The Assassin's Edge

Thoughts on the Ancient Races Presented to the Antiquarian Society of Selerima

By Gamar Tilot, Scholar of the University of Col

As students of history in our various degrees, we are invited to regard the ancient races of our lands as set apart, an impassable gulf of time dividing their lives from our own and rendering them unknowable. Why must they be so very different from ourselves? I argue these peoples are as easily understandable as the gentleman sitting beside you in this hall. Consider the question thus.

The Forest Folk of old are known through the ballads of wandering minstrels and the legends we tell our children. We entertain ourselves with tales of unicorns and griffons, with myths of women born from living trees and unearthly voices heard in dark and sacred groves. We imagine the people living with such wonders as innocent as children, unfettered by possessions, blithe in romances uncomplicated by marriage or settlements. Such an ideal life is a wonder that has passed beyond our ken.

But who sings us these songs? Why, travelling bards who come out of the Forest, boasting that same red hair celebrated in every chorus. They leave greenwood families living not in indolent ease but in the straitened circumstances of any who must forage for food among root and bough. Minstrels carolling the romances of Viyenne or Lareal do not exalt a lost ideal but merely solicit coin to clothe their children and fill their bellies with bread. Their songs are not mystical history but idle entertainment, to distract their folk from their own cold and hungry existence. Look around your city and you will see plenty of copper-crowned heads. Over the generations, many a Forest man has forsaken the woods for the practical comforts of settled life and trade. The Forest Folk are not distant paragons of a nobler age; they are your tradesmen, your servants. We all share the same concerns for our children, our prosperity, and our posterity. Those so inclined worship the same gods. Why should we imagine it was not ever thus? One can tell a tree by its fruit, after all and the apple never falls far from the tree.

Consider the Mountain Men. Read the sagas copied in the libraries of Vanam and Inglis and you see a race remote and forbidding as the very peaks of Gidesta. Incomprehensible myths speak of men unyielding as stone, dangerous as dragons reputed to haunt their peaks. Scholars nod wisely of the cruel climate that makes such men so harsh. The miners and trappers among the hills and forests north of the Dalas would laugh at such wilful ignorance. Where have the towns of northern Ensaimm learned their noted skills in smelting and smithing if not from the countless sons of Mountain blood who have settled in softer climes and married there, quite content with their lot? There can be no such great differences between us if they do not divide those sharing the honesty of the marriage bed. Tales of ancient warfare among the snowbound crags may send a shiver of steel down the spine when told around a fireside but the truth is that the Mountain Men are as familiar and as slight a threat as the knife you use to cut your meat at table.

What though of the Plains People? That is the greatest mystery of all, or so it is whispered around the chimney corners. We see no trace of them, only gazing in awe at the earthen walls that ring their sacred places, at mighty barrows raised above their honoured dead. Gentlemen such as yourselves dig into these and wonder at copper pots and axes. Why were they buried? Did they truly believe such possessions could be carried aboard Poldrion’s ferry? Every discovery turns up more questions than pebbles. The earth-stained bones cannot speak so we invent answers for the silent skulls. Just as children make monsters out of fear and the shadows cast by candles, so we weave the darkness of ignorance into the myth of the Eldritch Kin, masters of a realm beyond the rainbow, rulers of the unchancy lands of water meadow and sea strand, the Plains People gone away into the twilight where we cannot follow.

Nothing could be further from the truth just as no race could be closer to us. The turfed forts of Dalasor may be remote and eerie but the prosaic ploughs of Caladhria and Ensaimin turn up copper rings and brooches with every spring sowing. We live among the ancient dwellings of the Plains People; we cannot see them only because our barns and houses, streets and shrines are raised upon their remnants. We cannot see descendants of this ancient race as we do of Forest and Mountain because those born of the Plains are our very selves. As we have lived for untold generations on these wide and fertile lands, so we have passed from primitive lives and beliefs to wed with the civilisation that the Tormalin Emperors brought from the east. As warp and weft in one cloth, so we wove together the superiority we enjoy today, as the growing child sets aside his toys and takes up the tools of manhood. The Mountain Men have followed our lead and in time the Forest Folk will turn from their amiable idleness and heed their lessons in turn.

Islands of the Elietimm, 5th of For-Summer

Be careful, there’s ice melt coming down there.” Shiv looked back over his shoulder. He was sitting in the prow of the wooden-framed, hide-covered boat we’d stolen. He shook seawater from his white, wrinkled hand. “Curse it, that’s cold!”

Behind me, Ryshad was steering, long tiller tucked under his arm, both hands gripping it firmly. He narrowed his eyes at the milky flow running across the dark grey beach to bleach the greenish water of the sound. “Put your backs into it.”

Sorgrad and ’Gren exchanged a mutinous look but both renewed their grip on their oars. I smiled encouragement at them and did my best to keep my feet out of the water puddled in the bottom of the boat. My back ached from sitting on the hard thwart and the non-stop wind was cutting through my jerkin. I shivered and began rubbing my arms to try and get a little warmer. “Sit still,” Sorgrad told me curtly.

“I’m freezing,” I retorted.

“There’s nowhere to go and nothing to do. You’ll only get more chilled fidgeting,” he said sternly. “Who’s spent more time in the mountains, you or me?”

“Just make sure you keep your hands and feet moving,” Ryshad advised. “You don’t want frost nip in your fingers and toes.”

I could see Sorgrad scowling at that but it seemed he couldn’t deny that was fair advice, much as he might want to.

“You could always cursed well row,” ’Gren said as he pulled hard. “That would soon warm you up.” He certainly boasted a rosy glow.

“I don’t want to risk grounding,” said Shiv with some alarm.

“It’s all sandbanks round here,” scoffed ’Gren. “We’d be all right.” There were certainly none of the vicious skerries that had threatened us like vicious claws as we’d negotiated the uncomfortably exposed shore of Shernasekke.

“Let’s not take the risk,” suggested Ryshad.

Sorgrad said nothing, just shooting ’Gren a warning look.

“So you stay sitting like a noblewoman on a pleasure jaunt,” ’Gren grumbled. If he wasn’t having a good time, no one else was going to.

I refused to feel guilty for having neither the heft nor the weight to match anyone else’s stroke. I’d tried spelling both brothers and no one could dispute Ryshad’s decision that I stop, after we found ourselves veering so unexpectedly off course.

“Pull, now!” Ryshad leant all his weight into the tiller and the brothers bent over their oars, hauling them back with breath hissing through their teeth. From the concentration on Shiv’s face, he was doing his part with magic. All I could do was hold tight as the light boat bucked and swerved. Ashore, a surging stream laden with fine white sand cascaded down a mountainside thick with ash. It drew a stark line across a black sand bar, which itself cut abruptly across the paler grey of the beach where huge boulders, raw edges unweathered, lay scattered like a haphazard throw of knucklebones. Pale fingers reached through the dark waters towards us but everyone’s efforts took us safely past.

“ ’Sar would dearly love to see a fire mountain burning,” Shiv remarked, gazing at the mountain rising high above the shallow swell of the island we were passing. Yellow-tinted grey, the jagged peak had faint wisps of cloud clinging to the topmost pinnacles. No, not cloud but smoke or steam, ever renewed to defy the constant winds. I wondered if Misaen would heed a mongrel lass like me asking him politely to keep his fires banked until we’d quit this unnerving place.

“See, that’s all rock spewed up recently.” Shiv pointed to a formless mass of black stone sprawling across the beach and dusted with white. “It was so hot, it boiled a barrel full of salt out of the sea before it was quenched.” He smiled, intrigued at the notion.

I decided I preferred land that had the decency to stay as it had been made.

“Livak, put your hood up.” Ryshad spared me a blown kiss when I turned to see him covering his own head. I would have responded but this third day of harsh wind and such sun as burned through the recurrent mists had cracked my lips painfully. We’d taken a laboriously circuitous route in order to keep a long low, grass-covered island between us and the forbidding bulk of Ilkehan’s mountain-spined domain.

Our little boat crawled with aching slowness past a rocky islet in the midst of a treacherous sprawl of dunes and grass. A squat watchtower stood on the scant solid footing, the walls around it were stained and broken in several places. Small figures were making repairs with new, paler stone and several paused to look in our direction.

Sorgrad winked at me. “We leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone.”

But the builders on the fort weren’t the only people to see us coming in from the shallow seas between the outer Elietimm islands and the deeper ocean. To reach this mysterious Olret’s fiefdom, we had to navigate the inner channels winding between dour grey islands fringed with saltings claiming equal kinship with sea and land. We saw men, women and children up to their knees in mud, digging for whatever the grudging sand might yield. Wading birds, black and white and trimmed with flashes of yellow or red hopped around in eager anticipation.

“Why couldn’t we steal a boat with a god-cursed sail?” grunted Sorgrad as some unseen current slowed us.

“Why don’t you take an oar, if you Tormalin know all about boats?” Puffs punctuated ’Gren’s words as he favoured Ryshad with a disgruntled glare. “I’ll bet even I could steer with a wizard smoothing the water under this thing’s arse.”

“That’s called the hull, ’Gren.” I grinned.

“Your man been making you an expert?” he began.

“We need to make landfall soon,” Shiv interrupted, turning to hide his map from the inquisitive wind.

“That’s going to be easier said than done,” grimaced Ryshad.

I studied the coast of Rettasekke curving ahead of us. Black pillars of rock piled in steps and stacks offering no foothold to anything bigger than a seabird. Screaming hordes of them clustered on every ledge and spilled whiteness neither salt nor snow down the cliffs. The sun suddenly appeared to strike rainbow glints from the wet rocks. The colours vanished and I looked up to see dappled cloud spreading across the sky.

“We’ll want to be under cover before long,” Ryshad observed.

“Before nightfall, I aim to be an honoured guest at this Olret’s fireside, drink in one hand, meat in the other,” said Sorgrad with determination.

“Drink and a willing lass will suit me.” ’Gren chuckled.

“You keep your hands to yourself,” I chided my irrepressible friend. “Touch the wrong stocking tops and you could find yourself flogged or worse.”

“Foul this up and you’ll be explaining yourself to Halice,” added Sorgrad. That was one of the few considerations ever to give ’Gren pause for thought.

“Let’s try over there.” Ryshad pointed to a steep stretch of mottled shingle below a stretch of turf breaking the serried black columns.

“Solid ground again,” I murmured fervently.

“Did I mention that coming ashore’s the most hazardous bit of a voyage?” said Ryshad conversationally. I turned my head to stick my tongue out at him as Sorgrad and ’Gren chuckled.

“Fast as you can.” Shiv was concentrating ahead. “We must get above the waterline at once.”

Sorgrad and ’Gren picked up the pace of their rowing. I gripped my seat and trusted to Ryshad’s firm hand on the tiller. As we drew closer, I could see the long spill of gravel making a natural ramp down into the deeper water. The instant the hull bit into the stones, Shiv jumped out, splashing through the cold sea with the painter over his shoulder. Sorgrad and ’Gren tossed their oars into the bottom, sprang over the sides and joined in hauling the boat up the slope. Ryshad was over the stern, shoving from the rear. I stayed put until the boat was solidly grounded.

“Would my lady care to come ashore?” Ryshad swept a florid bow and offered me his hand with a grin.

I handed him his satchel and tossed the others their burdens before gingerly getting out of the boat. “These boots are new. I don’t want salt stains on the leather.”

Shiv was passing his hands over his sodden breeches, dry swathes appearing. “I thought you had more faith in my magic,” he said, mock sorrowful.

“When are you going to learn some useful spells like that?” ’Gren demanded of his brother as he tried to wring water from the bottom of his jerkin.

Sorgrad narrowed his eyes and steam began rising from his own clothes, leaving ’Gren open mouthed.

“Careful,” Shiv warned. “You wouldn’t be the first apprentice to set himself alight.”

“So Larissa said. ”A moment later, Sorgrad let out his breath with a triumphant grin. “What do you think of that?”

I ran a finger over his shirt cuff. “Just about dry enough for ironing.”

“Find me a nice flat stone and I’ll try heating it.” He grinned at me.

“I hate to play sergeant at arms all the time but we don’t have time to waste,” Ryshad pointed out.

“I hate being wet,” countered ’Gren.

“Permit me.” Shiv drove the water from ’Gren’s clothes with a brisk gesture. “Let’s hide the boat.”

“I don’t plan on rowing anywhere else,” ’Gren said firmly.

“I always plan on keeping every option open.” Sorgrad went to help Ryshad and I lent a hand as well. We wedged the vessel between two splintered black pillars and weighed it down with a few substantial stones.

“If we get separated, we’ll use this as a rendezvous.” Ryshad stowed the oars neatly beneath the thwarts.

Everyone nodded agreement as Shiv studied his map. “This way.”

We dutifully followed him up a steep hill shaped like an overturned boat, the blunt stern made by the stark cliffs. It was a punishing climb but the crest offered us a good view across the sound separating this island from Ilkehan’s domain. A line of rocks threaded between the sandy channels, the larger ones crowned with uncompromising cairns of ownership and one all but invisible beneath a small but sturdy fort. Ilkehan’s island beyond was hidden in secretive mists.

“This must be Rettasekke.” Shiv tucked his folded map away and we looked down on a fertile stretch of land dotted with a few houses, divided with neat stone walls and, in the distance, boasting a more substantial settlement.

“This is a clan leader’s holding, is it?” ’Gren looked distinctly unimpressed. “What do they reckon their wealth in? Rocks?”

If they did, this Olret had a plentiful supply. Beyond the narrow band of scrupulously tended land, jagged grey soon ripped through the thin coverlet of grass. Crags and outcrops ran away inland, ever taller and bolder, joining in daunting ramparts, massing to join the abrupt upthrust of the mountains at the core of this island. Some slopes were freckled black and grey like a rabbit pelt, others striped grey on black like a mousing cat, the patches of coarse scrub here and there doing little to soften the harshness of the landscape.

