigation ditches, sparkling with water. When the caravan rode by, the bent-back farmers would look up, stretch, and stare at the long string of pack mules and horses. Riding at the dusty end of the line, Taliaesyn would stare back and envy them: farmers or not, they were free men. Toward noon, the caravan came to a river, or more precisely, to a broad gulch, littered with rocks and small shrubs, where water ran down the middle in a small, mucky stream. Out in what current there was stood a huge wooden water wheel with buckets all along the rim. As, sweating in the sun, two slaves turned a crank under an overseer’s whip, the buckets dipped down, brought up the precious water, and emptied it into a wooden culvert that ran on stilts to the main irrigation ditch at the lip of the gulch. Seeing the scars on the slaves’ backs reminded Taliaesyn that he was lucky.

When Kryblano, a free man working as a caravan guard, dropped back beside him, Taliaesyn asked him the river’s name.

‘The En-ghidal. It’s dry now, all right, but soon the rains will start, and the flash-floods with them. We’ll be home by then, though.’

That night the caravan camped downhill from a farming village called Deblis, a tidy arrangement of some fifty square white-plastered houses, each with a little wooden fence around a vegetable patch in front and a chicken-coop behind. At sunset, Zandar took Taliaesyn and Kryblano in for the night-time market. Among the flower-blossom lights of oil-lamps, pedlars and local craftsmen squatted on the ground with their merchandise neatly arranged on pallets of woven rushes, but the local folk seemed to be standing around gossiping more than they were buying. Zandar’s goods, however, were a different thing. Once Taliaesyn got them unpacked and spread out, the village women clustered round to haggle for the little clay pots and packets of beaten-bark paper that held the precious spices.

After about an hour, as business was slackening off, Zandar sent Kryblano and Taliaesyn off to buy him some wine, and, generous employer and master that he was, gave Kryblano the money to buy himself and the slave a cup, too. After some poking around the village they found a tiny wine-shop set into the side of a house, a room smoky from oil-lamps where row after row of yellow clay jugs stood against the wall and patrons spilled out into the alley. While they sipped the flat cups of sweet red wine, Kryblano struck up a conversation with a pair of locals, but Taliaesyn stood a little behind him and spoke to nobody.

As they made their way back to the marketplace, Kryblano paused for a moment to slip down an alley and relieve himself in the dark. Carrying the wine jug for their master, Taliaesyn waited for him in the street, which was nearly as dark, and chewed over his continual nag of a problem: who am I, anyway? At a scrape of sandal on sand behind him, he turned and saw two men walking up to him, so purposefully and yet so quietly that he went on guard. Then he saw the bright gleam of a tiny dagger in one man’s hand, and the coil of fine silken rope in the other’s. Taliaesyn ducked to one side and kicked out as the steel flashed toward him, but he felt the dagger graze his arm. He threw the wine jug in his attacker’s face and grabbed the rope-carrier by the arm, twisting him round. When the man with the knife feinted in, Taliaesyn yelled an instinctive war-cry and shoved his struggling prisoner straight onto the blade. The man in his hands screamed and slumped forward with a gush of blood. As the second turned to flee, Kryblano came running, yelling his head off, and the alley filled with villagers drawn by the shouting. As they tackled the escaping assassin, Kryblano reached Taliaesyn’s side and grabbed his bleeding arm to look at the shallow wound.

Everyone was talking so fast that Taliaesyn had trouble understanding more than a few words. All at once he realized that his cut was burning and that he could no longer focus his eyes. By the light of oil lamps that shot up and wavered in great gobbets of flame he saw Zandar forcing his way through the crowd in the company of a stout man with grey hair. It was suddenly very hard to hear the voices around him. He did hear Kryblano, shouting in alarm; then there was a gauzy grey silence and a dark.

In the dark a light was burning. At first he thought it was the sun, but as he walked toward it he saw that it glowed red like a campfire, that indeed it was a fire, but a strange one, because in the middle of the flames crouched a tiny red dragon. Around the fire stood a black man holding the hand of a white woman and a black woman standing alone. When they saw him they laughed and waved to him. Instinctively he knew that he should complete the circle, and as soon as he’d linked up the partners, they all began to dance, circling round and round, faster and faster, until all four of them blurred together in a rush of silver light, and the dragon swelled up, huge and ominous in a roar of flames, calling out to him, calling his name …

‘Rhodry.’

He said the name aloud, and he was awake, lying on a blanket in the shade of a tree at the edge of the caravan camp. By the sun’s position he could tell that it was nearly noon. Although he was so dry that his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth, and his scratch from the night before still stung, he felt perfectly well and steady-headed, not at all like a man who’d taken a poisoned wound. When he spoke the name again, Zandar noticed that he was awake and came over with a waterskin.

‘So you’re alive, are you? Good.’

‘I’ve remembered my real name.’ Dry mouth or not, he felt his news so urgently it was like an ache. ‘It’s Rhodry.’

‘Well, by the gods and all their little piglets! Good, good for you. Here. Drink first; then we’ll talk.’

Taliaesyn drank as much as he could hold, waited a few moments, then found he could drink some more. Zandar hunkered down next to him and watched with a commercial sort of compassion.

‘There was some kind of poison on that blade,’ the trader said. ‘The village herbwoman was sure of that, but it couldn’t have been very strong.’

‘I don’t think it was poison. How about a simple drug, to knock me out and make me easy prey?’

‘If so, it failed badly. The man you had in your hands is dead.’

All at once Rhodry went cold all over, remembering that he was a slave.

‘And will I die for that?’

‘No. He attacked you, and the village headman is a friend of mine. What we all want to know is why he attacked you.’ Zandar gave him a grim smile. ‘Or let me guess: you can’t remember if you have any enemies who want you dead.’

‘I can’t, master. I’m sorry. I wish I could.’

‘Of course you do. Well, the headman’s going to have the other thief executed, and that will be an end to that. Think you can ride today?’

‘Oh yes. I feel fine. That’s why I think it was a drug, not a poison.’

‘Oh.’ Zandar considered this for a moment, then shrugged. ‘Well, let’s get out of this place and on the road, then. Maybe that will throw these mysterious enemies off your trail. I paid too much for you to have you slaughtered in front of me.’ Yet he paused for a moment, mouthing syllables. ‘Rhodry, huh?’ He said the name strangely, with no puff of breath and barely any trill on the ‘rh’. ‘Tell the others, will you? At least it’s shorter.’

Some five days later, the Great Krysello and his beautiful barbarian maidservant found themselves a suite of chambers in one of the most expensive inns in Myleton. Since the innkeep had plenty of experience with travelling showmen, he demanded payment in advance, but once Salamander gave him a generous handful of silver coins, he turned servile, showing them up to the suite personally, bowing often, and muttering words that Jill interpreted as being ‘hope my humble quarters are suitable’ and other such pleasantries. The innkeep’s boy carried up their travelling gear and laid it down on top of a low chest, then retired with an awe-struck look for the pale hair and eyes of his guests, rarities enough in Bardek to be a show in themselves. Although Salamander announced that he was pleased, especially with the piles of cushions and the purple divan, Jill found the squareness of the room uncomfortable, and the echoing tile floor and stark white walls amplified every sound they made. Near the ceiling ran a painted dado of fruit and flowers, so realistically done that she would have sworn you could have plucked them off the wall. When her gnome appeared, it sniffed round the corners like a dog.

‘Now Jill, listen,’ Salamander said. ‘When we go to the marketplace today, you’ll have to peace-bind that sword with a thong or suchlike, or the archon’s men will confiscate it.’

‘What? The bloody gall! What kind of a place is this, anyway? What if some thief attacks us?’

‘They don’t have that kind of thief here, thanks to those very same archon’s men. If you get your pocket picked, you see, you lodge a complaint, and the archon’s men hunt down the thief for you and arrest him.’

‘Sounds like a waste of public funds to me, when I’m quite capable of slitting the dishonest bastard’s throat for him.’

‘I fear me you’re going to find Bardek a great trial, and doubtless Bardek will find you one in return.’

‘Let them. Do you think Rhodry’s here in Myleton?’

‘I only wish life would smile upon us so warmly, my little eaglet. I’m willing to wager that he came through here, though, because this town is the centre of the slave trade. Anyone with an expensive property like our Rhodry would be insane to sell it somewhere else. I’m just hoping he went at government auction. They keep careful records of every sale, and for a few coppers we’ll … that is, I’ll be allowed to read them.’

‘One of these days I suppose I should learn letters. It seems like such a wretched bore, puzzling them out.’

‘Not once you learn, and truly, you should. Let me just see if I can pick up our Rhodry’s trail now that we’re back on land.’

In a corner of the room stood a rectangular charcoal brazier, made of cast iron, on a solid-looking bronze stand, with a layer of kindling and charcoal all ready for a fire. Salamander lit the fuel with a wave of his hand, then stared steadily into the pale and tiny flames. Jill felt a cold trembling of fear. For all they knew, Rhodry had never been sold at all, but still suffered at the hands of the Hawks of the Brotherhood. When the gerthddyn groaned dramatically, she leapt to her feet, thinking he’d seen Rhodry dead or maimed.

‘He’s been sold, sure enough, to some kind of caravan leader,’ Salamander said. ‘It certainly looks as if he’s being well-treated.’

‘Oh ye gods, you chattering elf!’ She felt tears misting her eyes and took refuge in anger. ‘Then why did you have to make such mournful noises?’

‘Because they’re travelling on a road through the grasslands, heading toward the undistinguished, unremarkable, and boringly bland mountains that cover half this island and a good chunk of the next, too. I have absolutely no idea where they may be.’

Jill muttered several foul things under her breath.

‘Fortunately,’ Salamander went on, ‘we can draw upon resources other than dweomer. We can check the afore-mentioned government records, and we can ask questions of the private traders, too. An expensive barbarian like our Rhodry will have been remembered.’

‘Good. Let’s get on our way.’

‘We might as well, O Gilyan of the hot blood. Besides, we have to go to the market to buy supplies and to get a permit. Tonight we put on our first show.’

