The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (15 page)

“Then Harquas will have them stuffed like squabs from a dovecote before the festival’s out.” I munched on some cress filched from Sorgrad’s plate.

“Are there likely to be other Mountain Men in the city?” inquired Usara.

Sorgrad shook his head. “Very few. It’s only the bigger valleys, the kindreds with labor to spare can afford to send their goods all this way. For all the profit you can make, you lose so much time on the trip—”

Movement by the door silenced him. I looked over to see Reza hurrying toward us. “Niello said to give you this, soon as you come in.” The lad pulled a twice-folded and sealed note out of his overlarge and shabby jerkin.

I signaled to the potboy before cracking the wax. “Sit down, Rez, have a drink.”

He smiled at me, exposing the toothless side of his mouth, permanent legacy of the hunger and beatings that had been his lot before Niello picked him out of the gutters. I winked at him but my good humor faded as I read Niello’s unpracticed scrawl gracing the back of some ancient masquerade dialogue.

“What’s the problem?” Sorgrad was reading my face as closely as I was studying the parchment.

“Did you and ’Gren run into any bother this afternoon?” I asked casually.

Sorgrad shook his head, unconcerned. “No.”

“And was ’Gren with you all the time?” I inquired.

“Until we got back here and he spotted Kelty adjusting her garters at him,” he grinned. “He’s never one to find fault with a fat goose.”

I nodded slowly. “According to Niello, they had the Watch in here asking questions earlier. Seems they want to talk to a pair of Mountain Men on account of a beating they gave some nailers.”

Usara opened his mouth and if I could have I’d have kicked him under the table to shut it. “Is this likely to be a problem?” His tone was both courteous and conciliatory.

I tried not to show my relief he hadn’t implied doubt in Sorgrad’s word. “Yes, to be honest. Niello wouldn’t have bothered straining his wits with this,” I waved the note, “if he hadn’t reckoned it was serious.”

“They cursed near tore the stage apart, in case anyone was hiding under it,” supplied Reza. “Emptied out all the costume baskets.”

I laid my hands on the table in front of me. “If their own have taken a hammering, the Watch will be pulling in anyone who fits the cry and like as not giving them a kicking for good measure. That’s the way of it here, the same as anywhere else. At any other time of year, we could find ourselves an advocate and argue the case in the courts, get a few witnesses to swear for us. Kelty for instance, she’d be good for convincing a judge ’Gren never left her bed.” I shook my head. “Not at a festival. The assize will father the bastard on the first face through the door and that will be that.”

“I don’t think we want to come to the attention of the Watch, do we?” I saw the face of Arle Cordainer reflected in Sorgrad’s eyes. Another consideration to add to the balance.

“Niello says Vadim took one of the nailers off into a corner,” I said to Sorgrad, ignoring the others. “Close as a miser and his money.”

“We can shut his mouth for him,” shrugged Sorgrad.

“If he turns up dead before the end of festival, that’ll just cause more trouble,” I warned.

“He won’t turn up,” Sorgrad grinned evilly.

“Why don’t we just leave?” asked Usara in some alarm.

“Because no minstrel is going to hit the road until the very last moment of the fair.” I hid my annoyance. There’s no point in trying to buck the run of the luck so I had to play these runes as best I could. “You could play the second clown, couldn’t you Rez?” The lad nodded hopefully.

“Then Niello can tell Vadim to take his coin and be on his way or we’ll use it to buy his ashes a niche in a shrine,” I said firmly. “He won’t argue. His type are all bark and no bite.”

“Who plays the dog?” asked Sorgrad.

“ ’Gren?” I suggested. There’d be no holding him back.

“So we’re going to the Forest, not the Mountains?” asked Usara, looking from me to Sorgrad and back again. “At the end of the festival?”

I nodded. “Do you have any problem with that?”

“No, none at all,” Usara spread his palms in a placating gesture. “I am bound to follow your lead.” He smiled with self-deprecating modesty.

I wasn’t fooled; he’d used magic to bespeak Planir in Hadrumal some time during the afternoon. It was a safe bet he’d been told to chain up his dog and make himself agreeable. That was all very well—at least he’d be likely to get along with ’Gren and Sorgrad—but I wasn’t about to trust a wizard, not completely, not even when he sat eating his supper, demure as an old whore at a wedding.

