Sorcery Rising (42 page)

Mam switched the Forent blade to her left hand, drew her own sword with her right and regarded the Istrian lords gleefully.

‘Right,’ she said. ‘Which one of you’s first?’

Out in the chill night, Fent Aranson ran swiftly and silently between the booths. By following the mercenaries to the southern lord’s pavilion he overheard a conversation not meant for any Eyran’s ears. His mind was in turmoil. Finn Larson a traitor to his country: it made his blood boil. It was not just that the shipmaker had been selling his finest vessels to the Istrian Empire: in doing so, he was selling every advantage the north had ever had over the old enemy – their mastery of the oceans, and the means with which to explore them.
The Ravenway
, he thought furiously,
that was their goal, the greedy bastards
. The Ravenway, that wonderful, mysterious ocean-passage to the fabled Far West: the Ravenway, that haunted the dreams of every red-blooded, sea-going Eyran. How could Finn Larson betray us all so? He had Katla’s finest blade in his hand. He had used the pommel; now he meant to use the blade.

By the time Ravn exited the Lord of Forent’s pavilion, he found Doc clutching his head and wandering about as if in a daze. Joz Bearhand lay on the ground with blood seeping from a wound on his temple. But the Rosa Eldi had vanished.

The fire had run amok and was threatening to consume everything in its path.

‘We must leave this place!’ the pale man said. He clutched at Lord Tycho’s sleeve urgently. The Gathering had gone from celebration to what seemed instant riot in a way he simply could not comprehend. Such violence, such chaos. His head reeled. He remembered the outbreak that had engulfed the nomad stalls, resulting in old Hiron’s death, but that had been a mere brawl in comparison to this savage tumult. And the smoke! His eyes were watering so hard he could barely make out the Istrian lord’s expression as he made his plea. ‘If we get out of here,’ he advised desperately, ‘I can fetch her back for you.’

At that, Tycho Issian gripped the map-seller by the arm and tugged him through the crowd. ‘You will,’ he said grimly. ‘By the Goddess you will or I will spit you myself.’ There was too much activity up on the dais in front of them: pulling Virelai along with him, Tycho made for a different exit. ‘This way!’ He looked back to make sure the map-seller had heard him, and saw that a great crest of flame had run up the central mast-pillar and was even now dancing amid the ropes that held the whole thing together. ‘Hurry!’

Tycho shoved aside a weeping girl crying out for her father, trod firmly upon a man who had dropped in front of him, coughing weakly, and headed inexorably onward. The map-seller stopped to wait for the fallen to regain their feet, then was dragged off his own by Tycho’s insistent hauling. Stumbling over the bodies, his mouth open in a silent wail, he found he had no choice but to follow. As they neared the exit, the pile of bodies and those struggling to surmount them grew higher. Ruthless to the bone, the Lord of Cantara removed the ceremonial knife from his belt and plunged it into the kidneys of a woman in front of him who was scrabbling ineffectually at the obstacle. ‘Get . . . out . . . of . . . the . . . way!’ Each pause punctuated by a stab. Though the knife might have been designed purely for ornamental purposes, the blade small and less than razor-sharp, in Tycho Issian’s desperate hands it was as deadly as any combat dagger. The woman, without even a moan, slithered away underfoot. A man caught the blade in his throat as he turned to protest. The hot gush of blood spattered Virelai’s face. He tried to scream, but found his lungs so full of smoke he could not.

‘Climb, damn you!’ the southern lord was shrieking at him. ‘Get up there!’ He trod on the dead woman and hauled the map-seller up by an arm, then set his shoulder under the pale man and launched him up the pile.

Virelai found himself falling; first up, then, at some speed, down. Cool air rushed past his skin, then there was the impact of hard ground under his back, and suddenly he was outside in the night, and the sounds and smells of horror from the place he had been seemed to have receded so far as to belong to another world. When he realised he was still alive and relatively undamaged, he opened his eyes and looked up to find the distant stars twinkling down upon him. The voices, loud at first on his contact with the ground, receded at last, as if appeased by his slowing heartbeat. He lay there for some time with his mouth opening and closing like a beached fish, and then there came a sharp pain under his ribs.

‘Get up, damn you!’

The southern lord drew his foot back, and Virelai watched it coming towards him as if time had slowed, not understanding the purpose of it till it struck him again, at which point he yelped and scrambled to his feet. By the time he had come upright, Tycho Issian was flourishing the little knife at him. Blood glinted on its tip.

