The Ships of Merior (59 page)

‘I agree.’ Arithon stood in fraught impatience. ‘Will you undertake this one task? I would pay any price you demand.’

‘I think I don’t have much choice,’ Dhirken said. ‘The sooner you’re off the continent, the better, I should say. Or everything afloat will be conscripted at the ports and forced into service for war transport.’ She gave him a bargainer’s grin. ‘I’ll have my fee in advance, though. If you fail, or get killed, or mishap fouls your rudder, I want to be rich enough to lay the
Drake
by until the bad times pass over.’

‘By all means.’ Arithon stepped back and unlatched the companionway with a debonair flourish. ‘Let’s retire to your hold and see what sort of wealth strikes your fancy.’

For the treasure was fully accounted for, the lading list accurate to the last crate and bale. Circled in musty lantern light, Arithon and Dhirken pressed between the packed cargo: the stacked crates of Falgaire crystal, wrapped and nested in straw; the iron-strapped bullion crates stamped with guild seals, and the carpets packed in lavender to discourage moths. Fine silks; exquisite tapestries; bronze lanterns paned with blown glass; the wine tuns and the rare brandies; the glazed pottery; to the last, breathtaking bolts of damascened silks and patterned linens.

Pleased by her settlement, Dhirken braced her hip on a wine barrel and flicked back the wisped end of her braid. ‘What’ll you do with the rest of this?’
‘Sell it in the markets here at Innish. The proceeds will fund my small fleet.’ Arithon trailed his fingers along a bullion chest, his madcap inventiveness struck into sudden sobriety. ‘The seals on this chest are Etarran.’

‘You didn’t know?’ Outside the glow of the lamp, Jieret stooped under the deck beams.

‘Know what?’ Arithon spun to face him, his elegant silks marred with grime and a sharpened frown on his face. ‘Lady Maenalle’s letter said she wished to stake a fortune to undermine Lysaer’s armed strength. I wouldn’t see her clans suffer undue persecution at the hands of Avenor’s war host, but if I wasn’t desperate not to play for killing stakes, the donation would have been refused.’

‘Donation?’ Earl Jieret elbowed past a bundled tier of carpets. ‘Your Grace, when I saw Tysan’s
caithdein
, she insisted she was returning what belonged to Rathain’s crown in the first place.’ A vindictive smile split his beard. ‘Everything in this hold was hauled overland from Etarra by Lysaer s’Ilessid, then torn out of his hands in clan ambush atop the Pass of Orlan.’

‘Oh, that’s rich!’ Dhirken folded into helpless laughter over the rim of her barrel. ‘Dharkaron drag you to the devil, prince! You’ll do all you say and take to blue water, underwritten by your foe’s stolen fortune!’ In admiration tinged with regret, she regarded the man etched against the hold’s murky darkness. ‘A pity for you. The time you need to complete your grand plan is one year too much to expect.’

Arithon’s smile cut the gloom like edged lightning. ‘That’s scarcely a setback, lady captain. Lysaer can muster his force at Etarra. He can outfit and march them the breadth of the continent at vast and ruinous expense. But to engage and wreak my ruin, he first has to find me. That will cost him a long and merry search.’

The Shadow Master stretched, caught the lantern from its peg, and flung an expansive gesture toward the ladder
that led to the hatch. ‘What do you say? We could broach that cask you’re perched on. Let’s drink like old friends to the charter you’ve earned, and my most cherished hope of freedom.’

The cherry trees in Tysan cast off their spring mantles, and flurries of pink and white blossoms gusted over the fringe of the war banners. Petals sprinkled the surcoats of the men in the cavalcades and strewed the lashed tarps on the supply wagons which furrowed black tracks in the mud beneath Avenor’s north gate turrets. With the equinox feast and the prince’s state wedding a month gone, his royal city rededicated its heart to the coming war against the Master of Shadow.

Lysaer’s new bride had no choice but to endure through the massive upheaval involved with launching the campaign. Her husband was rarely at her side. Surrounded by advisors and officers, he could be glimpsed between trips to the armouries and stock sheds; or some days not at all, closeted as he was through lengthy meetings with his secretaries and his seneschal. The dispositions, the inventory lists, the arrangements for wagons and supplies seemed grindingly endless.

Nights in the fast quiet of their high tower chamber became a guarded time of solace for them both. Clenched in the passion of her husband’s embrace, Talith unleashed every charm she possessed to kindle his
ecstasy, then storm his keyed nerves until his ongoing worries became seared away by blind passion. She melted to Lysaer’s skilled touch until her own starved response touched off his rapture in turn, to eclipse and scald out self-awareness. In his arms, she let nothing intrude; not the discipline of fractious young officers, nor frayed temper from the trials created by marching armed companies across leagues of bad roads; or allotments wrung from a dwindled treasury, to hire galleys for crossing Instrell bay to reach established supply lines in Rathain.

