Sorcery Rising (44 page)

‘Katla!’

The familiar voice broke through her morbid thoughts. Her head whipped around. The rearguard of the troop seemed to be experiencing some problems. ‘Keep walking, prisoner!’ the man behind her shouted roughly, prodding her hard in the back.

‘Damn this,’ Katla thought. She made as if to trip, then cast herself urgently sideways, knocking one of the two soldiers guarding her right flank into his companion. The two of them stumbled, and the one on the outside suddenly found himself wrongfooted on the awkward shelving strand. With a cry, he went down. From her vantage point on the ground, Katla saw a familiar blond head bob into view. A sword caught the moonlight and disappeared from her sight; a man groaned. Then Tor Leeson appeared over the top of the dune. Blood had covered the front of his tunic, splashed up his arms, spattered into his hair and beard; but he was beaming from ear to ear. The second guard went at him with alacrity, but Tor merely laughed and, ducking inside the sweep of the Forent blade, hacked brutally upwards with his broad northern sword. The powerful, shearing blow took the front of the man’s head off, so that his breath bubbled as he fell.

‘Tor—’

The Rockfall man gave her his most feral grin, then danced around to meet the next challenge. The guard roared something unintelligible in Istrian. ‘Your mother must have lain with goats!’ Tor returned in the Old Tongue, smiling politely. The man frowned, trying to make sense of the accented words, then his face darkened with rage and he charged at the big northerner. Tor feinted and dodged, bringing his sword around in a whistling, vicious arc. There was a soft thud of impact, and the guard’s leg came off at the knee, blood fountaining everywhere. The man looked down, brows knit, then lost his balance. ‘It’s a good sword, Katla!’ Tor yelled. ‘I said it would take a man’s leg off nicely.’

She met his eyes for just a moment, just long enough to see something more in them than bloodlust and mayhem, before two guards hauled her upright and others closed the gap left by the wounded. Three of them rounded on Tor; then her brother Halli appeared beside him, teeth gleaming white amid his dense black beard. He was wielding an axe. Katla recognised it as the little adze they brought for chopping firewood, but by the look of it it had seen its share of bloodshed this night. The two men exchanged what must have been a jest, for Katla saw Halli’s mouth open in what looked like a roar of laughter; then she realised her mistake. Tor suddenly pitched forward, blood gouting from his mouth. From the centre of his back, an Istrian spear protruded, the head sunk in the blond Eyran’s body up to the barbs. She saw an armoured woman with shells in her hair dispatch the spear-caster, and then a big mercenary ran at her brother, but though she spun to try to watch Halli’s progress the guards were pressing her so hard now that she was almost running, and she saw no more of him. That was when Katla knew true despair.

Saro Vingo came running down to the strand just in time to see the guard captain tying Katla Aransen securely to the stake. At least, he noted, they had allowed her the dignity of the coloured silk shawl around her head, but it did not seem to have been a gesture of compassion, but rather one of mockery for the man tightened the knots with sadistic glee. Katla stared at him reproachfully, but she refused to cry out. Saro felt his heart swell till he thought it would burst. He scanned the scene. A great welter of fighting went on around the foot of the pyre – except for a small gap to the eastern side, where gleamed a pale, silvery light.