“What shall we do tomorrow?” Sorgrad asked. “The shrine confraternities will be playing at piety in the morning but the tumblers and animal trainers will get their place in the sun after noon.”

I shook my head. “I’m going to see this minstrel about a song or two.” And not just about the ancient songs. Usara could keep his secrets and I’d keep mine. I’d been thinking about songs, their power and their persistence. Learning the secrets of old aetheric magic was all very well but perhaps I could make more prosaic use of a good tune and rousing words. If Frue could set some song doing the rounds that warned people about the Elietimm threat, word would spread faster than fire in a thatch. If I was careful to tell the tale so I didn’t feature at all, no one would be able to trace it back to me, either.

Kehannasekke, Islands of the Elietimm,

Spring Equinox

He was so absorbed in distant contemplation that he did not register his father’s soft-footed entrance, not until a breath stirred the hairs on the nape of his neck with a question. “Eresken?”

Startled, he could not prevent a sharp intake of breath, his shoulders tensing involuntarily beneath his unadorned tunic of undyed wool.

“How do you fare?” The question was genial enough; the older man was in a good humor and Eresken breathed more easily.

“Badly, sire,” he admitted frankly. “I have spent night and day in the search and might as well be wandering lost in fog. I had hoped the stasis of Equinox might aid me, but so far I’ve felt no advantage.”

The white-haired man snorted and crossed to the narrow window, where iron bars laid black stripes of shadow across his plain dun garb. The pale sunlight forced its way past, only to be reflected back from the bare white walls and floorboards scrubbed to the color of straw. He looked down into the courtyard four stories below, where black-liveried men-at-arms moved with set purpose and servants in drab cloaks hurried out of their path. “Perhaps we should make an example of some wrongdoer, kill a bantam to cow the rest of the flock.” He glanced sharply at his son. “What do you think?”

“I don’t feel the problem is a lack of commitment among our people,” Eresken replied carefully. “I sense their strength well enough and the focus of the stones is as strong as ever. It is rather that Tren Ar’Dryen is somehow shielded, barriers ranged against us. Even with the clarity of the balance, I cannot penetrate the deceptions.”

Admitting failure was risky but he had no option. If anyone could pierce the unholy miasma defeating him, it would be his father. Then he would show Eresken how it was done.

“You are correct,” his father nodded slowly. “How do you account for this?”

Eresken took a moment to think; that was allowed. He was careful not to show he realized he was being put to the test; that was not permitted, on pain of punishment or worse, dismissal from his father’s counsels and instruction. “In reviving the hidden ones of Kel Ar’Ayen, the false magicians of Hadrumal will most likely have found practitioners of true enchantment,” he began cautiously. “If Planir has suborned these to his own ends, he may be using their skills to deny us.”

“Good,” said his father approvingly. “You are correct again.”

Emboldened, Eresken leaned back in his chair, hands relaxing on the parchment-strewn table. “Perhaps Kramisak—”

“Kramisak is not your concern,” snapped his father. “Kel Ar’Ayen is not your concern. If I feel you straying from your allotted duties, I will chastise you in no uncertain measure, do you understand me?” His anger came and went with all the instant violence of winter lightning but the cold threat lingering in his voice was infinitely chilling.

“Of course, sire.” Eresken slowly laced his hands together, stopping them from shaking. “My task is to work around these obstructions. I will apply myself more diligently.”

“What have you been doing today?” The white-haired man crossed from the window to begin leafing through Eresken’s parchments, frowning at notations in margins and neat additions to the bottom of texts written in several different hands, the oldest lines blurred where the ink had rubbed away. A few bright lines of illumination here and there were the only specks of color to disturb the neutrality of the stark room.

“I have been looking for priests.” Eresken spoke with more confidence.

“Explain your reasoning,” his father demanded curtly.