“There’s your goats,” Sorgrad pointed out as our path across the hill showed us more of the grassland below.

It was a scene of considerable activity. A massive wheellike structure had been built from the ubiquitous grey stones, one gap in the rim admitting a protesting herd of what looked like every goat on the island. Men drove the beasts between walls too high for leaping into the hollow centre, where the axle for this supposed wheel would have fitted. Other islanders were somehow identifying goats and shoving them into wedge-shaped pens formed by the walls that made the spokes.

“What are they doing?” I wondered. Ryshad handed me the spyglass he’d been using and I saw men wrestling the unruly beasts to a standstill for women deftly threading orange, black and green threads through holes clipped in their floppy ears

“Suckling kid for dinner?” ’Gren suggested hopefully.

“Let’s get past without anyone asking us our business,” said Ryshad.

I don’t think anyone would have asked, had we walked along the shelving shoreline accompanied by a travelling masquerade complete with flutes and drums. For one thing, I doubt they’d have heard us over the ear-splitting din of outraged bleating and curses provoked by a billy goat’s horns or some nanny’s razor-sharp hooves. It was a relief to leave the commotion behind as we approached the settlement at the far end of the stretch of tillable land.

“That’ll be the grave circle, I take it.” Shiv nodded at an enclosure considerably larger than the one we’d seen ravaged. Hereabouts the rock evidently split into handy slabs because this was made from a double ring of rectangular stones fitted precisely edge to edge, a barrier needing no ditch beyond the merest scrape. Two reddish-yellow monoliths framed the single entry to the solid circle and inside more stood in pairs and singletons with no readily apparent pattern.

“I’ve not seen stone of that colour before,” Ryshad frowned.

“Where are you three going to hide up?” Sorgrad shaded his eyes with a hand.

“You’re going in, just the pair of you?” Shiv looked to Ryshad for confirmation.

He nodded. “That was the plan before. No need to change it as far as I can see.”

That satisfied Sorgrad and we all studied the prospect before us. Long, low houses were dotted between the grave circle and a formidable keep rising four square and four storeys high within a solid wall. Beyond, a long range of buildings boasted upper floors and chimneys as well as stone slates to their roofs rather than the bundles of coarse vegetation thatching the smaller houses. More of those were scattered on the far side of the keep and its storehouses, the settlement ending in a line of open-sided goat shelters. Beyond, a surprisingly substantial causeway dammed a paltry stream to create a wide pond.

“Barely big enough to spit across.” That was ’Gren’s usual Ensaimin idiom for the more wretched villages we’d visited over the years.

“Only if you caught the wind right.” But I had to admit it wasn’t very impressive.

“Catching the wind wouldn’t be a problem.” The notion prompted a shiver from ’Gren and he was right. The whole settlement was exposed to whatever weather came sweeping up the channel, which was doubtless why nets fringed with substantial stone weights weighed down the thatch of the lesser houses.

Ryshad on the other hand approved of the place. “Even if this isn’t the only landing on this stretch of shore, that pond blocks anyone coming over that headland.”

“No one’s going to sneak up on Olret,” Sorgrad agreed. “Not with such a reach of open land between the houses and any ground that offers cover.”

“If we hang around here, we’ll be spotted,” warned Shiv.

There certainly were plenty of people about but, fortunately, most looked too busy to be glancing our way. Between the keep and the sea was a broad open area where men walked barrels to and from large troughs surrounded by women. Lads carried bushel baskets brimming with the unmistakable silver of fish from long sheds on stone jetties that reached out into the water, tethered boats bobbing at their far ends. The sun was back, striking sparkles from the water, and turning greedy seabirds wheeling overhead a brilliant white.

The birds squawked and jinked to dodge small children throwing stones to keep them off racks of drying stockfish. Earlier catches were stacked like cordwood and weighted with the handily flat rocks.

Ryshad was making a stealthy survey. “Ask to be taken to whoever’s in charge,” he told Sorgrad as he snapped his spyglass closed. “We’ll wait over there.” He indicated a spread of dark green patches of some crop being raised between the closest house and the grave circle. The plants looked sparse and thirsty but offered more cover than anything else we could see.

Sorgrad nodded and the pair of them trotted off straight for the keep. The three of us skirted the grave circle, using its solid walls to shield us from view as best we could.

“Will they be all right?” Shiv wondered as we lost sight of the brothers.

Ryshad didn’t answer so it was left to me to reassure him. “Sorgrad’s gone into enemy camps before now. Halice often trusts him to negotiate safe conducts or exchanges of wounded, ransom prisoners for food. Believe me, when he sets his mind to it, he can convince anyone of anything.”

“It’s not Sorgrad I’m worried about.” Ryshad’s tone was concerned rather than caustic. “What if these people use Artifice to check he’s telling the truth?”

“We’ve come to look for an ally against Ilkehan,” Shiv pointed out. “That’s the truth.”

“What about ’Gren?” persisted Ryshad.

“Whatever Sorgrad tells him is what he’ll choose to believe.” I tucked myself behind a clump of unappetising-looking plants which proved to be growing within yet another stone wall, barely knee high this time and filled with something truly foul smelling.

“Dast’s teeth, what is that stink?” Ryshad and Shiv joined me, crouching more awkwardly with their greater height.

“Seaweed.” Shiv stifled a cough and peered over the little wall. “And gravel, half a year’s table scraps and what looks like a dead goat.”

I shuffled round until I could lie on my belly and get a decent view of the keep past the plants. Roughly clad Elietimm in dun and brown milled around the buildings, more gold heads together than I’d seen anywhere but in the most distant mountains. ’Gren and Sorgrad were nowhere to be seen.

I was about to heave a sigh before the stench on the other side of the meagre wall stopped me and I settled for sucking at my sore lip. Ryshad sat with his back to the reeking plants, keeping a watch inland and Shiv crouched beyond him to watch the way we’d come.

I made a silent wager with myself and won it when the lanky mage finally complained. “I’m getting cursed cramped.”

“Stand up!”

But it wasn’t Ryshad speaking. Whatever else charms culled from that ancient songbook might offer, Forest myth and Mountain saga remained stubbornly silent on whatever gave the Elietimm their disconcerting ability to step out of thin air. Down on the ground, we were in no position to defy the elderly Ice Islander who glowered at us, not when he had a handful of younger men behind him, armed with vicious maces of wood and iron. All were dressed in a steely grey livery of leather decorated with copper studs. We got to our feet with as much dignity as we could muster.

“We await our friends,” I said in careful Mountain speech.

A thin smile cracked the older man’s weathered face. “You are to join them.”

I translated and Ryshad swept a polite hand to indicate that our new acquaintance should precede us. He did so and his henchmen followed us, maces sloped casually over their shoulders but faces stern.

“What now?” Shiv asked beneath his breath.

“See how it plays out.” I couldn’t see what else to do.

“They’re not taking our weapons,” Ryshad pointed out, “nor tying us up.” He was walking on the balls of his feet, hands ready, alert to every man’s pace and position.

We were led past people still working in an overpowering stench of fish guts and through the main gate of the keep’s outer wall. Guards in the same leather armour ducked respectful heads to our guide. Elietimm battles must be remarkably simple affairs, I mused, given every enemy was handily identified by his garb. In the chaotic civil wars of Lescar you’d be lucky if all your side carried the same battlefield token or half of them remembered the recognition word. More than one battle had petered out in confusion when both contingents had plucked the same handy flower for their field sign and claimed Saedrin’s grace as their battle cry.

Such idly inconsequential thoughts kept my apprehension at bay as we were taken through a busy courtyard where a waiting throng eyed us with curiosity and suspicion. Our guide ignored them all and led us up a flight of forbidding stairs to double doors of weathered and iron-studded oak. At his nod, another grey-leathered warrior opened one to admit us.

The great hall’s echoing emptiness took up most of the ground floor by my quick estimation. Pale flagstones were swept bare beneath a skilfully vaulted ceiling rising from thick pillars of polished reddish stone sunk into the grey walls. Clouded glass in tall, thin windows muffled the bright sunlight but we all knew panes an Ensaimin peasant would sneer at betokened wealth and status in these indigent islands. Heavy curtains of soft beige wool, bright with geometric patterns in muted green and soft orange, hung around the far end where a shallow wooden floor offered a suggestion of a dais.

“Drink?” ’Gren proffered his goblet with a broad grin. He and Sorgrad sat on backless cross-framed stools at one end of a long table so aged and polished it was all but black. An Elietimm man wearing a well-cut grey mantle over tunic and breeches of fine quality stood beside them, amusement creasing his plump face. He was as blond as Sorgrad, with a wiry curl to his receding hair but his eyes were dark, something I’d noticed more than once among these islanders.

“Those who hid,” barked the old man who’d brought us in, gesturing at the same time as bowing deeply to his overlord.

Sorgrad set his own cup carefully by an array of small platters on the table. “I have explained that we did not wish to trespass on anyone’s hospitality until we had made ourselves known,” he said smoothly. “Master of Rettasekke, I vouch for Ryshad, sworn to one of those mainland lords whom Ilkehan has raided.” He indicated me next with a courteous hand. “Livak will speak for the Forest Folk who suffered at the hands of Eresken last summer while our friend Shivvalan comes from Caladhria. The lowland peoples were very nearly brought to war with the uplands by Eresken’s treachery and that is his concern.”

All of which had the virtue of being true, if not the whole truth, if someone somewhere was murmuring a charm to test Sorgrad’s veracity. He turned to our host.

“This is Olret, who graciously offers us the shelter of his house for the duration of the ancient travel truce.” Sorgrad smiled with a nice balance between humility and self-assertion. “So we see that our two races are not so sundered, despite the generations between us.”

The Mountain travel truce lasted three days and three nights and I wondered if that meant we’d be spared aetheric curiosity for that period. As I was trying to find a way of hinting as much to Sorgrad, a booming blow on the double doors made me jump. I wasn’t the only one and I saw Olret stifle a smile behind a polite hand as this peremptory demand was repeated. He said something to Sorgrad that I didn’t catch.

“Olret has business to attend to,” Sorgrad told us. “He wishes us to stay and observe as his guests.”

Someone somewhere was watching, perhaps behind one of the floor-sweeping curtains, because lackeys instantly appeared from a side door with stools for us all. Maidservants hurried after with more plates of titbits and pottery flasks of pale liquor as well as goblets various goats had sacrificed horns for. One corn-haired lass poured me a generous measure, which I sipped cautiously. The stuff was smooth, light on the back of the throat and innocuously flavoured with caraway. It drawled long, slow lines as I rolled the small goblet casually around in my hand. Too much of this and our host wouldn’t need Artifice; we’d all be confiding our innermost thoughts to our new best friend.

On the other hand, refusing to drink would probably be an insult. I took an anonymous finger-length of meat from a plate. It wasn’t unpleasant with a rich gamey taste beneath the subtle smoke but I couldn’t have said if it were fish, fowl or beast. What it was, it was salty, excellent for provoking thirst.

The great doors were opened and the throng from the courtyard filed in, heads dutifully bowed. Our host moved to a high seat skilfully wrought from dark wood and yellow bone carved with blunt and ancient symbols. Shiv cleared his throat and I looked at him, curious as to whether he might recognise any of these symbols. The mage glanced meaningfully at my goblet as he passed his hand casually over his own. I held my own drink absently to one side as I reached for what I fervently hoped was a morsel of cheese. Shiv’s hand brushed my own as he moved to offer Ryshad a dish of small crimson berries. When I took a sip from my goblet to try and quell the unexpectedly acrid taste of the cheese, I found the intense liquor had been diluted to a more manageable potency.

The man who’d led us into this well-baited pen was back again. He stood at the edge of the wooden floor, carrying a long staff carved from one single, mighty length of bone, some tantalising gems set around the ornately carved head. He struck the wooden planks and the crowd shuffled obediently about until a line of men pushed to the front, each carrying a leather bag.

“Proceed.” Olret looked on impassively as each man stepped up to empty his offering on to the long table.

The haul proved to be birds’ beaks. The nearest tally proved the death of a goodly number of hooded crows along with several ravens. That chilled my Forest blood; my father had always told me killing a raven prompted dreadful luck. I saw the predatory yellow curve of an eagle’s beak as well. Plainly no one worshipped Drianon hereabouts.

The men who’d come forward surveyed the competing piles and those who’d been less assiduous backed away. That left about half looking smug and expectant as the man with the bone staff walked the line and offered a tooled leather pouch to each one. Faces intent, every man pulled out a slip of horn that he held up for the man with the staff to see. He turned to the gathering and I picked enough words out of his declarations to learn three different sorts of rights were being granted.

“Driftwood without tool marks on the Fessands.”

“Worked wood brought ashore on the Arnamlee.”

“Stranded seabeasts from Blackarm to the Mauya Head.”

Olret looked expectantly at Sorgrad as the ritual was concluded.

The Mountain Man bowed politely. “Those that work to defend your territory from predators share in the chance-brought wealth of the seas.”

Olret smiled with satisfaction. “Ilkehan keeps all such bounty for himself.” His words carried and a shudder of fear and disapproval rippled through the gathering.

The bone staff thudded on the floor again and the crowd parted like a flock of goats as Olret’s grey-liveried hounds brought a handful of men before him. Each one wore only a filthy shirt, wrists securely bound in front. However enlightened this Olret might think himself compared to Ilkehan, his prisoners suffered the usual brutalities. One man’s eyes were all but closed with bruises while another’s hair was clotted dirty brown with old blood.

Each prisoner was hauled forward in turn and Olret pronounced sentence, expression unchanging. If there was such a thing as arguing a case at trial hereabouts, it must have happened earlier.

“White.” The man’s face turned hopeless.

“Green.” Someone unseen at the back hastily stifled a sob of relief.

“White.” For some reason, that came as a relief to that man.

“Red.” That provoked some disturbance on the far side of the hall that had the guards wading in to haul a struggling youth outside so fast his feet barely touched the floor.