Saro stared at this light, and as he did so, the stone in the pouch about his neck began to throb against his chest like a second heart. He put his hand up to it wonderingly, distracted amidst all the noise and horror, felt its pulse beneath his fingers. When he removed it from the leather sac, it had gone a fiery red, but at its core, a scintilla of purest gold winked at him like a tiny beacon. He closed his hand over the moodstone and marvelled at how it glowed so hard that he could see the outline of his fingerbones through the flesh. Energy from the stone coursed up through his arm. It suffused his chest, his head; so he felt that light must be streaming from his eyes like lanterns, but as he moved forward, no one seemed to pay him any attention. Keeping his gaze trained on Katla, he made his way towards the gap, and was surprised to see a tall, pale woman standing there in the midst of all the conflict, which went on all around her unabated, though a circle of clear space maybe three feet wide surrounded her at all times. The woman’s gaze was directed not at the girl tied to the stake, he noticed, but at the torch the guard captain was even now applying to the sere wood beneath her. Red flame blossomed and leapt. He saw Katla Aransen’s eyes widen, then shut tightly. With his sword in one hand and the moodstone clutched tightly in the other like a talisman, he walked steadily towards the pyre. An Istrian he didn’t know careered into him, pursued by a black-bearded northman wielding a small-headed axe. Terror, pure and desperate, consumed him for a second, so that he felt his own feet urging him to follow the Istrian’s; then the moment passed and he was standing in the nexus of space around the pale woman. When she turned to regard him, he thought his heart would stop. Something in those green eyes transfixed him, then searched through him like red-hot wires. She smiled. Saro found himself taking a step towards her. As soon as she was able to reach him, she took his left hand in hers. At once the mood-stone filled with such heat that it burned his palm and he cried out, but her grip on him only tightened. The energy he had felt in the stone now increased a thousandfold. Burning up through his palm, it travelled his arteries like a screaming horde sweeping down from the mountains to scour its enemy from the plains; it flooded through his muscles till each one, separately, swelled in agony; it fled up the marrow inside every bone; but still she did not let him go. Images exploded inside his mind: women whose skin melted and sloughed from their bodies; men staring at hands gone to charred black bone; death’s-heads and incandescent skeletons danced before his eyes.

And at last she released her hold on him.

Like a puppet on rods, Saro found himself walking past the pale woman and into the flames. A blue-cloaked man in a tall crested helm shouted at him, but Saro merely reached out with his left hand and touched the moodstone to the guard captain’s forehead. The man’s eyes flared briefly to silver-white, then to fathomless black, and he dropped dead at Saro’s feet. An Eyran and a southern man, joined in combat, pushed in front of him. One of them brushed Saro’s left hand, and a moment later both had fallen lifeless to the ground. Saro stared at them uncomprehendingly. Slipping the moodstone back inside his tunic, he stepped over the two bodies like a man in a dream, his eyes fixed on Katla.

The fire was at head-height now and crackling so hard that it consumed the sounds of battle. Through the billowing smoke, Saro saw the northern girl’s hands clenching convulsively behind her back. He saw her leather leggings steaming and bubbling in the heat; he saw the toes of her boots burst into flame.

‘Katla Aransen!’ he cried, and her eyes came open then, the flinty grey gone almost to purple in the conflagration’s glow. When she saw Saro coming at her, sword upraised, they widened in disbelief.

‘Go on, then!’ she cried, her voice hoarse and cracked. ‘Run me through where I stand, tethered like a sacrifice-beast. Kill me for your Goddess! At least it’s a quicker way than the fire . . .’

Saro leapt onto the pyre, flaming wood skittering away under his feet where he landed, to roll out into the circle of combatants. At these close quarters the smoke was chokingly thick: he could hardly make out the difference between rope and skin, but he knew time was precious. Holding his breath, he swiped down with the Istrian blade. Miraculously, the ropes sheared away cleanly, leaving bands of clean, pale flesh against the char. Holding her by the arm to keep her upright, he bent and cut at the shackles that bound her calves and ankles, then stepped away, unsure what to do next. As soon as her support was gone, Katla stumbled and fell headlong into the fire. The shawl unfurled upward from her like a butterfly’s wings.

From the opposite side of the pyre, Aran Aranson watched the Istrian wade into the fire, blade held aloft like some avenging hero, and every fibre of his will urged his good Eyran sword to transform itself into a crossbow. The boy was about to skewer his daughter before his very eyes and there seemed hardly anything he could do to prevent it. Words battered his skull like trapped pigeons: ‘a flicker of hope may be fanned to a beacon,’ old Gramma Rolfsen would say. ‘Never say die.’

‘Never!’ howled Aran Aranson.

Not caring whom he struck to win through to his daughter, he launched himself through the press of bodies. He saw his daughter fall and marked her position by the bright flare of colour provided by the billowing shawl. With a howl of rage, he charged through the midst of the flames, heedless of the sudden stench of burning hair that engulfed him. Hurling his sword away, he buried his hands in Katla’s jerkin and with a strength born of necessity, hauled her upright and over his shoulder. The silk blew around them and settled like a caul. He tore it aside and cast it down. Turning, he found Saro Vingo in his path. ‘Get out of my way, Istrian bastard!’ he yelled, though the intake of breath seared his throat. ‘If I ever see you again I will tear your lungs through the back of your ribs and send you to your bitch-goddess on bloody wings!’

