Sorcery Rising (7 page)

Though quite what she would do with her tousled crop for the royal reception, she didn’t know, and it was only a couple of days away. She’d been planning to braid it up in the latest style, shown to her by Jenna when she’d come back from Halbo last month with a gorgeous new dress in the best southern silk – glossy as a holly leaf and edged with framings of Galian silver lace. Katla had no gorgeous new dress at all. She had prided herself on her own hair being more lustrous and vibrant than Jenna’s, and that what she lacked in finery she’d make up for with her crowning glory, as her mother so proudly termed it. Not much of a crowning glory now, she thought ruefully. Bera would be furious when she got home, would no doubt start castigating Aran for ruining his daughter’s marriage chances, and not only to the King! Which, as far as Katla was concerned, was no bad thing in itself: she didn’t think any husband would be so generous as to allow her travel to the Allfair with him, as her father, for all his complaints, had done; let alone run wild around the islands, climbing cliffs and riding wild ponies. No, she’d be the one saddled and harnessed, with a brace of children before she could blink, and then more and more and more until she’d mothered an entire clan. The Eyrans regarded large families as a sign of Sur’s blessing: a hard enough achievement, since they lost so many to feuding and the wicked seas.

The girls she knew talked about nothing other than weddings, it seemed: which lads were the nicest looking; which had the best prospects; what their settlements would be and what they’d wear for the handfasting; how many children they would have; what they’d call them all. To Katla such discussions were no more than a catalogue of constraints, and that the girls should conspire in their own confinement seemed perverse, to say the least. It was hard to maintain friends when you shared none of their dreams. Recently, she’d found herself drifting away from them, to pursue more and more solitary interests, and she hadn’t really missed their idle tattle at all.

Oddly enough, she’d come to count her brothers and their cronies as closer allies than her own sex, finding with them a fine sense of companionship in the sharing of active tasks around the homestead; or adventures on the island. One day she’d taken Halli with her to climb the headland at Wolf’s Ness, certain she’d seen a rock-sprite in a cave near the overhang. Using combined tactics and a rope made out of sealskin, with Katla wobbling badly on her tall brother’s shoulders at the crux, she’d managed to grasp the ledge and haul herself over, only to be confronted by a furious gull which had rushed at her, wings spread wide, its squawks of outrage splitting the air and its mad little chick, with its huge eyes and ridiculous fluff, pecking bravely at her hands. So much for the rock-sprite. Halli had laughed so much he’d fallen off the ledge: but luckily the rope had caught over the lip of the overhang and, with Katla as a counterweight, the two of them had swung out over the sea, giggling at their recklessness till they were weak.

And that had been only last year. Not very dignified behaviour for a young woman of marriageable age.

She smoothed her hands down her tunic, saw where the salt-stains from the oars had left round, almost fungal patches; where sweat and food and animals had all left their marks. Even aside from its sorry state, she probably wouldn’t be able to wear this tunic much longer, for propriety’s sake: it was getting a bit short in the leg now, and surprisingly tight around the chest. Perhaps she’d sell enough knives to afford some new clothes at the fair. She’d seen leather brought back from the Allfair that was as supple as the finest cloth and could be sewn with an ordinary needle, instead of the vast, unwieldy bodkin used for tacking Eyran horseskins together. With such leather could be fashioned a luxurious jerkin. Not that Katla had any intention of sewing it herself: rather, she’d persuade her mother to sew it for her: sewing was not something at which Katla excelled: left to herself, she’d produce great long stitches half a knuckle long in order to get the garment finished, and when challenged would reply crossly:
It’ll do the job
. Of course, she’d have to admit that there was more than one item of clothing she’d made for herself that had sprung apart at the seams, often in embarrassing circumstances; but it made her no more patient. Maybe, she thought, returning to her buying fantasy, I’ll get a good shirt or two; and an embroidered waistcoat and some suede leggings, as well. And a pair of pointed shoes. And some fine, long boots to ride in . . .

She laughed: she’d have to sell the entire stand to afford such a collection!

