Sorcery Rising (36 page)

A storm of agony and outrage – furious, howling – rose up in Selen Issian. She wrested her head away from him in disgust. ‘Goddess help me!’ she cried. She flailed at her invader, but Tanto, glassy-eyed, ploughed on, heedless of the fists pummelling his back, his climax building.

At last one hand fell away from him, to scrape upon the floor. Something chill met her warm skin. Her fingers closed upon it. The hilt of the dagger fit her palm like an answered prayer.

Erno had insisted, with some odd and misplaced chivalry, Katla thought – or some sort of guilt – on carrying the bundle she had packed before the Gathering as well as his own bag.

‘I do not have much to my name,’ he said with a rueful grin as Katla looked sceptically at the largely empty leather sack with which he emerged from the booth.

Even as he said this she realised his gaze had inadvertently gone to her fabulously-coloured headcloth, and then slid away again. She coloured. Most of what Erno had owned had gone into the purchase that now shielded her patchily-dyed hair from public view. ‘Here,’ she said quickly, starting to unwind the fabric; but: ‘No,’ he insisted. ‘I bought it only with you in mind. There is no one else in my life to give it to, and I doubt it would suit me well.’

So she wore it still, though it was oddly in contrast with the knocked-about leather jerkin she had retrieved from the tent, and slipped on over the linen tunic. The red brocade dress they had bundled up as best they could and stuffed into the top of Erno’s bag. ‘We can sell it down the coast,’ Katla said mulishly when Erno had suggested they might more honourably leave it folded neatly for Finn Larson as a apology, as well as a rebuttal of his offer. ‘Besides, if they find the dress, they’ll know for sure I’ve fled – and where would any good Eyran head for if not the sea? At least if they’re looking for a girl in a long red dress, they’re not necessarily searching for a fugitive. It may slow them down just long enough for us to round the first headland.’

Now they ran swiftly and quietly through the Eyran quarter, heading east towards the Istrian sector and the strand on which the boats were pulled up. There was, it seemed, no one about, as if every living soul was ensconced in the great pavilion. Even in the usually more populous southern quarter, they came upon no other folk. They passed a group of southern-style tents clustered about the foot of Sur’s Castle, and here, Katla stopped. She cocked her head, staring up at its great dark mass, silhouetted against the starry sky. She wet her lips.

‘If we had the time, I’d climb the Rock again, now,’ she said with a grin.

Erno gave her a peculiar glance. ‘So it was you?’

Katla laughed. ‘Of course.’

‘When he cut off all your hair, I thought your father cruel and unfair.’

Katla shrugged. ‘When he took Halli and Fent’s money and gave it to Finn Larson I thought so, too. To lose your dreams, as my brothers did, is surely worse than to lose your hair.’

‘But he traded you to the shipmaker.’

‘Aye. But not for long, eh?’ Katla was gleeful. She looked around, then up at the Rock again. Her eyes gleamed in the moonlight. For a moment she looked as fey as a changeling; then, before Erno could say anything more, she undid her sword belt and sprinted to the foot of it, located the crack system she had ascended before, and started to climb. The white charge of energy she got from the rock was stronger this time, if anything. Perhaps it was the peril of the situation that enhanced it.

Erno flung down the bags in exasperation. ‘What in seven hells do you think you’re doing? Have you gone mad? One minute you’re concerned about buying time for your escape, and now you’re climbing the thing that got you into trouble in the first place!’ He paused, as if expecting a response. When he got none, he called up, as loud as he dared, ‘If the Istrians don’t kill you for it, I bloody well will.’

A low chuckle floated down to him, followed by: ‘It’s such a nice crack-line, Erno: how can I resist?’

All he could do was to stand there, helpless, his hands balled into fists, his eyes flicking constantly back and forth from the quiet fairground behind them to the nimble figure ascending the Castle. He watched her moving with quiet intensity, saw how she placed each foot with careful precision before putting her weight on it, how she tested the rock above her head with her reaching hand before pulling up on it. Where the crack became choked and bulged outward near the top he watched with his heart in his mouth as she swung herself up with both feet in the air for a second or two before making the move that took her over the obstruction. Moments stretched into what seemed hours. He heard a dog howl, its eerie sound oscillating through the still air. A horse whinnied somewhere to the west, then fell silent again. No folk appeared. A single gull, defying its natural sleep patterns, ghosted overhead to wheel above the Rock, saw Katla up there and banked sharply away.

At last she reached the summit. He saw her running about on top of its flat surface, waving her arms in the air in some private paroxysm of celebration and his heart swelled with a perverse pride. The wildness was back with a vengeance, he thought, and he loved her all the more for it.