“Equinox comes for the lands of the west as well as for us and some of their traditions reach back to the days before the Exile. I looked for those cities that hold religious gatherings to mark the quarter-year.” Eresken turned his notes to a relevant page and proffered it. “We know their priests hold the last remnants of true enchantment in the lands of the west; that’s why we were killing them. Now I think they might be more use to us alive than dead. I hope to find one with some vestige of piety turned to their gods that will leave his mind open to mine. It has always been easier to contact a mind with some training than an unwilling one.”

“A sound enough argument,” noted the old man. “What progress have you made thus far?”

“At the moment, it’s like trying to hear a single voice shouting in a storm.” Eresken could not disguise his chagrin. “Luckily, the strongest barriers are set in the east, so I have been following a chain of recollection and anticipation woven from the unguarded thoughts of merchants and the like traveling west. There is a great fair in this city, Selerima, and there must surely be some shrine where the devout will gather, even if it is only to pay duty to their lesser gods or goddesses.”

His father studied a map. “At such a vast distance, you cannot hope to influence a mind that is not actively cooperating with you.”

“I will do my utmost,” said Eresken stoutly. “With the strength that abides in the stones, I believe it will be possible.”

The white-haired man threw the parchment down on the table. “You should be searching for wizards at their false conniving. We know that leaves them vulnerable as newborn babes to us.”

The old man must be tired, Eresken thought discreetly. This was too obvious a snare to step into. “Planir knows that too, none better. The mages are the most closely shielded of all. I am not even attempting to touch them, not until they grow idle from lack of threat and relax their vigilance. Even then, while killing the mages is gratifying, it would be a shortsighted act, merely enraging the Archmage. I am looking for means to attack on a wider front.”

A half-smile quirked the corner of the old man’s mouth. “And what of those whose minds you have already touched? The redheaded bitch, the swordsman? Have you sought them?”

“I have, but on no more than a superficial level,” said Eresken slowly. “Anything more would risk alerting them to our continued interest in their downfall.”

“You’re afraid, that’s plain enough,” his father said softly. He leaned forward, hands on the table, and stared deep into Eresken’s grass green eyes.

Denial was useless and Eresken hastily emptied his mind of any thought he wished to keep to himself as his father’s opaque brown eyes held his own in unbreakable thrall. Eresken forced himself to concentrate on the face before him, to stop unbidden feelings or opinions intruding themselves. His father’s face was lean and taut, crowned with dead white hair, faint lines showing the scour of wind and years and the few scars mute testimony to lessons learned from rare mistakes. Eresken forced his breathing to a slow and even pace and laid his mind open. It was better this way, less painful. He’d learned that lesson long ago and now passed it on with the same merciless sting when opportunity presented itself.

The old man laughed but not unkindly. “They humiliated you, didn’t they? Jumped you, knocked you senseless and hauled you away like a seal trussed from the hunt. You don’t want to risk that happening again. Well, I can understand that. You’re not alone, boy. The slut held her own against me with no more than inborn defiance and a flood of doggerel.”

Eresken gaped. “I had no idea—”

“No, neither did I.” The white-haired man’s laughter rang unexpectedly light against the whitewashed walls of the room furnished only with a single table and chair. “It’s one more of the ironies of our present situation that some ignorant bitch could light upon a pattern of half-remembered song and gibberish that could disrupt our practiced incantations so thoroughly! One is prepared for challenge from an equal, not from some misbegotten sneak-thief.”

“They were none of them worthy foes,” spat Eresken with rising anger. “All they had was brute strength and savagery, too stupid to recognize their fate and submit!”

“Do not give way to your frustrations,” warned his father, speaking softly. “Emotion will restrict you, limit your effectiveness. But on the other hand,” he turned away abruptly, “you need to feel that anger, that outrage, that spur to set you looking beyond the confines of these islands, when so many others are content to see no farther than the horizon. That vision is what marks you as my son and makes you worthy of my time and trouble. You must learn to recognize such contradictions and master them.”

“But why—” Eresken spoke before he could stop himself.

“A child who simply asks ‘why’ shows an aptitude for training. A man who does the same is mistaking trust shown him for license to dissent.”

“I meant no disrespect,” insisted Eresken. Never that, not so long as he could reap the rewards of his sire’s favor. The truth of his words and his thoughts hung in the tense silence.