“White.” The final judgement disappointed someone but they had the sense to shut their mouth after an involuntary exclamation.

The man with the bone staff waved it in unmistakable dismissal and the crowd melted away as fast as it had gathered.

“He works a deal faster than Temar,” I quipped to Ryshad.

The great doors closed to leave us alone in the vast hall with our host. Alone, apart from whoever was keeping watch behind the curtains. Of course, we were all still carrying our weapons and I reminded myself not to condemn the man out of hand for simple prudence. He left his impressive chair and pulled up a stool, helping himself from the spread of food.

“What had those men done?” My command of the Mountain tongue was sufficient for that but Olret ignored me, addressing himself to Sorgrad.

“Do you still administer the three exiles in the lands of the Anyatimm?”

“I don’t know what you mean by that.” Sorgrad looked genuinely puzzled.

Olret seemed faintly disappointed. “The red exile is from life itself. That man will be flung from the cliffs. The green exile is from hearth and home but that man may find himself some shelter within the sekke and his friends may save him from death with food and water. The white exile is from the sekke and its people. Those men must leave our land before nightfall and none may offer them the least help.” Olret’s polite smile turned a little forced. “That was the exile the Anyatimm of old imposed on our forefathers. We fled north and east over the ice, little thinking that we would find these lands held fast in the cold seas. Then Misaen melted the path and, as many would have it, left us here for some purpose.”

Shiv and Ryshad were both growing visibly frustrated as I struggled to listen and to translate at the same time. Olret waited for me to finish speaking before surprising us all.

“Forgive me. I only know your tongue from the written word and speak it poorly.” His Tormalin was entirely comprehensible, for all his hesitations and harsh accent.

“You have the advantage of me, my lord.” Ryshad spoke slowly with all the practised politeness he’d learned serving his Sieur. “It is you who must forgive our ignorance.”

“May I ask how you know our language?” Shiv smiled but I could see he was thinking the same as the rest of us. Now we’d have to watch every word we said, even among ourselves.

“I have visited your shores.” Olret could barely conceal his satisfaction at astounding us with this news. “Not often and never for long but we have long traded with the men of the grasslands.”

A frisson ran through me. “The Plains People?” I enquired blandly.

“Just so.” Olret had no trouble recognising the Tormalin term for the last of the three ancient races. “A select few have long made such crossings, defying the sea-roving shades, though ill fates befall the unworthy who risk themselves.”

“I have never heard tell of such visitors.” Ryshad was hiding his scepticism behind a well-trained face.

“We do not linger,” Olret assured him. “The men of the grasslands lay curses on those who outstay their welcome by overwintering, so we permit no such ship to land. Too many return laden only with stinking corpses, carried here by the sea shades.”

Could there still be remnants of the ancient Plains People in the northern vastness? Tormalin history would tell us they’d all been driven out or married into the Old Empire’s high-handed delineation of their provinces of Dalasor and Gidesta. On the other hand, I’d known a fair few cast adrift from the wandering herdsmen of those endless grasslands to skulk like me on the fringes of the law. A lot of them had the sharp features and dark slenderness that legend attributed to the lost race of the Plains. Besides, plenty of those herding clans still passed down ancestral resentment of Tormalin dominance and that could well keep them silent about sporadic visitors bringing something worth trading. I wondered what that something might be.

Olret was talking to Sorgrad again. “Forgive me, but you will not find a welcome if you bring trouble upon my poor people. We’ve suffered a full measure of grief in these last three years.”

“The mountains have been burning?” Sorgrad was all solicitous concern.

Olret nodded grimly. “The Maker first struck sparks from his forge two years since. At first we hoped the Mother’s judgement had finally come upon Ilkehan but every isle was shaken or riven. Fish floated dead from the depths of the seas. Goats choked with the ash or died later, poisoned by their fodder. Whole families smothered as they slept when foul air filled the lowest lying hollows.”

“Then we appreciate your generosity all the more,” Shiv said seriously.

I took another piece of the smoked meat and a sliver of flat bread and avoided Shiv’s eye. It was Planir, Kalion and a couple of other mages who’d set the mountains erupting hereabouts, to give Ilkehan something to think about besides chasing us as we fled his clutches. It looked as if the Archmage had started something reaching a good deal further than he’d intended.

Olret managed a wry smile. “We searched out what favour the Mother showed us. There were turnips cooked in the very earth for the hungry. With so many beasts dead, we had fodder to spare for strewing on the hot ash.” He saw we were all looking puzzled at that and hastened to explain. “It prompts new growth, that we may recover the land as fast as possible.” His face turned sombre again. “But many have died for lack of food these two years past and Ilkehan preys on the weaker isles like a raven following a famished herd. He piles trouble upon trouble on them before claiming the land by force of arms and saying the people will it thus. Then he grants the starving food to keep them alive enough to work but too hungry to spare strength to resist him.”

“Is that what happened to the westernmost isle?” I asked politely.

Ryshad saw Olret was ignoring me again and asked his own question. “Have you no overlord or any union of Ilkehan’s equals to deny such conquest?”

Olret stiffened as if he’d been insulted before forcing a smile and asking Sorgrad, “Do the Anyatimm now submit to some king?”

“Never,” Sorgrad replied forcefully, half a breath ahead of ’Gren. “Every kin manages its own affairs and answers to none but its own blood.”

“And all who share blood ties work together for the common good?” Olret smiled with satisfaction as Sorgrad and ’Gren nodded. “Thus is ever with our clans.”

Which was all very well and entirely necessary in the mountains north of Gidesta, when the nearest neighbours were ten days’ travel over hard ground in good weather and thirty in bad. Everyone pulled together through that selfsame bad weather because they risked being the straggler who died if they didn’t. I wasn’t sure how well the notion would work here with everyone cheek by jowl in these meagre islands. “How are your leaders chosen?”

Olret ignored me again. “What is Ilkehan to you?” he demanded abruptly of Sorgrad.

“An enemy,” he replied simply. “To all of us.”

’Gren spoke up unexpectedly. ”He merits death by our law and by yours too, if that’s the price for wintering over the seas.”

Olret looked at him with sharp curiosity. “How say you?”

“Eresken was Ilkehan’s son?”

’Gren answered Olret’s nod with a satisfied smile. “I got it from Eresken himself that his mother was a slave taken from the grasslands and Ilkehan got her with child overwintering there.”

Hope in Olret’s dark eyes was soon quenched. “What is one more misdeed among Ilkehan’s manifest crimes? Do you not think we would have stood shoulder to shoulder and marched against him if we could?”

“Why can’t you?” asked Ryshad carefully.

“He draws the true magic from every hargeard and wields it like none since the time of the wyrms. The rest of us are left without the strength to ride the oceans in safety and even should we try, Ilkehan uses his dark rites to find and sink our ships.” Bitterness choked Olret. “I do not know where he gets such lore. He kills any who see into the realm of enchantment apart from those cravens who crawl at his heels, learning his secrets until he sends them to curse his enemies to death.

“Do you not think we would have thrown him down to break on the rocks below his stronghold if we could? He is proof against any attack. We could pile up our dead to reach his very ramparts and he would still be laughing as he watched us die beneath the lash of his magic.”

“Have you considered sending a single man to kill him?” Sorgrad asked. “One might escape the notice that a host attracts.”

Olret shook his head. “Ilkehan kills any exile who reaches his territories, lest they be some spy. As if I would let any man risk the Mother’s curse by making such a profane claim just to enter Ilkehan’s domains.”

“What’s a hargeard?” ’Gren demanded, picking berry seeds out of his teeth.

“You do not know?” Olret looked both wary and confused.

“We do not know the term,” said Sorgrad smoothly. “It will doubtless be called something else in our tongue.”

“The hargeard is sacred to the Mother and the Maker both,” Olret said guardedly. “Where we lay our ancestors to rest that the true lore may bind our past to our future.”

Sorgrad nodded reassuringly. “For us, such rites are centred in the tyakar caves.”

That meant nothing to me but visibly mollified Olret. “We use the Maker’s stones.”

Because anyone laying a body to rest in one of these curse-stoked mountains would probably come back the next day to find their revered forefather nicely cooked for carving. I decided that was better left unsaid and tried one of the berries before ’Gren took a quite unfair share.

“We have hopes of making Ilkehan pay for his crimes.” Sorgrad had decided we’d spent enough time with shuffling positions and measuring up the other players. It was time to cast the runes and see who came up a winner. He looked Olret straight in the eye. “We have come to kill him.”

That spark of hope flared again in Olret’s eyes and this time it burned brighter. “By your faith in the Mother?”

“By the bones of my soke.” Sorgrad was in deadly earnest.

Olret drew back a little. “But he has powers none can withstand.” That really galled him.

“I killed Eresken,” ’Gren piped up.

“We have the lore of the Forest Folk to protect us,” added Sorgrad with a nod in my direction.

Olret barely spared me a glance, all his attention on Sorgrad. If we’d had him at a gaming table, he wouldn’t have walked away with breeches or boots, his emotions showed so plainly on his face. He desperately wanted to accept we could rid him of his hated foe but every pennyweight of sense tipped his scales to disbelief.

“We have come to risk ourselves, not to bring danger to the innocent.” Ryshad spoke with his usual measured courtesy. He’d judged Olret aright, I noted, as the Elietimm betrayed relief at that. “But if Ilkehan were to be distracted, if some feint held his attention as we crossed into his lands, then our chances of success would be greatly increased.”

“Is there not some insult, some predation of Ilkehan’s that you plan on avenging?” Sorgrad asked casually. “We need not know where or how but if we knew when you intended to act, we could make our crossing while Ilkehan was looking in another direction.”

Olret was looking tempted but shook his head abruptly. “Were you captured crossing from my territory to his, Ilkehan would have his excuse to bring death to us all.”

“So we make a dogleg and cross from someone else’s lands.” ’Gren patently didn’t see a difficulty.

“Perhaps.” Olret’s eyes narrowed to give him a rather shifty expression. I guessed there was someone he wouldn’t be sorry to drop into Ilkehan’s line of sight. “Let me think on this. In the meantime, I welcome you as my guests, though I’m afraid we’re too busy to give you much entertainment. The Mother sends her bounties at this season and bids us gather all we can to see us through the grey days of winter. So, ease your travel weariness with a bath and then we shall offer what we can by way of feasting and music. Maedror!”

Olret was talking a little too fast and with rather too much forced friendliness but for the present I’d settle for getting clean and dry and filling my belly. The man with the staff appeared as soon as Olret shouted for him and we dutifully followed him up to the first floor of the keep. The building proved to have a stair on either side joined by a corridor running through the centre, rooms on either side. I was ushered into a snug cubbyhole barely big enough for the bed blanketed with weaving which made best use of all the shades of the local goats. This was presumably to protect my virtue since the others got a larger bedchamber to share. Maidservants scurried hither and thither with ewers of hot water as lackeys hauled in baths. They mostly managed the carefully blank faces of servants interrupted by unexpected guests but one lass betrayed anxious glances at the stairs leading up to the higher levels. I guessed she had duties above that had to be completed, irrespective of other calls on her time. That kind of thing had been one of the many injustices that had set me against a life in service to others.

The bath was bliss. To be warm all the way through again was utter rapture and, as well as scented soaps, someone thoughtful had set a pot of pale salve out on the tiny dresser next to the narrow bed. It soothed the split in my lip and my chapped hands wonderfully. I was rubbing in a second application when a knock sounded on the door.

“Livak?” It was Ryshad.

“Come in.”

He shut the door and leaned against it, smiling with blatant appreciation at my nakedness. Freshly shaven, black hair curling damply around his ears, he wore clean breeches and a shirt which he hadn’t bothered lacing.

“What’s everyone else doing?” I sat up and hugged my knees.

“I drew the lucky rune so Shiv’s only just got his turn in a bath. Sorgrad and ’Gren are arguing over who’s going to wear the one smart doublet they’ve got between them.” Ryshad held out a towel and I stepped into his embrace.

He held me close and kissed me with an urgency that roused my own desire. “Shall I lock the door?”

“There’s no key.” I kissed him back, running my free hand up into his hair. “But I could take care of that.” I let the towel fall disregarded to the floor.

“That might cause comment, if someone tried the door.” Ryshad bent to kiss the base of my neck and I shivered with delicious anticipation as his breath tickled. He cupped my breast and I could tell someone had given him a salve for softening roughened hands as well.

“Stand the dresser by it?” I suggested when I could concentrate again.

“Good idea.” He slapped my rump with gentle approval.

I had the coverlets turned down on the bed before Ryshad had the door blocked and he swept me off my feet with a flurry of kisses, caresses and laughter. I pulled the shirt over his head as he kicked himself free of his breeches and we lost ourselves among the soft woollen blankets. If I’d thought the bath had been ecstasy, I’d been wrong. I didn’t care if Olret had adepts spying on us. All they would have learned was how completely the two of us could become one, when it was just the two of us, open either to other, giving, yielding. No differences of upbringing and experience could come between us, no divergence of attitude or expectation could distance us, no friends or ties of loyalty could pull us apart. Moving in instinctive harmony, every sense alive to touch and kisses, coming together in the ultimate intimacy, I knew beyond question that I loved Ryshad and he loved me. In that simplest of moments, nothing else mattered. We lay entwined, breath slowing, a lazy smile on Ryshad’s face as I brushed curls from his forehead now damp with sweat.

A single apologetic knock sounded softly at the door. “If you’re ready, we’re invited downstairs for more food.”

I smiled at the barely concealed amusement in Sorgrad’s voice. “We’ll be out in a few moments.”

Suthyfer, Sentry Island, 5th of For-Summer

Temar!” Allin waved from the door of the cabin.

“Finally,” breathed Temar. “Excuse me, Master Jevon.”

The Dulse’s captain looked expectant. “Them pirates on the move?”

