Fallowblade (28 page)

‘It shall be done,’ Warwick said diplomatically, though fury blazed in his visage, and the other listeners muttered of their amazement that the wights knew such a great deal about the affairs of Tir.

‘Meanwhile,’ continued the goblin lieutenant, ‘no human being may cross north of the Wuthering Moors. This territory is the property of Zaravaz, King and Overlord of Calaldor,
Cooilleeneyder, as Ard-veoir Armyn
. Furthermore, you must render to us the
Corlaig Keylley
, which you call the Sylvan Comb, for it is a thing of goblin make and should be returned to its owners. Go now, and do as your indulgent overlord bids.’ With a supercilious smile, Zauberin added a parting caveat: ‘Travel by day, for the night is ours.’

In that moment Asr
ă
thiel’s every conceit and conviction crashed to an end, and for an ageless instant it was as if the mechanism of her pulse had jammed.

For the goblin king had smiled also.

It was a knowing smile, a sudden flash of white heat, after which he and his first lieutenant exchanged glances. They rode away, those two exceptional knights, followed by their stunted bluish-skinned familiars; and the horde of eldritch chivalry parted to let them through, then closed in at their backs and melted into the gloom.

Avalloc and Asr
ă
thiel found themselves at the centre of a flurry of activity. Three weeks seemed all too brief. It would have taken months for all the luminaries of Tir to travel by road from every capital city, so the weathermages and their prentices had to work speedily, ferrying notables by sky-balloon to King’s Winterbourne. Obstacles both foreseeable and unexpected cropped up; the poor health of some elderly dignitaries, the inexperience of the prentices at piloting aerostats, problems with sending and receiving messages, and various other setbacks. Some, terrified out of their wits, refused to cooperate. If persuasion and cajolery failed, they had to be brought to the city by force. ‘The Wicked Ones will know if any are missing!’ they were warned. ‘Their retribution would be swift and terrible!’

Loud and long were the debates held in hall and house and castle, as to the merits of cooperating with goblinkind. Many spoke against it. In particular Prince Ronin was vociferous in his protestations. Supported by his brother Cormac he declared that while he lived he would never allow his father to be turned over to the unseelie hordes.

‘I will stand in line with everyone else and take my chance as to whether the Wicked Ones will choose me as a tribute, but I will fight until my last breath to prevent this other wrongdoing!’ he proclaimed. ‘Why have they singled out my father above all others? Besides Shechem he is the only one they have named. I’ll warrant they have some cruel plans for dealing with him! I cannot countenance that my own sire, the head of my house, should be surrendered to a horrendous fate without my so much as lifting a finger to save him!’

His peers endeavoured to convince him otherwise, bidding him bear in mind the falseness of Uabhar, the murderous compacts he had made with the Marauders, the trickery by which he had slain the weathermasters, the wiles with which he had ensnared submissive King Chohrab, the tyranny of his rule, the greed, now exposed, by which he had determined to subordinate all the lands of Tir, and the extensive loss of life that had resulted. When Ronin appealed to his mother for abetment in his unpopular cause she refused to enter the argument, taking neither one side nor the other, but young Prince Fergus opposed his brothers’ stance and pronounced that justice would truly be served, were their father to be sacrificed in the cause of preserving humanity.

‘Were it you, Ronin, who was nominated for forfeiture,’ Fergus rejoined, ‘and our father who stood in your place, do you truly credit he would hesitate to throw you to the merciless wights? Recall how effortlessly he sacrificed Kieran! Recall how qualmlessly he made you prove your loyalty by sending you into battle time and time again. He would have no compunction, were he in your position. You are a fool if you believe otherwise.’

‘I am aware of our father’s shortcomings,’ Ronin said sadly, ‘and I would that he were as good a man as idealism would prescribe. He has wrought unpardonable evil upon the four kingdoms. Yet it were faithless of me to condemn him to a fate of unspeakable wretchedness, such as would surely await him at the hands of the goblin knights. If he is to be judged let it be by human arbitration, if he is to be punished let it be by human laws, not by the spiteful sadism of an alien race.’

