Читать книгу A Time of War - Katharine Kerr - Страница 9

PART ONE

Puer

Unless this figure fall into the House of Bronze, that is to say, the seventh country on our map, or into the House of Gold, the fifth country where dwell art and song, then it be ill-omened, bringing dissension, injury, and the lust for revenge.

The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster

Round Cerr Cawnen the meadows lay marshy, crossed by a thousand streams, most no more than rivulets, and dotted with pools and bogs. With his face and hands lard-smeared to keep the blackflies from biting, Jahdo picked his way through the high grass to hunt for brooklime and colt’s foot. To the north the mountains that the dwarven folk call the Roof of the World towered out of blue mist, their peaks shining white in the summer sun. To the south the rolling meadows spread out into farmland, dotted with trees, and here and there a plume of smoke from a farm-wife’s kitchen rose like a feather on the sky. In his pure boy’s tenor Jahdo sang aloud, swinging his wicker basket in time to the song. He was so entranced with this wide view, in fact, that he stumbled, stepping out into empty air and falling with a yelp some four feet down into a gully carved by a stream.

He landed on soft grass and marshy ground, but the basket went flying, hitting the water with a plop and floating away. He scrambled up, decided that the sandy stream bed offered the best footing, and splashed after the basket as it rounded a turn and sailed out of sight. Jahdo broke into a shuffling sort of trot, keeping his feet under the knee-high water, travelling, quite inadvertently, in near silence, hidden by the banks of the deepening stream. At another twist in the watercourse, he caught his runaway basket, which had beached itself onto a strip of shore at an eddy. When he picked it up, something shiny caught his eye, a little disk of metal, pierced and hanging from a leather thong. He grabbed it, hoping for a dropped coin, but the thing was only pewter, engraved with a strange squiggle. He slipped it into his pocket anyway, stood for a moment panting for breath, and realized that he heard voices.

Just ahead the leafy shadows of trees danced on the water. Up on the banks stood a copse, where a man and a woman talked on the edge of anger, though they kept their voices down so low that Jahdo could guess they met in secret. He began backing away, slipped, and fell with a splash and a curse.

‘Here!’ the woman shrilled. ‘A spy!’

‘I be no such thing, good lady.’ In a wail of protest Jahdo clambered up. ‘Don’t hurt me.’

Tall, blond, with ice-blue eyes as cold as the northern peaks, a young man jumped down onto the sandy strip of shore bordering the stream, grabbed his arm and hauled him out of the water. When he recognized Verrarc, a member of the Council of Five that ruled the city, Jahdo began to stammer apologies. Verrarc grabbed him by both shoulders and shook him hard.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Gathering herbs, sir. My sister she be ill. Gwira the herbwoman said she’d treat her, but it was needful for me to go and do some gathering. To give her due fee, I mean.’

Verrarc threw him to his knees. As he looked up at the tall, hard-muscled man towering over him, Jahdo felt the world turn all swimmy. Verrarc’s blue stare cut into his soul like the thrust of a knife.

‘He does tell the truth.’ Verrarc’s voice seemed to come from far away.

‘That’s of no moment. Kill him.’ The woman’s voice hissed and cracked. ‘We mayn’t risk – kill him, Verro!’

Jahdo whimpered and flung up his hands, half-warding a blow, half-begging for his life. When he tried to speak, his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and he gasped for breath. Verrarc laid one hand on the jewelled hilt of the sword slung at his hip, then considered him for an achingly long moment. His stare seemed normal again. merely the look of an angry man, not some strange ensorcelment.

‘I know you. You be the rat boy.’

‘I am, sir.’ He found his voice at last, but in his terror he could only whisper. ‘Jahdo Ratter.’

‘Kill him now.’ Wrapped in a black cloak with the hood well up, the woman crouched on the edge of the gully.

‘Hold your tongue, Rae!’ Verrarc snapped. ‘I’ll not be hurting the boy. He’s but ten summers old, and no threat.’

‘Verro!’ Her voice, this time, whined, as petulant as a toddler. ‘Kill him. I want to watch.’

‘Hold your tongue! He be valuable, this lad, and besides, the herbwoman does know he’s out here.’

With a snarl she sat back on her heels. All Jahdo could see of her were grey eyes and pale cheeks, streaked with sweat. No doubt she found the black cloak a burden on such a sunny day. Verrarc ignored her, slipped one arm around Jahdo’s shoulders, and turned him round.

‘Look, lad, as one man to another, I ask you: are you really going to be telling anyone about what you did see here today?’

All of a sudden Jahdo understood: a love affair.

‘Of course not, sir. It be none of my business, bain’t?’

Verrarc winked and grinned.

‘Not in the least, lad, not in the least. And don’t you go worrying. No harm will come to you, as long as you hold your tongue.’

‘Thank you, sir, oh, a thousand thanks. I’ll never say naught, I swear it. And I’ll gather my herbs somewhere far away, too.’

Verrarc looked deep into his eyes and smiled. It seemed that his blue eyes turned to water, that his gaze flowed over the boy like warm water.

‘Good. Good lad. Now, just trot back down along the stream, like, and go on your way.’

Jahdo followed orders, running as fast he dared, never looking back until he was a good mile away. He climbed out of the gully and stood for a moment, shaking his head. Something odd had happened, down there by the water. Or had he fallen asleep and dreamt it? He’d seen something, someone – Councilman Verrarc and a lady, and they were sneaking out behind her husband’s back, and he’d sworn to speak not a word of it. Fair enough, and he’d certainly keep his promise, especially since he wasn’t even sure if it were true or just a dream, or even a rumour. The city was full of rumours, after all. Maybe he hadn’t seen a thing. He was sure, as he thought about it, that he’d seen no one but Verrarc, sitting by a stream.

By the time he’d filled the damp basket with herbs, he’d forgotten the councilman’s name, and by the time he was heading home, all he retained was a sense of fear, linked to the grassy bank of some stream or other. A snake, perhaps, had startled him; dimly he could remember a sound much like the hiss of a snake.

Although there were a scattering of villages farther west, Cerr Cawnen was the only town worthy of the name in that part of the world, the Rhiddaer (the Freeland), as it was known. In the midst of water meadows lay Loc Vaed, stretching in long green shallows out to blue deeper water and a rocky central island, the Citadel, where stood the fine homes of the best families and, at the very peak, the armoury of the citizen militia. The rest of the town crammed into the shallows: a jumble and welter of houses and shops all perched on pilings or crannogs, joined by little bridges to one another in the rough equivalent of city blocks, which in turn bristled with jetties and rickety stairs leading down to the stretches of open water between them, where leather coracles bobbed on ropes. Toward the edge of town, where the lake rippled over sandy reefs, big logs, sawn in half and sunk on end, studded the surface of the water and served as stepping-stones between the huts and islets. On the lake shore proper, where the ground was reasonably solid, stood a high timber-laced stone wall, ringing the entire lake round. Guards stood on constant duty at the gate and prowled the catwalk above, turning the entire town and lake both into an armed camp. The forty thousand folk of Cerr Cawnen had more than one enemy to fear.

It was late in the day by the time Jahdo trotted through the gates to the stretch of grass that ringed the shore, and he knew he’d best hurry. Not only did the memory of his fear still trouble him, but he was worried about his elder sister, who’d woken that morning doubled over with pain. Clutching his basket tight, he jumped his way across the shallows from log to log, then climbed some stairs up to a block of buildings, all roofed with living sod or vegetable gardens. Most of the stilt-houses had wide wooden decks round them, and he leapt or clambered from one to another, dodging dogs and goats and small children, ducking under wet laundry hung to dry, calling out a pleasant word here or there to a woman grinding grain in a quern or a man fishing from a window of his house. At the edge of the deeper water he climbed down and helped himself to a coracle tied to a piling. These little round boats were common property, used as needed, left for the next person wherever one landed them. With his basket settled between his knees, Jahdo rowed out to Citadel.

Normally, poor folk like him and his family never lived on the central island, but his clan had occupied two big rooms attached to the town granaries for over a hundred years, ever since the Town Council had chartered the lodgings to them – on condition, of course, that they ‘did work most diligently and with all care and patience both of man and weasel’ to keep down the swarms of rats in the granary. Everyone knew that rodents were dangerous enemies, spreading filth and fleas, befouling much more food than they outright ate. To earn their food, clothing, and other necessities, the Ratters, as their family came to be known, also took their ferrets round from house to house all over town. Wearing little muzzles to keep them from making kills, the ferrets chased the vermin out through holes in the walls, where the family caught the rats in wicker cages and drowned them and their fleas both in the lake – not the most pleasant of jobs, but growing up with it made it tolerable.

The squat stone buildings of the public granaries clung to a cliff low down on the citadel island. Getting to the Ratters’ quarters required some of a ferret’s agility: first you climbed up a wooden ladder, then squeezed yourself between two walls and inched along until you made a very sharp turn right into the doorway. When Jahdo came into the big square chamber that served as kitchen, common room, and bedchamber for his parents, he found white-haired Gwira, the herbwoman, brewing herb water in an iron kettle at the hearth. The spicy scent, tinged with resin, hung in the room and mingled with the musky stink of ferrets.

‘Where’s Mam, Gwira?’ Jahdo said.

‘Out with your Da and the weasels. They’ll be back well before dark, she told me. Don’t know where Kiel’s gone to.’

Dead-pale but smiling, his elder sister, lanky dark-haired Niffa, was sitting at the rickety plank table nearby and drinking from a wooden bowl. Although she glanced his way, her enormous dark eyes seemed focused on some wider, distant view. A dreamy child, people called her, and at root, very strange. Jahdo merely thought of her as irritating.

‘You be well?’

‘I am, at that.’ Niffa blushed as red as the coals. ‘I never were truly ill.’

When Jahdo stared in puzzlement, Gwira laughed.

‘Your sister be a woman now, young Jahdo, and that’s all you need to know about it. It’s needful for us to set about finding her a husband soon.’

Vague boyish rumours of blood and the phases of the moon made Jahdo blush as hard as his sister. He slung the basket onto the table and ran into the bedchamber. At one end of the narrow room lay the jumble of blankets and straw mattresses that he, his elder brother, and his sister slept upon, while at the other stood the maze of wooden pens, strewn with more of the same straw, where the ferrets lived. Since his parents were out hunting, only one ferret, a pregnant female, was at home and surprisingly enough awake in the daytime, scooting on her bottom across the straw as if she’d just relieved herself. Jahdo leaned over her slab-sided pen, built high enough to keep the other ferrets out and away from her tangled ball of a nest, all heaped up straw and scraps of cloth. Tek-tek deigned to allow him to stroke her soft fur, then reached out her front paws in a long stretch, casually swiping her bottom across his fingers to mark him as hers.

‘Oh ych, Tek!’ Jahdo wiped his hand on his trousers, then remembered the pewter trinket in his pocket. ‘Here’s somewhat for your hoard.’

When he dropped the disk in, she sniffed it, then hooked the thong with her fangs and, head held high to drag her prize, waddled back to her nest and tucked it safely away. Some ferrets were worse than magpies, stealing shiny things to wad up with rags and bits of old leather into a treasure-ball. They liked socks, too, and stole belt buckles if you didn’t watch them, dragging them belt and all into their nests.

As promised, his parents came home not long after, bent under their burdens of caged ferrets and damp traps. Dark-haired Lael, going grey in his beard and moustaches, was a tall man, built like a blacksmith, or so everyone said, while blonde Dera was a mere wisp of a woman even now, after she’d borne three healthy children and two that had died in infancy. Yet somehow, when she got in one of her rages, no one thought of her as slight or frail, and her blue eyes always snapped with some new passion or other.

‘Back, are you?’ Lael said with a nod at Jahdo. ‘Help me with the weasels.’

They carried the cages into the bedroom and opened them one at a time, grabbing each ferret and slipping off its tiny leather hood. As much as they hated the hoods, the ferrets always seemed to hate having them off even more, twisting round and grunting in your lap. For creatures that weighed no more than five pounds at the absolute most, they could be surprisingly strong. Jahdo got the first pair unhooded easily enough, but their biggest hob, Ambo, was always a battle, a frantic wiggle of pushing paws.

‘Now hold still!’ Jahdo snapped. ‘I do know you do hate it, but there’s naught I can do about it! Here, just let me get the knot undone. It’s needful for you to wear them, you know. What if you ate a big meal and then fell asleep in the walls? We’d never get you back, and you’d get eaten yourself by one of the dog packs or suchlike. Now hold still! There! Ye gods!’

Free at last Ambo shook his sable length and chittered, pausing to rub himself on Jahdo’s arm, all affection now that his work day was over. He backed up for a running start, then leapt and pranced, jigging round Jahdo’s ankles. When the boy could finally catch him, he dumped Ambo into the common pen, where the ferret began rummaging round in the straw on some weaselly concern. Dera came in with clean water in a big pottery dish and a wooden bowl of scraps of jerky. She set them down inside the common pen, then laid down some fine chopped meat for Tek-tek.

‘Food for you later,’ she announced to Jahdo.

‘Is Gwira still here, Mam?’

‘She is. Why? Don’t you feel well?’

‘Naught like that. I just did wonder.’

‘Well, then, don’t stand in the straw like a lump! Come out and see for yourself.’

Jahdo followed her out to find his elder brother home, sitting at the far end of the big table and sharing a tankard of beer with Lael. The eldest of the three and almost a man, really, Kiel was a handsome boy, with yellow hair like their mother’s, and almost as tall as their father, but slender, with unusually long and delicate fingers as well. At the nearer end of the table, the herbwoman stood, picking over the herbs Jahdo had brought back.

‘Be those herbs good?’ he asked.

‘Perfectly fine, indeed,’ Gwira said.

The herbwoman stayed to dinner that night, sitting down at the end of the table next to Dera and across from Niffa, where they could all gossip over their sauced pork and bread about possible husbands, while Lael mostly listened, voicing only the occasional concerned opinion about one suitor or another. Kiel and Jahdo pretended indifference, but at the same time, they said not one word to each other, either, lest they miss something. As the second oldest person in Cerr Cawnen, Gwira knew a good bit about most everyone.

‘Well now, with your pretty face,’ the old woman said at last, ‘you might nock an arrow for high-flying game, young Niffa. Councilman Verrarc’s been known to stop by here for a word or two on occasion.’

‘He does come to see Mam, and I’d not be marrying him if he were the last man left alive under the moon.’

Although Niffa spoke quietly, cold steel rang in her voice.

‘I doubt me if he’d marry a ratter, love,’ Dera broke in. ‘So don’t you worry.’

‘Beauty’s bettered a lass’s fortune before this.’ Gwira paused to hack a bit of gristle with her table dagger. ‘Why do you hold him in disdain, lass?’

