Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (10 page)

Gasping, she thrust out a hand and welcomed the cold shock of the temple’s marble wall, luminous in the moonlight. Her affinity drew her backwards through the rock’s aeons-old existence. She felt the ring of the mason’s chisels and then the shuddering crack as the block was prized from the quarries in the hills above Feverad in distant Tormalin. The tremors faded, soothed by the calm of countless undisturbed generations until she felt the warmth of the rising fires deep beneath the earth which had transformed the once humble limestone into this radiant marble.

Jilseth opened her eyes and smoothed her skirts. Shivering, she realised that she’d left her cloak on the chair in Kerrit’s kitchen. There was nothing to be done about that beyond summoning up a breath of elemental fire to ward off the cold sea breeze. She took a cautious step forward and looked to either side.

The harbour-side path separating the temple from the low wall lapped by the gulf’s dark waters was deserted. Jilseth made her way cautiously along this windowless face of the mighty temple. The uproar from the crowds in the vast square on the inland side grew louder.

As she turned the corner and walked to the front of the temple, she contemplated the unruly celebrations swirling around the two great fountains in the centre of the flagstoned expanse. Silk-clad Relshazri bedecked with jewels mingled unconcerned with the city’s ragged and filthy, bottles and flagons passed from hand to hand.

Snatches of music rose above the tumult. Jilseth picked out several huddles of pipers and viol players around the fringes of the crowd. In the open space between the fountains and the temple, jugglers tossed rainbow knots of tasselled cords and glittering glass balls. Painted tumblers displayed their skills; girls flipping themselves from hands to feet and back again before their partners tossed them high onto a waiting strongman’s broad shoulders.

Would-be worshippers waited quietly in long lines four and five abreast. Every few moments they advanced a little further up the steps towards the temple’s great double doors. Torches burned in brackets high on the white marble pillars supporting the pediment laden with statues of the gods and goddesses. The flames struck a golden sheen from the hammered bronze sheathing the recessed entrances all across the front of the temple.

The hollow darkness within was guarded by priests and priestesses barring every one of those thresholds. No one entered without dropping some offering into the deep wooden bowls presented by these guardians.

Jilseth recalled that her coin purse was in her cloak pocket in Kerrit’s kitchen and besides, it only held a few silver marks and pennies for Hadrumal’s wine- and cook-shops. Mainlanders in taverns claimed that Archmage Planir could pluck solid coin out of thin air but if that was truly one of his secrets, he’d never shared it with Jilseth. Drawing pure metal from ore-bearing rock was a slow process by wizardly standards and besides, she no more carried such ore around than she did gold coin.

Would these supposedly pious men and women let her into the temple without paying their fee? She might be doing the Relshazri religious a disservice but Jilseth doubted it.

Since she had embarked on her travels around the mainland at the Archmage’s request, Jilseth had met priests and priestesses as varied in character as any other selection of humanity. Among those nobles who so often inherited a shrine and its obligations with the rest of their holdings, she had encountered both the truly devout and the mindlessly sanctimonious. Among those who had chosen to swear their life away in the service of some unseen, unquantifiable deity, she had met both the calculatedly venal and those whose dedication was clearly rewarded in some intangible fashion far beyond the food and shelter bought by the alms given to their shrine.

Master Resnada had said that time was of the essence. Jilseth retreated into the shadows and wrapped a veil of air around herself. Walking out unseen into the torchlight, she headed for the nearest door.

A dutifully generous trio were being ushered past two broad shouldered and thick necked acolytes by a prosperously plump priestess whose charcoal silk robe could have been sewn by Mellitha’s own seamstress. Even twenty paces away, Jilseth’s wizard senses told her that the rubies in the golden amulet hanging around the woman’s neck were of the finest clarity and colour.

‘May Poldrion see you safe to Saedrin’s threshold if that’s your fate in the year to come.’ The priestess peered into the bowl to see the suppliants’ offering. She looked up with a complacent smile. ‘May you see many more midwinters before Poldrion’s summons comes.’

Jilseth approached, using another swathe of elemental air to muffle her footsteps on the white stone. Master Resnada’s words echoed in her memory. How long was she prepared to wait for a chance to slide past these mercenary guardians unseen when Kerrit was in sore of need of whatever healing lore might be held within by more genuine priests?

C
HAPTER
S
IX

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

Winter Solstice Festival, 3rd Evening

A
T THE FAR
end of the manor compound, beyond the storehouses and the drying ground for laundry, Hosh rubbed at his face and grimaced. The cold gnawed at the deep dent beside his broken nose and woke the lurking ache on the toothless side of his jaw.

He ran his tongue carefully along his gums. He could no longer feel the empty sockets where he’d recently lost two more teeth and he couldn’t taste or smell the foulness of pus. The chewing herbs which Doratine pressed on him were keeping such corruption at bay so Hosh was daring to hope he might yet keep his remaining teeth. If only the wise woman had something as efficacious for the pains he suffered.