Knowing that she should swallow her pride and return at once to the family booth and join the workers, but still smarting from her treatment, Katla stayed on the knoll and watched the clouds burn away from a sky revealed at last to be as blue as a robin’s egg. The distant hills emerged from their grim shadows to expose slopes clothed in purple and russet, where most likely at this time of year bilberry and heather vied for space with brackens and grasses, like the hills at home. The thought came to her unbidden, that climbing the Rock had perhaps been a reckless act, since she had thought nothing of the circumstances, and that maybe she deserved her punishment: but she pushed it away, feeling instead a sudden, burning urge to keep on running, away from the fairground, out into these strange hills, to take one of the long, meandering black paths at random and run to the summit, there to look out over the vast southern continent on which she now stood. So she did.

‘Who was that man?’ Fent asked, his face sharp with curiosity. The Istrian lord had been everything he had expected from a member of the old enemy’s nobility: arrogant, dismissive, outright rude, and fanatical to boot.

At the water’s edge, Aran Aranson shaded his eyes and watched as his two ships’ boats crested the surf towards him, packed to the rims with crew and cargo. Some moments passed and the question hung, answerless, on the breeze.

At last, Fent was forced to repeat his enquiry.

Aran turned to regard him, taking in the volatile light in his younger lad’s eyes, his balled fists and chancy temper. ‘He’s a man you should avoid,’ he said mildly.

This merely served to irritate Fent further. ‘Why should I want to avoid him? I’d say I was more than a match for a soft southern man like that, lord or no lord.’ And when his father’s face went blank and unresponsive: ‘In Sur’s name, who is he?’ Fent persisted, goaded by the memory of the foreigner’s haughty demeanour, his contempt of Katla, his strange fervour.

Aran clenched his jaw. ‘His name is Rui Finco, Lord of Forent, and he’s a dangerous man to cross. You leave customers like that to me. We’re here to trade and I’ll tolerate no trouble.’

‘I don’t like him,’ Fent said stubbornly, but the fighting light had gone out of his eye.

‘Liking has little place in business.’

And with that, Aran strode out into the breakers to haul the next of the laden faerings ashore.

The vegetation of the foothills turned out to be nothing that Katla had encountered in Eyra: consisting largely of oddly-coloured sedges and lichens, and tufted grasses sprouting through all these like clusters of feathers. The gradient was steep, too; but the stitch didn’t return and she made it to the top in less than a half-hour, breathing harder than she’d like but delighted to have explored further than any of her brothers into this new land. Near the summit she turned to look down on the fairground. From here, Sur’s Castle seemed no more than a tiny crag, the people like insects bustling around, the ships as still and small as roosting birds on the glistening sea. But when she got to the crest of the hills, instead of being rewarded by a sunlit panorama stretching away to the exotic land of Istria, she saw nothing but mountain after mountain after mountain, ranges lining up one behind another like an army defending its territory; and then she remembered that the anchored boats off the shore of the Moonfell Plain had not been Eyran alone, but also those oddly elegant Istrian craft with the eyes carved at bow and stern so that the vessel could see in all directions. So most of the Istrians also came to the annual gathering by sea, not overland.

In which case, who were all those people a thousand feet below? Down there, the valley lay like a jewelled sash, impossibly green amid vast expanses of rockfall and scree, a narrow tract that wound its way like an emerald snake in and out of the mountains’ feet. And on that path, as far as the eye could see, came cart after cart, wagon after wagon, and hundreds of great, black slow-moving beasts toiling ahead in a long, long line, tiny figures perched, as bright as ladybirds upon their backs.

Katla felt her mouth open in a great gasp of wonderment. Nomads: the wandering peoples of Elda, doing what they were most famous for: travelling the world. It was the most amazing sight she’d ever seen. She watched them making their way towards a col further up the range, which meant— They were coming to the Allfair! All at once she was laughing, her head tilted up to the sky, the sun warm upon her skin. Truly, Sur took with one hand and gave with the other: if she hadn’t climbed his rock, her father would have had no cause to cut her hair; and if she hadn’t lost her hair, she’d never have run off in a rage and ended up here, rewarded by this secret glimpse of another world.

As they said in the north: ‘The likely may happen: also the unlikely.’ And it was true.

It was the arrival of Fabel Vingo that saved Saro from the beating he might otherwise have won from his brother.

‘Handsome beasts this year, eh Tanto?’