‘He’s like reaching into a pond and touching a big old slimy newt. I hate him.’

Dera and Lael both raised an eyebrow at this outburst. Niffa buried her nose in her cup of watered ale.

‘Well, there was that scandal,’ Gwira said. ‘Him and that Raena woman, the chief speaker’s wife from over in Penli.’

‘That near cost us the alliance, it did,’ Lael said. ‘A lot of us might not vote for the young cub again, I tell you, after that botch.’

‘Worse for her, it were,’ Gwira broke in. ‘Her husband did put her aside, didn’t he? Who knows what happened to the poor woman after that?’

‘If the young cub did want her as much as all that,’ Lael growled, ‘he might have married her decently when he had the chance.’

‘I hear Raena did go back to her people in the north in shame.’ Dera turned thoughtful. ‘But I don’t know. It takes two to twist a rope, I always say, and there was somewhat about that woman I never did like. I doubt me if she were but an innocent little chick to Verro’s fox, like.’

‘Um, well, mayhap.’ Gwira pursed her lips. ‘Our Niffa might not be able to do better when it come to coin and calling, but there’s no doubt about it, she can do much better when it come to character. I’ll be putting some thought into this, over the next few days, like.’

‘Think of Demet,’ Niffa mumbled. ‘The weaver’s second son.’

Everyone laughed, relaxing. Gwira nodded slowly.

‘Not a bad choice he’d be. Good steady man, his father, and prosperous, too.’

Jahdo laid his spoon down in his bowl. All this talk of Councilman Verrarc had made him feel sick to his stomach, and cold all over, as well. He should tell Gwira how he felt, he knew, should tell her about – about what? There was some incident he wanted to tell her, just because she was old and wiser than anyone else in town. Something about some event out in the meadow. Hadn’t something scary happened? Yet he couldn’t quite remember what it was, and the moment passed beyond returning.

Yet, not two days later, the boy recovered a brief glimmering of the memory, though not enough to save him. Early on that particular morning, Dera sent Jahdo over to town to claim some eggs and meat that one of the townsfolk owed them.

‘Your Da be across, too, love,’ she said. ‘See if you can find him when you’re done.’

Jahdo had rowed about halfway across the lake, his back turned to his destination, of course, when he saw the ceremonial barge pushing off from Citadel and heading his way. With a few quick strokes he moved off its course and rested at his oars while the squat barge slipped past, painted all silver and red, riding low in the water. In the middle stood a false mast to display the yellow and green banners of Cerr Cawnen, which hung lazily in the warm summer air. At the bow clustered a group of men in rich clothing, embroidered linen shirts belted over knee-length trousers, the common style in this part of the world, with short cloaks thrown back from their shoulders. Jewels and gold winked in the rising sun.

As the barge slid past, Jahdo saw Councilman Verrarc standing at the rail. His heart thudded once as the councilman looked his way. Since only some fifteen feet separated them, Jahdo could clearly see that Verrarc had noticed him, that the councilman frowned, too, and turned to keep him in view for a minute or two after the barge went past. Again Jahdo felt his mouth turn parched, and the sensation made him remember his meadow fear and the image of a woman, wrapped in black and hissing as she spoke. Yet all the boy knew was that in some obscure way Verrarc’s image had sparked the memory. With a cold shudder he forced the recollection away and rowed on to town.

The family who owed them for the ratting, the Widow Suka and her son, had slaughtered a goat just the day before. Some hundred feet from the lake’s edge, her house perched on a crannog piled up so many hundreds of years before that the construction had turned into a real island, with trees and topsoil of its own, a little garden, and a pen for goats, which, every day in summer, the widow’s son rowed over to the mainland for the grazing. While she nestled eggs safely in the straw in Jahdo’s basket and wrapped chunks of goat up in cabbage leaves, Jahdo strolled to the edge of the crannog and looked over to shore.

Down by the gates in the wall a crowd of people stood round, all staring toward the gate itself. Jahdo could just pick out the tall form of Councilman Verrarc toward the front of the mob.

‘Now what’s that?’ Suka said. ‘Looks like a merchant caravan’s coming in.’

‘It does, truly. Ooh, I wonder where they’ve been?’

‘If you want to go see, lad, I’ll keep the food here and cool for you.’

Leaving the boat behind, Jahdo made his way to shore on foot, hopping from log to log. He arrived at the edge of the crowd just as the gates swung wide and a line of men and mules began to file through. Since he was the shortest person in the crowd, Jahdo couldn’t see a thing. For a few minutes he trotted this way and that, hoping to find a way to squeeze through to the front, decided that he might as well give it up, then heard muttering and oaths from the front of the crowd. The press began to surge backwards, men swearing and stepping back fast though without turning to look where they were going. Jahdo tried to run, nearly fell, nearly panicked, and cried out.

‘Here, lad!’ Lael grabbed him. ‘This be a bit dangerous for someone your size. Hang on, and I’ll lift you up.’

‘Da! I didn’t even see you.’

‘Ah, but I did see you, and I was heading your way.’

Riding secure on his father’s shoulders Jahdo at last discovered the cause of the commotion. A pair of merchants on horseback, a pack of ordinary guards and a string of heavily laden mules had all marched by when, at the very end of the line, a man-like figure strode in, leading an enormous white horse laden with sacks and bundles. It was one of the Gel da’Thae, swinging a stout staff back and forth and side to side in front of him as he walked, as if he were clearing something out of his path.

He stood perhaps seven feet tall, roughly man-shaped with two short-ish but sturdy legs, a long torso, two long arms, and a face with recognizable man-like features – but he was no man nor dwarf, either. His skin was as pale as milk in the places where it appeared between the lacings of his tight leather shirt and trousers, but his black hair was as coarse and bristling-straight as a boar’s. At the bridge of his enormous nose his eyebrows grew together in a sharp V and merged into his hairline. His hair itself plumed up, then swept back and down over his long skull to cascade to his waist. Here and there in this mane hung tiny braids, tied off with thongs and little charms and amulets. The backs of his enormous hands were furred with stubby black hair, too. His cheeks, however, were hairless, merely tattooed all over in a complex blue and purple pattern of lines and circles.

As he walked, he turned his head this way and that, to listen rather than look, because where eyes should have gleamed under his furred brows were only empty sockets, pale and knotted with scars.

‘Oh!’ Jahdo spoke without thinking, in his piping boy’s voice that cut through the noise of the crowd. ‘He be blind.’

With a toss of his maned head the Gel da’Thae stopped walking in front of Lael and swung toward the sound of Jahdo’s voice. He bared strong white teeth, with more than a hint of fang about the incisors.

‘Do you mock me, lad?’ Although he spoke in the language of the Rhiddaer, his voice growled out and rumbled, echoing back and forth like the waves of a storm slapping off a pier.

‘Never, never,’ Jahdo stammered. ‘I be truly sorry. I were just so surprised.’

‘No doubt. But you’re an ill-mannered little cub nonetheless.’

‘I am, sir, truly, and I’ll try to learn better.’

‘Ill-mannered and cowardly to boot.’ The Gel da’Thae paused, sniffing the air. ‘Huh. I sense a man carrying you. Are you the lad’s father?’

‘I am,’ Lael said, and his voice was steady and cold. ‘And I’ll speak for him. He be no coward, sir. He be shamed that he might have wounded your feelings.’

The Gel da’Thae grunted, tucked his staff under one arm, and reached out an enormous hand to pat the side of Lael’s face. He reached higher, found Jahdo’s arm and patted that, then took his hand away and smelt his own palm.

‘Huh, sure enough, I sense no fear on the lad, but by all the gods and demons, as well, the pair of you stink of ferrets!’

‘So we do, no doubt. You’ve got a keen nose.’

‘Hah! I may be blind, but a man would have to be dead to miss that scent.’ He seemed to be smiling, pulling thin lips back from his fangs. ‘Well, a good day to you both and your weasel friends as well.’

With a whistle to the huge horse, the Gel da’Thae walked off, tapping his way with the staff as he followed the jingling of the caravan along the curve of the lake, where a grassy stretch of shore was set aside for travelling merchants. Lael swung Jahdo down with a grunt.

‘You’d best mind your mouth after this, lad. You always did have a cursed big one.’

‘I know, Da, and I truly truly be sorry.’

‘No doubt. But the last thing we do want is to give insult to one of the Horsekin. That’s all they need, one word for a thin excuse, and they cry war. I hate to see one of them here for just that reason. If that bard goes taking offence, we’ll have his clan riding at the head of an army to siege us.’

‘How do you know he’s a bard?’

‘Because his eyes are gone. That’s what they do, when they decide one of their boy-children has the voice to make a bard. They do scoop his eyes right out with the point of a knife, because they do think it make his singing sweeter.’

Jahdo nearly gagged. He turned sharply away, found himself staring up at Councilman Verrarc, and felt the blood drain from his face in a wave of cold fear.

‘Somewhat wrong, lad?’ Verrarc’s voice was mild, but his stare was sharp and cold. ‘You look frightened.’

‘Oh, he had a bit of a run-in with that Gel da’Thae bard,’ Lael said, smiling. ‘He’s never seen one of their tribe before.’

‘Enough to scare anyone, that.’

‘What’s he doing here, anyway?’ Lael went on.

‘Cursed if I know.’ Verrarc shrugged, visibly worried. ‘That’s why the guards did fetch me and the rest of the council before they did let that lot in. We’re going to pay him a visit, just to ask, like, down at the campground.’

‘Think it be trouble?’

‘I wish I knew, Lael, I wish I knew. As he walked by, he did tell me that he’d come to claim a tribute we owe his kind. We’ve got a web of treaties and obligations with these people, much as I wish we didn’t, and so who knows what he means by it? I’d best be finding out.’

Verrarc turned away with a pleasant nod, but Jahdo felt his fear deepen to a clot like goat’s hair in his mouth. With a dream-like clarity he knew that showing his fear of the councilman was dangerous, that if Verrarc thought he remembered – remembered what? The terror in the meadow. The hiss of a snake.

‘Well, lad,’ Lael said. ‘You do look as white as I’ve ever seen you. What be so wrong?’

Jahdo was about to tell, then realized that the councilman lingered within earshot.

‘The bard’s eyes, Da, that’s all. I keep imagining how that knife would feel when they did it.’

‘A nasty thing, sure enough.’ Lael shuddered a bit himself. ‘But they’re a strange lot all round, and cruel enough as well. Come along now, let’s get home. We need to stop to claim a fee, too.’

‘I did it already, Da. Mam told me to. I got a lot of roast goat from the Widow Suka.’

‘Splendid. Let’s go fetch it home, then.’

The news had preceded them to Citadel. As they were tying up the coracle, a handful of militiamen surrounded them. With the swing of one broad hand and a toss of his blonde head, Demet pushed his way to the front. The family had known him all their lives, just as most everyone knew everyone else in Cerr Cawnen.

‘Be it true, Lael?’ Demet burst out. ‘Is one of the Horsekin in the city?’

‘He is, and we did see him. A bard, and blind as a mole. Councilman Verrarc says he’s come to claim some ancient due or service.’

All the men swore, laying automatic hands on sword hilt or knife. Demet looked away to the distant shore and shaded his eyes with one hand, as if he were hoping to see the stranger.

‘I don’t see why we had to go and make treaties with them, anyway,’ Jahdo said.

‘Better than being their slaves, lad,’ Lael said. ‘Or the slaves of the wild tribes up to the north. Better to bargain with the Horsekin we know than fight the ones we don’t, bain’t?’

‘True spoken.’ Demet turned back to them. ‘But I’ll wager we call council fire tonight over this.’

No one bothered to argue with him, and rightly so. Just at sunset the big bronze gong that hung at the top of Citadel began to clang and boom across the water. More ominous than thunder, each huge stroke hung in the darkening air. When Jahdo and his family left their quarters, he could see boats and coracles, skittering on their oars like so many waterbugs, as all round the shore the townsfolk swarmed across the lake. Every person who dwelt within earshot of the gong had the right to attend these councils and make their wishes known, man and woman alike, just as everyone had the right to vote for the Town Council, too. Out in the Rhiddaer there were no lords and kings. As the citizenry hurried up the steep streets of Citadel in a tide of rumour and fear, the family made its own way to the assembly ground.

In front of the stone council hall, which sported a colonnade and a flight of shallow steps, stretched a plaza, paved with bricks. Off to one side, the militia was heaping up wood for a bonfire to light the proceedings. Jahdo and Niffa scrambled to the top of the thick wall on the uphill side and watched the murmuring crowd grow larger and larger. Every now and then Jahdo would turn round and look back at the lake. Already in the cooler evening mists were rising over deep water. Since it was fed by hot springs, the lake ran warm. Just as the night grew thick, and the flames began to leap high from the fire, casting enormous shadows across the arches and pillars of the hall, the council barge tied up down at the jetty. From his perch Jahdo could see the torches bobbing along the twisted streets of Citadel and pick out the council members, too, as the procession panted its way up the steep hillside. Striding among them was the Gel da’Thae bard.

‘I be scared,’ Niffa said abruptly. ‘I don’t know why. I just feel so cold and strange, like.’

‘Oh, he’s not so bad, really. The bard, I mean. And this won’t have anything to do with us.’

‘Don’t go being so sure, little brother. I never feel like this for no reason at all.’ Her voice stuck in her throat, and she paused, gulping for air. ‘Let’s get off this wall. Let’s go find Mam and Da.’

‘I don’t want to. I can’t see anything down in the crowd.’

‘Jahdo, come on! You can’t stay here.’

He hesitated, considering, but taking orders from his sister rankled.

‘Won’t. You go down if you want to.’

‘You dolt! Come with me!’

He shook his head in a stubborn no and refused to say a thing more. After a moment she slid down and plunged into the crowd like a swimmer into waves. He could just make her out, heading from clot to murmuring clot of townsfolk, until at last she fetched up next to Demet, standing guard near the fire itself. So that’s it! Jahdo thought. She just wanted to find him, not Mam and Da at all.

Brass horns blared at the gates to the plaza. The crowd shrank back into itself, opening a narrow passage through for the councilmen, with Verrarc in the lead and Admi, the Chief Speaker, bringing up the rear. In the middle strode the Gel da’Thae, surrounded by councilmen, all murmuring to him at once, whether or not he could hear over the crowd and the horns. As they reached the steps, a squad of militiamen escorted them to the big stone rostrum near the fire. After some confused milling round, the clot opened again to let Admi climb the rostrum. A tall man with narrow shoulders but a big belly, he was going bald rather badly, so that he seemed made from perched spheres. In the firelight his head gleamed with sweat, and his tiny eyes peered out at the crowd through slits in heavy flesh. Yet when he spoke, his dark voice rang like gold.