“Let’s hope so,” Temar said fervently. He walked briskly up the beach, noting Halice abandoning some animated discussion with the Maelstrom’s boatswain and heading for the hut. So he wasn’t the only one frustrated by these past few days of tense boredom. Nervousness teased Temar. What would Muredarch’s new challenge be? Would he be a match for it?

“What is it?” After the bright sun outside, he blinked in the gloom of the cabin. It was still stuffy and oppressive even after he had drafted some of Kellarin’s carpenters to cut windows through the walls and hang shutters.

Larissa and Allin flanked Usara who was looking intently at Guinalle.

“Muredarch just set sail in the sloop. He’s coming north.” The demoiselle was pale in the dim light, shadows like bruises beneath her weary eyes. “They brought a prisoner out of the stockade but muffled in a sack. I can’t tell who it is, not with the Elietimm warding the place so closely.”

Temar looked at Usara. “These enchanters aren’t harrying you so much you can’t maintain the blockade?”

“As long as we’re working within direct sight, we’re proof against them,” Usara assured him.

“The winds are still against Muredarch, no matter what direction he might try fleeing in,” said Larissa pertly.

“Those Elietimm only ever work together, which limits their scope.” Contempt enlivened Guinalle’s tone. “If they stray too close, I warn our mages to cease their working.”

Halice frowned. “Which is all very well as long as they stay stupid. What if they start working separately?”

“Separately, they will be vulnerable to me.” Guinalle didn’t sound as if she relished that prospect.

“Let’s go and see what Muredarch has to offer,” Temar suggested.

Everyone moved towards the door, Guinalle the most reluctant. Temar hurried ahead to warn Darni what was afoot. “And Larissa will stay with you this time,” he concluded, deliberately not reacting as he heard the mage-girl’s protest behind him. Darni’s reply drowned out whatever it was Usara said to her.

“That’s well enough by me.” The big man grinned ferociously before raising an almighty bellow. “On your feet! First corps, take the watch! Second corps, you can use the time for some sword drill. If those bastards think they’re coming here, you can meet them with a blade in your hand.”

Halice’s mercenaries were the heart of the first corps, along with those of Sorgrad’s recruits whose skills matched up to their often vague claims of experience in battle. Deglain and Minare each took a detachment to the headlands now readied with treetop vantage points and fuelled beacons. The second corps gathered on the beach with eager faces. Kellarin’s men were determined to outshine the sailors who were in turn set on improving Halice’s opinion of their skills. As the Dulse’s crew lofted her sails, Temar watched his men cut and thrust and parry and stab with growing pride.

“What do you think?” he asked Halice as she came to join him.

“I want them a cursed sight more practised before push comes to shove.” Halice looked towards Suthyfer. “And I want to know what goad Muredarch thinks he’s found today”

Temar looked up at the aftdeck where Usara and Allin were deep in conversation with Guinalle. “How much more do you think the demoiselle can stand?” he asked Halice in a low voice.

“Hard to tell,” the mercenary admitted frankly. “She’s a will of iron, that much is certain but one hard blow can shatter iron. It all depends if she’s cast or wrought.”

That was precious little reassurance to Temar but, as he kept covert watch on Guinalle, he was encouraged to see some of the strain lifting from her face as she discussed whatever it was with Usara.

The Dulse sailed on, flags signalling to the circling Maelstrom that this was an unplanned voyage rather than the expected relief. With the bigger ship resigned to a longer wait, they headed for the entrance to the sound between the islands. Some little while later, Muredarch’s toiling sloop came slowly into view.

“My duty, Messire!” The pirate hailed Temar genially.

Temar bowed his head in curt acknowledgement. “What do you want?”

“What I wanted before.” Muredarch stood high in the stern of the boat, dressed in his customary finery. “Rope, sails, nails and bolts.”

“We’ve already had this conversation.” Temar tried to see who it was a couple of Muredarch’s men had subdued on the single-master’s deck.

“This time I’ve got something I know you want.” Muredarch nodded to his subordinates and a heavy-set, thickly bearded man hauled up an unresisting prisoner.

“He should go bareheaded before his Sieur, Greik,” Muredarch said in mock rebuke. The pirate pulled the sacking off the prisoner’s head.

Temar fought to keep his face impassive and his voice level as Naldeth was revealed. “I want all of my people, not one at a time.”

Naldeth was pale with fear beneath bruises and filth, and a scarlet sore festered on one arm. He wore nothing beyond ragged breeches belted with a strip of cloth, bare feet cut and swollen. Temar’s stomach turned as he saw the wizard’s cringe of fear at an unexpected movement by the pirate Greik.

“You want some more than others.” Muredarch nodded to another man who heaved the contents of a bucket over the rail. Blood and entrails floated across the gently rippling sea. “My friends from the north want this lad given over to them,” Muredarch continued conversationally. “Seems he’s one of your mageborn.”

“Is he?” Temar’s attempt at bluff was futile at best. “Any man I can’t brand is touched with some sorcery,” snapped Muredarch before recovering his poise. “My friends from the north are all for turning his head inside out with their enchantments but I thought you might like to trade your boy for a few concessions.”

He nodded to the man with the beard who promptly punched Naldeth in the kidneys. As the mage’s knees buckled, the pirate knotted a rope securely around his chest.

“Let’s see just how much you value your friends.” Mure-darch’s voice was silky with menace and he stepped aside as Greik hauled Naldeth on to the tiny afterdeck. A second sailor flung a noisome bucketful of blood and butchered bones into the sea. Temar saw sharply angled fins cutting the water beneath the sloop’s stern but these were not the dolphins that frolicked on the ship’s carvings.

“Sharks,” growled Halice at Temar’s side. “I’d heard tell this was a game with the worst of pirates.”

Dark ominous shapes were gliding below the surface of the sea, vanishing only to reappear in the shadows of the boats, blue-grey fins broaching the ruffled waves, some tipped with white, some with black.

“All I want is to refit a ship and have your seal agreeing my writ runs in these islands.” Muredarch spoke with the reasonable air of a peaceable man. “I can be of considerable service to you and yours.”

Temar cleared his throat. “Rule over these islands is not mine to grant.”

Muredarch leaned back on the stern rail as Greik tied off the other end of the rope holding Naldeth. “You have the Emperor’s ear, you have highly placed friends in Hadrumal. With your word backing me, they won’t argue the roll of the runes.”

“You have an exaggerated opinion of my consequence,” Temar said coldly. “Neither Emperor Tadriol nor Archmage Planir will accept my decree on this.”

Muredarch shook his head. “But your man here, since he’s so desperate to convince us he’s worth less than the shit on my shoe, says Emperor and Archmage both have left you to your own devices and won’t come running to rescue him or anyone else. Well, they can hardly complain when you make dispositions of land and trade as you see fit. Especially when you’re forced into it.”

Temar stared at Muredarch, determined to avoid catching Naldeth’s eye. “We will not be intimidated by scum like you.”

“Then we have a problem. Or rather, your friend here does.” Muredarch considered the quaking wizard, head on one side. “Not enough blood on him, Greik.”

The bearded man forced Naldeth towards Muredarch who drew his dagger with slow, deliberate malice and scored burning lines across Naldeth’s bare chest. The mage writhed in a vain attempt to evade the torment but the bearded pirate held him firm.

“Planir may not involve himself in Kellarin’s affairs but harm one of Hadrumal’s own and by Saedrin’s very keys, he’ll involve himself in yours!” shouted Temar furiously.

At Muredarch’s nod, Greik turned Naldeth to show everyone aboard the Dulse a bold letter M carved into the mage, flourishes at the end of every stroke. “Can’t brand him but can carve him.” Muredarch shook his head. “If only I’d thought of that earlier. But then, we’d never have uncovered your wizard. Some good comes from every mistake, that’s what my father would say.”

“You witless son of a poxed whore,” Halice called out. “If you knew your father it was only thanks to him being some brothel-keeper’s runner.”

Muredarch ignored her. “Now, do we start high on the tally and I come down a notch or so for every mouthful you lose of your man? No. Let’s see if you’ve the stones to play for high stakes, boy. Give me what I want and you have him back whole. Hold out and the price goes up.”

“I’m playing no games with you.” Temar turned from the rail to see the horrified faces of Usara and Allin. Guinalle stood between them, face pale as bone and her eyes like hollows in a skull.

A despairing cry and a splash forced Temar back to the sea. Greik had thrown Naldeth overboard and the wizard was struggling to tread water, looking in all directions, hands searching for any hold on the harsh planks of the boat, new scrapes only adding to the blood in the water. Predatory fins swept towards him in long inquisitive arcs.

Greik laughed as Muredarch jerked the rope tied beneath Naldeth’s arms and then took hold himself. “Steady,” warned Muredarch. The rest of the pirates balanced the trim of the sloop, every face showing they’d seen this game played out before.

A notched fin flew straight as an arrow at the struggling mage. It disappeared beneath the water and Naldeth’s scream was a rising note of pure agony cut short with a gasping gurgle as something wrenched him beneath the roiling water. More fins jostled in an ever-decreasing circle.

“Pull!” Muredarch was intent as any fisherman casting a lazy line over a peaceful pond. He jerked the rope and the two of them hauled Naldeth bodily from the sea. The mage hung limp, white body dripping with seawater, scarlet blood gushing from the ragged stump where one leg had been bitten clean off just below the knee.

A questing snout broached the surface, black eyes like jet in the blunt grey head, gaping mouth lined with teeth more terrible than the most murderous mantrap. The shark dropped back into the water, pale belly uppermost for a moment before it disappeared into the perilous depths. An arrow, shot without sanction from the Dulse, struck the water and floated away, useless.

Naldeth began coughing and retching up salt water. Greik reached down to haul him up and the mage clung on the stern rail, remaining foot flailing in midair. To Temar’s astonishment, Muredarch briskly tied a tourniquet around Naldeth’s bleeding thigh.

“We can keep this up for some while, boy,” the pirate said confidently. “Well, depending on how lively Greik manages that rope. We’ve had a man live through the loss of both arms and legs, haven’t we, lads?” He patted the wizard’s sodden and matted head as the sloop’s crew dutifully chuckled.

Halice gripped Temar’s forearm. “Give the word and I’ll fill that bastard so full of arrows, they won’t need wood to build a pyre under him!”

“Can we kill them all?” Temar set his jaw. “And who takes that privy rat’s place? Most likely one of Ilkehan’s enchanters. Do we raise the stakes that high?”

“We want him looking this way, don’t we?” Halice was not deterred.

Temar could hear Usara and Allin whispering urgently to Guinalle. Were they as appalled at what he was doing as he was himself?

“Nothing to offer?” Muredarch sighed with false regret. “Time for another dipping.”

Greik pushed the hapless mage off the rail, heedless of his cries of anguish.

“Then do it as fast as you can!” Guinalle hung back, face twisted with concentration as Allin and Usara stepped forward to the Dulse’s rail.

A crack of thunder from the clear blue sky silenced Muredarch even as a shaft of lightning hissed into the sea by Naldeth’s head. Another and another split the water with blinding light and scattered the sharks. Muredarch raised his bloodied dagger at Temar but his words went unheard among shouts of alarm as the seas beneath the pirates’ hull bucked and heaved. Muredarch clung to the stern rail, face ugly, only to recoil a moment later as a golden shaft of lightning split the wood, cutting the rope holding Naldeth. The polished lamps exploded, shards of glass cutting Muredarch’s hands and face. A pirate tumbled screaming into the water but even with the sharks fled, no one threw him a rope.

“Allin, quick!” gasped Guinalle as Naldeth’s unconscious body was lifted on a swathe of dusky light. Usara was still intent on the pirates, a blazing thunderbolt shattering the sloop’s single mast and exploding into knives of light to shred the tumbling sails.

“Sink the bastards!” Halice raised one hand as archers on the Dulse’s ratlines waited for her signal.

Usara’s face twisted with concentration. Magic-tainted mist like bloodstained gossamer rose from the hostile sea to thicken around the pirates who slapped with rising panic at coils tightening around their arms and heads. The magic dissolved at their touch but the threatening tendrils reappeared a moment later. The pirates’ shouts cracked with fear.

“Stop, all of you!” screamed Guinalle. The noblewoman pressed her hands to her temples, eyes closed and face white. Naldeth thudded senseless on to the Dulse’s deck.

“Help me, somebody.” Allin was on her knees beside him, breaking her nails on the viciously tight tourniquet. His swollen thigh was dark with blood, cruel contrast to his pale, wasted body.

“One shot! Make ’em pay!” Halice swept her hand down. Shafts hissed through the air and pirates cursed and yelled as the arrowheads bit home.

“If we’ve no sails then we cursed well row! Get the sweeps out!” Muredarch was down among his men, tossing a corpse overboard before dragging at a long oar himself. “So, Tormalin Sieur, this is how you dishonour truce.” Muredarch stood up, unafraid. “You’ve a lot to learn, boy, if you’re ever to have men keep faith with you!”

With the long sweeps now deployed, the pirates strained to pull themselves out of bowshot.

“You broke faith first!” Temar’s rage got the better of him before he realised he sounded like a petulant child.

Muredarch laughed scornfully. “I’ve a whole stockade full of slaves and the ocean’s full of sharks. Let’s see who sickens of this game first!” He turned his back on Temar to lend a hand and encouragement as his sweating men fled for the sound between the islands.

“Can’t you sink it?” Halice demanded of Usara.

“Not with Muredarch’s enchanters ready to pounce.” Usara looked to Guinalle who nodded tight-lipped confirmation.

“We have to get him ashore.” Allin looked up at Temar. She had the stump of Naldeth’s leg raised across her lap, swathing the torn and ragged flesh in linen torn from someone’s shirt. Crushed splinters of bone were impeding her, blood running between her fingers and staining her cuffs. Guinalle dropped to her knees to cradle Naldeth’s head.

“I can raise us a wind,” Usara offered.