Then, abruptly, she dropped her arms and ran to the western edge of the Rock. She peered down towards the landward side, then vanished from his view. The next moment she was back, gesturing furiously. Erno’s heart skipped a beat. Had she been seen? Had pursuers come after them already? He cursed the wasted minutes of the climb, the sheer, mindless stupidity of it: for there was Katla, marooned upon Sur’s Castle like a treed cat, with nowhere to hide or run to. Katla, for her part, looked not panicked, but galvanised. He saw her begin her descent, hand over hand, down some rope contraption set up for the less nimble on the far side of the Rock, and in a remarkably short space of time she was safely on the ground and running towards him.

‘Erno, Erno, quickly!’ She bent down and grabbed up her swordbelt and pack and started running uphill past the western side of the Castle.

He had no choice but to follow her, even though they were now heading in the opposite direction to the faerings and their planned escape. Even with the pack, running uphill on shifting ash, she was fleeter than him. Head down and puffing, he did not see what Katla had espied from the top of the Rock until they were upon it.

Katla threw herself down beside a kneeling, naked figure, a figure covered in blood, with a dagger in its hand. Long tangles of black hair spilled across narrow shoulders but did little to disguise the swell of breasts. A woman . . .

‘Are you all right?’ Katla asked her in Eyran, and when this received no response other than a bewildered frown, she repeated the question in the Old Tongue. The woman nodded slowly. Runnels of tears had left pale channels through the gore on her face. Sobbing, she tried ineffectually to cover herself with her hands.

Katla looked back at Erno. ‘Stop gawping at her and give me the dress!’ When he hesitated, for a moment unsure of what she meant, she snatched his bag from him and hauled the brocade robe out of it. She took the dagger from the girl’s hand and cast it down. With a sleeve she wiped the worst of the blood away from the girl’s face and hands. ‘I knew it would come in useful,’ she grinned at the woman. ‘Red on red – it won’t even show.’

She put a hand beneath the woman’s elbow and eased her to her feet. There were smears of blood on her legs and in her pubic hair. Erno looked away, acutely embarrassed but at once Katla rounded on him. ‘For Sur’s sake, Erno, help me. Don’t tell me you’ve never seen a woman naked before.’

He hadn’t. But he wasn’t going to tell her that. Reprimanding himself for seeing the girl as a female before he saw her as someone in need of his help, he took an arm of the dress from Katla, gathered the thing up from the hem and helped her pull it over the woman’s head. Together, they adjusted the neck, laced the back. She was a different shape to Katla, he could not help but note, a different sort of woman altogether. There was no muscle on her, though her skin was smooth and her limbs neatly formed, and she was narrower in the waist and shoulders, though wider in the hip, so that the dress hung loose upon her upper body even with the laces tight.

‘Thank you,’ the woman said at last in the Old Tongue. ‘By Falla, I thank you.’

Katla and Erno exchanged glances. An Istrian woman, then, as they might have judged by her colouring, if nothing else: for whoever had seen one of the southern women run naked and bloody across the Moonfell Plain?

‘What happened to you?’ Erno asked slowly in the Old Tongue.

The woman looked distressed. She started to cry. Erno felt more helpless now than he ever had in his life. He put a hand out to her, but she flinched away. To cover his confusion he bent to retrieve the dagger from the ground. Though it was mired by blood, there was something familiar about it . . .

‘Isn’t this one of yours?’ he asked Katla softly in Eyran.

She stared at him, then at the blade. A moment later she took it from him, hefted it in her hand, then, heedless of the mess, wiped it across the thigh of her breeches. She held it up to the moonlight, and gasped. It was one of hers. Not only that, but it was the dagger she had given to the young Istrian man but two days ago at her stand. She looked at the woman again, her mind working. Surely the mild-mannered Saro had no part in this? She felt a chill run through her. ‘Who are you?’ Katla said urgently, reverting to the Old Tongue. ‘Tell us how you have come to this.’

The woman rubbed her tears away roughly, then pushed back her hair. Her chin came up. This is hard for her, Katla thought, recognising the pride there. She tucked the dagger into her belt and took the woman’s hand encouragingly.

‘My name is Selen Issian,’ the woman said. ‘A man murdered my slave, then forced himself upon me. I think—’ She fought down another rising sob, then gathered herself again. ‘I think I killed him.’

Compelled by a nameless dread, Katla tightened her grip on the hand. ‘Tell me who he was—’

Selen Issian frowned. ‘The Vingo son,’ she said. ‘We were to be betrothed tonight, though I did not want it. He would not wait.’

Katla felt dizzy. Saro Vingo – a rapist, and dead? Nausea rose up inside her, followed by an equally disorientating wave of pity, but whether it was for the woman – due to be betrothed, like herself, this very night to a man for whom she had no love – or for herself, she could not tell.