In spite of the constant anxiety that underlay her mind like the sound of the waves in a harbour, Jill found Myleton splendid with its longhouses and painted garden walls scattered through the forest of flowering trees. When they came to the market, she was doubly impressed. The vast plaza was a sea of brightly-coloured sunshades, rippling in the wind over the hundreds of booths spread out around the public fountains. Here and there was a small stage where performers struggled to get the crowd’s attention. Salamander told her that at noon the market would shut down while everyone slept the hot afternoon away, then reopen at twilight. They wandered around, eating cakes sticky with a white, sweet powder while they looked over heaps of silverwork and brassware, oil lamps, silks, perfumes, jewellery, strangely shaped knives, and decorative leatherwork. Salamander pawed through all the gaudiest merchandise and made his purchases; they ended up burdened with two brass braziers, packets of charcoal and resin incenses, yards and yards of red cloth, a long drape of cloth-of-gold, a tunic stiff with floral embroidery for her and a brocaded robe of many colours for the mighty wizard to wear on stage. While he shopped he kept chattering away, but Jill noticed just how much information he managed to extract as he did so, from the best place to buy horses to the current political temper of the city, and most important of all, the names of several private slave traders along with the news that at the last public auction, at least, no barbarians had been offered for sale.

The first trader they visited informed them sadly that he’d seen no barbarians for over a year, but he did direct them to a man named Brindemo, who spoke the barbarian tongue well and was thus the private trader of choice for someone who had a barbarian for sale. After a quick stop at their inn to unburden themselves of their packages, they followed the convoluted directions and managed to find, at last, Brindemo’s shabby compound. When they knocked on the door, it was opened by a slender man, too young to grow a beard, whose dark eyes darted this way and that as he greeted them. Salamander bowed to him and spoke in Deverrian.

‘Where is Brindemo?’

‘Very ill, my lord. I am his son. I will serve you in his stead.’

‘Ill? Is there a fever in your compound?’

‘Not at all, not at all.’ He paused to run his tongue over his lips. ‘It was strange. Spoiled food, mayhap.’

While Salamander considered him, the boy squirmed, his eyes looking everywhere but at the gerthddyn.

‘Well,’ Salamander said at last. ‘Tender my humble apologies to your esteemed father, but I insist on seeing him. I know many a strange thing, you see. Perhaps I could recommend a remedy.’ He paused for effect. ‘I am the Great Krysello, Barbarian Wizard of the North.’

The young man moaned and squirmed the more, but he threw the door wide open and let them into the grassy yard, where a couple of young women sat together near the well in a dull-eyed slump of despair. When Jill realized that she was seeing human merchandise, her stomach clenched, and she looked away.

‘I must see if my father is awake.’

‘We’ll come with you while you do,’ Salamander said.

With a groan of honest terror the boy led them round the longhouse to a side door which, it turned out, opened directly into his parents’ bedchamber. Lying amidst a heap of striped cushions on a low divan, Brindemo raised his head drunkenly and stared at them with rheumy eyes, his dark skin ashy-grey from fear and fever. Her hands clasped over her mouth, his stout wife stood frozen in the corner. Brindemo looked at her and barked out one word; she ran from the room. Salamander stalked over to the bedside.

‘Look at my pale hair. You know I’m from Deverry. You had a barbarian man here for sale, didn’t you?’

‘I did, truly.’ The fat trader’s voice was a harsh whisper from a poison-burned throat. ‘I told your men already. I sold him. A spice-merchant, Zandar of Danmara.’ He paused to cough horribly. ‘Have you come to kill me now?’

‘Naught of the sort. I can smell the poison in your sweat, and I know what it is. Swallow spoonfuls of honey mixed with butter or some other kind of fat. It will soothe the pains and sop the dregs up. Since the benmarono plant kills quickly, and you aren’t dead already, we may conclude that they gave you a less than fatal dose.’

‘My thanks. Ai! Baruma is one of your northern demons, I swear it.’

‘The son of one, at least.’

With great effort Brindemo raised his head to stare into Salamander’s eyes.

‘You!’ he hissed. ‘You’re not one of them, are you?’

‘One of whom?’

He fell back, panting from his exertion, and looked away. Salamander smiled gently.

‘I won’t force any truths out of you, my friend. If you mean what I suspect you mean, they’d kill you for certain. But in return, I shan’t tell you one word about myself, so they won’t be able to pry it out of you.’

‘A fair bargain.’ For a moment Brindemo lay still, gathering his strength to speak further. ‘Ease a sick man’s curiosity, good sir, if you can. The barbarian lad, the one they called Taliaesyn, who was he truly?’

‘He didn’t tell you?’

‘He didn’t know. His memory was gone, completely gone.’

Jill muttered a foul and involuntary oath.

‘I see.’ Salamander turned grim. ‘Well, my friend, you had the honour of feeding a very important man. He was Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, kidnapped and sold by his enemies.’

Brindemo made a deep gurgling sound, choked, and coughed in spasms of sweating.

‘Calm yourself,’ Salamander said. ‘You didn’t know the truth, so no doubt no further harm will befall you. I take it you know where Aberwyn is.’

‘I don’t.’ Brindemo could barely choke out the words. ‘Doesn’t matter. Know what a gwerbret is. Ai ai ai.’

At this his son stepped into the chamber, a big kitchen knife clutched in one hand and his face set in hard determination. When Brindemo muttered a few Bardekian words, he blushed in embarrassment and set the knife down on the windowsill.

‘This Baruma?’ Jill said to him. ‘Tell me what he looked like. Your father can’t keep talking. He needs to rest.’

‘He was a fat man, you would say pork-like, I believe, in your tongue. Very, very strange skin, very smooth, and his black hair and beard are always shiny and oiled down. He wore a silver beard-clip, too, and his eyes were like a snake’s, very narrow and glittery and nasty.’

‘What do you remember about the slave called Taliaesyn?’ Salamander turned to the boy. ‘Everything you know.’

‘There was little to know, sir. We thought he was noble-born because he moved like a knife-fighter, and all your lords are soldiers. He remembered he was a thing called a silver dagger, but naught else about himself.’ He glanced at his father, who whispered out Zandar’s name. ‘Oh, truly, the caravan. It was going south. That was ten days ago. Zandar works his way through all the villages and so on to the south coast. He sells spices to the cooks.’ He thought for a moment, apparently struggling with the not very familiar language. ‘The name of the drug in your tongue, it is … um, opium, that’s it! Baruma was giving him opium. Taliaesyn was very thin when we bought him, too.’

‘Baruma is going to pay for all this,’ Jill said quietly. ‘He is going to pay and pay and pay until he whines and screams and begs me to kill him and put an end to it.’

‘Jill!’ Salamander gasped in honest shock.

Brindemo laughed, a tormented mutter.

‘My blessing to you, lass,’ he whispered. ‘My humble but honest blessing.’

Salamander started for the door, then paused, looking back at Brindemo.

‘One last thing. Why did Baruma do this to you?’

‘I disobeyed him. He said to sell Taliaesyn to the mines or the galleys. I sold him instead to the decent master.’

‘I see. Well, that act of mercy’s cost you dear, but you have my thanks for it.’

All the way back to their inn Jill burned with rage, and that burning translated itself to her vision, until it truly seemed that pillars of flame danced ahead of them through the streets. Although he kept giving her worried looks, Salamander said nothing until they were back in their chamber and the door safely barred behind them. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

‘Stop it! I don’t even know what you’re doing, but stop it right now! I can feel power pouring out of you.’

‘I was just … well, seeing things again. I don’t know how to stop it.’

Yet the shaking and his very real fear had already snapped her mind back to a more normal state. The flames were gone, although the edges of everything in the room still shimmered with silver energy.

‘Then don’t start it in the first place.’ Salamander let her go. ‘Jill, you get to brooding on things, though I can’t truly say I blame you, mind. But, well, how can I explain it? When you brood, you summon power, because you have a dweomer mind, deny it all you want. When most people brood over things, they see pictures in their mind or hear the voice that they consider their self talking, but it all stays in the mind where it belongs. When you’ve got this raw power pouring into you, you begin to see the pictures and so on outside of your mind, don’t you?’

‘I do.’ She made the admission reluctantly. ‘I saw fire running before us down the street.’

‘Well, that’s cursed dangerous. Dweomerfolk see images, too, and work with them, but we’ve learned how to control them. If you go on blundering around this way, you could go stark raving mad. Images and voices will come and go around you of their own free will, and you won’t be able to stop them.’

Since she could barely control them even then, she went cold all over at the prospect. With a dramatic sigh Salamander sprawled onto the cushioned divan.

‘Food,’ he said abruptly. ‘Eating somewhat generally helps shut things down. It’s tediously difficult to work any dweomer on a full stomach. Drink dulls the mind right down, too. But I doubt me if that’s going to be enough. I’ve no right to do anything of the sort, but I’m going to have to teach you some apprentice tricks of the exalted trade.’

‘And what makes you think I want to learn them?’

‘Your basic desire to stay sane and alive, that’s what. Don’t be a dolt, Jill! You’re like a wounded man who’s afraid to have the chirurgeon stop his bleeding because pressing on the wound might hurt.’ He paused, and he seemed to be studying the air all around her. ‘Well, you’re too worked up now to try a lesson. How about food, indeed? The Great Krysello is famished. If you wouldn’t mind assuming your guise of beauteous barbarian handmaiden, go down and ask the innkeep to send up a tray of meats and fruits. And a flagon of wine, too.’

‘I’m hungry myself.’ She managed to smile. ‘Oh mighty master of mysterious arts.’

Salamander was certainly right about the effects of food on her visionary state of mind. As soon as she’d eaten a couple of pieces of meat and some cracker-bread she felt a definite change, the dulling, as he’d called it, which she needed so badly. Although the colours in the room seemed unusually intense, the constant shimmerings disappeared. A couple of glasses of sweet white wine finished her involuntary dweomer-working completely.

‘When are we getting on the road?’ she asked. ‘I wouldn’t mind leaving tomorrow, when the city gates open at dawn, say.’