‘Fellow citizens! We do have among us a guest, the honoured bard Meer of the Gel da’Thae.’

Dutifully everyone clapped their hands, a patter of sound, dying fast.

‘He does come on grave purpose and with serious intent. Trouble brews in the far west. The wild tribes of the northern Horsekin are on the move.’

It seemed that everyone in the plaza caught their breath hard. Even over the crackle of the bonfire their dismay hammered on the surrounding walls. Admi wiped his forehead with both hands, unconsciously pushing back hair he no longer had.

‘May the gods allow that this trouble stay among them!’ Admi went on. ‘Yet who knows what the gods intend? The western Horsekin, our allies for all these long years, are fortifying their cities. From what Meer does tell me, it behooves us to look to our own. We go on full guard and military alert.’

Murmurs, nods – the crowd moved within itself, then fell silent. Jahdo inched closer along the wall. He could just see Meer, turning his head slowly back and forth, as if listening to the temper of the gathering.

‘Since Meer did travel long and hard to reach us, he will claim a reward,’ Admi continued. ‘He would journey farther on, where none of our merchants do go, and he does need a servant and guide. Sightless as he is, he requires a lad to wait upon him in his roamings, now that he can no longer travel with a caravan.’

Too late Jahdo remembered his sister’s premonitions. He clung to the wall, paralysed like a rat cornered by a ferret, as Councilman Verrarc walked to the edge of the steps and looked his way. The traitor fire flared up and sent long lines of light to bind him to Verrarc’s cold blue stare. In the crowd several men called out a question.

‘He’s heading east.’ In the stress of the moment Admi dropped his rhetoric. ‘He says he does have business at the border. The one we share with the Slavers.’

Jahdo turned so weak and cold that he nearly fell. He grabbed the rough stones to steady himself and swung down to hide in the muttering swarm of townsfolk. Too late – Verrarc was speaking to the militiamen, summoning a pair, plunging into the crowd and heading straight for him. Jahdo tried to run, but caught in the forest of grown-ups he found no path. Verrarc laid a heavy hand on his shoulder and swung him round. The councilman was smiling.

‘Meer did remember you, lad. Bring me the boy who smells of ferrets, he said. That one owns a brave heart.’

Jahdo stared into his eyes and felt again that he was spinning in a mind-eddy, down and down, drowning in the lake of Verrarc’s eyes. From what seemed like far away he heard a woman screaming in rage. The screams grew louder, rushed close, turned into his mother’s voice. The spell broke. His mother’s face hovered above him.

‘You mayn’t, you mayn’t! How can you even think of it?’

‘It be the treaty bond, Dera!’ Verrarc shoved himself back, raising one hand ready to ward blows. ‘It’s needful that someone go. Do you want a whole pack of Horsekin sieging us for breaking the treaty?’

‘He be but ten summers! Send some other lad. Send one of the militia.’

‘Meer didn’t ask for some other lad.’

With an animal snarl Dera turned away and began shoving her way toward the steps. In his mother’s strong grip Jahdo found himself dragged after as the guards and Verrarc followed, with Verrarc arguing with Dera the entire way. Jahdo could just sense the crowd thinning, swaying, as most of the citizens headed for the gate. He was willing to bet that the family of every other boy there was running for safety. In the flaring torchlight by the colonnade Meer stood waiting, his arms crossed over his chest.

‘Listen, you!’ Dera growled. ‘I do care not if you be one of the gods themselves. You’re not taking my son away.’

‘Dera, please, hold your tongue!’ Verrarc looked terrified. ‘You’ll insult our guest.’

With Niffa, Demet, and Kiel right behind him, Lael pushed through the crowd. Dera ignored him and the councilman both and waggled one finger under Meer’s flat nose.

‘Just who do you think you are, anyway,’ she went on. ‘Marching in here and –’

‘My good woman, please!’ Meer held one huge hand up flat for silence. ‘I come to you as a suppliant, as one in need. Please, I beg you, allow your son to come with me. I promise you I’ll treat him not as a slave, but every bit as well and tenderly as I would treat my very own first-born nephew.’

Dera hesitated. Verrarc muttered astonishments.

‘A mother’s words are law, Councilman,’ Meer snapped. ‘My good woman, as I travelled this day through your city, everywhere I smelt fear, except on your son. He’s like one of your weasels, very small, but with the heart of a wolf. I cannot travel alone.’ He reached up to touch the rim of an empty eye-socket. ‘My own mother wept when they blinded me, but in the end my calling pleased her well. For all I know, some great destiny lies in wait for your lad. Would you stand in his way?’

‘Well now.’ Dera let out her breath in a puff. ‘Well now. If you were going anywhere but east –’

‘Truly, the name of the Slavers is not one to speak in jest. Among my own people we call them Lijik Ganda, the Red Reivers. An aeon ago they swept down upon us, and the slaughter drove us from our homeland and into sin and degradation. Woe, woe to the people of the horse that our desperation drove us to such sins! Do you think we’ve forgotten such terrible things? I will not lie to you. I take your son into danger, but I would take my own nephew, had I a nephew, into the same.’

‘This thing be as important as that?’ Lael broke in.

Meer turned slightly in the direction of Councilman Verrarc, just a brief involuntary gesture. Fortunately Verrarc was whispering to one of the militiamen and, at least, seemed to notice nothing.

‘It is to me. To no one else, mayhap. My mother laid a geas upon me concerning my brother, and I have reason to believe he’s gone east.’

To Jahdo the bard’s voice sounded entirely too smooth, too glib, making him wonder if Meer were lying, but he supposed that he might have felt that way because he too had something to hide from the councilman. As he thought of Verrarc, he felt words bursting from his mouth.

‘Mam, I want to go.’

The moment he spoke he was horrified, but there was no taking the words back. Dera threw her hands into the air and keened aloud, just one brief sob of sound, quickly stifled. Lael turned to him, his mouth working.

‘If we do owe this thing under treaty,’ Lael said at last. ‘And if you want to go, well, then, there be naught much your mother and I can say about it. But be you sure, lad? At your age and all, how can you know your own mind?’

Jahdo felt his entire body trembling, trying to squeeze out the words his traitor mouth refused to speak: no, no, I didn’t mean it, I don’t want to go, I don’t. His heart pounded the words like a drum, but he could not speak.

‘He smells great things on the move, my good man,’ Meer said. ‘Even a child may sense destiny.’

‘Destiny?’ Dera spat out the word. ‘Hogwash and turnip wine!’

‘My good woman, please. With luck we’ll never even cross the Slavers’ border.’

‘Hah! That sort of luck does have a way of running short. I’m not letting my lad –’

All at once Dera stopped speaking. Meer caught himself as he was about to speak, as well, and turned, moving his huge head from side to side as if he were straining to hear some small sound. Jahdo realized that he himself was – that they all were – turning to Niffa, staring at Niffa, even though she’d said not a word. Her face had gone dead-pale, and in the broken torchlight her eyes seemed huge pools of shadow, as empty as those of the bard himself. Demet grabbed her arm to steady her.

‘Let him go, Mam.’ Her voice was a hollow whisper. ‘He’ll be safer there than here.’

Involuntarily Jahdo glanced at Verrarc, standing just behind her, and saw the strangest smile on the councilman’s face. It reminded him of a playmate caught cheating in a game. Dera considered for a long moment, taking her daughter’s strange pronouncement seriously, as indeed she always did whenever Niffa came out with one. For a moment she seemed about to speak; then she burst into tears and rushed off, dodging her way through the remnant of crowd. Swearing under his breath, Kiel followed her.

‘Well, then, that’s settled.’ Rubbing his hands together, Verrarc stepped forward. ‘Lael, since your son’s fulfilling an obligation for the entire town, the council will of course provide him with a pony and such supplies as he’ll be needing for this journey. Meer, the Chief Speaker and I did think that we could spare you some armed guards, as well, a squad of militia, say, and some pack horses.’

‘You can’t spare them, councilman,’ Meer said. ‘That’s the point of my journey here, wasn’t it now? Besides, the child and I will be safer on our own. I know a trick or two about smelling my way to safety when I have to. If need be, the lad and I can always hide in wild places, but hiding a whole pack of armed men in the forest is beyond me.’

‘Hiding?’ Lael stepped forward. ‘From what? Now wait just a moment, good bard. I had no idea –’

‘Da!’ Niffa snapped. ‘It’s needful that you let him go.’

‘Come now, my good sir,’ Meer said. ‘The lore teaches that one of the fifty-two fixed things is this: when women lay down the law, men must do as we’re told.’

Lael turned to him, utterly baffled by this statement, a gesture, of course, lost on the bard.

‘He does agree,’ Niffa broke in. ‘Jahdo, come home now. We’ve got to get your gear ready.’

Lael started to protest, then merely threw his hands in the air to reproach the gods and followed the two children as they hurried across the by-then empty plaza. When Jahdo looked back, he saw Demet running after as well. Standing where they’d left them, Verrarc and the Gel da’Thae conferred, heads together, while the rest of the Town Council hovered anxiously nearby.

The family spent a miserable evening round the central hearth, where two candle lanterns stood, sending long shadows flickering on the walls. No one wanted a fire on such a muggy night. For a long time Dera and Lael paced back and forth, squabbling and cursing each other and the Town Council both while the family merely listened. Niffa and Demet sat on a wooden bench; Kiel leaned in the doorway and glowered; Jahdo scrunched into a corner with a ferret cradled in the crook of his arm for comfort. All at once he realized that his father was speaking to him.

‘Why? Why did you say you wanted to go?’

Jahdo opened his mouth to answer only to find that he had no words. Although he tried his best to remember what had made him speak, the entire episode by the council fire had blurred in his mind into something much like a half-remembered dream.

‘The adventure of the thing, maybe?’ Lael said, softening his voice. ‘Lad, lad, you can tell me.’ He crouched down to Jahdo’s level. ‘What be wrong? Second thoughts?’

Jahdo nodded. Lael let out his breath in a puff.

‘Too late now, lad, to get out of it. You should have thought of this then. Ye gods, it’s not like we can spare you here. There be a passle of work, this time of year.’

‘Lael?’ Demet broke in. ‘If my sergeant does release me, I’ll come take Jahdo’s place.’

Niffa gave him a brilliant smile that made him blush. Lael pretended not to notice.

‘Now that be decent of you, lad,’ he said. ‘I’ll speak to him myself. It’s been many a long year since I served my turn in the militia, and I wouldn’t mind having someone good with a sword round the place.’

‘Why, Da?’ Jahdo found his tongue at last.

‘Don’t know.’ Lael hesitated, suddenly uneasy. ‘It’s just that somewhat be wrong. I can feel it, like.’

‘Everything be wrong.’ Dera began to weep. ‘Jahdo, Jahdo! Naught will ever be right again.’

Jahdo clutched Ambo so tight that the ferret whipped his head round and nipped his wrist, then slithered free and dashed for the other room. Jahdo stood up.

‘Mam, don’t be crying! Please! It’s needful that I do this.’ He felt as if he were struggling to open a locked door, shoving and pushing and banging against some huge expanse of solid oak, but he simply could not voice the truth, that he’d never wanted to agree.

‘You could at least tell your mother why,’ Lael snapped.

The entire family was staring at him, waiting for him to speak.

‘I can’t. I don’t know why. I can’t say it.’

Lael sighed and threw his hands into the air.

‘To think that a son of mine!’ he snapped. ‘Ye gods!’

‘Da!’ Niffa came to Jahdo’s rescue. ‘Leave it be. There’s no help for it now, anyway, no matter what the reason.’

Dera wiped her eyes on a bit of rag and nodded agreement.

‘And I’ll say one thing for that Gel da’Thae bard,’ she snarled. ‘He’s got some respect for a mother’s heart, not like our Verro. Here I’ve known him since he was a tiny lad, a pitiful little thing with that rotten father of his, and me the only woman in this town who’d stand up to old Renno, at that, and tell him to keep his belt off his lad’s back. To think he’d treat one of mine this way now that he’s made his way in the world!’

Jahdo tried to speak so hard that he began to tremble, but words would not come. Dimly he remembered that Verrarc had somehow or other spared his life, but he could not tell his mother, could not find one word.

‘Now here, the lad be exhausted,’ Demet said. ‘Lael, a dropped plate’s past mending, isn’t it? Might as well let Jahdo get his sleep. He’ll need it.’

Jahdo decided that as prospective brothers-in-law went, Demet had a lot to recommend him. Before his parents could start in on him again, he retreated to the bedchamber.

Although Jahdo was sure that he’d never fall asleep, suddenly it was dawn. Wrapped in their blankets, Kiel and Niffa were sleeping nearby; the ferrets lay tumbled in pairs and threes in their straw. Jahdo got up, considered waking everyone, then decided that he could never bear to say goodbye. The night before, he’d gathered into a sack his few pieces of extra clothing, along with his winter cloak and the bone-handled knife his grandfather had given him, and put the lot by the front door. He dressed, pulled on his heaviest pair of boots, and slipped out of the chamber, tiptoeing past his parents’ bed. At the door he stopped, looking out into the grey light brightening on the passageway outside. If he turned round for a last look at home, he would cry. He grabbed his sack and hurried out.

He slithered down the passageway, climbed down the ladder, bolted into the wider street, and nearly collided with Councilman Verrarc. In the rising light Verrarc looked ill – that was the only word Jahdo had for it, anyway. His skin was dead-pale, and his eyes seemed huge, sunk in the puffy shadow of dark circles. Behind him stood two guards, armed, wearing chain mail shirts under the loose red tabards that marked them as servants of the Council of Five. Even though his family knew their families, Jahdo saw them as jailors.

‘There he is,’ Verrarc sang out, and he was making some attempt at a smile. ‘Jahdo, the council does send its official thanks. Do you realize what that means? By taking up this burden of the treaty bond, you do work for everybody – the town, the council, your family – everybody. Why, lad, you be a hero!’

The two guards nodded their solemn agreement. Jahdo merely shrugged. He knew that if he tried to say one word, tears would pour and shame him. And yet, when they reached the main jetty and discovered the entire council assembled to hail the rat boy, Jahdo found himself caught by the moment. Admi himself stepped forward to take his hand and lead him onto the barge, where the town banners snapped and rustled as the mists blew away. The councilmen bowed, the oarsmen saluted, the militia all watched him with awe. Jahdo’s heart began to pound from the honour of it. Maybe he was a hero, after all. Maybe he really did believe them. Maybe he really did want to go.