‘I have saved your life, you miserable turd, and I’m not even sure why I’ve done so, considering that you have tried to dupe me into buying something it was clearly not within your power to sell; and I am less than convinced by your vaunted ability to get the woman back.’ He took a step towards the map-seller, the blade trembling with his rage.

‘My lord—’

Virelai knew real fear now. He began to regret ever leaving Sanctuary: for all his faults, the Master had never treated him as ill as this. He willed himself to coherence. ‘I can do magic!’ he reminded his captor. ‘I was apprenticed to a great mage, from whom I learned many mysteries.’ This was overstating the matter, admittedly, but as long as he had the cat, it would be almost true . . . ‘I can trace the Rosa Eldi and by spell draw her back to me.’

Tycho scoffed. ‘Like you did just now?’

‘My lord, it was all so confusing: I could not focus. Just bring me to my wagon, somewhere quiet—’

‘And what about my daughter?’

Virelai frowned. The daughter. What was the daughter to do with him?

‘Can you bring her back, too?’

She had been taken by others, he recalled as through a mist . . . ‘I . . . can try, my lord.’

‘If you can return them both to me,
sir magician
,’ the Istrian said with venomous sarcasm, ‘then I will spare your life.’

Virelai gulped air. He tried to concentrate on the problem. The scrying bowl; some water; he might at least espy the girl’s whereabouts. As for the Rosa Eldi—

‘You must permit me to fetch . . . certain items from my wagon,’ he said. ‘Then I will do what I can.’

Armed bands roamed the fairground like packs of hunting dogs. Tycho Issian and Virelai passed a pitched battle between a group of Eyrans and some southern youths, but in the darkness it was hard to tell which side was winning.

Further on into the northern quarter, all was havoc. People were running and shouting: there was smoke and fire everywhere.

‘She’s not in here!’ came an Istrian voice. ‘Nor here,’ came another. ‘Burn the ones you’ve checked!’

A tall dark boy in orange came skidding around a corner, torch in hand and was soon joined by another. Tycho thought he recognised them. Then some Eyran women came running out, armed with cooking implements. One of them belted the second lad with an iron cauldron on a chain that she whirled over her head like a mace; the next wielded a huge ladle. One of the Istrians went down with a split head; the other threw down his torch and took to his heels. Further along, they were forced to dive aside as a string of horses thundered past, whinnying in terror. No one seemed to be driving them. Past the end of the Eyran quarter they came into that part of the fairground designated for the nomads’ use. Here it was quieter far, and darker, too. Virelai stared around. More than half the wagons were gone, and in the distance he could just make out the tail end of a line of vehicles and animals snaking away into the foothills of the Skarn Mountains. Wares had been cast aside in the rush to leave: pottery lay abandoned, fabrics trampled under yeka hooves; a puppet-theatre and its painted backdrop depicting the famed caves of gold lay forlorn and smashed beside an overturned cart. Virelai regarded it, head on one side, and a strange little smile touched his lips.

‘Don’t delay, you fool,’ Tycho growled, shoving the map-seller in the back.

The wagon he had shared for these past months with the Rosa Eldi and the Master’s familiar stood isolated, where before it had been hemmed in, and his yekas were gone. Something died quietly inside him. It was not that he had formulated any specific plan for escaping the southern lord; but without his animals even that option was closed to him now. But at least no one appeared to have tampered with the wagon, for the door was still latched as he had left it. ‘I would ask you to remain here, sir,’ he said to Tycho. ‘While I pack my requisites.’

The Lord of Cantara nodded impatiently. Virelai opened the door a crack and slipped inside, shutting it quickly behind him. Inside, it was dark, and he felt the cat’s eyes upon him seconds before he saw the beast. A movement on the divan betrayed its position. He watched as its outline stirred, then saw the wary green light of its gaze. ‘Now, Bëte,’ he said softly, but with despair already rising, ‘nice Bëte, come with Virelai, who will do you no harm.’ He picked up the woven-reed box he had made for the creature all those months ago when they had at last struck land, and placed it gingerly on the couch. Then he opened the flap. ‘Bëte, my little dove, my pigeon, my sweetling . . .’

The cat purred, and he realised with some surprise that he had used the Master’s voice.