Then he leapt back into the throng, and ran as hard as he could for clear ground. Behind him, someone shouted and pointed. The man next to him dropped his sword and stared.

Aran turned around. Down on the strand, the fire had become a shimmering white conflagration, each flame silver licked with gold; and the smoke had turned an eerie green. The flames that a moment before had been leaping at head-height and higher now flickered and diminished. As the smoke cleared, folk started to murmur. Weapons were dropped. Enemies stepped away from one another. All eyes now directed to the site of the burning, Istrians gestured nervously to ward off evil magic; while Eyrans stared and frowned.

To the side of the pyre stood the woman in the pale robe, her silvery hair touched by the golds and greens of the last of the bonfire.

‘There she is – the Rosa Eldi!’ Lord Tycho Issian pointed frantically across the remains of the pyre. ‘Thank the Goddess, she’s unharmed.’ What he truly meant was that the northern king had not yet managed to make off with her as he had feared, so she was still here for the taking. ‘Now! Work your magic now.’

Virelai bent to the cat-box. ‘Now, Bëte,’ he said cajolingly, ‘you remember the Drawing Spell, do you not?’

The cat regarded him, green-eyed and unforgiving. Then it began to yowl.

‘Extraordinary,’ breathed Fezack Starsinger, her face radiant with the light from the crystal.

Her daughter frowned. ‘It’s certainly magic of some variety,’ she said slowly. ‘But quite what sort of magic it is, I don’t know.’

They bent over the great rock again. ‘Where’s the girl?’ Alisha asked softly. ‘I can’t see her.’

‘Her father has her safe,’ Fezack replied. She angled the crystal so that Alisha had a better view. ‘See: he carries her down to the sea.’

Peering closer, Alisha could see how a small group of northerners had gathered around the faerings. She watched the big man, hair burned back to a dark fuzz, lay his daughter at the tide mark; saw how he cupped seawater and washed her face with it; how she did not stir. He called to a thin, red-haired man and together they lifted her into the thwarts of a large rowing boat.

‘Why haven’t they seen her escape?’ she said, puzzled, indicating the crowd. ‘Surely they can see she’s gone from their damned pyre.’

They could. The two nomad women watched as a man waded in amongst the smouldering wood and drew a length of unsullied cloth from the foot of the stake. He held it aloft to the crowd and shouted something. At once, they could see faces contorting in rage and fear, mouths opening like caves through which night winds blow.

‘They think it’s witchery,’ Fezack said. ‘Tricks with cloth and lights. The fools.’

‘And it’s not?’

Fezack took her hands from the crystal and regarded her daughter solemnly. ‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘It’s a great deal more serious than that. You might even term it a miracle; though it’s not a good omen for our kind right now. We must flee at once. Get Falo. I’ll harness the yeka. Quickly, Alisha, our lives depend on it.’

‘Sorcery!’

The cry rose up into the air and was taken up by others.

The man with the shawl brandished it wildly. ‘She flew up into the air: I saw her. She used this for her wings, till she needed it no more!’

‘Witchery!’

‘She did not climb Falla’s Rock – she flew up it like a carrion bird—’

‘Eyran sorceress!’

‘Their men steal and defile our women—’

‘They spit upon our Goddess—’

‘Sacrilege, heresy and witchcraft: the way of the north!’

‘How should we stand for such atrocity?’

‘War, I say!’

‘War!’

‘At last, I have found you. I have walked the entire fairground in search of you, my love.’

King Ravn Asharson’s arms closed around the Rosa Eldi’s waist and she turned to face him with a smile that made his breath catch in his throat.

‘We must away,’ she said. ‘He is trying to draw me to him: I can feel the tug of the old words . . .’

Ravn frowned.

‘Quickly, now, before they use the Binding.’ She took his hand and began to pull him towards the sea.

‘There are serious matters afoot here,’ the King said slowly, feeling his will drain away. ‘There’s talk of war . . . I will have my men take you to safety, but I must bide here—’

The Rose of the World laid a cool hand on his mouth and Ravn felt the blood rush so hard to his head that he swayed where he stood. ‘Take me to your ship,’ she whispered. ‘Lay me down in your bed.’

Volitionless, he let her lead him down the strand, while behind him the cries for war swelled and burst like thunder-heads.

PART

FOUR