At the main gates out Meer stood waiting beside his huge white horse. With his staff in one hand he turned his sightless eyes their way and boomed out a greeting as the procession made its way up. The honours evaporated like summer mist from the lake.

‘Well, Jahdo lad, are you ready for our journey?’

‘Not truly.’ The words leapt from his mouth. ‘Meer, I be scared.’

The councilmen winced and looked this way and that, but the Gel da’Thae laughed.

‘Good. So am I. We’ve every right to be. Neither of us are warriors, are we?’

‘So we’re not,’ Jahdo said. ‘I wish we were.’

Meer laughed again and swung his head round.

‘Councilman Verrarc? Where are you?’

‘Here, good sir.’ Verrarc stepped forward. ‘My men tell me you don’t want the lad to have a pony.’

‘Just so. The pack mule and supplies will do us, and very generous you townsmen are, I must say. Jahdo and I will walk, because warriors we are not, only a blind man and a lad, and much more fitting it will be for us to stay on our two feet. And safer, as well. All during my long journey from the trading stations of the east, I’ve been studying to be humble, and Jahdo my friend, I recommend the same to you. When a man runs the risk of meeting his ancestral enemies, humility becomes him.’

No one seemed to be able to think of fine words to answer those.

‘Let us address the gods,’ Meer went on, ‘and beg them for a safe journey as we go about our business. All our doings lie in the hands of the gods, after all.’ He flung himself to his knees, bowed his head, and stretched out his arms like a suppliant. ‘O you gods who dwell beyond the sky, all-powerful and all-seeing, and especially the gods of roads, O you, Tanbala of the North, O you, Rinbala of the South, Thunderers and Shakers, hear our prayer!’

Meer prayed for a long while, both in his language and that of the Rhiddaer, while the men looked this way and that and Jahdo watched fascinated. The folk of the Rhiddaer prayed, when they prayed at all, standing on their feet and facing the home of whatever god they were invoking, whether it was a tree or a hot spring or a fire mountain. He’d never seen anyone grovel in front of the gods before, and the sight embarrassed him. At last, however, Meer finished and rose, dusting off the knees of his leather trousers as if he’d done something perfectly ordinary. The men standing round all sighed in relief.

Verrarc handed Jahdo the lead rope of a fine brown mule, laden with canvas panniers.

‘Farewell, lad, and may we meet again soon.’

Jahdo had never heard anything less sincere in his life.

As the gates swung open, he took the lead, urging the mule along with little clucking noises such as he’d make to encourage a ferret. One of the guards handed him a switch.

‘Beat the mule as much as it needs,’ he remarked. ‘Stubborn ugly things.’

‘Here!’ Meer bellowed. ‘What did he give you? A stick or suchlike? Throw it away, lad. I’ll teach you how to handle a mule, and beatings have no part in it.’

Secure in Meer’s blindness the guard grinned and rolled his eyes, but Jahdo tossed the switch away.

All that morning they followed a hard-packed dirt road east through reasonably familiar country. Although Jahdo had never been more than a mile or two away from Cerr Cawnen, the farmers round about were still his people. Their wooden longhouses, all painted white and roofed with split planks, stood in the midst of fields of volcanic earth so rich some thought it magical. Often, as they walked past a fenced field or a pasture, a well-dressed man or a couple of plump children would leave their ploughing or cattle to run to the side of the road and stare at them. For the first few miles, Meer strode along in silence, swinging his stick back and forth on the road with one massive hand as he led his horse with the other. Wrapped in his instant homesickness, Jahdo was glad to be left alone at first, but the farther they went, the harder it became to keep back his tears.

Since he’d never eaten that morning, as the sun rose high in the sky his stomach began to growl. He could imagine his family coming back home for their noon meal, gathering at the long table and watching while Mam dipped soup from the kettle and cut bread into chunks. He caught his breath with a sob.

‘What’s this?’ Meer bellowed. ‘What do I hear?’

‘Naught, good bard.’

‘Hah! You can’t fool my ears, lad. Don’t even try. Huh. The sun feels hot on my back. Is it near midday?’

‘It is, truly.’

‘Time for us to stop and see what kind of provisions your councilmen gave us, then. Look round. Do you see a stream nearby? We should be watering our animals, anyway.’

About a quarter-mile down the road Jahdo found them a shallow stream with a grassy bank. Working under Meer’s direction, he unbuckled the pack saddles, but Meer himself had to heft them down. Despite his affliction the Gel da’Thae moved remarkably surely when it came to tending his horses. Watching him rub down the white horse, Baki, with a twist of grass, with the bard talking under his breath all the while, or seeing him patting the horse and leading him to the stream, it was hard, in fact, to remember that Meer was blind. The mule received the same attention.

‘We’ll name you Gidro,’ Meer announced. ‘That means strong in my people’s talk, and a fine strong mule you are.’

Gidro leaned its forehead against the bard’s chest and snorted.

‘Mules are one of the thirteen clever beasts, young Jahdo. Your people abuse them and call them stubborn, but by every demon among us, who can blame the mule? Here, he thinks to himself, why should I be sweating and straining my back all for the benefit of some bald two-legged thing that smells of meat and piss? All I get out of it is sour hay and a draughty shed. A pox on them all, thinks the mule.’

Jahdo found himself laughing.

‘That’s better, lad,’ Meer said. ‘I know it’s a hard thing I’ve asked you to do. Now go through those packs, there, and find us a bite to eat.’

Much to his delight, Jahdo found a lot of food wrapped and cached in various cloth bags, including some chewy honey cakes. Meer had him bring out some dark bread and cheese, which Jahdo sliced up with his grandfather’s knife. Before they ate, however, Meer recited yet another prayer, though mercifully it was a good bit shorter than his effort back at Cerr Cawnen, to thank the god Elmandrel for the food.

‘The gods do matter a fair bit to you, don’t they, Meer?’ Jahdo said.

‘They do, and so they should to all the Gel da’Thae, for we are sinners in their sight, more loathsome than worms.’ Meer held out his hand for lunch. ‘Thanks, lad. That cheese smells good, I must say. At any rate, we all sinned mightily against the three hundred sixty-five gods and the thousands upon thousands of the Children of the Gods, back in the old days, when the Red Reivers fell upon us. Your people, now, they suffered much at the hands of the Lijik Ganda, but as victims they did not sin.’

‘Er well, that be splendid, then.’

Meer merely grunted and bit into his bread and cheese. Jahdo followed suit, and for a long time neither of them spoke. Jahdo had heard stories of the old days from priests and singers among his own people, who recited them at public feast-days, such as the celebrations of spring and the harvest time, but he had never considered that those ancient events would someday reach out dead hands to touch his own life. The Slavers lived only in stories, didn’t they, to frighten children into behaving? Stop pinching your sister right now, or the Slavers will come get you – that sort of thing. But he’d just found out that they were real, and he was heading their way.

Far far to the east, or so the stories ran, lay a beautiful kingdom that once had belonged to the ancestors of the Rhiddaer folk, where they lived in peace and prosperity near the trees and springs of the ancient gods. One dark day a new people appeared, warriors who thundered down on horseback and killed or enslaved the peaceful farmers. On their stolen land and with their slave labour, these invaders built stone towers and towns made of round houses, where they lived at ease while the ancestors were forced to work the fields. A few at a time, though, the ancestors had slipped away, seeking freedom. Some died in the attempt; others escaped to found a new country, the Rhiddaer, where kings and lords such as commanded the Slavers were forbidden forever by law. Finally, the Slavers’ blood-thirsty ways brought ruin upon their own heads, when a huge civil war, lasting five and a hundred years, tore their kingdom apart. Most of the ancestors escaped during those days of retribution and made their way to freedom in the Rhiddaer. For a long time everyone hoped that the Slavers were all dead, but unfortunately, the warring madness had left them in the end, and their kingdom was prospering again.

‘Meer?’ Jahdo said. ‘The old stories do say that the Slavers used to cut off people’s heads and then tie them to their saddles and stuff. The heads, I mean, not the rest of the people. That be not true, bain’t?’

‘I fear me it is, lad. The lore passed down from bard to bard confirms it.’

Jahdo dropped his face into his hands and sobbed. After this whole long horrible day, the lore was just one thing too many to endure. He heard Meer sigh and move; then a broad hand fumbled for his shoulder and patted it.

‘Now, now, we’ve got to put our trust in the gods. They’ll guide us and protect us, and the Slavers will never even know we were walking their border.’

Jahdo snivelled back his tears and wiped his face on his sleeve.

‘Well, I be sorry I did cry.’

‘Don’t you think my heart aches within me, too? I tell you again, lad, warriors we are not, and thus the gods will hold us not to the warrior’s harsh honour.’

‘All right, then, but if ever I do get home again I’ll have to be a warrior when I grow up. I’ll have to join the militia, I mean. Everybody does. I guess it’s not like that in your country.’

‘It’s not, indeed. Only the chosen few become warriors, the best among us, and a grim lot they are, soaked in blood and death from the time they’re but colts.’

‘They be just like the Slavers were, then.’

Meer laughed, a rumble under his breath.

‘So they are, but I wouldn’t say that to them, if ever you meet some. And truly, you just might in the days ahead. You just might indeed.’

After they’d eaten, they loaded up the horse and mule again and headed east on the familiar road for the rest of that day. At times as they walked Meer would sing, or at least, Jahdo supposed that you could call it singing, a far different thing than the songs and simple tunes for dancing that his people knew. Meer’s voice rumbled deep and huge to match the rest of him, but it seemed he sang with his throat squeezed tight and forced the air out his nose, too – Jahdo wasn’t exactly sure – so that his notes hissed and wailed as much as they boomed, and the melody flowed up and down and round about in a long cadence of quarter-tones and sprung rhythms. Every now and then, Jahdo could have sworn he heard the bard sing chords, all by himself with no instrument to help him. At first the music threatened headaches, but by the third song Jahdo heard the patterns in it, and while he never grew to like it, he found it tolerable.

That night they made camp beside a duck pond in a farmer’s pasture, within sight of the wooden longhouse and big stone barn. After they’d eaten, Jahdo collected wood and tinder for a little fire, but he saved it for the actual dark. As the sunset faded to twilight, Jahdo found himself staring at the farm, watching the gleam from a lantern dancing in the windows, wondering how big a family lived there and if they were happy. When he wondered if he’d ever see his own family again, he started to cry, and this time Meer let him sob until he’d got it all out and felt better for it.

‘Well, lad, are you sorry you said you wanted to come?’

Jahdo tried to speak and found his throat frozen. All he could do was make a small choking sound.

‘Here, what’s that mean?’ Meer said.

‘Naught.’ Jahdo grabbed a handful of grass and blew his nose.

The Gel da’Thae swung his massive head round as if he were looking Jahdo’s way, but he said nothing. All round in the velvet evening insects buzzed and chirred. Jahdo tossed the ill-used grass away.

‘Meer? Why are you going east?’

‘That’s a fitting question, considering how I’ve dragged you away from hearth and home, but I’m not going to answer it.’

‘Here! Not fair!’

‘Fair has naught to do with it.’

Jahdo felt all his homesickness boil and turn to rage. He scrambled to his feet.

‘Then you may just find your way without me. I’m going home.’

He grabbed a bag of food from the ground and marched off, sighting on the last glow of the setting sun. Behind him Meer howled, a huge sound as if ten wolves sang.

‘Come back, come back!’

Jahdo heard stumblings and cursings, but he kept walking.

‘Stop!’ Meer’s anguish floated after him. ‘Wait! I’ll tell you, then.’

Jahdo stopped and turned round, but he hesitated. In the last of the light he could just see the bard’s silhouette, flailing round with his stick as he tried to follow over the rocks and hummocks. He moved remarkably well, considering, but he was angling away fast from the path that Jahdo had actually taken. He’ll die out here without me, Jahdo thought.

‘Meer, stop! I’m coming back.’

The bard sobbed once in relief and held still. Jahdo led him back to their camp, sat Meer down on a log, then busied himself with striking sparks from his flint and steel until the readied tinder at last caught. Jahdo blew the spark into a flame, fed in a little dried grass, then some twigs, and at last pieces of broken branch. As the light leapt and spread he moved back from the unwelcome heat. Meer was sitting with his head between his hands, his face turned as if he were staring into the fire. Seeing him look so defeated brought Jahdo a strange insight: never before had he argued with, much less bested, a grown man, and rather than exulting, he was frightened. Yet he refused to back down.

‘Well, tell me now. Why are you going east?’

‘It’s a long and bitter story, but you’re right enough that you should hear it. Pay attention, though, because I can only bear to repeat it this once.’ Meer cleared his throat several times before he went on. ‘I have an elder brother who became a powerful razkan, what you’d call a captain in your tongue, I suppose, the man who leads a group of warriors. And what with his raiding and then the legitimate battles between our various cities, he became famous, gathering many a free-born warrior round him, as well as the usual slave soldiers he bought with all his booty.’

‘Hold a moment. Slave soldiers? How can you give a slave weapons and make them fight?’

‘They’ve been bred and born among the Gel da’Thae, and they know that if they fight well, they’ll be set free.’

‘But still, I don’t understand. You think they’d just kill this razkan fellow and run away.’

‘Run to what? The wilderness? They know the civic authorities would hunt them down, and the gods wouldn’t help them the way they helped your people escape, because they’d be rebels and traitors.’

‘The gods helped us?’

‘Of course they did. They sent their own children to save and succour you, out on the grasslands to the south.’

‘I never did hear that before. I heard that it was some people who raised horses or suchlike. Why did the gods help us?’

‘Now here!’ Meer spoke with some asperity. ‘Do you want me to finish this tale or not? Fewer questions, if you please.’

‘I be sorry.’

‘Very well, then. Now, as I say, my brother, Thavrae his name is, his warrior’s name, I mean, though Svar was the name our mother gave him. Ah alas, woe betide the day she birthed him, and woe betide that his kin and clan have lived to see his infamy!’

‘What’s he been doing?’

‘Whoring after strange gods. Gods? Did I say gods? One of the three hundred sixty-four kinds of demon, more like! False gods, anyway. They’re supposed to be new gods. Now I ask you. If a god wasn’t around to help make the world, what kind of a god can she be? Gods don’t just pop up all of a sudden like, out of nowhere, appearing at your table like some unmarried uncle in search of a dinner!’

Jahdo giggled.

‘Just so.’ Meer nodded firmly. ‘But for some years now these false prophets have been coming round, preaching these new gods to anyone stupid enough to listen. These so-called seers come from the wild tribes of the far north, where the demons have been appearing and working marvels, or so they say. Alshandra’s the name they mention most, a powerful goddess of war, or so they call her.’

‘Your people, they’d be liking her, then.’