‘I know your heart burns with impatience, Jill my turtledove, but we must consider what Zandar, prince of the spice trade, is going to do next. Mayhap he’s heading home to Danmara, mayhap he’s travelling this way and that about the countryside, unloading his goods upon the commerce-minded public. If he is, we could be going one way while he’s going the other. If we go to Danmara to wait for him, we could sit around there for weeks. On the other hand, we can’t sit around here either, doing naught while evil villains scheme, plot, work wiles, or even machinate. Whichever way we go, we’ll have to travel slowly, stopping often to perform, like the showmen we call ourselves.’

‘Well, true spoken. We’ve got to get some coin before we go anywhere, though. I can’t believe how much you’ve spent!’

‘Good horses are not cheap in this rare and refined land.’

‘We haven’t even got the horses yet, you wretched wastrel. Our show had best go well tonight, or you’re in for it.’

From a couple of jugglers Salamander had learned that any showman was welcome to perform in the public squares, provided he turned a quarter of his profits over to the archon’s men. When it grew dark, they hauled their newly-acquired props down to the market, which was just coming alive again in the cool. Oil lamps flickering among the gaudy sun-shades and banners cast coloured shadows on the white buildings while the merchants and their customers stood in little groups, talking and joking over cups of wine and snacks of spiced vegetables wrapped in fresh-baked rounds of thin bread. After a little asking around Jill and Salamander set up on the terrace at the top of a flight of steps leading to a public building. While Jill laid charcoal into the braziers and sprinkled it with incense, Salamander spread out the fancy carpet, then picked up the cloth-of-gold drape and began doing tricks with it, making it swirl in the air and catch the light, or suddenly turn stiff and billow out like a sail before the wind. Down below a crowd gathered to watch.

‘I am Krysello, Barbarian Wizard of the Far North. Look upon my marvels and be amazed!’ He flicked the drape one last time, then let it settle on the steps. ‘Jillanna, my beauteous barbarian handmaiden, and I have travelled far across the seas from the wondrous kingdom of Deverry to amuse, delight, and mystify you with magic that your otherwise splendid city has never seen before.’

By now some fifty people were gathered at the foot of the stairs. Salamander slowly raised one arm and pointed at the first brazier. In a perfumed tower flames leapt up high, then fell, leaving the charcoal burning red and the sweet resins smoking. When the crowd gasped in honest awe, other people came running to see. Salamander waited until the crowd was steady again to light the second brazier.

‘Shall I proceed with my humble show, O good citizens of Myleton?’

The crowd laughed, dug into their purses, and flung a shower of copper coins. Jill scooped them up, then took a place out of the way as Wildfolk of all sorts flocked to the improvised stage and clustered around Salamander. Her grey gnome appeared, did a little jig of excitement, then jumped to her shoulder and settled down to watch.

‘Now behold the marvels of the north!’

Salamander pulled a long silk scarf out of mid-air – or so it seemed – and began to do the ordinary sort of tricks that any sleight-of-hand artist might do. First he made it disappear, then pulled it out of Jill’s hair; he tossed it up in such a way that it looked like a bird, flapping down to his shoulder; he turned it into three scarves, sailed them around his head, then held them up to show that they were mysteriously knotted together. All the while he sang, snatches of a long wailing elven war chant, bits and pieces of Deverry ballads, and fragments of songs in some guttural tongue that Jill thought might have been dwarven. After a few minutes he switched to doing stunts with silver coins – again, just standard trickster’s fare. He wanted to impress upon the crowd that he was only a showman and nothing more, to plant in their minds the idea that there had to be a rational explanation for everything he did.

Finally, when they were starting to get restless, Salamander flung up his arms and sent a glowing waterfall of many-coloured sparks high into the air. As it poured down in a double rainbow, the crowd shouted and surged closer, a sea of sweaty faces in the rippling light. With a howl of elven delight Salamander drifted great red and blue washes, shot with silver and gold, across the stage, then followed with miniature lightning bolts and thunder growls. On and on the show went, with bursting flowers of light in many colours and purple cascades, while the crowd sighed and gasped and Salamander alternately sang and joked. When Salamander announced that he was growing weary, the crowd threw another rain of coins, and most of these were silver with here and there a gold. After some juggling tricks with hens’ eggs, he gave another good display of real magic, then announced that this time he truly was weary and the show over. Still, a good many more coins came their way.

As the crowd drifted away, still talking over the marvels they’d seen, one of the archon’s men – he had the city crest painted on his cheek – appeared to claim the official cut. While Jill rolled up the carpet and folded up the cloth-of-gold, Salamander sat down with the official near a brazier to count the haul.

‘That was the best show I’ve seen all year, wizard. Just how do you do it? Some kind of powder in those braziers?’

‘Oh, not at all. It’s all true magic, as taught in the barbarian kingdoms.’

‘Well, it’s not fair of me to pry into your secrets. It would only spoil the fun if I knew how the trick worked. But still, I’ll bet that handmaiden of yours is scattering all sorts of chemicals across the stage when everyone’s watching you juggle. I see that robe of yours has got good deep sleeves, too.’

Salamander merely smiled, but the Wildfolk scowled and stuck out their tongues, as if wondering how the man could be so blind.

They’d racked up so much coin that Salamander gloated all the way back to the inn. Once they were up in their chamber, he danced around, humming elven melodies and dancing in the elven way, head thrown back, arms up rigid by his shoulders, as he swayed and jigged through the piles of props on the floor. Jill had to laugh with him.

‘You love it,’ she said. ‘All those adoring female eyes looking up at you.’

‘Of course.’ He stopped, panting a little for breath. ‘Here, O beauteous barbarian handmaid, grab a handful of those coins and go buy us a jug of wine, will you? The Great Krysello is fired with thirst, and we shall celebrate the success of our ruse.’

Yet once the wine was fetched and poured, she found herself thinking of Rhodry again, wondering if he were safe, and if he would ever forgive her even if they did manage to rescue him.

‘You’re brooding again,’ Salamander said abruptly. ‘It’s not going to do one rotten bit of good.’

‘Oh I know, but I don’t have any elven blood, and so I can’t be heartless.’

‘What a nasty tongue! Here, if I were truly heartless, would I be running all over Bardek looking for Rhodry?’

‘You wouldn’t. Ah, forgive me – I’m sorry. I’m just all to pieces.’

‘Of course.’ He picked up the jug and frowned into it. ‘Almost empty. In a bit I’ll go buy more, but first we’ll drink this up. That way, if the shop is closed or I break my neck on the landlord’s unsafe stairs, at least we’ll have enjoyed the final cup. That’s the elven way, Jill, and is it truly heartless, to enjoy today when no man knows what evil the morrow will bring him?’

‘It’s not. I should be thankful that Rhodry and I had as many good times as we did, even if he heaps scorn on me when we meet.’

‘He’s not going to scorn you! Hum, I see from your dark look that if I go on talking, you’re going to strangle me, which would be a great hindrance to our plans. The Great Krysello shall make the supreme sacrifice and hold his tongue.’

Since they’d been stopping in every town and village, it had taken Zandar’s caravan several weeks to work its way to the city of Daradion, on the southern tip of Bardektinna. From there, Rhodry learned, they were going to take one of the special caravan barges, more cattle-boat than sailing ship, across to the island of Martinna and their home city of Danmara. As they arrived at the harbour town just before sunset, they camped outside the north gates in a public campground to wait until the gates opened again in the morning. Although the campground was deserted when they rode up, while they were tethering out the stock a small caravan joined them, among them a young man, expensively dressed in a white tunic with gold and purple vertical stripes and a belt with a solid gold buckle. He had with him a boy who seemed to be a personal slave, and three pack mules, laden with what turned out to be travelling gear, not merchandise. Zandar hailed the fellow, Pommaeo, as an old friend and insisted he join them for dinner round their campfire.

Once everyone had eaten, Zandar had Rhodry bring out a jug of wine and serve it round. While Rhodry worked, he noticed Pommaeo watching him, and in a few minutes he discovered why, when the fellow turned to Zandar.

‘The Deverry slave? How much will you take for him?’

‘I was thinking of keeping him, actually. He’s a good man around horses.’

‘My dear old friend, you’ve never had much flair, have you? Are you really going to keep a showy little rarity like that out in the stables? I can think of lots of infinitely more appropriate uses for him. I’ll give you thirty zotars.’

‘He’s not for sale.’

‘Fifty, then.’

‘I’m not haggling. I mean it.’

For a moment Pommaeo hovered on the edge of sulks, all pouty-mouthed like a child who’d never been denied any trinket or toy. Then he reached inside his tunic, pulled out a pouch jingling of gold, and produced an enormous coin: one of the fabled Bardekian zials, worth a hundred zotars at face value but a good bit more than that in a transaction thanks to its rarity. The other free men caught their breaths, but Zandar merely shrugged. Pommaeo’s scowl darkened further.

‘By the wings of the Wave-father!’ Zandar gave him a smile meant to be conciliatory, most likely, but that turned out suspicious. ‘Just what do you want him for, anyway, if you’re willing to pay that much?’

Rhodry had been rather wondering the same.

‘As a gift for a very important friend of mine. I’m sure she’d be absolutely delighted with an exotic barbarian to tend her front door.’

‘Oh!’ All at once Zandar laughed. ‘I take it you’re still courting the widow Alaena?’

‘I don’t see where it’s a laughing matter, but yes, I happen to be going to visit her.’

‘And it takes a wealthy gift to snare a wealthy wife, eh?’

Pommaeo replied with a Bardekian phrase that Rhodry didn’t know, though he could guess its general tenor by the way the other men both winced and snickered. With a grin Zandar got up and motioned for Rhodry to follow him as he walked a few steps away.

‘It feels odd, justifying something to a slave, but I’ve grown to like you, boy. I’m going to take his offer because I think you’ll be safer this way. Anyone can find out that I live in Danmara. For all I know, the men who want you are sitting there waiting for you to walk right into a trap. This should pretty well throw them off your track. Besides, you’ll live well in the widow Alaena’s household, and you’ll have plenty of chances to earn tips. Just don’t piss the money away on gambling and drinking, and you can buy your freedom back sooner or later.’ He gave Rhodry a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘And good luck.’