‘Indeed, Uncle. As you can see,’ he held out his injured arm for inspection, ‘Saro and I have paid dearly to make them look their best!’

Fabel roared his approval. ‘Ah well, it’ll be the high-spirited ones that always fetch the best price; and it ain’t the case only with horses – eh, lad?’

Tanto’s huge, open-hearted laugh joined with his uncle’s bellow. Saro looked on, smiling weakly. It would never do not to accede to the joke, though he had no idea what it was that had set them off so.

Uncle Fabel took his eldest nephew by the elbow and together they walked around the enclosure, Fabel indicating each horse’s finest points, Tanto nodding discerningly, as if riveted by every word. Saro sighed. He kicked at the ground. Truly life could be mightily unfair. Surely any idiot could see that Tanto had no interest in the animals at all, that as far as he was concerned they were just walking bags of cantari, ready to be exchanged into nice fat dowry payments. It was ironic, Saro thought, tracing a pattern with his foot, that his brother had not the wit to make the rest of the metaphorical leap: for if the horses were there to be traded for money; how different was Tanto’s own position? Endowed with sufficient funds, and enhanced by his status at the Allfair’s contests, wouldn’t he then also be auctioned to the highest bidder, married off into the family of the man who could offer the Vingo family the best deal, as far as social and political advancement were concerned?

For a moment, Saro was the recipient of a delightful vision: his brother, naked in the selling-ring, hair and muscles polished with linseed oil, eyes rolling in fear; paraded around on a lungerein with the rest of the marriageable lads. The dealer with his silver baton pointing out Tanto’s fine pectorals, the proud carriage of his head, the curve of his neck, the neat turn of his calves and fetlock; flicking him lightly across the buttocks with the whip to show off his well-disciplined gait, his graceful trot; then running the baton down his flanks and lifting into view Tanto’s private parts so that the audience might remark (disparagingly) upon the virility and length of his—

‘Saro!’

Saro’s head shot up so fast he cricked his neck. Favio Vingo had joined his brother and Tanto and was even now bearing down upon his second son. Thank Falla his people were not mind-readers, Saro thought wildly. If they were, it would not be Tanto on the receiving end of a whip.

‘Hello, Father.’

Favio Vingo was a short man, though compactly muscled. He hid the shame of his encroaching baldness today under a fabulously-patterned silk head-wrap, fastened with a vast emerald on a pin. ‘I have something to show you, Saro. Come with me.’ His father beamed: clearly, Saro thought uncharitably, the effects of the araque must still be with him, that he should be so magnanimous towards one he so despised.

Garnering his most obliging and agreeable expression, Saro took his father’s proffered arm and fell into step with him.

‘What is it, Father, that you wish to show me?’

‘Words would not do justice to the experience: you must see it for yourself and form your own responses. I remember witnessing a similar scene on my first visit to the Allfair—’ he paused. ‘By Falla! Over twenty-five years ago, now: can you believe it?
Twenty-five years
. Twenty-five visits to the Moonfell Plain, by the Lady! And still the memory of that first time as clear as if it were yesterday: such excitement, eh Fabel?’

Fabel Vingo looked over his shoulder at them. ‘Ah yes. I remember my first time at the Fair – would have been a few years after you, though, brother.’ He winked and then turned back to continue his conversation with Tanto. As if unconsciously, he ran a hand through his own thick cap of hair.

Favio grimaced. ‘It wasn’t just his
first time
at the Allfair, either,’ he said in a voice too loud to be destined for Saro’s ears alone, but there came no response from his brother.

They made their way past the rest of the livestock stalls and the temporary booths for the herdsmen and servants, and soon found themselves out on unoccupied ground. The sun, coming to its fullest point now, beat down on the volcanic ash so that in the miasma of heat thus produced, it seemed that the eastern mountains rose off the plain in great, rippling waves, like a tide. The sky overhead, early clouds now burned away to nothing, was the deep, unflawed blue of a Jetra bowl.

Favio shaded his eyes. Saro, following his example, stared out into the heat-haze. Tanto and Fabel, bored already, started to discuss the intricate silver inlay-work that could be commissioned from some northern craftsman they’d heard of who specialised in ornamental daggers and pattern-welded swords. Lovely work, apparently: though far from cheap.