‘Just so. But most of these prophets are gone now. Some got themselves caught and strangled in the public square by the authorities, and the rest haven’t been seen for some while. They’ve turned sensible, if you take my meaning, but a few fools have listened to them. And my brother, my own blood kin, little Svar as I’ll always think of him, he’s one of them, claiming allegiance to this Alshandra creature. It broke my mother’s heart.’

‘I’ll wager it did. That be too bad, Meer, really tis so.’ Jahdo was trying to imagine what the mother of a man such as Meer would be like – even more formidable than his own mother, he supposed. ‘I guess she could talk no sense into him, huh?’

‘No one could make him listen to reason, no one, not our mother, not our aunts, not our uncles. But anyway, some weeks ago Thavrae led his men out east.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, partly to spare our city outright war between his warband and that of his rivals. He did listen to our mother about that, when she begged him to take his men away before citizen slaughtered citizen in the streets. The authorities wanted to strangle him for blasphemy, you see, but you don’t just arrest a razkan when he’s got his warband round him.’

‘Then he does have some honour left.’

‘Some, truly, though a poor comfort to our mother it is.’

‘Wait a moment. You said these demons live in the north, right? Why did Thavrae head east?’

‘I’m coming to that part. Hush. Apparently he’d received an omen from the gods, sending him to fetch a particular thing from the lands of the Slavers.’

‘What was it?’

‘How would I know? But I was sent to find him and beg him to come home.’

‘Sent by your mother?’

‘Just so.’

‘Do you think you – I mean we – can find him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Meer sighed, running both hands through his tangled mane of hair. ‘By now he and his men should have found whatever this mysterious object is and be returning. I hope we’ll meet them on the road back.’

‘What road? We don’t even know where we’re going.’

‘True.’

‘Then how do you think we’ll ever find him?’

‘If I can get within a reasonable distance, the brother bond will guide us.’

‘The what?’

‘The brother bond.’ Meer hesitated for a long time. ‘Now, that’s one thing I can never explain to you, Jahdo, even if you were to walk away again and leave me here to starve. It’s a magick, and some magicks are Gel da’Thae. They cannot be shared. In the temple we swear holy vows.’

‘Well, all right, then. My mam does always say that if you swear a thing, it’s needful for you to do it. But I still don’t see how we’re going to find him. What if he goes north and we go south or somewhat like that?’

‘It might happen, truly. But a mother’s charge is a sacred charge, and I must travel and try.’

Jahdo hesitated, considering.

‘Be you sure this is all you’re doing? I did hear you talking to Verrarc back home, Councilman Verrarc I mean, and you were talking about your mother and stuff, but I did get this strange feeling. You weren’t telling him everything, were you?’

Meer laughed.

‘I figured I was choosing the cleverest lad in town, and I was right. But actually, I wasn’t lying. I was merely editing. I didn’t want to go into detail. There is somewhat about Councilman Verrarc that creeps my flesh. I hear things in his voice, somehow.’

‘Things?’

‘Overtones, odd hesitations, a peculiar timbre. He sounds enraged, but at the same time, he reeks of fear.’ Meer paused, considering. ‘I can barely put it into words, it’s such a subtle thing. But he’s an ominous man, in his way, an ominous man.’

Jahdo shuddered. Yet once again the buried memory tried to rise, bringing with it a cold shudder. He caught his breath with a little gasp. Meer turned an inquiring ear his way.

‘Geese walking on my grave,’ Jahdo said. ‘O ych, I wish I hadn’t said that.’

‘More likely the evening breeze, lad. I wouldn’t take it as an omen.’

Later, as Jahdo was falling asleep, he remembered that Meer had found him clever. In spite of the trouble this opinion had got him into, he was pleased.

It took three more days of their slow journeying before they left settled country behind. The road climbed steadily, and the last few farms they passed nestled in hills where sheep, not cows, grazed the sparse pasturage between huge grey boulders. What trees there were, scrubby pine and second growth alders and suchlike, hugged the narrow valleys, leaving the hill tops to grass and the wind. As the road diminished to a rocky path, Meer began to worry about the horse and mule, stopping often to run a huge hand down their legs to check for swellings and strains. He told Jahdo how to pick up their hooves and look for tiny stones or thorns that might have got stuck in the soft frogs. Although Jahdo was afraid of getting a kick for his trouble, as long as Meer was holding their halters or even simply touching them, the horse and mule stood still and docile.

‘If either of these creatures comes up lame, lad, we’re in for a miserable time of it.’

‘I do see that, truly. Well, I’ll be real careful and take good care of them.’

The next day early they left the Rhiddaer behind, not that there was a formal boundary or cairn to mark the border. It was just that Jahdo happened to glance back from the top of a hill and realize that he could see nothing familiar – not a farmhouse, not a shepherd, not a cultivated field nor a coppiced wood – nothing to mark the presence of human being or Gel da’Thae, either. For a long moment he stood looking back west and down across the low hills to catch a glimpse of the valley, all misty in the blue distance, where he’d spent his entire life. He felt torn in half between missing his family and a completely new sensation, a wondering what lay ahead, not behind, a sudden eagerness to see the new view that would lie east of these hills.

‘Jahdo?’ Meer called. ‘Somewhat wrong?’

‘Naught, truly. Just looking behind us. Meer, you’d better let me lead the way now. This be a road no longer, just sort of a trail. I don’t think your staff will be enough of a guide.’

‘Well and good, then. Lead on. And please remember, lad, that you’re my eyes. You’ve got to tell me everything you see.’

‘I will then.’

Remembering to keep up a running commentary for the blind bard turned out to be difficult. At first Jahdo had no idea what information would be useful to him, and he tended to describe distant vistas rather than the footing just ahead. Thanks to Meer’s constant and sarcastic comments, he did learn fast that a lovely view of trees in a valley wasn’t half so valuable as news of a rock blocking the path.

The path, such as it was, wound along the sides of hills and ran, basically, from one grassy spot to the next, which confirmed Jahdo’s guess that it was a deer trail. It was a good thing they were heading directly east; without the sun’s direction to guide them, they could easily have circled round and round the broken hillsides and steep valleys. Water, at least, ran clean and abundant in a multitude of little streams and springs. Here and there they came to a deeper stream, roaring with white water at the bottom of shallow but steep ravines. It was one of those, in fact, that nearly proved fatal.

Late in the afternoon, as they skirted the edge of a fast-moving stream, Jahdo was so intent on telling Meer where to walk that he lost track of his own feet and stepped too close to the ravine edge. The moment his foot hit he felt the damp soil crumble under his weight. He tossed the mule’s lead-rope back toward the animal just in time to avoid pulling Gidro after him.

‘Meer!’ he shrieked. ‘I’m falling!’

The sky spun blue and bright, and the roar of the water far below seemed to fill the world as he went over, twisting, flailing, grabbing out at empty air. With a smack he hit a wall of pain and lay gasping for breath on a little ledge. Above, what seemed like miles and miles above, he heard the frightened mule braying and Meer yelling his name, but though he fought sobbing for air he could not speak or call out. My ribs be broken, he thought. I’ll never be able to walk. I’ll have to die here.

All at once he realized that the sounds from above had stopped. His first panicked thought was that Meer had left him behind, but he realized almost immediately that the Gel da’Thae needed him too badly for that. His second panicked thought was that Meer was going to fall over the edge himself.

‘Meer!’ he managed to force sound from his burning lungs at last. ‘Careful! The edge be soft!’

‘Jahdo! You’re alive! Thank every god! Lie still, lad, lie still and get your breath.’

Jahdo did as he was told, letting the pain subside as he listened to odd scrapings of sound above him. Suddenly Meer’s face appeared at the cliff edge. Jahdo realized that the bard was lying on his stomach and feeling for the edge with one hand. In the other he held a rope.

‘Make noise,’ Meer called out.

‘You be right above me.’

‘Hah! Thought I heard you panting down there.’

If Meer had heard him breathing, no matter how noisily, over the sound of the white water below, then, Jahdo decided, his hearing must have been amazingly keen. When Meer tossed the rope, the end spiralled down and fell across his chest. Jahdo grabbed it with one hand and carefully felt round him with the other. He had just the room to sit up, and as he did so, he realized that while he ached from bruising, nothing was broken.

‘I be whole enough, Meer!’ he called out. ‘And I do have the rope.’

‘Splendid, splendid. Tie that end round your waist, lad, not too tight, now. You’ll need to ride her up like a sling. I’ve got the other end on Gidro’s pack saddle.’

With the mule pulling and Jahdo walking up the steep side of the ravine, he got to the top easily enough, but scrambling over with the rim so soggy and soft was something of an ordeal, because his back and shoulders ached like fire. At last he was crawling on solid ground. By grabbing Gidro’s pack saddle he could haul himself up to his feet. Meer inched back from the edge and sat up into a crouch.

‘My thanks,’ Jahdo said. ‘You did save my life.’

‘And my own as well, eh?’ Meer felt the front of his shirt and began brushing off mud and grass clots.

‘I do thank you anyway. You could have fallen and broken your neck, trying to save me.’

‘I feared your mother’s curse worse than I did dying. A mother’s curse follows a man into the Deathworld, it does. And I thought we’d lost you for sure, lad. What happened?’

‘I did step too close to the edge, that’s all. This soft dirt, it be a jeopard, Meer. It’s needful that you do test every step with that staff you carry.’

‘And so I shall from now on. Here, do you see a good place to camp? How late is it? I feel a powerful need to rest, I do.’

‘Well, the trail runs downhill from here, and I see some trees and grass down over to our left.’

‘Downhill, does it? Huh, I wonder if there’s mountains ahead. Can you see any, off on the horizon?’

‘I haven’t yet, not even from the top of a hill. I did never hear any stories about mountains between us and the Slavers. I think that’s why the ancestors could escape. They never would have survived in mountains.’

‘True. Huh. Another thing I wonder. This city, where Thavrae was heading, I mean, is it northeast or southeast?’

‘You don’t know?’ Jahdo heard his voice rise to a wail.

‘I’m afraid I don’t. The lore’s a bit sketchy when it comes to details like that. Well, we’re in the hands of the gods. In them lie our true hope and our true safety. Let us pray for guidance.’

Although he never would have dared to voice such a thought, Jahdo decided that he’d rather put his trust in a man who’d travelled there and back again. Yet, much to his surprise, not long after they did indeed receive a sign from the gods – or so Meer interpreted it.

For the next few days they travelled slowly, stopping often to let Jahdo rest his sore back. Although he soon realized that out of sheer luck he’d broken nothing, he hurt worse than he’d ever hurt in his young life. Sleeping on the ground did nothing to ease his bruises, either. At times, thinking of his warm mattress at home would make him weep. At others, he would simply wish that he had died, there in the fall, and put himself out of his misery. Yet, of course, he had no choice but to keep travelling. Going back would have hurt as much as going forward, after all, and he learned that, much to his surprise, he could endure a great deal and still cope with the work of tending animals and making camps, to say nothing of a hard walk through broken country.

On the fourth day it rained, a heavy summer storm that boiled up from the south. Although they were soaked within a few moments, they took shelter from the wind in one of the wooded valleys. Meer insisted that they unload the stock for a rest while they waited out the rain in this imperfect shelter.

‘They might as well be comfortable, anyway,’ Jahdo said. ‘Even if we can’t. I hate being wet. I do feel all cold and slimy, and my bruises from that fall, they do ache in this damp. My boots be wet inside, even. This be miserable, bain’t?’

‘I take it, lad, that you’ve not spent much time in wild country.’

‘Why would I?’

‘No reason, truly. You’re not Gel da’Thae. Our souls belong to the wild places of the world, you see, and deep in our souls, all of us yearn for the northern plains, the homeland, the heartland of our tribes.’

‘But I thought you did live in towns, like we do.’

‘Of course, so that we may better serve the gods here in the latter days of the world. But in our souls, ah, we yearn for the days when we rode free in the heartland. Our warriors make their kills to glorify its memory, and singers like me make our music in its honour.’

‘Well, if you do miss it so much, why don’t you go back?’

‘We can’t. Jahdo, listen. This is very important. When the Slavers attacked the homeland, we fled. We deserted our north country and fled south, stinking in our shame, cowards and slave-hearted, every one of us. For what is one of the thirteen worst things but to desert one’s homeland in its hour of need? And in our rage and shame we fought and burned and pillaged our way through the cities of the south. Oh, woe to the Gel da’Thae! That we should desert the homeland and then destroy the cities that the gods themselves had built for their children! Woe and twice woe, that we raised our hands against those children themselves and did slay and smite them! And for that shame and that sin, we can never return. The long meadows of the north, the fire mountains of the ancestors and the warm rivers that forbid winter their banks – all, all are lost forever. Do you understand?’

‘I don’t, truly. Meer, you must be awfully old, to remember all that.’

‘I don’t remember it, you irritating little cub. This is lore.’

‘Well, I do be sorry if I were rude again, but it does seem to mean so much to you. It’s like it just happened last winter.’

When Meer growled like an enormous dog, Jahdo decided to let the subject drop.

Once the horses were tended and tethered, Meer hunkered down beside the leather packs, which they’d piled up in the driest spot. Although Jahdo was expecting him to pass the time in prayer, instead he merely sat, as still and in the same way as one of the tree trunks around them, alive but utterly silent. At times he turned his head or cocked it, as if he were hearing important messages from every drop of rain, every scuttling squirrel. Even when the rain slacked and died, Meer sat unmoving, until Jahdo finally could stand it no longer.

‘Meer? I feel so awful.’

‘No doubt you do, lad. My apologies. Here, take off those wet boots. Wet boots rub wet feet raw. What does the sky look like?’

‘Clearing up pretty good. It must be twixt noon and sunset by now.’

‘Huh.’ Meer considered for a moment. ‘And what does the land ahead look like?’

‘More hills. Bigger ones, and all broken up, like.’

‘We’ll camp here, then. I hear a stream nearby.’

‘I can just see it, truly. I thought I’d take the waterskins down. Do you want a drink?’

‘I do, if you don’t mind fetching me one. The lore says that one of the fifty-two contrary things is this: sitting in the rain makes a man thirsty. And as usual, the lore is right.’

Jahdo slung the pair of waterskins, joined by a thong, across his shoulders and picked his way through the trees and tangled bracken. The little stream flowed between shallow banks, all slippery with mossy rocks and tiny ferns; predictably enough, he lost his footing and slid into the water. Stones stung his bare feet, and he yelped, righting himself.

‘Careful.’ The voice sounded directly behind him. ‘It’s not deep, but it’s treacherous.’