Guinalle opened her eyes for a moment. “No. They’re seeking us with every art they can summon.”

“Back,” Temar waved to the Dulse’s captain. “Fast as you can.”

Usara glared after the vanished pirates. “I could slaughter that whole nest of vermin with every torment of magic I could think of.”

“Help us lift him,” Allin demanded. “Careful. Keep that leg raised.”

With Guinalle steadying his head, Temar and Usara carried Naldeth into the stern cabin, Allin looking to his wounded leg and remaining foot. For all their care, a lurch of the ship caught them unawares, jolting Naldeth and forcing a moan from beneath his gritted teeth.

“On the bunk.” Usara and Temar laid Naldeth down and Allin began stripping away linen already soaked with blood to study the open wound. She covered it again with a light layer of clean cloth. “We have to stop this bleeding and that means cautery,” she said bluntly. “I daren’t use magic, not with him being mageborn and in such pain. It’ll have to be hot irons.”

The cloying scent of blood was rapidly filling the cramped cabin. Temar realised he was feeling sick and swallowed hard. That left him feeling both empty and nauseous, his mouth dry. The cabin darkened and Halice filled the doorway. “I’ll see to that,” she said grimly.

“Will you be able to?” Temar took the stained dressings Allin held out to him and then wondered what to do with them. “I mean, if they couldn’t brand him.”

Allin stroked Naldeth’s forehead. “Go and find anything that might dull the pain; tahn, thassin, spirits. Ask all the sailors.”

“Let me do that.” Usara followed Halice out of the cabin. Temar would have gone too but Naldeth suddenly writhed on the bunk. “Hold him,” Allin cried in alarm and Temar forced the mage’s shoulders back on the blankets. Naldeth’s eyes stayed closed, lips drawn back from clenched teeth, panting breaths rasping in his throat. A pulse beat fast and ragged in the hollow of his neck. Temar held him, expecting heat to sear his hands at any moment.

“Apple brandy.” Usara appeared at the door, offering a dark bottle sewn into a leather sleeve.

“Use liquor to clean the wound,” said Guinalle from the corner where she was standing, eyes unseeing as she worked some Artifice. “It won’t help the bleeding to have him drink it.” She looked at Usara. “The enchanters are trying to read Muredarch’s intentions. Now we are retreating, they have no interest in harassing us. You could speed us home with some small magic worked just around the ship. But I cannot keep watch for you,” she warned, eyes huge, “not if I’m helping Naldeth bear the pain of the cautery”

“Usara knows some elemental defences against Artifice,” Allin was still concentrating on Naldeth’s stump, fingers pressing tight to stem the bleeding. Temar moved closer to the door and seized the chance for a breath of fresher air as the mage departed.

Guinalle laid a gentle hand on Naldeth’s forehead. “Concentrate on my touch, on my voice. Let me take you away from the pain.”

The stricken wizard flinched but Guinalle persisted with gentle, inexorable hands bending close to whisper her incantations. Naldeth swallowed a sob, deep in his throat, eyes rolling beneath flickering lids. Gradually his laboured breathing slowed, the rigid tension lessening down his body.

Temar saw tears trickling down Allin’s face. She sniffed irritably, trying to scrub her cheek dry on her shoulder. Temar dug in a pocket for his kerchief and went to dry her face. As she mouthed her gratitude, he thought how remarkably sweet her smile could be.

“Mind your backs.” Halice held the cabin door open as the Dulse’s shipwright carried in a small brazier held tight between thickly padded leather gloves. His apprentice followed, lugging a hefty slab of slate. “Set it down there.” The shipwright steadied the brazier as it rested on the tile. “I don’t know what irons you might want, my lady, so I brought a fair selection.” The lad ground pincers, tongs, a small prybar and a plain length of iron into the glowing charcoal.

Allin pulled on a glove the apprentice offered her. As she took the iron bar from the coals, the end glowed with a white heat the brazier could never have imparted. “Hold his leg for me,” she appealed to Temar.

Catching his lip between his teeth, Temar knelt to grip Naldeth’s thigh as steadily as he could. Allin quickly uncovered the butchered flesh, fresh blood flowing from the ruin of torn skin, chewed muscle and sheared bone. Temar had to turn his face away. He’d seen his share of battlefield injuries but this was worse, a man so savaged by a mindless seabeast.

Allin bent closer to wield the thick bar with the delicacy of a fine pen picking through a manuscript. Naldeth whimpered and Temar felt his thigh tense beneath his hands. This close to Guinalle and with all that linked them, he sensed her fighting every impulse that screamed at the mage to rip himself away from this torment. The stink of burning flesh assaulted Temar’s nostrils, stinging his eyes but he could not turn away, lest he hinder Allin, lest he meet Naldeth’s eyes.

“Nearly done,” Allin murmured. The second application of the iron only took a moment but the smell was just as bad. Feeling Naldeth falling slackly unconscious, Temar couldn’t help clapping a hand to his mouth.

“He’s out of his senses.” Guinalle tried to stand but her knees gave way and she would have fallen if Temar hadn’t caught her. She began to retch, catching them both by surprise.

“Outside.” Temar gripped her around the waist. “Come on.”

Allin, moisture beading her forehead, continued determinedly dressing Naldeth’s stump with fresh linen. “Not for the moment.”

Temar realised sweat was sticking his own shirt to his back as he half escorted, half dragged Guinalle out on to the main deck. The noblewoman was ashen but the salt-scented breeze saved her from vomiting.

“It’s working Artifice on water,” she said faintly. “I just need a moment before I go back.”

“Is he going to die?” Temar dragged clean air deep into his lungs and his own nausea faded.

“Not just at present.” Guinalle smoothed her braids with shaking hands.

“Then you work no more healing on him until we are safe on land,” Temar told her bluntly. “You push yourself too hard.”

“Who else is there?” Guinalle glared at him.

“For combating the Elietimm enchanters, no one,” Temar retorted. “So I will not permit you to exhaust yourself tending Naldeth. Sailors and mercenaries have lost legs before now and lived through it without aetheric healing. I’m sure Halice and Master Jevon know what to do.”

“You will not permit me?” Rage lent a spurious colour to Guinalle’s pale cheeks. “How do you intend stopping me? What right have you to command me when your callousness cost that poor boy his leg in the first place?”

“Me?” Temar gaped at her.

“You could have had him safe and whole!” Guinalle stabbed an accusing finger in Temar’s chest. “For the sake of some nails and some sailcloth!”

“And that would have been the end of it?” Temar folded his arms to stop himself slapping Guinalle’s hand away. “Don’t be so foolish! Yield once to a bully and he comes back asking for twice and thrice.”

“What price a man’s life?” cried Guinalle.

“What price would Muredarch settle for, once he had me on the run?” countered Temar angrily. “He plans to hold these islands for his own and Kellarin can go hang for all he cares. We stand against him now or he’ll bleed us dry and spit out the husk.”

“This has been a trying day for all of us.” Usara’s hand closed on Temar’s arm, catching him unawares. “Why don’t you leave this discussion for some other time, somewhere a little less public?” For all his peaceable words, the wizard’s voice was tight with anger.

Guinalle blushed a ferocious scarlet, turning her face out to sea, back stiff with outrage.

Temar took a measured breath. “What have you there?”

Usara carried a haphazard collection of jars and bottles in a frayed wicker basket. “Half the sailors seem to have some shrine-sanctioned cure-all in their sea chest, or a salve with the seal of the Imperial Apothecary.”

Guinalle looked over her shoulder. “Do you know what’s in them?”

Usara shrugged. “Not really.”

“I’ll see what Allin and I can make of them.” Guinalle took the basket without ceremony. Usara would have followed her to the cabin but Temar caught him by the arm.

“I didn’t start that. It was Guinalle.” Sounding like a whining apprentice again, Temar thought crossly.

“What has that to do with anything?” Usara was unforgiving. “You’re our leader and you should be setting an example.”

“By refusing to give in to extortion?” Did no one appreciate his impossible position? Temar shook his head. “Never mind. It’s Guinalle I’m worried about.”

Usara’s annoyance softened to wary concern. “You and me both, but she insists she’s all right.”

Temar waved a hand in frustration. “She’s like a lyre some fool’s tuned to too high a pitch. We may get some fine music for a while but she could snap without warning and then we’ll have no strings to our bow at all.”

“I believe that expression refers to the weapon rather than the music tool.” Usara tried for levity with a resounding lack of success.

“Adepts are trained to suppress their emotions away from their enchantments. Guinalle’s so very effective at using Artifice because she’s so very good at divorcing herself from her feelings.” Temar hesitated. “But she used to allow herself to feel pleasure, to relax, enjoy a dance, a flirtation, just like any other girl.” He gave the wizard a hard look. “Don’t you admire her?”

“I hold her in the highest esteem,” Usara said awkwardly. “She has a remarkable mind.”

“Take it from me, she’s as much woman as intellect,” Temar said fervently. “But she’s forgotten that and that’s just making things worse. You’re probably the only person who can remind her, soothe her to some proper relaxation.” He gave the wizard a meaningful look.

“Are you suggesting I roll her into a handy bunk and tumble her into a more amenable temper?” Usara was caught between incredulity and outrage.

Temar blushed scarlet but held his ground. “If that’s what it takes. Don’t tell me you don’t want to.”

“I’ll tell you to mind your own business.” Usara rubbed a hand over his beard. “And I’ll write off your crashing lack of tact against the stresses of today. And since we’re talking so frankly, Messire, may I suggest you look to your own affairs?” He turned on his heel and disappeared into the stern cabin before Temar had any chance to reply.

That could have gone better, Temar thought gloomily. No, curse it, someone had to get through to Guinalle and Usara was the man to do it. He wondered about joining Halice on the forecastle where she was talking to Master Jevon. Would she congratulate him for defying Muredarch or blame him for Naldeth’s mutilation? Would she just be furious with him for not killing all the pirates out of hand, parley or no? How many such outrages would Raeponin have tallied against Halice’s name when she came to render her account to Saedrin? Temar wondered sourly. Maybe it was different if you were a mercenary.

The Dulse sped on, cleaving through the great swells rolling in from the endless ocean. The vessel swayed as the helmsman turned their course to ride the waves. Temar stared at the rise and fall of the waters, catching every detail of windblown spume, every glint and shade of sunlight on the dense blue. How did those birds so blithely riding the vanishing crests find fish in this vast emptiness? Did they sleep on the waters or fly back to land to roost for the night? Had anyone ever seen those birds but those few who’d discovered these isles lost in the deepest ocean?

No, he decided, he wasn’t going to think about Suthyfer. He’d been telling Guinalle she needed to set her problems aside for a while so the very least he could do was take his own advice. But how was he going to find an answer to Muredarch’s threat? Never pull a rope against a stronger man, that’s what his grandsire had always said.

A soft step beside him roused Temar from his fruitless thoughts. It was Allin, her sombre brown dress stained with blood and water, a smear of unguent greasy on one sleeve. Her round face was sad, brown eyes vulnerable, and a quiver tugged at the corners of her downturned mouth.

“Am I needed?” asked Temar, bracing himself.

Allin shook her head, silent for a moment before answering. “No, Guinalle and Usara are sitting with Naldeth.” She managed a wry smile. “They’re debating theories of magic so I thought I’d get some fresh air.”

“Theories of magic?” Temar was confused.

The mage-girl nodded. “Usara recalls some ages-old treatise arguing elemental affinity is an extension of the five physical senses into the unseen realms of nature. They’re trying to decide if there are any correspondences between this theory and this doctrine of the five wits that Guinalle says underpins Artifice. He’s always had this notion that there must be fundamental balances underpinning everything.” She sounded sceptical.

“Guinalle needs to rest, not boil her brain with puzzles,” said Temar, exasperated.

Allin’s short laugh surprised him. “Actually, I think they both find a little intellectual debate welcome distraction from the bloody reality we’ve been dealing with.”

Then they were welcome to it, Temar thought. “How is Naldeth?”

Allin drew an abrupt breath and squared her shoulders. “Insensible but the bleeding has stopped.”

“He owes you his life.” Temar sought to comfort her.

“For the moment.” Allin’s mouth pressed into an unhappy line, tears welling in her eyes. “It’s all rags and gobbets of skin and flesh that will turn to green rot given half a chance and that’ll have him dead inside a couple of days. We have to take the rest of his leg off, mid thigh somewhere and find enough skin to cover the stump.” She was struggling not to weep. “But he’s lost so much blood already, I don’t know he’ll be able to stand it. But, if we delay, we risk the wound festering.”

Not knowing what to say for the best, Temar just gathered her to him, holding her close, silky hair smooth against his cheek.

“If only we could get him to Hadrumal,” Allin sobbed. “But Guinalle says the enchanters will be watching and we’d all be at risk, Naldeth most of all. What do I tell Planir if he dies?”

“Why should he blame you?” Temar fumbled awkwardly for his kerchief to wipe the tears from Allin’s face again. “I’m the one bears the guilt for defying Muredarch.”

Allin gazed up at him, reddened eyes wide. “You couldn’t give in to him!”

“Thank you for that.” Temar kissed her forehead absently. “I only hope a few others agree with you.” Allin’s arms tightened around his waist in mute support, warming him.

“I’m not playing this game again.” Halice’s arrival took them both by surprise. Allin would have moved away but Temar resisted and she stayed in his embrace.

“Muredarch may think he’s got all the runes in his hand but I aim to spoil his fun.” Halice was looking as dangerous as Temar had ever seen her. “He can’t torture us by killing prisoners if we take them off him.”

“You can’t attack while we’re still waiting for Ryshad and Livak to kill Ilkehan.” Temar just about managed to keep his words a statement rather than a question.

“I’m talking a raid, on that cursed stockade of theirs.” Halice’s face was hard and cunning. “We loose the prisoners and take them into the forest. That’ll give Muredarch and his cursed enchanters something new to worry about while we wait for ’Gren to have his fun.”