For Zandar’s sake Rhodry forced out a smile, but inwardly he was steaming at the thought of being a courting gift. If his position had allowed it, he would have cursed in a steady stream.

To clinch the deal Zandar threw in the horse that Rhodry had been riding and the clothes and blankets he’d been using. As the young slave boy, Miko, helped him carry his gear over to his new master’s campsite, the lad talked so much and so fast that Rhodry could only understand about half of what he said. He did manage to figure out, though, that Pommaeo was a difficult man, prone to slapping his slaves around if they didn’t do exactly as they were told. He realized that if he were going to live to see this widow’s household, he was going to have to keep a firm grip on his temper; striking back could get him flogged by the archon’s men. Although he couldn’t remember specifically why, he did know that restraining his temper was something he’d never done before in his life and that the job wasn’t going to be easy.

Later that evening Pommaeo left Zandar’s camp and returned to his own fire. While Miko combed the master’s hair and removed his face paint for the night, Pommaeo gave Rhodry a small lecture in remarkably good Deverrian. It turned out that he’d made several trading-runs to the kingdom with his uncles.

‘So, an Eldidd man, I’d say, and sold as a slave in the islands? Zandar told me it was a matter of gambling debts, but I have my doubts. It doesn’t matter a pig’s fart, mind, just so long as you watch your courtesies from now on.’

‘And do I have any choice about that?’

‘None, of course. Now listen, you’re about to go to a fine household that makes those barbarian duns of yours look like pig-sties. You’ll have strict duties, and there’ll be other slaves to make sure you perform them in the correct manner. If I hear of you giving the lady Alaena the least jot of trouble, I’ll flog you myself. Do you understand me?’

‘I do, master.’

Although Rhodry bobbed his head respectfully, he was considering ways to strangle Pommaeo and leave his body beside the road. The mincing piss-proud excuse for a real man! he thought to himself. Hunting rich widows! Let’s hope the poor old woman has the wit to see him for the snake he is!

‘Do you know what the whole secret of the dweomer is?’ Salamander said abruptly. ‘Making pictures in your mind. Just that and little else – making the right sort of pictures and saying the right words to go with them. How does that strike you?’

Startled, Jill looked up from her breakfast.

‘Are you sure you’re not having a jest on me?’

‘I’m not, though I know it must sound like one. There’s this book we all study – eventually you’ve got to learn to read, my little turtledove – which is known as The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid, though I’ve been told that it’s actually a lot of short bits and aphorisms jotted down by various dweomer-masters over the years. Be that as it may, there’s one particular piece that springs to my mind at the moment. “You could go to the marketplace and, like a gerthddyn, preach aloud the secret of all dweomer without one soul being a wit’s worth wiser.” Do you know why? Because it’s so simple everyone would sneer. Or to be precise: simple to describe; cursed hard to do.’

‘I’ll admit to fighting the urge to sneer if all you’re talking about is a lot of pictures.’

‘Aha, I know a challenge when I hear one. Very well.’ He held up his elaborately jewelled table dagger. ‘Look at this for a moment. Then shut your eyes. Try to see the dagger as clearly as you could with your eyes open – a memory picture, like.’

Although Jill stared at the dagger for a long moment, she did so blankly, as if she could soak it up the way a bit of rag soaks up spilled ale. As soon as she shut her eyes, its image was gone, and no amount of struggling with her memory would bring a clear picture back. With an oath, she looked again, and this time she actively tried to memorize the details, but she could only retain the vaguest general impression, more of a dagger-like shape than a dagger.

‘Harder than it sounds?’ Salamander was grinning at her frustration.

‘It is.’

‘By the time you’re done with your prentice-work, you’ll be able to walk into a chamber you’ve never seen before, stay but a few minutes, yet be able to call up a picture of that chamber so clearly that you’d swear you were standing inside it. You’ll curse the work before you’re done, too, because learning how to manipulate images is the most boring thing in the world. Think of it as a test, my minuscule finch. The bard tales talk about suffering mysterious ordeals both harsh and lurid to gain the dweomer, but are you willing to be bored sick with it? That’s the true test of every apprentice.’

‘When my father was teaching me how to use a sword, he drilled me until I wanted to weep. Have you ever lunged at a bale of hay over and over in the hot sun? Some days I’d do it a hundred times, while he stood there and criticized the way I was standing or holding my wrist or suchlike.’

‘Gods, I doubt if you’ll find me as harsh a master as Cullyn of Cerrmor must have been. Now, let’s see. It’s easier to start with a picture than it is with a solid thing, somehow. We can search the marketplace for a painted scroll.’

‘Oh come now, you don’t expect to find some rare dweomer book right out in the Myleton market, do you?’

‘Of course not, but we don’t want one. What we need is the sort of thing a merchant’s wife would have in her reception chamber to amuse a guest, a little scroll with four or five coloured drawings on it, maybe pictures of famous temples, maybe sea-coast views – that sort of mundane thing. Trained slaves copy them out by the hundreds, so we should be able to find one with little trouble. You need a complicated thing to keep your mind alive while you do the wretched exercises.’

‘Whatever you say. What comes after learning to hold pictures in your mind?’

‘Oh, extensions of the basic work. You start by maybe changing some details of the picture you’re seeing mentally – adding clouds in the sky, say, or putting in a tree. Then, let’s see … uh well … eventually you have to pretend you’re in the picture yourself and looking around at all its various parts … I know we did that …’ His voice trailed away.

‘You don’t really remember it all, do you?’

‘You may berate me for a wretched and most frivolous elf, if you wish, because, alas, alack, well-a-day, and so on and so forth, you speak the truth. I do remember the beginning banishing ritual, though, and that’s truly important for someone in your state of mind.’

‘Well and good then. What is it?’

‘There’s no time to go into it right now. If we’re going to buy horses, we have to get to the market before it closes for the mid-day heat, so let’s wait till we’re out on the road. But don’t let me forget to show it to you.’

It occurred to Jill that as harsh ordeals went, learning dweomer from Salamander was going to have its moments.

Before they went to the market, Salamander did his usual morning’s scrying. His face all narrow-eyed concentration, the gerthddyn bent over the glowing embers in the charcoal brazier and watched as strange images moved among them. All at once he smiled and began to speak in a whisper.

‘Finally! He’s riding up to a city, my turtledove, so we can – now wait, what’s this? Hell-ice and foul humours! Rhodry’s been sold again! Curse it all! I can see him riding behind some new master.’ He paused for a long moment. ‘Ah finally! They’re going into the city gates. I can see the crest, oh joy, oh rapture, the glorious city crest! Daradion down on the south coast … Oh ye gods! Curse them, curse me, a pox and the vapours upon us all! They’re going down to the harbour! Oh dear, dearest gods, not on to a ship!’ He made a gargling noise deep in his throat, then watched in silence for a long while. ‘May the Lord of Hell’s balls atrophy and fall off! This wretched fool is dickering with a ship owner for some kind of passage!’ With a toss of his head he looked up, sweeping away the vision. ‘At least I got a chance to read the ship’s name. It’s the Grey Kestrel, so we can ask the harbour master where it was going.’

‘When we get there. Ye gods, how far away is this place?’

‘Well over a fortnight’s ride, alas. We have the lovely choice of travelling straight and slowly through the mountains, or round-about but at a more rapid pace along the coast. I can’t scry while they’re crossing the sea because of the …’

‘The blasted elemental what’s it … veils of astral force.’

‘Where did you learn that?’

‘You told me yourself, lackwit.’

‘You needn’t be so nasty. Look, at least we’ll know we’re on the right track. We might have been rambling, roaming, and generally trampling about to no purpose at all.’

‘True spoken, and I’m sorry I snapped at you. It’s just that this new owner could be taking him anywhere at all … I mean, hundreds and hundreds of miles for all we know.’

Salamander’s face sank like warm wax into despair.

‘Alas ’tis true, little eaglet. Fortunately, ships sail all year long across the nicely sheltered Inner Sea, and so we shall be able to follow them wherever they go. We have tarried long enough. Let us pack up our gear and head for the marketplace, so we may bend our course for glorious Daradion, winged with sails and so on and so forth. Myleton has enjoyed the pleasure of our presence long enough.’

During the slow trip across the Inner Sea to the island of Surtinna, Rhodry was quartered down in the hold in a stall next to the horses and mules, although he was allowed above-decks to eat his meals with the other slaves. The arrangement suited him well enough, giving him the privacy to think a good distance away from Pommaeo’s ill-temper. Or at least he tried to think; most of the time he slept, drowsing in the warm straw with Wildfolk heaped around him like a pack of dogs. It did occur to him once that he probably had been a soldier if his body would insist on taking every chance it got to stock up on sleep, but try as he might, he never had another flash of insight like the drugged dream that had given him back his real name.

They left the ship at Ronaton and spent another two days riding northwest to the hill-town of Wylinth, where the widow Alaena lived. Pommaeo was so arrogant and demanding that by the time they finally arrived, Rhodry had decided that the shame of being a courting-gift was a small thing compared to the joy of getting away from him. All white stucco and flowering trees, Wylinth spread out over clustered hill-tops behind walls of pink sand-stone. After he paid the toll at the city gates, Pommaeo led his miniature caravan to a long, sprawling inn in the centre of town and hired a suite. The main chamber had a floor tiled in blue and green, and a marble fountain splashed lazily in the centre of the room. The two slaves carried up the mounds of luggage; then Pommaeo gave Miko a string of orders while Rhodry spread Pommaeo’s embroidered blankets on the bed instead of the innkeep’s plain ones.

‘I’m going to the market,’ the master said. ‘Rhodry, do what the boy tells you.’

Miko’s orders were welcome enough. Apparently the master was going to give Rhodry away that very night, and he wanted him presentable. Rhodry was more than willing to go down to the slave’s corner of the bathhouse and get truly clean for the first time in weeks. He even let the boy cut his hair for him with only a minimum of grumbling. Pommaeo returned from the market shortly after, and in a few minutes, when a slave arrived with an armful of purchases, Rhodry noticed with some interest that Pommaeo did indeed tip the man a couple of coppers. The master pawed through the bundles and tossed one to Rhodry.