When Jahdo spun round he saw a strange man sitting on the bank and smiling at him. He was a tall fellow, slender, dressed in a long green tunic and buckskin trousers. His hair was the bright yellow of daffodils, his lips were the red of sour cherries, and his eyes were an unnatural turquoise blue, bright as gemstones. Yet the strangest thing of all were his ears, long and delicately pointed, furled tight like a fern in spring.

‘That Gel da’Thae has no eyes,’ he said.

‘He be a bard. They get them taken out.’

‘Disgusting custom, truly, but no affair of mine. You’re his slave?’

‘I am not!’

‘Then what are you?’

Jahdo considered.

‘Well, I didn’t even know him a fortnight ago, but he’s my friend now.’

‘Very well. Give him a message. What the legends say is right enough, and east lie the Slavers, sure enough, but south, south is the way to turn. Follow this stream, and it will swell to a river. Cross at the ford marked with the stone, and head into the rising sun. Beware, beware that you go too far, or you’ll reach the Slavers’ towered dun. Can you remember that rhyme?’

‘I can indeed, sir, but please, who are you?’

‘Tell the bard that my name’s Evandar.’

‘I will, then. But sir, will you come back if we get lost?’

‘Now that I can’t promise. I have other affairs on hand.’

With that he disappeared, so suddenly and completely gone that Jahdo was sure he’d dreamt the entire thing – until he realized that he could never fall asleep standing knee-deep in cold water. He filled the skins and rushed back to the bard, who was currying the white horse.

‘Meer, Meer, the strangest thing just happened! I did see this man, and then he were gone, all at once like.’

‘Indeed? Suppose you start at the beginning of this peculiar tale, lad, and tell it to me slowly.’

Jahdo did, paying particular attention to the fellow’s directions. For a long time Meer said nothing, merely laid his huge hands on the horse’s back as if for the comfort of the touch and stared sightlessly up at the sky.

‘Well, now,’ he rumbled at last. ‘I told your mother, didn’t I, that you were marked for a great destiny?’

‘Well, you said maybe I was.’

‘And I was right.’ Meer ignored the qualification. ‘To have seen one of the gods is the greatest honour a man can have.’

‘That were one of your gods?’

‘It was. Did I not pray for guidance in our travelling? Did he not come to provide it?’

Jahdo shuddered. He felt as if snow had slipped from a roof down his back, and it took him a long time to be able to speak.

‘You be sure that were a god? He didn’t look like much.’

‘You ill-got little cub! It’s not for us to question how the gods choose to appear to us.’

‘My apologies, then, but you be sure it weren’t one of those demons you do talk about?’

‘Not if he gave his name as Evandar the Avenger, the archer of Rinbala, goddess of the sea, he whose silver arrows could pierce the moon itself and fetch it from the sky.’

‘Well, he only said Evandar, not all the rest of that stuff.’

‘The rest of that stuff, as you so inelegantly put it, happen to be two of his major attributes and one of his minor ones, as attested by the holy hymns themselves. Humph. I can see that I’d best attend to your education. Besides, if he’d been a demon, he’d have tried to snatch you away, to make me fail in my quest.’

Jahdo went cold again, a bone-touching chill worse than any god-induced awe.

‘I smell fear,’ Meer said.

‘Well, do you blame me?’

‘Of course not. Lead me over to our gear, lad, and open the big grey saddlebags. I’ve got some very powerful amulets in there, and a feather talisman wound and blessed by the High Priestess herself, and I think me you’d best wear them from now on.’

They met on horseback and alone at the boundary of their two domains, which lay far beyond the physical world in the peculiar reaches of the etheric plane. In this empire of images, a dead-brown moor stretched all round them to a horizon where a perennially setting sun fought through smoke, or so it seemed, to flood them with copper-coloured light. Evandar rode unarmoured, wearing only his tunic and leather trousers as he lounged on his golden stallion. Since he sat with one leg crooked round the saddle peak, a single shove of a fist or weapon would have knocked him to the ground, but he smiled as he considered his brother. Riding on a black horse, and glittering with black enamelled armour as well, the brother was more than a little vulpine. Since he carried his black-plumed helmet under one arm, you could see his pointed ears tufted with red fur and the roach of red hair that ran from his forehead over his skull and down to the back of his neck. His beady black eyes glittered above a long, sharp nose.

‘You’re a fool, Evandar,’ the fox warrior snarled. ‘Coming here alone like this.’

‘Am I now? Your message said you needed my help. Was it all a trap and ambuscade?’

He grunted, slung his helmet from a strap on the saddle, and began to pull off his gauntlets. Russet fur plumed on the backs of his hands, and each finger ended in a sharp black claw rather than a nail.

‘First you lose your wife, your dear darling Alshandra,’ he said at last. ‘And now I hear you’ve lost your daughter as well.’

‘Alshandra’s gone, true enough, and good riddance to the howling harridan, say I! My daughter? Not lost in the least.’ Evandar paused for a grin. ‘I know exactly where my Elessario is, though indeed she’s gone from this place. Elessario lies safe in a human womb, and soon she’ll be born into the world of men and elves.’

The fox warrior shrugged, indifferent to the fact now that the barb had missed its mark. He turned in his saddle and spent a long moment staring at the horizon, where the bloody-coloured light fumed and roiled. It seemed that the smoke was stretching higher, sending long red fingers toward the horizon.

‘What have you done to the Lands? Hah?’ His voice at times barked like a fox’s as well. ‘You’ve done somewhat, you bastard swine, you scum of all the stars. We can feel it. We can see it. The Lands are shrinking and fading. My court sickens.’

‘What makes you think that’s my doing?’

‘It’s always your doing, what happens to the Lands.’ He stared at the ground, grudging each word. ‘You made them, you shaped them. Doesn’t Time feed in your pasture as well?’

‘And what does the flow of days have to do with one wretched thing?’

‘Don’t you see? The turning of the wheel brings decay, and Time runs like a galloping horse these days. You’re the only one who can grab its reins. Make it slow, brother, for the sake of all of us, my court as well as yours.’

For an answer Evandar merely laughed. A weapon flashed in his brother’s hand, a silver sword held high and ready. Evandar unhooked his leg, leaned forward in the saddle, stared into the black, glittering eyes and stared him down. The fox warrior snarled, but the weapon swung into its sheath.

‘You won’t kill me, younger brother,’ Evandar said, but quietly, lest a grin or a laugh be taken as mockery. ‘Because you don’t know what will happen to you if I die. Neither do I, for that matter, but I’ll wager it would be naught good.’

The fox warrior shrugged the statement away.

‘What have you done to the Lands?’ he repeated. ‘Tell me.’

‘Tell me your name, and I’ll tell you.’

‘No! Never! Not that!’

‘Then I’ll say naught in return.’

For a long moment the fox warrior hesitated, his lips half-parted as if he would speak, then he snarled with a jerk of his reins, swung his horse’s head round and kicked him hard. As he galloped away in a rise of dust, Evandar watched, smiling faintly.

‘You stupid fool,’ he said aloud. ‘It should be obvious what’s happening to the Lands. They’re dying.’

He turned his horse and jogged off, heading for the green refuge along the last river, where his magic, the enchantments that had carved kingdoms out of the shifting stuff of the etheric plane, still held.

Although he most certainly wasn’t the god Meer thought him, Evandar held enormous power, drawn straight from the currents of the upper astral, which shapes the etheric the way that the etheric shapes the physical. He knew how to weave – with enormous effort – the shifting astral light and twine it into forms that seemed, at least, as solid as matter, though he’d also had to master the art of constantly channelling energy into those forms to keep them alive. In the thousands of years of his existence, which he’d spent trapped in a backwash, a killing eddy of the river of Time, he’d had plenty of leisure to learn.

Unthinkably long ago, in the morning light of the universe when Evandar and his people were struck, sparks from immortal fire as all souls are, they’d been meant to take up the burden of incarnation, to ride with all other souls the turning wheels of Life and Death, but somehow, in some way that not even they could remember, they had, as they put it, ‘stayed behind’ and never been born into physical bodies. Without the discipline of the worlds of form, they were doomed. One by one, they would wink out and die, sparks flown too far from the fire – or so he’d been told, and so he believed, simply because he loved the woman who’d told him the tale and for no other reason of intellect or logic.

After Evandar left the dead moor behind, he came to a forest, half green trees and burgeoning ferns, half dead wood and twisted thorns. At its edge stood an enormous tree, half of which thrived in green leaf while half blazed with a fire that never consumed the branches nor did it go out – the beacon that marked the boundary proper between the lands he’d made for his brother’s Dark Court and those he kept for his own, the Bright Court. Once the beacon lay behind him, he could relax his guard. As he rode, he thought of his daughter, who had chosen to leave this less than real, more than imagined place and take on flesh in a solid world, one that endured without dweomer to feed it, but one that promised pain. She would be born to a human mother soon, would Elessario, and take up the destiny that should have claimed all his folk. If she were to be safe, there was much he had to do in that other world, the only one that most sapient souls know. What happened to his glamoured lands, or the images of lands, that he had spent an aeon building up no longer much concerned him. Without his concern, they dimmed.

All the green plains, dotted with glades and streams, had turned misty, billowing as he crossed them, as if they were embroidered pictures on a coverlet that someone were shaking to lay out flat upon a bed. The distant towers and urban prospects fluttered and wavered as if they were but banners hung on a near horizon. Only one particular river and the meadows round it remained real, the gathering place for his Court, and it seemed to him that they too had shrunk into themselves, turned smaller, fainter, flames playing over a dying fire.

Yet still they were a beautiful people. Since they had no proper bodies or forms of their own, they’d taken the form of the elves that their leader loved so much, with hair pale as moonlight or bright as the sun to set off violet eyes, grey eyes, and the long delicate curled ears of that earthly race. For the most part their skin was as pale as milk, just touched with roses in the cheek, but some had seen the human beings of the far southern isles, and those who had wore a rich, dark skin like fresh-ploughed earth under a rain. They clustered in the golden pavilion, listened to sad songs played by indifferent bards, or sat in the pale sunlight, merely sat and talked in low voices, their dancing, it seemed, all done forever.

Whether their numbers had shrunk as well, he couldn’t say. Counting the Court lay beyond him or any being, truly, because most of them were like shapes half-seen in clouds or flames, at times separate, at others merging into one another, rising into brief individuality only to fall back to a shared mind. Only a few had achieved, as he had, a true consciousness. One of these, wearing the form of a young page, ran to take his horse as he dismounted. Although the boy stared at him, hoping for a few words, Evandar merely shrugged and walked away. As he hurried through the scattered crowd, faces turned toward him, eyes came to life, hope bloomed in smiles that he would save them as he had before. He doubted that he cared enough to try.

Down by the river, flowing broad and slow between rushy banks, sat a woman with steel-grey eyes and silvery-blonde hair that tumbled down her back. When she rose to greet him, he abruptly saw her slender body as a shaft of granite, hard and cold and real among the shifting forms of the Land. Round her neck she wore a tiny figurine, seemingly carved from amethyst, that echoed her body in every detail. It actually was her body, in fact, once physical meat and blood and bone but transformed by his magic so that she could live in his country. Dallandra was one of the truly-born, a member of that race called elves or Westfolk by men and the ‘Children of the Gods’ by the Gel da’Thae, though they called themselves simply ‘the People’. She was also a dweomermaster of great power, though no human or elven sorcerer could ever match Evandar’s skill.

‘What did your brother want?’ she said.

‘To blame me for letting his territories fall into disrepair. Let him build his own, if he wants them as badly as all that. I’ve no time to waste upon his snouted, hairy pack.’ He walked to the riverbank and looked into the astral water, thick and silver, oozing rather than flowing between the clumps of water reeds and the rushes. ‘No matter what I do, this river remains. I wonder if it will still exist – after I’m dead and scattered into nothingness, I mean.’

‘It might well, at that. Of course, there’s no reason for you to die with your domain. You could choose birth like your daughter has.’

She spoke casually, barely looking his way.

‘I’ve made my choice,’ he snapped. ‘Never shall I go live in the world of blood and muck and pain and mire.’

‘Well, then there’s naught I can do about it, is there?’

His hurt that she would sound so indifferent to his death stabbed like a winter wind. For a moment he was tempted to change his mind, just to spite her.

‘But I do have to visit it now and again,’ he said instead. ‘I’ve started a few more hares upon this field, and I have to go see how they run.’

‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

He laughed, tossing back his head.

‘I hope I do, too, my beloved. I sincerely hope I do. Don’t you trust me?’

‘It’s not a question of trust. It’s just that everything’s getting so dreadfully complicated. You seem, to have so many schemes afoot.’

‘Only the one, to keep Elessario safe once she’s born.’

‘But you’ve a fair number of meats simmering in this particular stew. And I worry about Time, my love. It runs so differently here in your world than it does in mine.’

‘Why must you always refer to that world as yours? I want you to stay here forever with me.’

She hesitated, but in the end, although he could see longing in her eyes, she shook her head no.

‘My place is there, in the world of men, the world of Time.’

‘And the world of Death.’

‘It is, at that. Some things are beyond changing. But after death comes new birth.’

He tried to speak, but no words came. Whether it was beyond his changing or not, he knew that Time and her daughter Death were beyond his understanding. The knowing gave him doubts. Maybe he didn’t understand the universe as completely as he thought he did, maybe his power was far more limited than he thought it was. With those doubts, a distant city vanished from his lands forever, wiped away like a smear of charcoal from a hearthstone.

Although it seemed to Evandar that a mere hour or two had gone by since he’d seen the Gel da’Thae bard and spoken with Jahdo, ten whole days of Time as we measure it in our world had passed for them. They’d been following the stream south, stopping often to rest the horse and mule, since by then they were long out of oats. Although they skirted hills, rising off to the north and east, the river itself seemed headed for lower country. As the river deepened, the banks turned flat and grassy, so that the walking became much easier, even though the forest grew thick and wild to either hand. As Jahdo described the terrain to the bard, Meer remarked that someone must be inhabiting this country, whether they’d seen them or not.

‘Trees hug water, lad. Following this river should be a battle, not an easy stroll. Someone cleared this bank, and not so long ago, either, or second growth would have taken it over.’

‘Well, maybe so. I hope they don’t mind us using the road.’

‘So do I.’

Thinking about what might happen to them if they ran into hostile natives made Jahdo nervous enough to sharpen his eyes. As the river began turning east, he found himself studying the bank as they walked. Here and there he found brown traces of crumbling horse-dung, and the rare hoof-print, too, cut so deeply that the rains hadn’t washed it away.

‘Do you think that’s dung from Thavrae’s horses?’

‘It sounds too old from the way you describe it,’ Meer said. ‘So it more likely came from horses belonging to the natives. Hum. If they drive stock through here, clearing the bank would make sense.’