Temar realised he’d never quite appreciated just what qualities had raised Halice to such pre-eminence among the mercenaries of Lescar.

Rettasekke, Islands of the Elietimm, 6th of For-Summer

These people have some bizarre ideas about what’s edible,” I murmured to Sorgrad. The time of day suggested this was breakfast but we were served much the same food at every meal. “Didn’t we see a lot of this last night?” Olret might consider himself master of all he surveyed but my mother, mere housekeeper to a prosperous merchant, would have scorned serving up the previous night’s leavings.

“Pickled moss?” Sorgrad innocently offered me a bowl of soused green lumps.

“Thank you, no.” I reached for some tiny sweet berries, topping them with something halfway between thick cream and underpressed cheese that, remarkably enough, didn’t taste of goat. “Oh, you’re not going to eat that!”

’Gren was contemplating a plate of glaucous grey lumps that I’d thought looked unappetising even before I realised that’s where the smell halfway between rancid milk and a plague house privy pit was coming from.

He raised a golden eyebrow at me. “Why not?”

“Suit yourself.” I picked up my spoon. “I’m not sitting near you if you do.”

“All right.” He gave up his teasing and pulled a leg from a vaguely goose-shaped bird. I’d tried some of that the previous evening and would have sworn I’d been eating fish, if I hadn’t carved it for myself.

“Where’s Ryshad?” Shiv cut into a slab of meat too dark and substantial to be a goat so I guessed it must be some seabeast flesh. Perhaps meals would be easier if I just stopped trying to work out what was what.

“Just coming.” I nodded towards the door as I took some bread. There was plenty of that and if the grain and texture were unfamiliar, it did at least taste recognisable.

Ryshad brushed his hand across my shoulder as he passed behind me and pulled up a stool. “This is all very informal.”

“Compared to last night,” Sorgrad agreed, looking the length of the long table at people we’d yet to be introduced to, gathering in small groups, chatting as they helped themselves from the array of bowls and platters.

“What were all those stories about?” asked Ryshad. We’d sat through an interminable if well-presented banquet, all of us seated as Olret’s guests of honour, and the evening had rounded off with endless recitations resounding with the heavy rhythms of ancient Mountain sagas. With upwards of a hundred of Olret’s people packed into the hall and all rapt attention, Sorgrad hadn’t liked to translate.

“Wraiths and wyrms, the usual stuff,” ’Gren answered, mouth full.

“One warned of travellers who turned out to come from behind the sunset.” Sorgrad chewed and swallowed. “It reminded me of a Gidestan tale about the Eldritch Kin, though that’s not what they called them.”

“Pass the water, please.” Shiv looked thoughtful. “Geris reckoned myths of the Eldritch Kin were half-remembered tales of the Plains People.”

I took some of the wonderfully clean-tasting water for myself after pouring a horn cupful for Shiv. “What do we make of that?”

“Another curiosity for the scholars of Vanam?” Ryshad hazarded.

“There were a good few tales of life among the Elietimm here.” I looked to Sorgrad for confirmation.

“Which bear out what Olret was saying about no overlords,” he nodded. “And it seems the lowest born can end up ruling a clan hereabouts if he can convince enough people to back him.”

“If he’s got the stones for it.” ’Gren was unimpressed. “Half those tales were about someone with a bit of gumption coming to a bad end. Where’s the fun in that?”

“Bad and bold got exiled or worse while meek and mild got enough to eat and saw his grandchildren thrive,” I said to Ryshad.

He considered this. “So while anyone could rise to rule in theory, in practice, the strong hand their power to their sons?”

“Sort of.” I frowned. My knowledge of the Mountain tongue had been found wanting a good few times. “I wasn’t quite clear on the daughters, Sorgrad.” According to Mountain custom, the wealth of their mines and forests was always passed down the female line, which did make sense when you wanted to keep such resources within the family. There will always be women to vouch for a child being born to a particular mother but independent witnesses to a conception are never going to be easy to come by.

“From what I could work out, marrying into an established clan bloodline certainly strengthens a claim to power but it’s not set in stone like Anyatimm tradition.” Circumspect, Sorgrad surveyed the hall and the people coming to and from the table.

“They don’t like their women getting above themselves,” I commented. Several tales had mentioned in passing wives who’d abandoned their husbands for some intrepid lover and either starved in exile or died a bloody death with every hand raised against them.

Sorgrad was still considering Ryshad’s question. “Their songs praise hard work and keeping your head down but if you don’t, just as long as you win, no one condemns you for it. That final song started with a woman who shirked her duty to expose a child born to her husband’s concubine. The boy lived, ran wild as he grew and finally returned from exile to burn his father’s house down around his ears, killing everyone inside. The son ruled and no one gainsaid his right, by conquest as well as by blood.”

“That was the song Olret cut short?” asked Shiv.

I nodded. “Doubtless because that’s the kind of tradition Ilkehan relies on.”

“And there’s no overlord or union of the other rulers to keep anyone inclined to abuse his power in check.” Ryshad grimaced. “It used to be any two leaders with a dispute would agree on a third to act as mediator, lawspeaker,” Sorgren looked grim. “But that’s a tradition Ilkehan seems to have killed off.”

We all fell silent as a maidservant appeared to collect empty plates and make up full dishes from half-emptied ones.

A resounding blow on the double doors interrupted everyone’s meal. The leathery-faced retainer Maedror entered, swinging his bone staff as if he’d like to hit someone with it. A liveried guard followed, apprehension naked on his face as he dragged in a cowering hound. Brindled and bred for coursing by its long slender legs and narrow head, it was a pitiful-looking beast, cowering on its creamy underbelly. As it fought against the leash with heart-rending whines, we all saw the bloody socket where some scum had gouged out one of its eyes.

Furious, Maedror shouted at a maid who took to her heels. We all sat tight, along with everyone else caught unawares by this turn of events. Those servants who could, vanished behind the wall hangings. Olret soon came into the hall at a run, tunic unbelted over loose trews and shod in slippers of soft cured hide rather than his lordly boots. He skidded to a halt when he saw the brindled cur.

“What is that?” With Olret spacing his words with deliberate cold calm, I easily understood.

Maedror’s reply was too hasty and stumbling to be clear but I caught the word Ilkehan. A chill ran through the room as if someone had opened a window on to a blizzard.

Olret walked slowly down the hall. He circled the whimpering dog, bending to look more closely at its rump. The beast crouched low, tail tucked between its legs. Infuriated, Olret snatched Maedror’s staff and smashed the wrist-thick bone down on the dog, snapping its spine with an audible crack. The beast howled its uncomprehending anguish, back legs useless, bowels and bladder voiding on the floor. Its front paws scrabbled at the flagstones for a nerve-shredding moment then Olret brought the butt of the staff down to stave in its skull. But that was not enough. He pounded the sorry corpse, blood and brain spattering everywhere. Heedless of his footwear, he kicked the ruined mess of skin and bone time and again, sending gory smears across the floor.

Revolted, I didn’t dare look away. No one else had moved so much as a hair, not even the guard with the leash biting into his fingers. Maedror stood as still as a statue, even when Olret, panting with exertion, flung the staff at him. The heavy bone, dull with blood and muck clattered to the floor as Maedror failed to catch it. Olret glared at his retainer with almost the hatred he’d shown for the dog. Maedror bent to recover the staff and even halfway down the hall, we saw the fear in his face.

’Gren nudged me with a whisper. ”If that’s the local sport, I don’t reckon much to it.” Fighting for ’Gren is only fun if your opponent can appreciate the pain and danger coming his way.

“Shut up,” Sorgrad said quietly.

Olret bent over the ravaged corpse of the dog and lifted one back leg. Whatever he saw warranted a slow nod. The ill-fated guard ducked away, expecting a blow as Olret whipped round but he simply marched up the hall, face like carved stone. His soft, stained footwear betrayed him and, slipping, he nearly fell. No one so much as smiled as he paused to strip his feet bare.

“You, come with me.” He summoned us with a bloodied finger.

A lackey got to the door barely a breath ahead of his master and flung it open. We followed hastily as Olret took the main stairs of the keep two and three at a time. With Maedror hard on our heels, we passed the floor with the rooms we’d been granted and continued without pause for breath up the next flight of stairs. Olret turned down the corridor and halted before a solid door.

“Ilkehan sent me that dog as a gift for my son.” Emotion cracked the cold mask of his face. “They met on neutral ground at Equinox to agree truce terms. If they had not met, Ilkehan could claim the right to do whatever he pleased. You may see how Ilkehan returned my son to me.”

He opened the door and beckoned us into a hushed and shuttered room, richly furnished by local standards, coffers set along one wall, cushioned chairs along the other, bed hung with embroidered curtains. A still figure lay in the bed beneath a light coverlet. The boy was Temar’s age, perhaps a little younger. It was hard to tell with the bandages swathing the youth’s corn-coloured head. Yellowish matter stained the linen over what I could only assume was an eye socket as empty as the dog’s. A nurse looked at us warily from her cross-stool where the slats in the shutters offered light for her sewing. Olret summoned her with a peremptory hand. Her slow movements betrayed her reluctance as she lifted back the blanket with gentle hands. The lad was naked beneath the soft wool but for the bandages covering his groin which were stained with unmistakable foulness. Now I understood Olret’s reaction to the dog.

The pitiful figure on the bed stirred and his nurse re-covered him, Olret hustling us out of the room. “I do not know whether to wish that he lives or he dies to be spared the knowledge of such mutilations.” He spoke as if every word were torture. “I cannot stand to see how he looks at me.”

“Which is why Ilkehan didn’t take both his eyes.” Sorgrad was coldly furious. In all the years I’d known him, I could count the number of times I’d seen that on the fingers of one hand. I’d also seen the bloody consequences. What people didn’t appreciate was Sorgrad was really far more dangerous than his brother. ’Gren only ever acted on impulse. Sorgrad thought out precisely what mayhem he intended.

Ryshad’s face was a study in disgust. “Do such crimes go unpunished?”

Olret looked at Sorgrad and to Shiv. “Will you truly kill Ilkehan or spend your lives in the attempt? If I help you, will you tell him at the last that you act for my son?”

“I’ll carve the boy’s name on his forehead myself,” promised Sorgrad. My heart sank a little since that was no idle boast.

Olret held his gaze for a long moment then nodded with satisfaction. “Carve Aretrin, down to the very bone.”

“Perhaps Forest lore can ease your son,” I offered slowly. Halcarion help me, if there was some charm to at least save the lad the agonies of death by wound rot, I should try it.

“I will attack one of Ilkehan’s outposts, that you may reach his lands unnoticed.” Olret ignored me, addressing Sorgrad, Ryshad and Shiv. “Come, I will show you.” He turned down the corridor towards the lesser set of stairs.

I stayed put, to see what the reaction would be. There was none. ’Gren stood beside me, watching the others go. “We’re the spare donkeys in this mule train.” He didn’t seem concerned. ”Nice to know this Olret’s got as much reason to hate Ilkehan as we have.”

“Hmm.” I wasn’t so sanguine. “Olret might have provoked him. Sow thistles and you’ll reap prickles after all.”

“You don’t trust him,” said ’Gren with eager curiosity.

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “I don’t know who we’re dealing with and that always makes me uneasy. Remember that business with Cordainer?”

“Our man’s certainly got something to hide,” agreed ’Gren. “Did you see that gate on the stair?”

“No.” What had I missed?

“This way.”

’Gren led me back to the main stair. A metal gate barred the turn on the next flight, mortared firmly into the stone and secured with the first half-decent lock I’d seen on these islands. ”What do you suppose he’s hiding up there?”

A liveried guard appeared on the stairs below and stared up at us with undisguised suspicion. I turned ’Gren with a firm hand and we went down past the guard. I favoured him with a reassuring smile but all I got back was a mistrustful glower.

“What now?” ’Gren demanded sulkily. “I’m not sitting around getting bored while they fuss over maps and tactics and all the rest of it.”

Not eager for more of Olret’s snubs, I’d already thought of a better use for my time. “Why don’t we see what these people reckon to our host? If his own folk like him, maybe we can trust him.”

“Where shall we start?” asked ’Gren obligingly.

“Shall we see what keeps everyone so busy?” I led the way out through the main hall. The yard around the keep was empty apart from a few guards practising with wooden staves bound with leather to save them from splintering. Scarce wood was well looked after around here.

“They move well.” ’Gren’s was an expert eye.

“They probably start training them in their leading strings,” I commented. Even without Artifice to back them, we’d have found any Elietimm fighting force formidable opponents.

We passed through the main gate without anyone raising a question.

“Let’s see what the boats have brought in,” ’Gren suggested with lively interest.

It was more basketfuls of glittering fish about the length of a man’s hand poured in silver torrents into long troughs where mothers and grandmothers ripped them open with practised knives. Lads barely higher than my shoulder dragged baskets of gutted fish to another set of troughs where girls of all ages washed them clean. Several whistled and hummed tunes with a compulsive lilt to put a spring in a step. I wondered idly if there was any Artifice in the music, to drive these people on beyond weariness and tedium. That would suit what I knew of Elietimm cold-heartedness. Beyond them, a square of sombre old men layered the cleaned fish into barrels, adding judicious handfuls of salt and spice. A cooper stood ready to seal them.

“Fish to eat all winter,” said ’Gren without enthusiasm.

“More than enough for the people hereabouts.” None of whom so much as paused in their work to glance at us.

“You heard them last night. There’s farms and holdings all over this island.” ’Gren shrugged. “They’ve all sent people to help with the glut.”

Such rural concerns never bothered me in Vanam where I bought fish, pickled or dried from those merchants my mother favoured with her master’s coin. Some of them made a tidy profit from the trade. Questions teased me as we watched the islanders work. Did Olret’s people truly eat all the fruits of their labours? Where did he get the spice to flavour the brine? I’d eat one of those little fish raw and unboned if pepper grew anywhere in these islands. Come to that, where did he get all the wood for these barrels? I reckoned he was being a little too coy about what trade he had with the world beyond these barren rocks. No wonder Olret was keen to see Ilkehan dead, if the bastard was sinking any ships but his own venturing on to the ocean. That was some reassurance; I’ll generally trust a motive that can be weighed in solid coin.