‘Put these on. You won’t be much of a gift with horse-sweat all over your clothes.’

Inside was a plain but good-quality white tunic and a new pair of sandals, a hair-comb, and – much to Rhodry’s surprise – a good bronze razor in a plain sheath.

‘Well, you’ll need to shave every day,’ the master said; he’d apparently noticed Rhodry’s surprise even if he seemed to think nothing of handing a slave a potential weapon. ‘You’re a house slave now, and you’ll be expected to keep yourself clean, not wallow with the animals like a barbarian. Speak humbly at all times, and do exactly what the chamberlain tells you. If you do one wrong thing, and I’m not here to flog you, then her brother-in-law will. And try to do something about those Deverry table-manners, will you? Her other slaves are civilized people, and they’ll have to share a table with you.’

They left the inn just after sundown. Carrying a lantern, Miko went a few paces ahead as they walked through the wide, straight-running streets, lined with palm trees and jasmine. They passed the market square, where tiny oil-lamps were flickering into life like the evening stars, then climbed a hill to a neighbourhood where enormous houses stood in their compounds behind stucco walls. Although it was hard to see clearly in the lantern light, Rhodry could make out elaborate frescoes painted on every one of them. Eventually they came to a wall painted with a rural scene; set in a painted cottage was a real wooden door. When Pommaeo called out, an elderly slave opened it and ushered them inside.

In the midst of tangled jasmine and spent roses a fountain leapt and splashed in a courtyard, which was lined with the tall wooden statues of the clan’s ancestors. The longhouse itself, with a pair of crossed oars in front of the door, stood toward the rear. At a tiled entrance way a maidservant bowed low, then took them down the hall into a large, airy room with a blue and white floor. The walls were painted in a cunning illusion of branches, leaves, and bright-feathered birds, as if the room were set in the treetops of a forest. Dozens of oil-lamps glowed in niches and on shelves and glittered on silver oddments and glass vases of flowers. Toward one end was a low dais piled with velvet cushions. Lounging among them was one of the most beautiful women Rhodry had ever seen.

She was not very tall, but slender with coppery skin set off by curly black hair that waved tightly around her perfect oval face. Her enormous dark eyes watched Pommaeo with just the right touch of humorous disdain while her long, slender fingers played with a silk scarf. In the lamplight she looked like a girl, but her movements and expression made Rhodry think that she must be well past thirty. Pommaeo gave Rhodry a cuff to make him kneel before the dais, then launched into a long and flowery speech, whose point was mainly that his humble gift was unworthy of her great beauty. So this is the poor old widow, is it? Rhodry thought. He found it in his heart to think a little better of his temporary owner. Laughing under her breath, Alaena tossed the scarf aside and sat up to look Rhodry over.

‘Oh how sweet! For me? You shouldn’t have!’

His arrogance dissolving into a love-besotted simper, Pommaeo perched on the edge of the dais. Alaena patted Rhodry on the head like a dog, giggled when she held up a soft brown hand to compare the colour of his skin, then called to the maidservant to bring an oil-lamp. Together they stared into Rhodry’s eyes.

‘Look, Disna!’ the mistress said. ‘They’re blue!’

When Disna giggled and shot him a sidelong glance, Rhodry realized first that the slave-girl was almost as pretty as her owner, and second, that he might find some consolations in his captivity. Alaena turned to Pommaeo and held out her hand for him to kiss – the gift, apparently, was a great success.

Although Miko stayed to pour wine for the masters, Rhodry followed Disna to the enormous kitchen, tiled in browns and reds. At one end was an adobe cooking-hearth where three women were busy preparing the meal; at the other, a welter of storage jars and wooden barrels. In between was a low table, a bit nicked but as expensive-looking as anything in many a Deverry lord’s hall. Sitting there was a dignified-looking man of about sixty and a boy of twelve or so. In a flood of giggles, which drew a sharp remark from the old man, Disna explained who Rhodry was. The man got up and gave him a distant but not unkind smile.

‘My name is Porto, and in Deverry you’d call me a chamberlain, I believe. Here, I’m called the warreko, and never forget it.’

‘Yes sir.’ Rhodry knew authority when he heard it in a man’s voice. ‘My name is Rhodry.’

‘Good. You give me no trouble – you’ll get no trouble. Understand?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Very good. Well, we’ve needed another man around here. Come with me.’

They went up a narrow, twisting stairway to the top floor, just under the roof, where the day’s heat still hung close and stifling. On one side of a hall was the women’s quarters, on the other, the men’s, with four narrow bunks set into the wall. Only two had blankets, but Porto rummaged in a wooden chest and brought out a pair which he tossed on to one of the empty beds. His gestures, the setting were so familiar in a strange way that Rhodry felt his mind struggling to remember something, a place no doubt, or no, a string of places, all much the same. Finally he shook his head and gave it up as a bad job. Porto was looking at him curiously.

‘Don’t you feel well?’

‘I’m sorry. It’s just the heat. I’m not used to it yet.’

‘Heat?’ The old man paused for a grin. ‘It’s almost winter, boy. You wait until the summer comes if you want heat.’

Rhodry spent the rest of the evening in the kitchen. After the meal was served, first to Alaena and Pommaeo, then to the slaves, he hauled water from the well outside, then helped scrub pots under the cook’s keen eye. He realized straightaway that Vinsima was the other centre of power among the slaves. A woman of fifty, with skin so dark it was a glittery brown-black, she was tall and broad-hipped, with arms as well-muscled as a warrior’s and the reflexes to match. Once, when the young boy made an insolent remark, she rapped him on the skull so hard with a wooden spoon that he cried out. The look she shot Rhodry implied that he’d be next if he didn’t watch his step.

After the work was over, everyone settled in around the table to talk over the events of the day. Every now and then a little bell rang, summoning Disna to bring more wine or a plate of sweetmeats. When she returned, she would report on what was happening in the other chamber. It was obvious that none of the slaves wanted Alaena to marry Pommaeo; after putting up with the man for a few days, Rhodry had to agree. Gradually Rhodry learned everyone’s name and began to sort out the hierarchy in the household. Porto and Vinsima were at the top, although Disna, who had the mistress’s personal favour, had a certain independence. At the absolute bottom were the litter-bearers, four young men who lived in a shed behind the house and who were fed out there like dogs. Rhodry got quite a shock over the boy, Syon, who turned out to be Porto’s personal slave, bought with tips to do the jobs that Porto disliked, such as polishing the lady’s enormous collection of silver animal figurines. That one slave would own another was utterly beyond Rhodry’s understanding, but it was clear from the conversation that this vicarage, as it was called, was perfectly common.

Since Rhodry himself was new and therefore an unknown quantity in this elaborate scheme of things, he often caught Porto studying him, doubtless wondering if he’d turn out to be a good worker or a trouble-maker. There was something oddly familiar in that appraisal, so much so that Rhodry found himself wondering about it while he tried to get to sleep in his narrow and lumpy new bed. All at once a chunk of memory rose to his mind, and with it a rush of information. Captains of warbands had looked at him that same way, when he was a silver dagger back in Deverry. He could remember several faces, several names, several duns, even, where he’d briefly stayed. The information was so exciting that he stayed awake half the night, musing over it.

Unfortunately Porto woke him just at dawn. Yawning and stumbling Rhodry went down to the kitchen, to find Vinsima kneading a vast lump of bread-dough on a marble slab.

‘Firewood, boy. Short lengths, about as thick as your arm, and lots of them for the baking. The woodshed’s straight out the door and to your left.’ She pointed to a rack on the kitchen wall. ‘There’s the axe.’

To his surprise Rhodry saw a heavy woodsman’s axe with a good steel head, a dangerous weapon in the hands of a man who knew how to use it. He took it outside, found the woodshed easily, and set to work, wondering as he splintered the kindling why anyone would leave a tool like that where the slaves could get at it. In a few minutes Porto strolled out and stood sipping a steaming cup of hot milk while he watched. Finally he motioned to Rhodry to rest for a moment.

‘You’re a hard worker, I see. Good. Let me give you some advice, boy. Be nice to the mistress’s friends. Smile a lot, and do whatever they ask you to. Most of them are older than her, a lot of old hens, really, and they’ll enjoy tossing a few coins at a good-looking young man.’

‘I see. Does your – I mean, our mistress entertain a lot?’

‘Oh yes, and also you’re going to be her footman. She needs an escort when she goes out, and I’ve got too much to do here as it is.’

‘I’ll do whatever you want, as long as you explain things to me. I don’t understand all the customs of the country.’

‘You haven’t been here long?’

‘No sir.’ Rhodry realized that he’d better come up with some convenient story. ‘I came here as a bodyguard for a rich merchant and got way over my head in debt, gambling. That was only a couple of months ago.’

‘Your merchant wouldn’t buy the notes back?’

‘No sir. I was nothing to him, only a kind of mercenary soldier called a silver dagger. Ever hear of them?’

‘No, but I take it they have no status to speak of. Well, that’s too bad.’ He paused, looking shrewdly at the axe. ‘Let me tell you something, boy. Do you know what happens if a slave murders his master?’

‘They hunt him down and torture him to death.’

‘Oh yes, but they also kill every other slave in the household, whether they had anything to do with the murder or not.’

‘What?!’

‘They drag them out and slit their throats, except for a few that they torture to give evidence in the courts.’ Porto’s voice had gone flat and soft. ‘I saw it happen once, in the house across the street from the one where I was born. The master was a beast, a sadistic animal, and everyone knew it, but when one of his men killed him, the archon’s men slaughtered the whole household, dragged them screaming to the public square and killed them all, right down to the cook’s babe-in-arms. I’ll never forget that. I see it in nightmares still, even though it was over fifty years ago.’ He shook himself like a wet dog. ‘I can’t imagine why anyone would lift a hand against our lady Alaena, but if she accepts Pommaeo, he’ll be lord and master here. I warn you, if I ever think you’re so much as dreaming of violence, I’ll turn you over to the archon myself. Understand me?’