‘I wonder if they be the same people from the old tales? The ones who helped the ancestors escape.’

‘Those were the Children of the Gods,’ Meer snapped. ‘The lore says so.’

‘But what would gods want with real horses?’

Meer had to chew over this piece of heresy for a long time before he answered.

‘Perhaps your helpers were indeed horseherders, as your lore says, but acting under the direction of the gods or their children, as our lore says. That would make sense, all nice and tidy, like.’

‘Very well, then. If they are the same people, then we don’t have to worry. The tales talk about how decent they were, feeding the ancestors and giving them knives and mules and stuff so they could farm up in the Rhiddaer.’

‘Hum. Goes to show, then, that they were guided by the gods for purposes of the divine wills.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, any ordinary folk would have enslaved the ancestors all over again.’

‘The tales do say that these people were against keeping slaves, on principle, like, just like we are. They thought it was dishonourable and just plain rotten.’

Meer snorted in profound scepticism.

‘Not likely that anyone would believe such a thing, is it?’ he said. ‘Well, not to insult your tribe or suchlike.’

‘Oh, never mind.’ Jahdo had always heard the grown men say that trying to change a Gel da’Thae’s mind about anything was like trying to stop a fire mountain from spewing. ‘Everyone be different.’

Round noon they came to an enormous meadow, ringed with rotting tree stumps, which gave credence to their theory that the mysterious horseherders had cleared some of this land. After they’d unloaded the stock and let them roll, and Meer had prayed, they unpacked a scant dinner and settled down to eat. Although they still had a good amount of cheese, hard tack and jerky left, they’d used up half of their supplies, and Jahdo was beginning to worry about what they’d eat on the way home. Meer, of course, was convinced that the gods would provide for them when the time came.

Jahdo had just finished his meal when he heard a strange sound, a rasping bird-call, up in the sky.

‘What’s that?’ Meer said. ‘Sounds like a hawk.’

Jahdo looked up.

‘It is, truly.’

Far above them, silhouetted against wispy clouds, the bird was circling the meadow. From the backward sweep of its wings and its colour, dark grey on its back, a very pale grey on its belly, Jahdo could tell that it was a falcon of some variety or other. Even though it soared high, he could see its slender grey legs and the mottling on its breast so clearly that, he realized suddenly, it had to be enormous. As he stared up, the bird suddenly flapped and flew, just as if it knew he watched. Yet he thought little of it at first. Toward evening the falcon, if indeed it were the same bird, reappeared to hover above them as they made their camp. Again, when Jahdo stood for a better look, it flew abruptly away.

On the next day Jahdo kept watch for it, and sure enough, in the middle of the morning it reappeared, flying in lazy circles and holding its place even when he stopped walking to scrutinize it. With a call to Meer to hold for a moment, he shaded his eyes and studied the bird, which seemed to be flying lower than it had the day before.

‘Meer, here’s an odd thing! Way above us there’s a falcon, circling round, like, but it’s the biggest falcon I’ve ever seen. It’s way too big for a peregrine, which is sort of what it does look like.’

‘How big, lad? This could be important.’

‘Well, huge, actually.’ He paused, trying to gauge distances and size. ‘You know, I’d swear it were as big as a pony, but that can’t be right. It’s all the clouds and stuff, I guess, making it hard to see. I mean, not even eagles do grow so big.’

Meer howled, a cry of sheer terror, and flung both hands in front of his sightless eyes. With a flap and a screech, the falcon flew away.

‘It be gone now,’ Jahdo said. ‘What be so wrong?’

‘Bad geas, lad, bad bad geas! Don’t you understand? There’s only one thing a bird that large could be!’

‘But there can’t be a bird that large. That’s what I did try to say.’

‘Hah! You don’t understand, then. I should have known you didn’t, when you didn’t sound afraid. A mazrak, lad, that’s what it must be. The most unclean magician of all, a shapechanger, a foul thing, using a coward’s magic.’

‘Huh? You mean someone who can turn themselves into a bird?’

‘Just that. If a mazrak’s spying upon us, then things are dark indeed.’

Jahdo quite simply didn’t know what to say. While they’d been travelling, Meer had been teaching him lore, just as he’d promised. The bard’s tales had introduced him to an entirely new world, one where the gods moved among men and demons fought them, where spirits roamed the earth and caused mischief, where magic was a necessary part of life, as well, to fend all these presences off or to bend the weaker ones to your will. Automatically Jahdo’s hand went to his throat to touch the thong-full of talismans that hung there. He would have laughed all the tales away if he hadn’t seen with his own eyes the being called Evandar disappear. As it was, he was prepared to believe almost anything.

‘Well, it were an awful huge hawk,’ he said.

‘Of course it was. Mazrakir can’t shrink themselves or such-like. They can only change the flesh they have into another form. It’s only logical that their totem animal, the one they change into, I mean, would be about the same size they are.’

‘There be other ones than birds?’

‘Some are bears, some wolves, some horses. All kinds of animals, depending on the nature of the mazrak.’ Meer turned his head and spat on the ground for luck. ‘But it’s bad geas to even talk about such things. Let’s move on, lad. And we’d best travel ready to duck into the forest, where spying hawks can’t follow or see.’

‘All right. And can we sleep in the woods, too?’

‘We’d best do just that, indeed.’

The very next morning Jahdo became a believer in the power of mazrakir to bring bad luck. Just at dawn he woke, sitting bolt upright and straining to hear again the sound that had wakened him. From far above it came again, the shriek of a raven, and a huge one, judging from how loud it squawked. In his blankets nearby, Meer rolled over and sat up.

‘Jahdo, what?’

Jahdo rose to a kneel, peering through the tree-leaves overhead. He could just see a black shape flapping off, a bird as large as a wolfhound at the least, thwacking the air with huge wings.

‘It be another one,’ he burst out. ‘Meer, another mazrak.’

Meer whimpered under his breath.

‘It be gone now,’ Jahdo went on. ‘I hope it doesn’t come back.’

‘Never have I echoed a hope so fervently!’ Meer considered for a moment, then pushed his blankets back with a huge yawn. ‘I’m tempted to try travelling through the forest edge, out of sight, like, but the footing will be too hard on the horses. Besides, if we lose the river, we’re doomed.’

‘Well, I was kind of thinking the same thing, about the river, I mean.’

‘We will pray to the thirteen gods who protect travellers before we set out today. But first, let’s lead the horses to their drink, and break our own night’s fast.’

After the horses were watered and tethered out on the grassy bank to graze, Jahdo knelt by the gear, took out a few small pieces of flatbread and some chewy dried apples, a scant handful each for him and Meer, and laid them on a clean rock while he repacked the saddlebags to balance. Behind him Meer was strolling back and forth, singing under his breath and rehearsing phrasing, as he always did with a particularly important prayer. All at once the bard fell silent. Jahdo slewed round to find him standing frozen, his mouth slack, his head tilted as if he listened for some tiny sound.

‘What is it?’ Jahdo got to his feet. ‘What be wrong?’

Meer tossed back his head and howled. Never had Jahdo heard such a sound, a vast vibrating ululation of grief, all the world’s mourning, or so it seemed, gathered and rolled into this long long wail, wavering and shrieking up and down the bard’s entire register.

‘Meer!’ Jahdo ran to him and grabbed his arm. ‘Meer! Tell me. What be so wrong?’

Another howl answered him, then another, long cascading waves of grief and agony, while Jahdo shook his arm and begged and shouted and in the end, wept aloud in sheer frustration. The sound of his tears cut through the bard’s rapt anguish.

‘Forgive me, lad,’ Meer gasped. ‘But my brother, my brother! I think he’s dead.’

‘What?’ Shock wiped the tears away. ‘Dead? When? I mean, how can you know?’

‘Just now, and the brother bond told me.’

Meer shook the boy’s hand away and stalked into the forest. Jahdo hesitated, then decided that Meer would need to be alone, at least for a while. He wiped his face on a dirty sleeve, then picked up the food again, packing Meer’s share away, eating his own while he squinted up at the sun. Not even half of the day’s first watch had passed since the mazrak’s cry had wakened them.

‘I’ll bet it was the mazrak, too,’ Jahdo said aloud. ‘I’ll bet that ugly old raven does have much to do with this.’

Thinking of the mazrak made him shudder in cold terror. He ran across the open space, hesitated on the edge of the forest safety, groaned aloud, then dashed back again to grab the tether ropes of the horse and mule.

‘I don’t even want to think about that raven getting you,’ he told them. ‘Come on. Let’s go find Meer.’

He’d led them to the forest edge when he remembered their gear, spread out near the riverbank. Without Meer to lift the pack saddles, he couldn’t load the stock. Snivelling and crying in sheer frustration, he led the horse and mule onward. Fortunately, Meer was quite close, standing at the edge of a small clearing. Jahdo urged the horses into this sliver of open ground and dropped their halter ropes to make them stand.

‘Meer?’ He hesitated, wanting to ask the bard how he fared, realizing that the question was stupid. ‘Meer, it be Jahdo.’

Meer nodded, turning his sightless eyes the boy’s way.

‘Meer, we can’t just stay here. Forgive me, but we’ve got to do something. If that mazrak –’

‘True.’ The bard’s voice sounded thick, all swollen with grief. ‘No need to beg forgiveness. You’re right enough.’

‘Are we going to go back west now?’

‘Can’t. I’ve got to make sure he’s dead. In my heart, I know, but how can I tell my mother that I learned of his death without bothering to find out how or why or where he lies buried?’

‘Well, truly, that would be kind of cowardly. She’ll want to know.’

Meer nodded his agreement. Jahdo chewed his lower lip, trying to find the right words. There were none, he supposed.

‘Meer, I be so sorry.’

Meer nodded again.

‘Uh, I’m going to go get the food and what I can carry.’

The bard said nothing, sinking to his knees, his face turned to the earth.

Jahdo went back and forth, carrying armloads of sacks and bags, dragging the heavy pack saddles, staggering under their bedrolls, back and forth until at last he was exhausted but their gear safe in the tiny clearing with the horses. During all of this the bard never moved nor spoke. Jahdo went back to the river one last time for a long drink. He splashed water over his head and arms, as well, then knelt for a moment, looking up at the sky. A few stripes of mare’s tail clouds arched out from the west, but nothing moved below them, not even a normal bird. Shuddering he hurried back to the forest.

This time the bard looked up at the sound of his footsteps.

‘Do you want to stay here for a while?’ Jahdo said.

‘I need to collect myself.’ Meer’s voice was thin and dry, the sound of reeds scraping together. ‘My apologies, Jahdo. My apologies.’

‘It be well. I do be real tired, myself. I just wish there was somewhat I could do.’

Meer shrugged and sighed.

‘I guess you wouldn’t know where your brother is? I mean, well, you know.’

‘I don’t, I’m afraid, no more than I knew where he was when he was alive.’ His voice choked on the last word. ‘But we don’t need scrying crystals to guess what’s happened. His false goddess has deserted him, and in the end no doubt she’ll do the same to all who believe in her! A curse upon her and her evil prophets both!’

‘I guess all we can do is keep going east and hope and pray and stuff. I be so scared.’

But wrapped in his grief the bard never heard him. Meer clenched one enormous fist and laid rather than pounded it against a tree trunk. Under his breath he keened, a low rumble rather than a wail, yet it rose and fell with agony. All at once Jahdo realized a small horror – without eyes Meer couldn’t even weep. At last the Gel da’Thae fell quiet. For a moment he stood silently, then turned and spoke in an unnaturally flat voice.

‘Best be on our way. Whatever that may be.’

All that day they headed more south than east, following the river and luck as well, to make a grim camp at sunset. Meer spoke only to the horse and mule, and in his own language at that, leaving Jahdo to bad dreams of seeing some member of his own family killed beyond his reach to stop it. For Meer’s sake he kept hoping that the bard was wrong and his brother still lived, but some days later they found that Meer’s inborn magic had revealed the truth.

It was getting on late in the afternoon when the river, which had turned due east, grew suddenly wider, suddenly shallow. They might be drawing near to the ford Evandar had told them about, Jahdo supposed. He was beginning to think of finding them a campsite, when the boy saw black specks wheeling against the sky at some distance and, as far as he could tell, anyway, on the other side of the river. Meer stopped walking.

‘What’s that?’ he snapped. ‘Do you see birds? I hear them calling a long way off.’

‘I can see them, sure enough. There be a lot of them. I don’t know what kind they are. They fly too far off, but they look really little, not like mazrakir.’

‘Good. Well, let’s see what they’re up to. Lead on.’

Some yards on they came indeed to the ford, and on their side tall white stones marked its spread, just as Evandar had told them. Although the water ran shallow enough for Meer and the horses, Jahdo had to pick his way across the rocky bottom in water up to his waist, but he didn’t dare ride one of the pack animals and leave Meer to guide them. Since the river fed off the mountain snowpack, he was chilled deep by the time they scrambled onto the grassy bank at the far side. Meer felt his damp tunic, then laid the back of one furry palm against the boy’s cheek.

‘We’d best keep walking. Warm you up a little.’

‘Well and good, then. Do you still want to see what those birds are?’

‘I do. I have dread round my heart, but I must know the truth.’

Meer’s fear turned out to be more than justified. As they travelled on, heading more south than east, the distant bird cries resolved themselves into the harsh cawing of ravens, wheeling and dipping over some unknown thing.

‘It might just be a dead deer,’ Jahdo said.

Meer only grunted for an answer and strode onward, swinging his stick back and forth before him like an angry scythe. After some hundred yards the horse and mule suddenly tossed up their heads and snorted. Their ears went back and they danced, pulling on their lead-ropes.

‘Oh by the blessed name of every god,’ Meer whispered. ‘Do you smell that?’

‘I can’t. What?’

‘Count your human weakness a blessing, then. It’s the smell of death, much death, death under a hot sun.’

Jahdo felt his stomach clench.

‘Let’s go back a-ways and leave the horse and mule behind. Jahdo, forgive me. If I could go on alone and spare you what’s sure to lie ahead, I would, because you’re not a Gel da’Thae colt, raised to this sort of thing, but without you, how can I tell if my brother lies there or not?’

‘Well, true spoken. I’ll try to help.’

They retraced their steps a-ways and found a good campsite near the river, then unloaded and tethered the animals. Meer had Jahdo find pieces of old rag, soak them in water, and tie them round their noses and mouths before they set out again. As they walked, Meer prayed, a low rise and fall of despair.