‘He deserves all that they can inflict upon him,’ Fergus said rancorously, ‘and more. There is no honour in saving such a sire from the consequences of his own wrongdoing. He slew Kieran as surely as if he had struck the fatal blow, as he would have slain you or me if it had suited him. With his persuasions he blindfolded us, but in hindsight and free from his influence, I can see clearly. He deceived us all.’

‘Yet he is our father,’ said Ronin.

He made an impassioned plea to the sanctorums, to the weathermasters, to Conall Gearnach and the Knights of the Brand, begging that they take his part. They refused. A few Slievmordhuan aristocrats hearkened, calling for bargaining and compromise, but in the end it was Avalloc who settled the matter once and for all.

Angry with the dissidents he said to them, ‘Do you truly understand whom you are dealing with? By some unaccountable quirk of circumstance it is none other than Zaravaz, King of the Silver Goblins, whose coadjutant parleyed with us on the battlefield. It was my understanding that Zaravaz was rendered powerless forever at the conclusion of the Goblin Wars, but it is now clear I have overlooked some twist, some proviso or loophole in the intricacies of the matter, for he has risen again. The lore-books have much to tell about his wickedness. He hates humanity with a vengeance. He would stop at nothing to destroy human life. A slayer of countless thousands is he; a ravager, an assassin, a hunter and killer of men. The atrocities he has wrought surpass belief. What more can I say? How better can I argue?

‘Never in history has Zaravaz offered to negotiate with humankind. It is a miracle that we have been presented with any opportunity for reprieve whatsoever—despite endless hours of consultation and deliberation our best strategists have failed to come up with any feasible plan to save us. The goblins
will
honour their contract, for eldritch wights are bound to keep their word. Have you forgotten that since my kindred the Councillors of Ellenhall were destroyed, it is within the power of the hordes to erase humankind from the world? And that is precisely what you risk, if you presume to argue against their terms. I cannot fathom why they would give us any chance at all, when they despise us so. The fate of all people hangs upon a thread. Test that thread and it will snap, I guarantee.’

Prince Ronin said, ‘We could fly from them.’

‘Their steeds are swift!’

‘We could hide out, in the deserts, in the Tangle—’

‘Even if we survived the perils and privations of those wastelands they would find us out eventually. They have powers we know little about, and they are deathless, Ronin. They would have all the time in the world to track us down.’

‘But during that time—’

‘During that time, if they gave us any, the pitiful remnants of our race would exist as terrified, scurrying mice, living from hand to mouth, our civilisation degenerating as we slipped into a pit of backwardness and ignorance.’

‘The surviving prentices would come into their full power!’

‘Do you imagine the goblins would wait that long? Are you suggesting we condemn entire kingdoms to death on that possibility?’

‘They have not specified the number of prisoners they will take, Lord Avalloc. What if they demand dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands? What if they claim each and every one of Tir’s greatest warriors and philosophers and mages and statesmen?’

‘That is pure speculation.’

‘But it might happen.’

‘What would you have, Ronin?’ Avalloc cried, his eyes flashing as if fireworks had kindled behind the panes of jade. ‘Two paths only are open to us. We may choose the security of humankind, paid for by many lives or few, or we may choose the total annihilation of our race. Both choices are evil but, as I see it, they are our only options.’

Then at last Prince Ronin bowed his head.

‘If that is so, then I must reconcile myself and let it be,’ he said, his voice rasping with strangled grief. ‘But I will ask the Fates to be merciful to my father.’

The Storm Lord’s reasoning silenced the dissenters, whereupon the feverish undertakings continued with fresh zeal.

Throughout those weeks of hectic activity Asr
ă
thiel was the object of effusive love and deference from all quarters. She had always been esteemed as a weathermage of surpassing skill, grandchild of the Storm Lord, heiress to the House of Maelstronnar and weathermage to the King of Narngalis. Since she had displayed her mettle in the field, however, the people adored her as their rescuer, praising her with such names as Queen of Swords, Tir’s Champion, Heroine of the Four Kingdoms and Lady Conqueror. Some took to simply titling her Fallowblade, as if she and the sword were indivisible. Indeed, she carried it everywhere with her, buckling it on every morning and wearing it constantly at her side.