‘Yes sir, but as we say at home, don’t trouble your heart over it. I’d never do anything that would put the rest of you at that kind of risk.’

‘I think you mean it, and you know, Rhodry, I think you’re a good boy at heart. Too bad about the gambling, it really is. I’ve always heard that you barbarians are too fond of the dice.’

‘Barbarians? We’re barbarians, are we? Ye gods, your wretched laws sound savage from what you’ve just told me.’

‘Savage? Oh no, merely practical. Slaves who murder their masters are very, very rare in the islands.’ And yet he looked away with a world of sadness welling in his eyes.

About the middle of the morning, Rhodry got his first taste of his new duties when Alaena decided to pay a call before Pommaeo returned to her house. Porto gave Rhodry an ebony staff with a heavy silver knob at one end and a small leather whip – the whip for the litter slaves, the staff for the beggars and other riff-raff who might block the lady’s way. When the litter came round to the courtyard, he finally saw these supposedly bestial dregs of slavery: four boys, not more than fifteen, who shrank back at the sight of the whip. Paler than most Bardek men, they had strange yellow eyes, oddly slit and staring. With a shock Rhodry wondered if they had elven blood in their veins. As if they’d heard his wondering, some of the Wildfolk appeared, and the boys’ eyes moved, following them as they strolled around.

‘They come from Anmurdio,’ Porto said, meaning of course the slaves, not the spirits. ‘It’s a horrible, primitive place, lots of small islands, all infested with disease. They say the people there are cannibals.’ He shrugged, dismissing the island group and its inhabitants both. ‘Here’s a rag. Take it and dust off the litter. The mistress is almost ready.’

The litter itself was a beautiful thing, made of ebony like his staff, painted with floral garlands on a dark blue background. The cabinet in which the two passengers rode was fastened to the poles by cast brass fittings of monkeys, whose paws and tails joined to form the enclosing circle. Inside were more of the purple velvet cushions that the lady seemed to favour. Rhodry had just handed the rag back to Porto when Alaena appeared, dressed in a brocaded, knee-length tunic, a large number of emeralds at her throat and a scarf of green silk gauze wrapped round her head to keep the sun off her face. In the sunlight she definitely looked in her mid-thirties, but beautiful all the same. When Rhodry helped her into the litter, she gave him a little pat on the cheek. Disna followed right after, carrying a carved wooden box about two feet square but only some four inches deep. When Rhodry helped her in as if she were a fine lady, he was rewarded with a brilliant smile.

Although Porto rattled off a long string of directions, Rhodry would have been lost if it weren’t for the litter boys, who seemed to have followed the route many a time. As he strode along, scowling at passers-by, the closest bearer called out where they were supposed to turn in a voice shaking with fear. It occurred to Rhodry that if they all got lost, the boys would be whipped, not him, thanks to the rigid hierarchy among the slaves. He decided to try to get them some extra food that evening; he could think of no other reward that would have any meaning in their desolate lives.

Their destination was no more than a mile away, another splendid compound whose outer walls were painted with an underwater scene of fish in a coral reef. Rhodry left the litter and the litter-boys in the care of a gatekeeper, but carrying the wooden box, he accompanied the mistress and Disna up to the house. An elderly maidservant, all toothless smiles, bowed them into a house even more luxurious than Alaena’s.

In a central chamber where the walls were painted with climbing roses, and four grey and black kittens chased each other among embroidered cushions, three women were waiting at a low table. Even though he’d never seen them before, Rhodry could tell immediately that they were a mother and two grown daughters; they shared the same beautifully shaped brown eyes and full mouths, as well as a certain way of tilting their heads and smiling. They got up to greet Alaena with a flood of chatter that was hard for Rhodry to follow, since most of it seemed to concern neighbours and friends of which he knew nothing. Then one of the daughters noticed Rhodry and gave a small, ladylike squeal.

‘A barbarian, ’Laen! Where did you get him?’

‘From the tedious Pommaeo, actually. He may talk about himself all the time, but he certainly does know how to buy gifts.’ She motioned Rhodry closer. ‘Look at his eyes. They’re blue.’

The daughters gawked and giggled while the mother merely smiled in a fond sort of way and Rhodry blushed, a response that only made them giggle the more. At last they’d satisfied their curiosity and all knelt on cushions round the table. Alaena took the wooden box from Rhodry and emptied out a set of little ivory tiles, painted with flowers and birds among other designs. With a rumbling sound of thunder the women began flipping them face down and mixing them up. As if at a prearranged signal, two servants appeared with brass trays piled up with sweetmeats and set them down at the corners of the table. When they started to leave, Alaena signalled to Disna to follow them, but an imperious wave of her hand kept Rhodry on the dais.

‘You may sit behind me.’

‘Thank you, mistress.’ Rhodry had the distinct feeling that she hadn’t seen quite enough of her present, like a little girl who won’t put a new doll down for a moment.

By then the tiles were apparently properly mixed, because the other three women had stopped scouring the table with them and were looking at Alaena expectantly. A few at a time, a small crowd of Wildfolk materialized to stare at the table as well, but as far as he could tell, anyway, Rhodry was the only one who saw them, even when a bold blue gnome laid a skinny finger on one of the tiles.

‘Do you want to be first, Malina?’

‘Age before beauty?’ the mother said comfortably. ‘Mine always is the dullest one, so we may as well get it out of the way.’

When the others laughed, Malina began picking out tiles, one at a time, and placing them, still face down, in a star-shaped pattern. Rhodry realized that what he’d been thinking a game was actually some sort of fortune-telling device. He felt a certain mild contempt, a condescension really, that these silly women would believe in this nonsense when there was real dweomer all around them. Suddenly he felt cold. What did he mean, real dweomer? How did he know that such a thing existed, how could he be more certain of it than he was of his own name? He felt like a man who, talking over his shoulder to some companion, walks himself smack into a wall – both confused and foolish. The only evidence for his certainty was the Wildfolk, settling down on the floor and unoccupied cushions to watch as Alaena leaned forward and turned the first three tiles face up to reveal a sword between two flowers.

‘A lover? Well, well, well – what do you mean, yours is always dull?’

At that all four of them laughed with sharp little cries like birds in an aviary, and the Wildfolk clapped soundless hands and grinned. Alaena helped herself to a sweetmeat, a gelatinous oblong covered in a dead-white powder. She took a thoughtful bite while she studied the tiles, then turned, motioned to Rhodry, and held the sweetmeat out to him like a treat for a dog. When he opened his mouth to make a polite refusal, she popped it in and patted his cheek. Rhodry had no choice but to eat it, but it was so sweet that he nearly gagged. Fortunately Alaena had returned to her tiles and never noticed. By all the ice in all the hells, he thought, the sooner I escape and start hunting Baruma down the better! I’d rather die than be a lapdog, even for a pretty wench like this. Then he set himself to the difficult task of staying awake as the long drowsy morning dragged on.

When they left Myleton, Jill and Salamander had opted for the direct if difficult route straight south from the city, and for over a week now they’d been winding their way through the hill country. Since the travelling was slow and tedious, and the imaging exercises kept her mind off Rhodry, Jill poured herself into the work and made such rapid progress that Salamander admitted he was impressed. Before they’d left Myleton, they had indeed found a picture scroll for her lessons. About a foot high and five long, it unrolled right to left, all backwards to Salamander’s way of thinking. Since she’d never read a Deverry book or scroll, to Jill the direction seemed as good as any other. She rather liked the paintings themselves, three scenes from the history of Myleton, showing the first colonists founding the new city, a famous tidal wave of some hundred years later, and finally, the election of an archon known as Manataro the Good. Each picture was crammed with small details, all cleverly arranged so that it seemed she was looking into a box, not down onto a flat surface.

Yet, after days of staring at the historically renowned tidal wave and working on seeing it as if it were real in her mind, she was heartily sick of the scroll and the practice both. The banishing ritual she found more tolerable, even though Salamander drilled her mercilessly, because she could see its direct benefit, the control of the floods of imagery that threatened to overwhelm her whenever she was angry. First she would place those images in her mind as if they were practice lessons, then banish them with the sign of the flaming pentagram. At times she still failed, and the fires of rage would seem to burn around her unchecked, but every time she succeeded she felt her skill growing, and over the days the out-of-control images came less and less often.

On the afternoon that they reached the centre of the island, everything seemed to go wrong with her workings. First, she stumbled over the words of the ritual, drawing the gerthddyn’s scorn. Then, when she tried a new picture from the scroll, she could get only the barest trace of the image of Archon Manataro, and it seemed that all her hard work had gone for naught. When she complained to Salamander, he smiled in his most infuriating way.

‘You don’t dare give this up, you know. Or do you want to go slowly but inevitably mad?’

‘Of course I don’t! And I’ll follow orders, just like I always followed orders when Da was teaching me sword craft. I just don’t understand why these blasted pictures are so important. I mean, with Da, I always could figure it out – this exercise strengthens your arm, or that one worked on your grip, but this is all too peculiar.’

‘Ah. Well, what you’re doing is indeed like your Da’s exercises; you’re just strengthening mental muscles. Here, when the bards sing about dweomer, they always talk about strange powers, don’t they? Where do you think those powers come from? The gods?’

‘Not the gods, truly. Well, I suppose, you just get them. I mean, it’s dweomer, isn’t it? That’s what makes it magical.’ She suddenly realized that she was sounding inane. ‘I mean, magical things just happen.’

‘They don’t, at that, although that’s what everyone thinks. All those puissant powers and strange spells come out of the mind, human or elven as the case may be. Dweomer is a matter of mental faculties. Know what they are?’

‘I don’t.’

‘When you learn to read – and I think me we’d best start lessons in that, too – I’ll find you a book written by one of our Rhodry’s illustrious ancestors, Mael the Seer himself, called On the Rational Categories. In it he defines the normal mental faculties for humans, and most of them apply to elves, too, such as seeing, hearing, and all the other physical senses, as well as logical thinking, intuition, and a great many more, including, indeed, the very ability to make categories and generalizations, which is not a skill to be taken lightly or for granted, my petite partridge. These are, as he calls them, the rational faculties, open and well known among elves and men, although the elves have a few faculties that humans don’t, such as the ability to see the Wildfolk. Every child should develop them as he grows; if someone’s blind, say, or simply can’t remember things, we pity them and feel they’ve been robbed of part of their birth-right.