’Gren coughed. ”Let’s go somewhere fresher.”

Beyond the gutting and salting, men and women were carving bigger fish into long fillets with wickedly sharp knives. More lads were hanging them on racks set to catch the wind while a gang of smaller children gathered discarded heads and spread them out to dry. An earlier harvest of stockfish was stacked flat beneath heavy stones and the last moisture drained slowly into a fishy slick coating the beaten earth, lapped at by eager cats just waiting for a chance to sneak closer.

A young woman saw me looking at the fish heads and paused in her work, bending a wrist to brush back a blond lock straying from her close-tied headscarf. “For winter, for the goats.”

“Ah, I see.” Then they’d even have milk that tasted of fish.

“You are visiting?”

“From the west.”

’Gren beamed back blatant appreciation of the shapely figure beneath her coarse and salt-stained bodice.

She would have replied but froze at a sharp rebuke from an older woman further along the stone workbench. ’Gren swept a bow to the sour old hag but she was intent on her filleting.

“Maybe you’d better rein in the charm,” I suggested as we strolled towards the distant edge of the settlement.

“You can’t ask that, not with so many fine-looking women,” he protested. “And precious few men to go around.”

He was right. “They’re all out fishing?” I guessed.

“Not at this time of day.” ’Gren shook his head. “Let’s see if these beauties have any answers.” We’d reached a high-walled enclosure holding more of the elusive goats. I was surprised to see how patiently they stood as girls combed the winter’s growth from their thick coats, filling baskets with soft tangles of woolly hair.

A buxom lass stood upright to ease her back and smiled shyly at ’Gren. Two other lasses looked up from their work with ill-concealed interest. “Good day to you.” ’Gren rested his chin on his hands atop the wall. “Don’t let me disturb you.”

An older woman, possibly the girls’ mother, certainly looking out for their interests, assessed him in much the same way she was sorting the hanks of goat hair.

I smiled at her. “That makes wonderfully soft blankets, doesn’t it?”

If I’d been a goat, she wouldn’t have treated me to any fish heads. ’Gren on the other hand was winning covert approval from all of them.

“See what you can get out of them without me around.” I slapped ’Gren on the shoulder, speaking in the gutter slang of Selerima. “I’ll meet you back at the keep in a while.”

’Gren nodded, his eyes on one lass bending forward to tease leaves from a goat’s shaggy forelock and artlessly offering him a fine view of her cleavage.

“We’re here to make friends, not babies,” I reminded him.

“I’ll stay chaste as a dowerless maidservant — until I know what the penalty for flipping a girl’s frills might be,” he added with a sly smile.

I poked him in the chest. “I was a dowerless maidservant, so you’d better stay a cursed more chaste than that.”

“I’m hardly going to tumble the first girl who flutters her lashes at me,” he protested. “Not when there are so many to choose from.”

“I’ll see you later.” Given how much ’Gren enjoyed flirtation, I judged I’d be back before he was ready to risk all our necks for the sake of some lass’s white thighs.

As soon as I turned my back, the girls all started talking. As long as he kept his wits out of his breeches, he was well placed to find out a good deal about this place.

The only thing beyond the goat sheds was the pond and the causeway. A narrow-windowed building stood solid in the middle of the rocky dam and closer to, I realised it was a mill. All I’d find there would be busy men who wouldn’t welcome interruption. Where might I find something useful like bored guards ready to gamble and gossip?

I walked idly back towards the keep, passing a building both open-fronted laundry and bathing house. Women pounded coarse, unbleached cloth in tubs filled from a spring that steamed as it bubbled up from the ground. On balance, I’d rather heave wood to boil my water than risk the ground melting beneath me for the sake of easier laundry. Unself-conscious as they stripped, girls were washing themselves clean after their fish gutting, pouring water over each other and soaping themselves with what looked like lengths of fatty hide. ’Gren would be none too pleased to have missed this treat but, given how obsessive these people were about cleanliness, I imagined he’d get another opportunity.

Other girls were giggling and chatting as they sat combing out their damp hair in the sun. I wondered about joining them but they were watching youths wrestling on a smoothed expanse of sun-baked clay. The lads were naked but for belts around their waists linked to leather bands around each thigh by plaited leather straps and a brief loincloth to prevent an opponent getting an unexpected handhold. The object seemed to be to drag your opponent off his feet by these straps. I spared a moment to appreciate the game as well as the players but decided the lasses wouldn’t welcome me.

Then I heard a hastily stifled giggle somewhere behind the laundry. A seemingly casual stroll took me round to a drying yard where shirts and blankets flapped in the breeze. I ducked beneath a swathe of sodden cloth and found a huddle of children shirking whatever tasks they’d been set. Some were throwing knobbly bones from some sizeable fish’s spine into a circle scored on the ground while others tossed a turnip studded with feathers between themselves. They all looked at me with vivid curiosity.

“Good day to you,” I said with a friendly smile.

“What’s your name?” asked a pert little girl with an upturned, freckled nose and dark eyes telling of mixed blood somewhere in her line.

“Livak,” I told her. “What’s yours?”

“Gliffa,” she answered promptly. “You’re not from here.”

“No, I’m not.” I swept a vague arm in the direction of the sea. “My people live in a forest that covers the land with trees taller than your houses.” That should intrigue youngsters from a land where trees rarely reached above knee height.

“What brings you here?” Gliffa was clearly a child always asking questions.

“I wanted to see the sea.” I shrugged.

“What happened to your hair?” demanded a small boy, his own locks close-cropped to little more than gold fuzz.

“Nothing.” I sat down, cross-legged. “It’s always been this colour, same as all my people.”

“Are you gebaedim?” the child asked suspiciously.

That was a word I’d caught last night. I shook my head. “What’s that?”

“Gebaedim live in the western lands.” One of the older girls leaned closer to study my hair and eyes. “They look like real people until they’re out of the sunlight. Then you can see they have shadow-blue skin and black eyes like a beast’s.” Smaller ones who’d been looking distinctly nervous relaxed at her authoritative pronouncement.

So Sorgrad had been right. I smiled again. “We call them the Eldritch Kin.”

“You’ve seen them?” The crop-headed lad’s blue eyes were awestruck.

“No one has, not in a long age.” I shook my head reassuringly. “We tell tales of them. Would you like to hear one?” That won me eager nods all round.

“There once was a man called Marsile who chased a hare inside an Eldritch man’s earthen fort. The Eldritch man made him welcome and offered him guest gifts.” The story of Marsile was one I could tell in my sleep and I gave the children the version my father had told me as a little girl, full of miraculous things like the leaf that prompted fish to throw themselves out of the water when Marsile tossed it into their pond, and the sprig of blossom that made him proof against any fire, even a dragon’s breath. My personal favourite was the purse that called coin to keep company with any he put in it.

“When evening came, Marsile told the Eldritch man he must return home to his wife.” I lowered my voice and leaned forward, the children unconsciously doing the same. “The Eldritch man was angry. He said he had only given the gifts because he thought Marsile intended to marry his daughter and, truth be told, she was a great beauty.” Versions I’d learned later in life detailed the Eldritch maid’s charms in terms emphatically not for children, as well as elaborating on just what Marsile did with her to make the Eldritch man so angry. I moved on to Marsile’s desperate bargaining for his freedom.

“Finally, the Eldritch man agreed to let Marsile go, but,” I raised a warning finger, “only if he remained for one night, while the Eldritch man went to Marsile’s house and took what he wanted, in return for the gifts he had made him. Because, as we all know, a gift once given cannot be taken back.” The children all nodded solemnly; that rule evidently held even in these poverty-stricken lands.

I told them of Marsile’s frantic night worrying about what he might lose, rather than his enthusiastic romping with the Eldritch daughter according to the taproom version. Some stories had the Eldritch man making just as free with Marsile’s wife. In those the hapless man returned to find a year had passed for every chime he’d spent within the earthen ring and the Eldritch man’s final gift to him was a brood of black-haired brats at his hearth and a wife who ever after burned his food as she pined for her magical lover. But that wasn’t a tale for children either. What they wanted was a rousing finish.

“As the sky began to pale, the Eldritch man returned and told Marsile to leave. He warned him he’d release his hounds if Marsile wasn’t beyond the river by daybreak. Marsile ran but the sun came up and he hadn’t reached the river. He heard howls behind him and running paws,” I drummed my hands on my thighs and the little ones shivered. “He ran for his life with barking ever closer. He dared not look back, even when something caught at his cloak. He ripped it off and threw it away, hearing the dogs stop to worry at it. But he soon felt their icy breath on his heels again so he threw away his bag, then his jerkin. He emptied his pockets, he lost the leaf, he lost the enchanted blossom and the magic purse but just as the sun came up over the eastern edge of the land, he reached the river. He threw himself in and swam to the other side.” The children all heaved a sigh of relief.

“He scrambled out and finally looked back.” I paused, looking at the intent faces. “Huge black hounds prowled on the far bank. They had eyes as white as snow and frost dripped from teeth like icicles.” I sat back. “Then the sun melted them into smoke.”

The children cheered and clapped but as always, there was one less appreciative in my audience. “They couldn’t have reached him anyway.” An older lad at the rear of the group spoke up with confident disdain. “Gebaedim can’t cross water.”

“Then how did they get to Kehannasekke—” The lass broke off and looked guiltily at me. I might tell a good story but I was still an adult and I’d bet her braids this wasn’t something they were supposed to discuss.

“We’re safe as long at the hargeard holds.” The older boy scowled at her. “My father said. ”

I saw him nervously tumbling three conical shells and a pea-sized reddish stone from one hand to the other. “What’s that game?”

“Just nonsense for the little ones.” He looked slyly at me. “Could you find the stone?”

I pursed my lips. “How hard can it be?”

“It’s easy,” he assured me, with all the instincts of a born huckster.

“You’re not supposed to play that,” piped up some sanctimonious miss.

“I won’t tell,” I grinned.

The lad glared at the dutiful one. “We’re only playing for fun. That’s allowed.” He sounded a little too defiant for that to be strictly true.

I was happy for him to think we weren’t playing for anything of value as I studied the shells beneath his rapidly moving hands. We play this trick with nutshells and a pea back home and call it the squirrel game. I had been a handful of years older than this lad when I’d first learned it, practising till my fingers cramped once I realised a penniless lass on the road had to choose between deception or prostitution and I had scant inclination for whoring. I knew exactly where the lad’s piece of gravel was and put my finger unerringly on the shell next to it. “There.”

“No!” He’d need to learn how to hide his triumph if he wanted to keep people playing long enough to empty their pockets.

“Let me try again.” We went a few more rounds. I let him win often enough to start feeling cocky but got it right a few times, with suitably feigned deliberation. That kept him keen to prove he could outwit me. Most of the other children returned to their own games.

“How does a hargeard keep you safe from gebaedim? No tale tells how to ward off the Eldritch Kin where I come from.” I picked up the shell to reveal the stone. That was twice in a row.

The lad set his jaw, determined to best me somehow or other. “Gebaedim live beyond the sunset where there’s no light or water,” he told me with lofty superiority. “Where the dead go.”

Which was a fair description of the shades, where the pious would insist those barred from the Otherworld by Saedrin ended up. “What then?”

“The dead have power.” He spoke as if that were self-evident and it certainly fitted with what I knew of Mountain Men’s reverence for their ancestors’ bones. “The hargeard ties their power to the living. As long as we have the lore to use that power, the gebaedim cannot harm us.” He glanced towards Olret’s keep.

“And Olret holds the lore.” I nodded as if he was saying something I already knew. In one sense he was; I’d suspected Olret had some Artifice at his disposal. “But your friend said there are gebaedim in Kehannasekke?”

“So my father says.” The boy looked all too young as he said that, fear shadowing his eyes. “He says Ilkehan uses them in his army, that’s why he’s never been beaten.”

“But Olret holds your hargeard and that keeps you all safe,” I reminded him. I didn’t want nightmares of evildoers arousing parental suspicions about whom the children might have been talking to. I picked up a shell. “There it is. I’ve got the trick of this now”

Three times is always the charm and it worked on the lad. “I’ve played enough. I have work to do.” He stomped off, too cross to fret about Eldritch Kin. As he thrust a sheet out of his path, I saw a small child trying to hide as she was revealed.

“Go away!” Gliffa flapped an angry hand at the little girl. “You’re not to come here.”

The intruder fled, bare feet showing dirty soles. All she wore was a ragged shift, which struck me as odd given the others all wore neat skirts or trews, loving embroidery around the collars of their coarsely woven shirts and chemises, feet snug in tight-sewn leather footwear halfway between boots and stockings.

“Will you tell us another story?” Gliffa asked shyly.

“Maybe later.” I smiled at her. “I’d better go. My friends will be wondering where I am and I wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.” I gave her a conspiratorial smile before walking away just fast enough to see the ragged little girl scamper through the crudely cobbled yard running along the back of storehouses. Adults busy about their tasks ignored her, apart from one man who raised his hand to her in unmistakable threat. She cowered away and vanished through a sally port in the wall around the keep.

The jalquezan refrain from the ballad of Viyenne and the Does should keep me unseen if I could only keep it running through my mind. “Fae dar amenel, sor dar redicorle.” Sure enough, no one so much as glanced my way as I ran silently to catch up with the child. I reached the sally port just soon enough to see the girl scramble in through a window that quick calculation told me must open on to the lesser stair.

Hitched up, her shift showed a painfully thin rump and legs barely more than skin and bone. That starveling little lass wasn’t eating her fill of fishy-tasting birds or meaty seabeasts and sneaking in through a window suggested she was up to no good. Neglected like this, all she’d have to fill her belly was resentment. If I could catch her, I might be able to tempt her to tell me some less pleasant truths about this place.