Such adulation, however, did not sit well with her. ‘Give me no credit,’ she begged, sincerely. ‘It is not my doing, but a happy accident that I was born a brí-child and gifted with qualities that make me unafraid of the battlefield. Were anyone else possessed of these talents, they would have done the same.’

Despite her protests the encomiums continued unabated.

Another matter further contributed to the damsel’s discomfort, though to a lesser extent: across the realms, tidings of the goblin encounters on the Wuthering Moors had spread like smoke along the wind, and everyone was talking about the shock of seeing the unseelie horde, surpassingly fair to look upon, when stories had described such surpassing ugliness! But the chief topic of conversation in certain circles was the goblin king, Zaravaz.

Apart from the vast numbers who were consumed by grief for husbands, brothers, lovers, sons and grandsons slain in battle against the goblins, women of all stations had taken to talking about him. It was not so much the
fact
that they discussed this epitome of wickedness, it was the
frequency
with which they discussed him that vexed Asr
ă
thiel. The princesses Lecelina and Winona, for instance, could often be found in the castle solar with their ladies-in-waiting, interminably conjecturing about Zaravaz’s clothing, his hair, the colour of his eyes. They discoursed upon his every action as reported from the battlefield—his horsemanship, his fighting prowess—with a kind of fascinated horror, like passers-by at the scene of an accident who cannot look away although their flesh crawls at the gruesome sight. Every scrap of information about Zaravaz was gleaned and examined minutely, every conceivable possibility was raised; the tales told of him, his history, the legends, the manner by which he and his unseelie hordes had been let loose upon Tir again, where they had been hidden since the Goblin Wars, where they disappeared to between battles.

‘Rumour has it that Zaravaz was not buried with his knights in the golden caves,’ the feminine newsmongers tattled. ‘Some say he roamed free, but with his powers bound by some mighty enchantment.’

‘We’ve heard he rules a stupendous palace made of ice, somewhere in the heights of the north,’ they prated. ‘A charmed fastness guarded by deadly wights, where no man dares venture.’

Always the chatterers spoke in tones of disapproval, tut-tut-ting and shaking their heads, but they could not leave their theme alone, and an uninformed observer might have surmised that they could not wait to set eyes on the infamous goblin king, though they avowed, vehemently and repeatedly, that they hated him and wished him wiped out of existence.

Asr
ă
thiel could not brook such gossip, nor did she have time for it. Most of her waking hours were spent overseeing sky-balloon transport, piloted by inexperienced crew members, ferrying passengers who had never in their lives flown through the sky. When she had a spare moment to herself her thoughts would stray to grievous or disorienting matters; she felt the approach of doom; she longed for her sleeping mother to revive before the end so that at least she might embrace her and say farewell; she fretted for her father and ached with sorrow for the betrayed Councillors of Ellenhall.

She bled, too, for little wanton Crowthistle and the terrible deed he had obliged her to do. Why had he wearied of the world, when it was filled with endless wonder? How could she have missed any clues to his despair, she who had believed she knew him as well as any human being could hope to know an eldritch wight? Had she understood the depths of his despondency she would have tried everything possible to cheer him. Was it possible she had been at fault in some way, perhaps unwittingly contributing to his sadness? Now, none of these questions could ever be answered.

At whiles her musings did alight, too, on the subject of the women’s gossip, but she never allowed them to remain there for long.
I dismiss ruffian losels from my scope. They are unworthy of attention.
Notwithstanding, she once asked Avalloc, in passing, if he knew aught about the reports of the goblin king’s enchantment.

‘It is true he was not entombed in the golden caves,’ he replied. ‘His sentence was a different form of imprisonment. The weathermasters bound him with unimaginably potent chains of gramarye, rendering him harmless, unable to use his powers. That much I have learned, but if there is more it will have to wait. No doubt there will be ample record of it in the archives, somewhere, but I have not yet had sufficient leisure to delve amongst the tomes, and the scribes have been inundated with urgent matters.’