‘Then there are the buried, hidden, or occult faculties that exist in the mind like chicks in a new-laid egg. While every elf and human possesses a selection of them in potential, very few are born with them already developed. You can call these faculties “powers” if you wish, though it sounds perhaps too grand for perfectly natural phenomena. Do you understand the idea of a category of the natural? As opposed to the supernatural?’

‘Uh, what? Well, uh …’

‘The Maelwaedd’s book becomes a necessity, I see.’

‘Very well, but what do these rotten picture exercises have to do with all this grand-sounding stuff?’

‘Oh. Truly, I did ramble a bit. Well, if you want to awaken these sleeping powers, you use pictures, mostly, and names and sometimes music to go with them. Once you’ve awakened them, you can use them over and over. Perpend – once you’ve learned how to be logical, can’t you re-awaken that faculty whenever you’ve got a problem to solve? Of course. Just so, after you develop the scrying faculty, say, you can open it with the right images and words any time you want. A great master like Nevyn doesn’t even need the names and images any more, for that matter. For him the occult faculties have become manifest.’

Although his small lecture was so difficult to understand that Jill felt like a halfwit (as the organizing faculties go, Salamander’s were far from being the best in Annwn), everything he said resonated in her soul, with a hint more than a promise that here was a key to open a treasure-chest.

‘But I’ll tell you what, my robin of sweet song, you can try a new exercise if you’d like. Instead of using the scroll, make up your own image and try to realize it clearly in your mind. I don’t mean draw it or suchlike – we don’t have any ink, anyway – just decide on some simple thing and try to see it, like an inn you once stayed in, or your horse Sunrise, he who now eats the king’s bountiful oats – somewhat like that.’

‘Well and good, then, I will. As long as it’s all right to jump around like this.’

‘Oh, by the gods! This prentice-work isn’t truly even dweomer. You’re just learning some useful tools. I can’t imagine that the least harm could come of it.’

On his final night in Wylinth, Pommaeo and Alaena quarrelled. Since he was waiting on table, Rhodry heard all of it; they seemed as indifferent to his presence as they were to that of the furniture. As soon as he’d laid out the meal and poured the wine, he retreated to the kitchen, where he found Disna and Vinsima listening at the door to the distant sound of lifted voices.

‘It looks good,’ Rhodry blurted out. ‘She’s refusing to give him a promise of any kind whatsoever, and he’s accusing her of having other suitors. Does she?’

‘Only one and he’s seventy-odd years old,’ Disna said. ‘So it looks very good indeed.’

‘I’m not breathing easy yet,’ Vinsima said. ‘What if they make things up with lots of kisses? Well, the dessert needs serving, boy, so you’ve got a good excuse to go back in.’

When Rhodry brought in the gilded plate of small sugared cakes, they were the only sweet thing in the room. Straight and stiff on their cushions, Alaena and Pommaeo glared at each other from opposite sides of the small table.

‘Take those cakes away!’ Alaena snapped.

‘Yes mistress.’

‘They happen to be my favourite kind,’ Pommaeo said with ice in his voice. ‘Bring them here.’

Rhodry hesitated.

‘I said go!’

‘Yes mistress.’

He hurried out just as Alaena was informing her guest that he had no business giving any orders at all to one of her slaves. Some half an hour later the doorkeeper came rushing into the kitchen to announce that Pommaeo had left in a violent temper. Yet first thing in the morning Miko appeared with a long letter from his master, one that was full of sweet apologies, or so Disna said, because the mistress had read it aloud while her hair was being combed. Much to Disna’s disgust, Alaena had written a conciliatory note in return.

‘And now I’m to hurry to his beastly inn and deliver it before he leaves. Oh well, at least he’ll be gone all winter. He’s not the type to travel in the rain.’

‘Our mistress can read and write?’ Rhodry was honestly amazed.

‘Of course she can.’ Disna wrinkled her nose at him. ‘That barbarian kingdom of yours must have been awfully primitive, that’s all I can say. You’re surprised by the strangest things.’

‘Well, so I am. I hope you don’t think too badly of me.’

Disna merely gave him a slow smile, hinting of many answers, then hurried off on her errand.

That afternoon Alaena summoned Rhodry to her side. Dressed in a simple white tunic, she was sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the low table and frowning at her fortune-telling tiles when he came in. A pair of warty-brown gnomes materialized at his entrance and grinned at him.

‘There you are. Now that I’ll have the time, we’re going to start educating you.’ She swept the tiles to one side, then looked up to consider him. ‘You don’t do too badly when it comes to serving food, but you’ve got to learn how to carry my fan properly and other things like that. And then there’s the way you talk. Your accent’s dreadful, and we’ll have to spend some time on correcting it.’

Although Rhodry was hoping that Alaena would tire of teaching him such dubious skills as the proper way to fold scarves and arrange cushions, she took every detail so seriously that he soon realized she was quite simply bored with her life. Thanks to her inherited wealth, she had to work or wait for nothing, and while she understood financial affairs perfectly well, one of her many brothers-in-law did all the actual work of managing her properties. Twice a week this Dinvarbalo would come to lunch. Over a long feast of many elaborate courses, they would discuss her investments in land and trading ventures; she would ask sharp questions and make sharper suggestions while he wrote her wishes down on a wooden tablet covered with wax. Once he was gone, the spirit would slowly fade from her eyes again, and she would summon Rhodry for one of his lessons. Usually she would be irritable, too, slapping him across the face for the least mistake or even sending him away in a flood of insults. Yet, the next time that she called him back, she would be pleasant again, if strict.

Porto and Disna told him something of her history. She’d been born the second child of ten to a poor oil-seller down in Ronaton, in poverty so extreme that she’d nearly been sold as a slave to feed the rest of the family. Her beauty, however, had saved her by catching the eye of a rich merchant who had most honourably married rather than bought her. Since he was fifty-two when she was fourteen, the marriage had been far from happy, even though her childhood sufferings had made her obsessed with being the perfect wife. More from his incapacity than any other reason, they had no children before he died at seventy-four, after a long debilitating illness during which she nursed him with her own hands. Now, although she was far from eager to bind herself to another husband, she also knew that her beauty was sure to fade, sooner rather than later. Cosmetics and herbal baths filled her mornings. She often sent Rhodry to the marketplace as soon as it opened to buy rose petals, fresh cream, and beeswax while she and Disna closeted themselves like alchemists in the bath chamber.

Much to his surprise, Rhodry found himself growing sorry for her. Although he wanted to hate her for keeping his freedom locked up on a bit of paper in her jewel-chest, he simply couldn’t. There came a time, in fact, when he realized an even more bitter truth about himself. With cosmetics for the mistress and spices for the cook, he was jogging home from the market one morning when the air was fresh and crisp with the scent of coming rain, and the last of the summer’s flowers bloomed bright over painted walls. He found himself singing. With a shock he realized that for a moment he’d been happy, that he’d come to accept his new life. All day he noticed other things, how pleased he was when Porto praised him, how he laughed at jokes in the kitchen, how he smiled when as a sign of her favour Alaena gave him a silver piece. He realized that if he someday took Porto’s place, being a trusted warreko would give him security no matter whom Alaena married.

At first he’d wondered why slaves didn’t rise up in open revolt; now, he was beginning to understand. For a slave with his standing, life wasn’t cruel enough to take the risk. Any slaves such as the tin miners who might well be driven to desperate measures were kept branded, chained, and half-starved, and their lives were too short for long-term plans. Any slave like himself who had a firm commercial value had every necessity in life, a few comforts, even, and the possibility, though a chancy one, of someday earning freedom. If he’d remembered his former life, he decided, he would have felt differently, longing, no doubt, for freedom with a hiraedd befitting a man born free, but as it was, Deverry was a thing of shadows and patched memory to him. His only certainty was that he’d been a silver dagger, a despised outcast without clan or home, a shamed man without honour, doomed to fight endlessly in one petty lord’s feud or another until an early death claimed him. There were plenty of times when being Alaena’s footman seemed a better throw of life’s dice.

Yet there was one memory that kept contentment from trapping him. Baruma. Every afternoon, when the entire household, slaves and mistress alike, took a couple of hours to nap or at least rest on their beds, Rhodry would remind himself that he owed Baruma a bloody death, even though it would cost him his own life. What’s the swine done with my silver dagger? The question became an obsession, as if the weapon itself, those few ounces of dwarven silver, contained his very honour the way a body contains a soul. Every now and then he dreamt of killing Baruma and taking the dagger back; after one of those dreams he would be silent, wrapped in himself all morning, and he would notice that everyone would avoid him then, even the mistress.

There came an afternoon, as well, when he recovered another memory of his lost life, one that stabbed him to the heart. After a grey morning rain broke, a chilly drizzle that set everyone grumbling. Since he couldn’t work outside, Rhodry went to attend their mistress, who was as usual poring over her fortune-telling set. For some time Rhodry merely sat beside her and handed her tidbits of dried apricots and sugared almonds when she held out an impatient hand. The rain droned on, the oil lamps flickered, while Alaena laid out tile after tile, only to sweep them impatiently away and start all over. When she finally spoke to him, he was nearly asleep.

‘This wearies me, and don’t yawn like that.’

‘I’m humbly sorry. Shall I put them away now, mistress?’

Alaena shrugged, pouting, and held out her hand. Rhodry gave her an apricot, which she nibbled while she considered.

‘I know.’ All at once she smiled. ‘I’ll tell your fortune. Sit round the other side and start mixing up the tiles.’

He’d seen the fortune-telling game so many times now that he knew what to do. After the mix he picked twenty-one of the ninety-six tiles at random, then laid them out in a star-shaped pattern. Alaena helped herself to an almond and ate it while she studied the layout.