There was no one in sight but I still kept up the charm as I squeezed myself through the narrow window. I could hear the lass’s breathless running up the stair, bare feet whispering on the stone. She didn’t halt at the floor above the great hall, nor yet at the next, hurrying on up. I kept pace with her, flattening myself against the wall and peering around the corner to see her meet another of those iron gates. Which were all very well, unless you were thin enough to squeeze through the bars. I watched as the child threaded herself carefully through, the fattest thing about her the woolly animal she clutched by one leg. That was easily squashed and pulled after her. She paused to reshape her treasure, kissing the nameless beast with passionate apology before disappearing up the stairs.

A memory struck me with all the force of a blow to the head. I’d seen that woolly beast before now and I could recall exactly where. That little girl had been barely walking but she’d carried it through the halls of the Shernasekke house that we’d seen reduced to ruins. How had she escaped that destruction? If Olret had saved her, he wasn’t taking particularly good care of her now.

What else was he keeping behind lock and key? I crept cautiously down to the corridor where Olret’s mutilated son had his room. That was empty so I ran lightly down the next flight and ducked into my own cubbyhole. The bed bore no trace of our passionate exertions the previous night, coverlets straight and smooth. My bag hung on the footboard and I saw that the hair I’d left in the buckle apparently caught by chance, was now snapped. No matter; I didn’t keep anything of interest or value in there. I sat on the bed and opened my belt pouch. Slipped into the stitching of the inner seam was a fine steel picklock and I patiently teased it free, tucking it into the sheath of the dagger I had strapped on the inner side of my forearm. I also took out the parchment bearing my scant knowledge of Artifice and smoothed it flat. That in hand, innocent face all eagerness to help, I marched boldly up the stairs to the floor above. There was still no one around, so, tucking the parchment back in my pocket, I disappeared up the curve of the stair.

There was no way I could squeeze through the bars so I knelt by the locked gate. I could have opened most locks in these islands with a piece of wet straw but this was different. As I probed its hidden working, I wondered where Olret had got such a thing. There wasn’t enough metal hereabouts to give any Elietimm the chance to hone such craftsmanship. No matter, it wasn’t as complex as the Mountain-crafted locks Sorgrad had trained me on. It yielded with a softly rolling click.

I went cautiously up, low to the ground to look over the topmost stairs since any guard would be keeping watch at head height. There was no one there but a rank smell like a stable drain wrinkled my nose. I stood up and walked softly down the corridor. Doors ajar on either side opened on to unfurnished rooms, bare walls, scrubbed floors and no sign of the little girl, not even cowering behind a door. After checking every room, all I was left with was one shut up and, unsurprisingly, the source of the stench. The door wasn’t locked but bolted high and low.

What was inside, besides the little girl? Whatever it was, it was something Olret kept safely locked away and that meant it had to have some value. I reached up to the top bolt and then stopped. How had the child got in here and then bolted the door after herself? No, she must be cowering in the other stairwell. I lowered my hand and was about to turn away when both bolts began to move of their own accord. They glided smoothly through the hasps and the latch lifted. A frisson ran through me.

The door stayed shut though. Opening it would have to be my choice. Where had that notion come from? I studied the blank timber. Could I walk away and not know what it concealed? Curiosity got Amit hanged, as my mother used to say. Perhaps, but that had never stopped me before. I pushed at the door and it swung open on well-oiled hinges. I managed not to choke on the stink it released.

The room was the biggest I’d seen on the keep’s upper levels and it was full of cages. In a land so poor in metals, I was looking at a fortune to choke the greediest merchant back home. Still, I didn’t imagine the women looking through those bars appreciated being surrounded with such wealth. They ranged from a frail-looking grandmother to two maidens barely blooming into womanhood. The other three were much of an age with myself and one held the fugitive child close to her skirts. All were Elietimm by their colouring and features and, by local standards, their gowns were well cut and expertly sewn. But the clothes hung loose on them, gaping at the neck and slack in the waist. All the captive faces were drawn with hunger kept just short of starvation by a prudent jailer.

The little girl looked at me, hugging her woolly animal. Her mother’s sage dress was stained and creased with wear, the hems dirtied where she’d been unable to avoid the spreading pile of ordure she’d done her best to keep in one corner of her prison. Could Olret not even grant his prisoners a chamber pot? Or was that the point? How better to humiliate these women than by denying them even the most basic dignities? All had fingernails rimed with black, fair hair lank with dirt, filth engrained in the creases of faces and necks. They had nothing to sit on, not so much as a blanket to soften the iron bars beneath their feet. Only a crude hide spread out below each cage, edges curled and tied into corners to catch the soil before it reached the floorboards and threatened the ceilings below.

I hadn’t exactly decided to leave but was considering backing out of the room when I realised I couldn’t. Nothing hindered my feet but I knew for a certainty that the only way I could move was forward. All the women watched intently. It was a fair bet one of them was using Artifice on me but, oddly, I didn’t feel particularly threatened.

“Good day, ladies.” A step forward was easy enough but I knew instantly I still couldn’t take it back.

“Please come beyond the door.” The mother spoke urgently, her Tormalin as good if not better than my Mountain speech. That was a fair point. I moved and the door swung closed behind me, bolts sealing me in with a soft rasp as the grandmother muttered a rapid charm.

“Who are you?” the mother demanded. Locked in a stinking prison, I wouldn’t have bothered with niceties either.

“A visitor, from over the ocean.” It may be mere childhood myth that giving the Eldritch Kin your name hands them power over you but I wasn’t taking any chances with unknown practitioners of Artifice. “Who are you?”

“I was wife to Ashernan, master of Shernasekke.” The mother wasn’t bandying words with anyone who might help her. “We are all of that clan; my mother, my sisters and their daughters.”

“I thought Ilkehan destroyed Shernasekke.” I matched her directness, aware someone might interrupt us at any moment. Then I’d be in trouble but we’d deal with that as the runes fell.

“Ilkehan with Olret yapping at his heels.” The grandmother spat copiously in wordless disgust.

Her back against her bars, one of the sisters sat with coppery gold skirts rucked up to pad her rump. “What Evadesekke sees, he covets. What Evadesekke covets, Kehannasekke steals. What Kehannasekke steals, Rettasekke hides.” The obscure pronouncement had the bitter resonance of old, acknowledged truth in the Elietimm tongue.

“How do you come to be here?” I asked the lady of Shernasekke.

“Olret stole us out from beneath Ilkehan’s nose.” She waved a disdainful hand at their foul prison. “He offers us a choice: marriage with his blood or this squalor.” Her mother barked with weary laughter.

“Marriage will give Olret a claim on Shernasekke land to rival Ilkehan’s right of conquest?” I guessed, glancing at the two nubile girls. Marriage by rape is a long and dishonourable tradition in Lescar, where inheritance squabbles fester from generation to generation and more than one duchess took her wedding vows with a dagger at her throat.

“He will only have a claim when the bloodlines are joined by a child.” The other sister scowled from her foetid cage, twitching her mossy green skirts as she stood.

The lady of Shernasekke smiled. “He may have cut us off from home and hargeard but we can summon power from our common birthright to rule within this room.”

So this neglect might be more precaution than calculated torment.

“It is both,” the woman in green told me.

“Are you reading my thoughts?” I asked warily.

She shrugged. “A simple enough trick.”

“One that Olret cannot master.” The grandmother came to the front of her cage, eyes webbed with age and sunk deep in her wrinkled face. “That’s the other reason he risks Ilkehan’s wrath to keep us in this captivity. We hold all that remains of Shernasekke’s lore and Olret would dearly love to add that to his own.”

“Mother!” protested the sister in the green gown.

“Why dissemble?” argued her other sister. “Olret condemned our clan to be crushed beneath Ilkehan’s heel without us to defend Shernasekke.”

“This one is no friend to Olret.” The old woman stared at me. With her clouded eyes I doubted she could see much beyond the length of her arm but something was giving her uncomfortably accurate insight. She grunted with satisfaction. “Nor her friends.”

“You’re here with others?” One of the young girls spoke for the first time, hope naked on her face.

“Can you get a message to Evadesekke?” The woman in gold scrambled to her feet. “We have ties of kinship there.”

“Dachasekke will help us once they know we are still alive,” her sister in green insisted. “Froilasekke too.”

“Our quarrel is with Ilkehan,” I said carefully. “We’ve little interest in involving ourselves in strife we have no part in.” If you can’t see the bottom of the river, you don’t start wading.

“Olret will trade us to Ilkehan if some turn of fate makes that worth his while or if our surrender proves the only way to save his own skin.” Shernasekke’s lady looked at me and I knew her words for simple truth.

These women had some powerful Artifice among them and, like Guinalle, the skills to work their enchantments without constant incantations. It was also a relief to know Olret wasn’t able to look inside my head and learn I’d been up here. This wasn’t the brutal, damaging enchantment that Ilkehan had wrought on me and around me but all the same, none of these women were showing any qualms about taking what they wanted from my thoughts or imposing their will on my body. Was that the resonance of undeniable truth I heard in their words or treacherous magic convincing me of their lie? There didn’t seem to be any of Guinalle’s ethical tradition in Elietimm Artifice; it was either brutal or insidious.

“Are you truly speaking honestly?” I raised my eyebrows at Shernasekke’s lady.

She shrugged. “You can only decide such things for yourself

“When I’ve done so, I’ll come back.” I found myself unhampered by enchantment as I turned to leave. The bolts slid back at a whisper from the younger maiden. As I slid through the door, I saw her looking at me with a misery that her elders refused to admit.

I hurried along the corridor. Those women were getting food and water, however inadequate, and I didn’t want to meet whoever was bringing it. Slowing on the stairs, I dug a vial of perfume in my belt pouch and dabbed a little in the hollow of my throat. The scent cleansed the prison stink from my nostrils and hopefully masked any clinging to my clothes. Then I heard steps in the corridor where Olret’s son slept his fevered dreams and froze. Creeping silently down, I stole a glance around the corner and saw the nurse walking away from me. I hurried on down but heard boots coming up below me. Turning, I fished my parchment out of my pocket and walked back up as if I had every right to be there.

There was no answer when I knocked so I waited by the door for the lad’s nurse. Olret’s son wouldn’t be joining his bloodline with either of those lasses up above. Presumably that was Ilkehan’s excuse for cutting his stones like some colt not wanted for stud. Did Shernasekke’s lady know that had happened?

Was I going to tell the others what I’d discovered? How would they react? It was easy to see ’Gren could no more leave something like this alone than he could keep his fingers out of a tear in his breeches. He’d be all for storming the upper floor and setting the captives free. Come to that, Sorgrad would need some convincing reason why we shouldn’t.

Ryshad might consider losing even a distasteful ally like Olret too high a price to pay for the women’s freedom. Our purpose here was killing Ilkehan, not involving ourselves in wider dissensions. Ryshad would certainly find their casual domination of unknown Artifice sufficient argument to mistrust the women and leave them be, at least until we knew them to be friend or foe.

But Shiv would surely argue we needed any and all aetheric lore working for us and against Ilkehan. Would the mage be wrong? Could we have this out among ourselves without Olret getting wind of it?

I’d jotted a few scores from a meaningless game of runes with ’Gren on the back of the parchment. Just what kind of game was this three-cornered strife between Ilkehan, Olret and the lady of Shernasekke who seemed to have taken her dead husband’s seat at the table? I didn’t owe her any more than I trusted either of the others. Would stepping up and making my own random throw pay off handsomely for us or not?

“What do you want?” It was the nurse come back.

I flourished my parchment. “My people, we of the Forest, we have songs to soothe the sick and injured.” I wasn’t going to claim aetheric skills, not when I couldn’t be certain I’d be able to help the lad.

The woman considered this. “For a little while.” Her face said as plainly as speaking that if I couldn’t do any good, I couldn’t do any harm and there was little enough hope for her charge in any case.

The room was still dim and the sour sweetness of corruption was stronger than before. The lad lay motionless on his back, an unhealthy flush on his cheeks below his bandaged eyes.

I cleared my throat and began to sing softly. Guinalle reckoned ‘The Lay of Mazir’s Healing Hands’ had Artifice hidden in its jalquezan refrain and I’d seen a wise woman of the Forest Folk sing it over a half-drowned girl who’d certainly recovered faster than she’d any right to. The nurse sat at her window sewing and I caught her smiling at the tale of Kespar who’d lost a wager with Poldrion, that he could swim the river between this world and the Other faster than the Ferryman could row his boat across. He’d paid the price in blood when the god’s demons caught up with him. Mazir had healed her love with herbs and wise words, all the while teasing him for his folly. As I sang, I wondered if this poor lad had anyone to love him and comfort him. We’d seen no sign of any wife or mistress to Olret, nor yet any other children. Still, as Sorgrad would say, that was none of our concern. Ever softer, I drew the final refrain to a close. It may have been my imagination but I thought the lad’s breath rasped less fast and desperate in his throat.

The nurse set aside her sewing and came to lay the back of her hand gently against his forehead. “He sleeps more easily.”

“He may yet recover,” I suggested, though Saedrin knows, I couldn’t think of a man who would relish such a life.

The woman shook her head regretfully. “In cutting him off from his future, Ilkehan has cut him off from his past. Without the blessing of those who have gone before, he cannot live much longer.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “At least he will know a little peace.”

“It’s best that you do not come again.” The nurse’s face was unreadable.

“Very well.” I turned as I reached the door. “I shall not speak of this. Will you keep silent as well?”

She nodded.

I did the same and left the room. That would be best for everyone. I didn’t relish trying to explain to Ryshad or Sorgrad what I’d done, not when I had no clear idea just why I’d done it myself. Besides, as Sorgrad and Ryshad would both surely tell me, there was no reason for Olret to know what Artifice we might have to call on.