The only way to find any relief would be to go somewhere warmer. Where could he wait until his loving mum had eaten and drunk her fill with her friends in the great hall? The village women would still be sharing the burden of each other’s sorrows and losses as well as taking comfort in his mother’s joy at his unimagined return. It would be close to midnight before she would be ready to go home to the village beyond the brook.

Hosh looked around the storehouses and contemplated their cellars, bins and lofts now filled with the season’s tithes from the farms which paid their dues in kind rather than coin. He liked to make these circuits of the compound, alone and unobserved, to reassure himself that this wasn’t some tantalizing dream. Every day when he woke, he still had to remind himself that he was truly safe home in Halferan where the manor had risen, better than new, better than ever before, from the ruination left by the corsairs.

He walked past the well-house and the smithy and contemplated the barracks beyond the steward’s residence. A lantern glowed in the window of the wide hall and the door stood ajar. Doubtless a handful of troopers had retreated there to drink ale warmed through with white brandy while they shared choicely obscene stories.

He wasn’t about to join them. Those who hadn’t shared in that final assault on the corsair island would pester him with questions about that terrible night. Those who had followed Corrain alongside the guardsmen from Licanin, Tallat and Antathele would be happy to relive their own elation at surviving what had seemed like certain death.

Hosh could repeat himself till his tongue withered, insisting that he had no wish to remember that night. The other troopers still demanded to hear how he had cut down the black-bearded corsair who had murdered the true Lord Halferan. How he wrestled with the blind trireme master who had commanded that unconquerable raiding fleet, apparently by means of insights into heavenly omens, in truth thanks to the wizardly spells held within weapons and trinkets; magic which was anathema to true Archipelagans.

He had tried telling them that he had only picked up a sword because he was so certain that his life was already lost. Until then he’d done all he could to stay alive, meekly serving the Mandarkin mage. He was no hero but none of them would accept that, insisting that he tell them how he had plotted his revenge and connived against the vile wizard from the outset.

Since they didn’t want to hear the truth, Hosh now refused to be drawn into such conversations. He would answer for his deeds, for good and ill, when he finally stood at Saedrin’s door. Until then, he wanted to look to the future, not dwell on past horrors.

He glanced at the shuttered dormitory windows above the barrack hall. Could he slip up the stairs unnoticed and lie quietly on his own bed? No such luck. A candle’s glimmer through the cracks above suggested some lucky trooper had persuaded his sweetheart to share a festival frolic.

Hosh heaved an incautious sigh and winced as the cold air bit deep at the back of his nose. He couldn’t see a sweetheart in his own future, let alone the grandchildren his beloved mum silently longed for. Who would marry a man with a face ugly enough to sour milk, never mind one who refused to accept the accolades and surely the fat purse that should be his reward for slaying the true baron’s murderer?

The manor’s maidservants had grown sufficiently used to his disfigurement not to let their revulsion show but Hosh still saw the pity in their eyes before they swiftly looked away. He heard the incautious comments and guessed at the whispers behind raised hands whenever he visited the village.

He contemplated the gatehouse. The windows to the guest apartments up above were dark; Halferan had no noble visitors at this festival season. Only a couple of troopers would be sitting in the guard room beside the archway, to answer any knock at the heavy oak gates. They would be the most junior of the autumn’s recruits, too awed to ask him impertinent questions. They would also have a warm fire. Hosh could sit beside that until his mother was ready to go home.

He walked quickly across the cobbles and knocked on the guard room door. As he opened it, he halted. Kusint sat at the table within. More astonishing, so did Lady Ilysh.

‘Hosh, fair festival.’ Lady Ilysh greeted him warmly. In her eyes, no mutilation could possibly signify after the service which Hosh had done her father by avenging him.

‘Come in and shut the door.’ Kusint invited.

Hosh did as he was bid. There was no danger of the Forest man wheedling for some titillating tale of slavery among the barbarian Aldabreshi. Kusint had rowed in chains himself after being captured in the battles between Lescar’s rival dukes, lured to a mercenary’s life by tavern tales of high heroics and riches. So he knew all about the pain and fear which pervaded a slave’s every waking moment and which still plagued Hosh’s nightmares.

Hosh took a chair and looked at the rune bones spread on the table. ‘What are the stakes?’

He couldn’t see any coin waiting to wager on the roll of the three-sided pieces, not even the copper pennies cut into halves and quarters which the troopers were supposed to limit themselves to in their gambling.

‘We’re not gaming,’ Lady Ilysh quickly assured him. ‘We’re casting fortunes for the turn of the year, according to Forest lore.’

She gathered up the nine stubby triangular bones, battered and scratched on their three oblong faces where the runes themselves were carved. Slipping them into a tattered leather bag, she tucked it into a pocket hidden in the side seam of her gown.

‘How do you read fortunes in runes?’ Hosh had heard about the new captain’s habit of seeking such guidance but he’d never had occasion to learn how it might be done.

Kusint looked at him for a long moment before producing a wholly different set of runes. These were long wooden sticks as long as the Forest man’s hand and no thicker than his smallest finger. A leather thong tied them together, triangular shapes nested together to form a single larger triangle.