‘I have to get away,’ Selen Issian went on. ‘My father . . .’ She turned to Katla, her black eyes huge. ‘Help me. If they find me they will surely burn me for his death.’

Another woman escaping her family and the fires. This was all too strange. Katla took a deep breath. She looked at Erno. He gave a single nod: how could they possibly turn her away?

‘As luck would have it, we are also leaving this place: you are welcome to come with us.’

Selen Issian smiled wanly. ‘I have nothing to offer you but my thanks.’

‘No time even for that,’ Katla grinned. ‘Come on.’

They were just nearing the western edge of Sur’s Castle and had begun their downhill descent towards the shining sea, when there was a shout. Katla stared around. Behind them, in the Istrian quarter, torches danced in the darkness. The shouting grew louder.

‘Run!’ cried Erno. He grabbed Selen Issian by the arm and dragged her along with him. Katla heaved her pack up onto her back and ran behind them, turning every third step to assess the pursuit.

They dodged between a group of tents, fled through some sort of pebbled enclosure scattered with flowers and stinking of death. More tents, and a small group of drunken folk weaving their way back from the nomad quarter, who stared at them as if they were some sort of impromptu entertainment, and then they were out on the strand. Here, the ashy ground was rough and sharp. It cut into Selen’s bare feet so that soon there was fresh blood spattered up her legs. She bit back her whimpers of pain, but it was impossible to keep up with the long-legged northman and it was not long before she stumbled on the long hem of the dress and fell headfirst. Erno ran back, took one look at her ruined feet and stopped dead.

Katla turned and looked for their pursuers. A line of firelight marked their position. They had come the long way round the Istrian pavilions, but now they were heading fast in their direction. She turned back to Erno, made a swift assessment. ‘Pick her up and get down below the crest of the rise,’ she said. ‘Head for the faerings. I’ll draw them off this way.’

‘Why should they follow you? If they’re looking for Selen, they’ll hardly be seeking someone in Eyran clothing—’

Katla lost her patience. ‘Look, just take her and run: it’s her only chance. I can’t carry her as fast as you can, and if we split, they may at least become confused. I’ll meet you at the boats. Just launch one out and get away: I can always swim after you.’

He stared at her, wordless; but there was no time for further discussion: the first of the torches came at a run around the last of the tents. Instead, he grabbed Katla’s chin and kissed her once, hard, on the mouth. Then he hauled Selen Issian over his shoulder and dropped down over the rise and out of immediate sight.

Katla waited until the pursuing group gained a clear view of her, then took to her heels, running uphill away from the sea. She heard shouts behind her, as shrill and avid as a pack of huntsmen sighting quarry and knew her ruse had worked. Up amongst the Istrian tents she ran again, doubling back on herself. The pack soon became a burden now that she was running flat-out. She thought quickly, then cached it behind a pavilion with a long line of flags on a pole out in front of it, so that she could locate it easily again, and ran on. The shouting got close enough that soon she could make out individual voices, but not the words. It took her a moment or more to realise this was because they called to one another in Istrian, and she grinned. Perfect. Even if they caught up with her, they’d have to let her go.

A few minutes later she had managed to lose them again amid the welter of tents and pavilions, and shortly after that found herself back in the pebbled enclosure. Here she stopped, the air sawing painfully in her lungs. Not so fit after all, she chided herself ruefully. Still, this should have given Erno sufficient time to reach the boats. She bent over, feeling the blood run into her turbaned head, and tried to catch her breath. A strong smell of incense rose up to meet her. It came from a garland of crushed orange flowers that lay on the ground beneath her feet. Curious, even in the midst of the drama, Katla picked one up and examined it. Flecks of its dark pollen tumbled out onto her hands. It was like no flower she had ever seen: some exotic southern species that would never survive in the windy north. She discarded it with a certain disgust, wiping her hands off on her tunic. She looked up at Sur’s Castle rising before her. If she were to run back up around the Rock and come down to the sea from its landward side, that should throw them off the scent. But then she remembered her pack. Damn. She ran quickly through its contents in her head and knew with a sinking heart she couldn’t afford simply to abandon it. Slipping out of the garden the way they had originally entered it, she cut between pavilions and looked around. Unrelieved darkness. No sign of the pursuit; nor of the flags. She ran a way downhill again, dodging between the tents. When she came to the last of the pavilions she stopped and peered carefully around its seaward side. Nothing but the volcanic strand and the moonlit sea rolling into the shore on line after line of silver surf. She felt her breathing steady itself. Looking back west, she saw the topmost of the pennants she had noted previously hanging from its flagpole maybe thirty lengths to her left and a little further up the slope. Excellent. She slipped into the open space between two pavilions without a second thought.