‘Now of course, this is all in the past, because you’ve never had your tiles read before. Sometimes you get several readings that refer backwards before you start going forwards again. I don’t know why. The scroll that came with the set didn’t say.’ She paused, thinking. ‘By the hem of the Goddess’s robe! I never knew you were a soldier. I see lots of battles in your past.’

‘That’s certainly true, mistress.’ Rhodry moved closer, suddenly interested in this game. What if she could find out other things about him, ones he didn’t know?

‘And you fought in many different places.’ She pointed to a tile of two crossed spears. ‘This indicates you were a mercenary, not a citizen volunteer.’

‘I certainly was.’

‘How very odd, because it looks as if you were born to a highly-placed family.’ She laid a painted fingernail on the ace of Golds. ‘Very highly placed. But, oh, yes, here it is! You got in trouble with the law, and you were either exiled or you just ran away. Honestly, Rhodry, how naughty of you! Was it gambling that time, too?’

Since he couldn’t remember, he merely smiled, a gesture she took for a yes.

‘You never had any sense about money, that’s certain. Draw two more tiles.’

When he handed them over, she turned them face-up and placed them by the two of Golds.

‘No sense at all,’ she laughed. ‘I see you handing out rich presents to everyone who asked.’

‘That’s the way of a Deverry lord, mistress. They have to be generous, or they’re dishonoured in everyone’s eyes.’

‘So you were noble-born. I rather thought so, but Pommaeo said it was a stupid idea, and I should forget it. Honestly, Rhodry, how awful, to fall so far, and all because you couldn’t keep your hands off the dice.’ She considered the tiles again, then smiled wickedly. ‘There were other things you couldn’t keep your hands off, as well. Look at that prince of swords with a flower princess on either side. You had lots of love-affairs.’

It struck Rhodry as unjust to the extreme that he could remember none of them.

‘Oh, look at this! You have a child back home.’

‘I do?’ The shock made him forget his mask of servility.

‘You didn’t know? What did you do? March off with your army before she even knew she was pregnant, probably.’ She burst out laughing. ‘Well, Deverry men are certainly like Bardek men in some crucial respects, aren’t they? I’m afraid the tiles can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.’ Still smiling, she took another apricot and ate it slowly while she thought. ‘I wonder about this queen of Swords at the top. It seems such an odd place for her. Draw me two more.’

The pair turned out to be the ace of Spears and the Raven.

‘Oh!’ Alaena gasped in honest shock. ‘How very sad! She was the one true love of your life, but it all ended tragically. What happened? It almost looks as if she were sold into slavery, too, or married off against her will to some other man.’

Suddenly Rhodry remembered Jill, remembered the name to put with the blonde woman who at times had haunted his memory and his dreams, remembered with a rush of emotion his despair when he had lost her, somewhere along the long road. Dimly he could remember beginning to search for her, somewhere in dark woodlands …

‘Rhodry, you’re weeping.’

‘I’m sorry, mistress.’ He choked back the tears and wiped his face on his tunic sleeve. ‘Forgive me. I loved her very much, and she was forced to go with another man.’

He looked up to find her watching him with a startled expression, as if he’d just materialized like one of the Wildfolk.

‘No, you forgive me. I forget that you weren’t always a slave.’ She looked down at the tiles and frowned, then swept her hand through the pattern. ‘Just take that fruit away, will you? Do whatever you want until it’s time for dinner.’

Since he had no other privacy, Rhodry went up to his bunk in the men’s quarters and lay down, his hands under his head as he stared at the ceiling and listened to the rain. Slowly he pieced together a few of his memories, but only a few. He knew that he had loved, that he still did love, with a fierceness that shocked him, this woman named Jill, but who she was, where he’d met her, why she’d been dragged away from him – they were all mysteries still. He wept again, but only briefly, a few tears of frustration more than heart-break.

Although Alaena never referred to the incident again, from that afternoon on Rhodry was aware of a change in her attitude toward him. At times, he caught her watching him with a little puzzled frown, as if he’d become a problem for her to solve. Outwardly, nothing seemed to have changed; he spent his afternoons with her as before, learning the protocols of greeting and announcing guests of various ranks, and none of the others seemed to have noticed anything except, perhaps, Disna. Suddenly Rhodry noticed that the maidservant had grown cold to him; whenever he complimented her she gave him the barest trace of a smile or even a downright nasty look. When he tried to turn the whole thing into a joke and tease her about it, she refused to answer, merely walked away fast with her nose in the air, making him wonder if all those love-affairs that had appeared in the tiles were doomed to remain in the past.

After some days the rain stopped, and Alaena went out to the marketplace. Since everyone in town seemed to be there, catching up on their shopping and gossip, they left the litter on a side-street, hired a shopkeeper’s lad to watch it, and walked to the market itself. Carrying his ebony staff, Rhodry followed a few paces behind the mistress while she went from booth to booth, looking mostly at jewellery and silks while merchants grovelled before her. Finally she motioned Rhodry up beside her and pointed at some silver brooches set with bits of semi-precious stones.

‘I want to buy a present for Disna. Do you think she’d like the one with the large turquoise?’

‘I have no idea, mistress. I don’t know anything about jewellery.’

‘You should learn. It helps you judge people when you first meet them – their taste in things, I mean, not just what they can afford to spend. But I don’t think these will do.’ She walked on, motioning him to walk at her side. ‘I have heaps of things Pommaeo gave me at home, of course, and some of them are quite fine, but …’ All at once she flashed one of her wicked smiles. ‘No, I have a different use for them. Come along. There’s another jeweller over here.’

This particular jeweller was a fat man who reminded Rhodry of Brindemo. On each hand was an amazing collection of garish rings, and he wore a dozen different pendants around his neck, too. Among his collection of merchandise was one pin so different from the others that it seemed to call to Rhodry, a tiny rose, worked in fine silver, no more than an inch long but so life-like that the leaves seemed to stir in the breeze. Alaena picked it up.

‘What an odd thing,’ she said to the merchant. ‘What kind of alloy is this? It’s much too hard to be pure silver.’

‘I don’t know, oh exalted and beautiful exemplar of womanhood. I won it in a dice game actually, from a man who said it came from the barbarian kingdom.’

‘Indeed? How much do you want for it?’

‘Two zotars only, for one as lovely as you.’

‘Bandit! I’ll give you ten silvers.’

The haggling was on in earnest. At the end, Alaena had the pin for twenty silvers, about a sixth of the asking price. Rather than having the man wrap it, she turned and pinned it onto Rhodry’s tunic, near the collar.

‘A barbarian trinket for a barbarian,’ she said, smiling. ‘I rather like the effect.’

‘Thank you, mistress.’ Rhodry had learned that gifts like this were his to keep, even if he chose to turn them into cash some day. ‘I’m flattered you’d think so well of me.’

‘Do you know what kind of metal that is?’

‘Well, yes. I had a knife made out of it once. In the Deverry mountains are little people called dwarves, who live in tunnels and make precious things out of strange metals like this kind of silver. Some of their trinkets have magic spells on them. Maybe this one does, too, but we won’t find out unless it chooses to show us.’

‘How charming you are when you want to be.’ She laughed and reached up to pat his cheek. ‘What a darling story! Now let’s find something for Disna.’

Eventually she found a pair of long gold earrings, shaped like tiny oars, that she pronounced suitable. Rhodry took the parcel and started to follow her out of the marketplace, but again she had him walk beside her.

‘That was fun, but now everything wearies me again.’ She sighed gently. ‘Do you think I should marry Pommaeo?’

The question took him too much by surprise for him to think of a properly-phrased answer. He gawked at her while she laughed.

‘Well, I think he’d be mean to you – and far too interested in Disna,’ she said at last. ‘So perhaps I won’t. Besides, he can be the most wearisome thing of all when he wants to.’

At that she moved ahead and let him walk behind until they reached the litter.

When they returned to the house, Alaena closeted herself in her bedchamber with Disna while Rhodry went to the kitchen to haul in firewood for the evening meal. In some half an hour Disna rushed in, the earrings glittering as they framed her face in a most appealing way.

‘Guess what? The mistress won’t marry that awful Pommaeo after all. She’s going to ask Mistress Malina to find her other possible suitors instead.’

The staff raised a small, dignified cheer.

‘My thanks to holy Zaeos, to all the Goddesses of the Many-Starred Sky, and to the Wave-father,’ Vinsima said. ‘Any member of Mistress Malina’s family is bound to be a fair-minded and generous man.’

‘I think,’ Porto said, ‘that we may have some extra wine with the evening meal. To toast the gods for smiling upon us if nothing else. Girl, does the mistress require anything?’

‘Yes.’ Disna glanced at Rhodry, her smile disappearing in an oddly abrupt way. ‘She wants you to run an errand. She’s in her bedchamber at the moment.’

Rhodry assumed that he was to take a note over to Malina’s, but when he came into the chamber, he found Alaena sitting, as carelessly as a girl, on the floor in front of her jewel chest. When he hovered uncertainly in front of her, she motioned for him to sit down, too, with a flick and a point of one slender hand. Beside her on a cushion lay a tangle of emerald necklaces and two heavy gold arm bracelets.

‘Pommaeo gave me these. I want you to take them over to the temple of Selenta as a gift to the priestesses. They run an orphanage, and they can sell these off a bit at a time when they need coin.’

‘Very well, mistress. Are you going to give me away, too?’

Alaena laughed in a peal of musical amusement.

‘No, I don’t think so, really.’ She reached up and put her hands on either side of his face. ‘Well, come along. Kiss me.’

More in shock than pleasure, Rhodry kissed her on the mouth.

‘You do that much better than Pommaeo ever did. Yes, I think I definitely like the slave better than the stupid master.’ She glanced at the jewellery beside her. ‘Oh, that can wait.’

The meaning was unmistakable, but Rhodry hesitated, half-panicked. All his intuitions were screaming that it would be very unsafe for both parties if a slave had an affair with his mistress, no matter how common it was for men to take their female slaves. No doubt it’s worse for the slave, too, he thought; I’ve no desire to end up getting flogged in the public square or suchlike.