First the sound of the birds, and all too soon the stupefyingly foul smell of rotting flesh, led them down the grassy bank, then east of the river for some hundred feet. The land there rolled back rising from the river to a high wooded knoll that climbed like a grave-mound behind the carnage. For a long time Jahdo could only stare at what he saw; every time he tried to speak he gagged from the smell. The air bludgeoned him, even through his pitiful mask; it shoved a dirty fist down his throat; it wrenched at his stomach with filthy fingers. Yet he was too horrified to vomit, which was perhaps the worst thing of all. I have to go through with this, he told himself over and over. What if it were Kiel lying dead there? How would I feel then? I’ve got to be Meer’s eyes. At last he convinced himself into courage, and he could speak.

‘Meer, there’s a flat space, like, and it’s all covered with dead men. They’re not buried or anything. They do just lie there, and they be all puffy. And the birds do crawl all over them like ants. The birds keep fighting with each other, and that’s why they keep squalling and flying.’

‘Indeed.’ Meer’s voice was very thin but steady. ‘How many men?’

‘Oh, lots and lots. They’re all human beings. Off to the north there’s an overturned wagon. It be all broken, and there’s someone really tall lying by it.’

‘I hate to ask you this, lad, but can you bear to lead me there?’

‘I’ll try.’

Fortunately they could skirt the edge of the battlefield rather than walk across it, but even so, Jahdo was caught by the horror and found himself staring at the corpses. He would never forget that sight, not as long as he lived, of bodies heaped and tumbled like firewood, broken, slashed, tangled, left there for wild things in a last gesture of contempt. Whenever the singers back in Cerr Cawnen had told lurid tales of battlefields, they’d always spoken of red blood and deathly silence. Here all the bodies lay grey and swollen, streaked with the black of dried blood or the dull maroon colour of torn flesh where the birds were feeding. The field itself pulsed with life and noise as ants swarmed, ravens screamed and chattered, broke to fly only to circle and settle again, while under it all sounded the vast drone of thousands of flies.

‘I think they were killed with swords. There lie hoof-prints all round, too, and a couple of dead horses, but only a couple. Oh wait, here’s an arrow, just lying here.’

Although the shaft was broken, the point was mercifully clean. When Jahdo stooped down, he saw the tiny pawprints of foxes on the horribly moist ground – no doubt they crept up at night to share this banquet. He concentrated on the arrow, picked it up and ran his fingers down the wood.

‘I’ve never seen an arrow so long. When it were whole it must have been longer than my arm, and the feathers are from some kind of blue bird.’

‘None of my people would loft a thing like that.’ Meer was whispering. ‘Ah, evil evil evil come upon us!’

Jahdo wanted to agree, but he didn’t dare risk speaking for fear he’d sob aloud. Between them and the wagon lay a scatter of corpses, as if they were a few sticks of wood tossed in the eddy of this river of death. A young man lay on his back, his head tilted at an unnatural angle, his eyes pools of slime in a bloated grey face. The body of a comrade lay slung over his legs. Nearby lay an arm, torn clear off and as grey as stone, with the bone exposed and picked clean all down the wrist. Flies crawled between the fingers.

‘Meer, watch out!’ Jahdo’s voice came out all strangled. ‘Step round to your right.’

‘Very well.’ Meer was tapping with his stick, but gingerly, afraid no doubt of what he might touch. ‘Lad, what are these dead men wearing?’

‘Some of them aren’t really dressed at all. The others have shirts with big sleeves and these leather vest things, and trousers that come all the way to their ankles, and there’s these thong things that tie them in.’

Meer whimpered in a way that said he recognized this garb.

They came at last to the overturned wagon and the enormous warrior stretched out beside it. At their approach a scatter of ravens shrieked and flew, but someone had dropped a cracked shield over the man’s face and folded his arms over his chest, too, with a cloak upon his hands, so that the birds had barely got a start on him. When Jahdo described these scant signs of respect, Meer made a long keening sound under his breath.

‘What does that shield look like?’

‘Well, it be wooden, and sort of egg-shaped, and white-washed. In the middle there does lie this circle of metal with funny designs on it, and down at the bottom someone’s scratched this little picture that I guess is supposed to be a dragon.’

‘A little more detail, if you please, about that metal plate.’

‘Well, the design runs in circles, and one’s like when you braid a horse’s tail, three strands, and then there’s one that’s like a lot of knots, like someone did tie all these sheep-shank knots in a long rope but then never did pull them tight.’

Meer shrieked.

‘Slaver work, may the gods all help us! Can you bear to lift the shield, lad?’

Gagging profoundly, Jahdo used the broken arrow to hook the shield rim and shove it to one side. At the motion it broke in half, the pieces sliding apart. All puffed with heat-rot a huge distorted face looked up with eyes glazed and milky. His mane of coarse black hair lay tangled and clotted with dried blood, which also streaked one tattooed cheek.

‘Meer, I be sorry. He be Gel da’Thae.’

Meer tossed back his head and howled, a cry of such pulsating agony that all round the ravens flew, flapping indignantly in circles overhead as the bard shrieked again and again, clutching his staff in both hands and raising it high as if to lay his plaint before the very gods themselves. Thanks to Meer’s teaching of the lore, Jahdo knew that the charms and amulets braided into Thavrae’s hair were for his protection in the Deathworld and had to remain with him. The cluster of talismans on the thong round his neck, however, needed to go back to his kin. On the edge of vomiting Jahdo drew the knife his grandfather had given him, knelt down, and cut the thong while Meer’s rage and grief swirled round him like a storm. When Jahdo yanked the talismans free, the head flopped to one side. Retching and gagging, he stood up fast, shoving the charms into his pocket.

‘Meer, Meer!’ He grabbed the bard’s arm. ‘It’s needful for us to get out of here. We don’t know where the enemies are. What if they’re still close by?’

Meer wailed once more, then let the sound die away with a rattle in his throat.

‘True spoken, lad. It behooves us to head west as fast as we can travel.’

Leaning on his stick, Meer let Jahdo lead him away, but doubled with grief the bard moved slowly. Once they were back at their camp, Jahdo sat Meer down by the pack saddles, handed him one of the waterskins for a drink, then tore off the mask and threw it onto the ground. He rushed to the river, knelt, and plunged his head and shoulders into the water. Gasping and crying, he flailed round with his arms until his entire upper body was soaked and free of the smell. He sat back on his heels and wondered if he should vomit, but by then the gut horror had faded, leaving him with memories that nothing would ever purge.

Meer began keening again, more softly, this time, but he was rocking back and forth, hands clasped round his drawn-up knees, rocking and moaning in a ghastly kind of music that had a certain beauty to it. Jahdo walked back and laid a hand on his shoulder.

‘Meer, can you travel? We’ve got to get moving, Meer. I be so scared.’

The Gel da’Thae never heard him, merely keened and rocked, all knotted with grief. Jahdo grabbed his shoulders and shook him.

‘Meer, Meer! Listen to me, Meer!’

‘Go on without me, lad. Let my house die here. Thavrae was the last hope of our house, a warrior who might win the right to claim a daughter as his own and hand over our name to her like a treasure chest. No daughters has my mother birthed, and woe woe unto our clan and kin, that the gods would wipe our name from the face of the earth. Leave me, Jahdo, and let me die with the name of our house.’

‘I’m not going to do anything of the sort. If you stay I’ll stay with you, and then I’ll die, too, and here you did promise my mother that you’d look after me.’

Meer whimpered and trembled.

‘Well, you did,’ Jahdo snapped. ‘You promised.’

Meer fell silent for a long while, then all at once laughed, a hysterical sort of rumble.

‘Jahdo, lad, one day you’ll no doubt be a great man among your people, the Chief Speaker, I’d say, wielding power with words as your people do. Very well. Bring Baki over. I’ll saddle him up first. All day we shall travel, and in the night I’ll mourn.’

Yet they made only a few pitiful miles that afternoon. Meer was exhausted with his mourning, Jahdo with the horror he’d seen and smelt, and in the hot sun it seemed they could barely put one foot in front of the other. At times Meer would burst into a mourning song, half music, half keening, only to break off in mid-phrase and fall silent again. As if they picked up his mood, the horse and mule walked head down and weary, ambling to a stop unless Jahdo yanked their lead-ropes to keep them moving.

‘It be useless,’ Jahdo said at last. ‘Just ahead does lie that little stream where we camped last night, and there’s grass for the horses here, and so why don’t we just stop?’

And there the Slavers caught them. It was still afternoon, and Jahdo was scrounging dead wood for an evening’s fire, when Gidro and Baki became restless, throwing up their heads, sniffing and snorting into the rising wind, finally whickering out a greeting. Distantly a horse answered, then another. Jahdo leapt to his feet and grabbed his grandfather’s knife, but Meer sat unmoving, hunkered down by their gear, his head on his knees. Hoofbeats sounded, riding fast, riding hard, and straight for them out of the east. Jahdo could see a plume of dust skittering along like a live thing.

‘Meer, Meer! We’ve got to run.’

Slowly the bard raised his head and turned toward the sound.

‘You run, Jahdo. Head west and hope you find those horsemen who aided your people once before. I might as well die a slave, so long as I die soon. A man is nothing without a clan, and my future holds no kin to serve the gods in my old age.’

‘Stop that! It’s needful you come, too.’

The hoofbeats came louder, tack jingled and rang, men yelled, a wordless high shriek of triumph. The dust resolved itself to a mounted squad. Meer rose to his feet, grabbing his staff, but he only leaned upon it as he waited, turned toward the noise.

‘Run, Jahdo! Grab that bag of food and run to the forest.’

Jahdo hesitated, and in that moment it was too late. With a whoop and a yell, like men driving cattle, the horsemen swept round the camp and surrounded them, about twelve of them, mailed and armed, and wearing loose long trousers tucked into high boots. When they edged their horses into the firelight, Jahdo stared in fascinated terror at their gear, but he could discern not one severed head – all the comfort he was going to get. He sobbed once, then drew himself up to full height with the knife clutched in his fist, as two of the men dismounted, tossing their reins to others in the squad. Both of them were over six feet tall, hard muscled under their mail, but one was blond and young, with a heavy moustache drooping over his mouth, and the other had dark hair, streaked with grey, and his road-filthy stubble of beard sported grey saltings as well. Each of them carried at their belts a peculiar dagger, narrow and sheathed, with three silver knobs on the pommel, and a heavy long sword.

‘A blind man and a lad?’ the blond said. ‘This is our ever so important prize?’

Jahdo goggled. He could understand their speech, a thing he’d never expected. Although they rolled every R and RH they spoke, and pronounced half their words deep in their throats, too, or so it sounded, by paying strict attention he could at least make out the main sense.

‘Any Gel da’Thae’s a rare enough thing.’ The dark-haired man was smiling. ‘I’d trust that Jill knows what she’s doing.’

Jill? That was a Rhiddaer name! Automatically he turned toward Meer, hoping for answers to these puzzlements, but the bard stepped forward at that instant and knelt at the dark-haired man’s feet.

‘If I’m the prize,’ he rumbled, ‘then let the lad go. Let him take what food we’ve got left and try to make his way home.’

The dark-haired fellow hesitated, visibly touched, but the blond strode forward, gesturing at the squad.

‘All right, saddle up those pack animals! Let’s get on our way back to the main camp.’ He turned to the dark-haired fellow. ‘Rhodry, the child can ride behind someone’s saddle, and we can load this hairy dog onto a pack horse, I suppose.’

‘Maybe so.’ Rhodry strode over to Jahdo. ‘Hand me that knife, lad.’

In sheer instinct Jahdo stabbed at him, but Rhodry caught his wrist in a huge grasp and half-lifted him from his feet. The knife dropped.

‘Here, now, you’ve got guts.’ Rhodry was smiling at him. ‘But this is no occasion for heroics, like. Are you going to behave yourself, or are we going to have to tie you up?’

Jahdo tried to think of a really good insult, but at that moment the blond man grabbed Meer’s arm.

‘On your feet,’ he snapped.

‘You leave him alone!’ Jahdo snarled. ‘You treat him with respect, too. He be a bard.’

Although the blond man started to laugh, Rhodry hit him on the shoulder and made him stop. He walked over to Meer and knelt down in front of him on one knee.

‘Does the lad speak true?’ he said, and politely.

‘He does. A bard I am, and a loremaster as well, to the twelfth level of the thirteen levels of the deepening well of knowledge, not that I’ll ever see my homeland and my master again, most like, to complete my studies.’

‘And the lad’s your slave?’

‘He is not that, but free born, travelling with me at my request.’

‘Well and good, then.’ Rhodry got up, turning to the blond man. ‘Yraen, put your saddle on that white horse, because the bard and his lad will be riding in comfort. You’ll have to make do with bareback, unless you want to clamber into that pack saddle yourself and shell your own nuts.’

‘What?’ The man called Yraen was practically spitting. ‘Have you gone daft?’

‘A bard’s a bard, lad, and due all respect.’

Laughing and calling out jeers, the other men in the squad gathered round to see what Yraen would say to that – nothing, as it turned out, because Rhodry caught his gaze and stared him down.

‘Have it your way, then.’ Yraen heaved a melodramatic sigh. ‘You stinking bastard.’

Although Jahdo expected swords to flash, everyone merely laughed. Rhodry’s laugh taught Jahdo the meaning of that old saw, that a sound could make your blood run cold. It was daft and furious, merry and murderous all at the same time, a high-pitched chortle that reminded him of ferrets in a rage. The rest of the men, however, seemed to take it for granted, as if they heard him laugh that way often. With a shake of his head, Yraen strode off to get the squad ready to ride. As Jahdo watched them, he wondered why the view had turned so hazy, wondered why he felt so trembly, all of a sudden. Then he realized that he was crying, the tears running down his face of their own accord. Still kneeling, Meer held out one enormous arm. Jahdo rushed to him and flung himself against the Horsekin’s chest to sob aloud while Meer moaned and whimpered under his breath.

‘Forgive me, Jahdo lad, forgive me, and may your mother forgive me, too!’

In a river twist the etheric water puddled like a mirror, slick silver, edged with green. Evandar knelt on the bank nearby and stared down at the surface, but his eyes moved, following a vision rather than contemplating himself. All at once he laughed and sat back on his heels.

‘They have them,’ he announced. ‘The bard and the boy, I mean. Rhodry and his squad have seized them upon the road. They’re all heading off to Cengarn.’

‘I feel sorry for that poor child,’ Dallandra said. ‘He must be terrified.’

Evandar merely shrugged.

‘Don’t you feel anything for these people?’ Dallandra burst out. ‘You’re moving them round like pegs in a game of Wooden Wisdom, knocking them off the board and ruining their lives. Don’t you care?’

‘I love you, and I love my daughter, and I love the memory of Rinbaladelan, the sea-coast city I was telling you about. Beyond that, my darling, no, I don’t care. Not one whit.’