Bëte rose from her resting place, stretched first her back legs, then her front legs, and then with the perversity that is the essence of the feline, strolled over to the box and sat down in it. She looked up at Virelai expectantly, then started to wash her face.

Virelai stared at her as if he could not believe his good fortune, then remembering what he was about he reached out quickly and snapped the catch shut. Moving methodically about the wagon, he gathered his most necessary belongings – his herbs, including the container of brome – though he had no confidence he would ever see the Rose of the World again; the little grimoires he had made for himself, the few spells he had rescued from the Master’s efforts to destroy them; a sharp knife he suspected he might need. The gold and the maps he ignored for the worthless rubbish they were; but he managed to retrieve his scrying bowl and a few items of clothing . . . He paused. Draped over the back of the wagon’s single chair lay a slip of silk. He picked it up, held it to his face. He ran it across his skin with his eyes closed and inhaled deeply. He could smell her.
He could smell her
. . .

There came a rap at the door. ‘Hurry up map-seller—’ With the cat-box in one hand and his bundled possessions under his arm he shouldered his way through the narrow door and emerged into the night.

‘My lord,’ he said to Tycho, self-belief returning by the minute. ‘I am ready.’

Feet dragging, Saro climbed the slope towards the Rock and was just about to turn west towards the Vingo residence when something moving fast across the strand snagged in his peripheral vision. He turned and stared back towards the Gathering. Moving away from all the smoke and flame of whatever celebratory bonfire had got out of hand there was a huge, many-legged beast. He could hear shouts – but whether of anger or high spirits he could not tell at such a distance. He watched the thing move quickly eastward until he could make out individual figures within the mass, a group of giants, it seemed, surrounding a smaller figure, and trailed by a great tail of ordinary mortals. He squinted. As they came closer, the giants resolved themselves into Allfair officials in their strange horsehair-crested helms, and in their midst a thin, dark lad bound with ropes.

Saro turned away. Clearly the wine had been flowing freely and someone had misbehaved.
Shame it isn’t Tanto
, he thought savagely, and carried on up the hill.

At the family pavilion, he was surprised to find the lights on and slaves running about as if in a panic. Saro straightened his back, firmed his jaw and strode into the tent. Inside, his Uncle Fabel was sitting on the floor cushions with his head in his hands. He looked up, and his face cleared.

‘Saro – thank heaven—’

‘I had not thought I would be welcome,’ Saro began, but his uncle jumped to his feet and ran to the adjacent chamber.

‘Favio! Favio – Saro has returned hale and safe.’

There was a brief exchange of voices and Favio Vingo ducked out into the main room. His face was haggard, his eyes dull. He walked quickly across the floor and gathered his younger son into his arms. There were wet streaks on his face. Saro pushed back from him in alarm. ‘What’s happened?’

‘It’s your brother . . .’ Favio could barely speak, emotion gripped him so hard. ‘They think he will die—’

‘Die?
Tanto?
’ Saro was bewildered. The last time he had seen his brother the only death present had been the promise of his own. ‘Die of what?’ But his father was sobbing openly now.

A moment later a portly man in a dark-red robe emerged from the chamber whence his father had just come, rubbing his hands nervously. ‘I have done all I can for him, sir. The flow of blood is quite stopped and the, er, wound is sealed, for the time being. If he wakes, you would do well to strap him down, in case the cautery does not hold. But I do greatly fear that even if he survives, your son will sire no children—’

Favio’s shoulders quaked. Saro stared at the chirurgeon in disbelief.
Sire no children? Cautery?
It was like walking into someone else’s mad dream. Fabel, meanwhile, followed the man out of the pavilion, pressing a pouch of coins into his hand.

‘I will be back first thing in the morning,’ the chirurgeon declared brightly, hugging the money to him. ‘So many other calls to make in all this tumult, I bid you the Goddess’s grace.’ And with that he was away, his relief in escaping the place before the patient expired obvious in the speed of his retreat.

‘What happened?’ Saro asked again.

‘My brave boy . . .’ Favio started. ‘My brave, brave boy—’

‘It seems that Selen Issian was attacked by Eyran ruffians intent on rape,’ Fabel said quickly. ‘Tanto heard the rumpus and went in to stop them in their evil endeavour. By then they’d already killed her little slavegirl and were attacking the lady herself. He fought them off as well he could, but took a terrible wound.’ He dropped his voice. ‘They found her shift ripped clean in two, and the lady Selen gone . . .’