Talith had no hope to change fate. Prince Lysaer’s peace of mind was inextricably linked to his drive to kill the Master of Shadow.

A third of Avenor’s garrison had already marched in hired passage as caravan guards. The rest embraced a feverish schedule to set final polish on training already knit into close discipline. Talith lived in dread of the moment when the meadows burst into high flower. However sweet a nest she could weave with new love, once the season could provide for the draught teams, Avenor’s last divisions would depart. Her splendid royal husband would be nowhere else but in the dust of the vanguard with his officers.

But this morning the war horns were still silent. The casement panes loomed blank as pearl inlay while the dawn slowly quenched the last stars. Birds outside roused and chirped in sleepy twitters against the tap of a wall sentry’s step. Talith rolled over. Her hair a dragged spill of honey from her temples, she slid her flattened hand beneath quilted silk in a sensuous quest for warm flesh.

Strong arms enfolded her from behind. The embrace robbed the bite from chill air, even as the coverlet slipped off her creamy shoulders. Lysaer nestled his chin in her nape and murmured into her ear. ‘I can’t take time for you this morning, my love.’

She twisted to face him. The rasp of his suede doublet against her skin raised the disturbing discovery that he was already dressed. ‘The sun isn’t up. You aren’t wearing silk.’ Apprehension cranked her tone a pitch higher. ‘Where are you going?’

Lysaer kissed her, languorous and light until she struggled to fling off the bedclothes that mired her hips and knees. His touch infallibly drove her to heat until she ached in surrender. Before she recovered from the storm to her senses, he melted back, lost in the shadows by the armoire.

A whispered flick of strap leather and a chink of dangled spurs disclosed his intent to pull on his boots without the service of his valet. Before her alarm could find voice, Lysaer spoke. ‘In the land of my birth, by old custom, the king would ride into the wood and slay a spring boar to prove his prowess. Not to be shamed by tradition, beloved, I’ve set the day aside to go hunting.’

‘You’re mad!’ Talith shot erect in a churned up calyx of silk sheets. ‘Why rush off to bloody some hapless, mean creature?’ Etarran enough to make her pique sting, she flared, ‘Does the Master of Shadow not offer sport enough?’

A dangerous, brittle stillness claimed the space where Lysaer stood. Then the hiss of his expelled breath tore through his protracted quiet. ‘Dare you question my love for you?’

Talith gasped. ‘Ath show me mercy, how can it compete?’ And the tears came, hot and stormy, for the way his honest hurt could devastate her defences. ‘Is it so hard?’ With sadly swallowed pride, she admitted, ‘I dread the day you must leave me.’

A boot dropped with a thud against the carpet. Then the mattress gave to his knee. Cool fingers cradled Talith’s chin, turned her stiff neck. Lysaer’s lips moulded to hers and shared the salt on her mouth. ‘One old boar shouldn’t keep me past nightfall if I’m quick and skilled.
As for my regard, lady wife, how can that be measured against a commensurate evil? You’ve married a prince who is human flesh and blood.’ Like the rip of cold iron, he added, ‘If you, who are closest, think my heart isn’t torn, then rejoice, for I have triumphed. Every man bound to follow me onto the field must never guess how this duty chafes my spirit. Did you forget?’

His grip tightened.
‘The criminal I go to ruin is my mother’s bastard son.
I beg you, bear up and be brave. The killing of a half-brother is burden enough on my conscience.’

No touch from her could soothe his inner pain; no word existed to hold him: Lysaer slipped gently away.

By the time Talith’s misery relented enough to meet his need for her smile, new sun bronzed the east casement. Long since, her prince had summoned his huntsman and gone.

His quest for the royal boar turned inland and wound through the glens, bedecked in new spring like worked lace. The cool shadows still pocketing the lull flanks gave way to tepid light. Lysaer went attended by three men at arms and his equerry. His sole badge of rank, the star and crown embroidered on his saddlecloth, stabbed a prick of unquiet reflection. His hounds ran collared in stitched leather; his horse’s trappings were plain. The polished ash boar-spear socketed in his lance rest sported no ribbons or inlay. Its sharpened head snicked and fretted through the greenery as he rode, a flame of silvered steel wreathed in yellow puffs of disturbed pollen.

Beyond the tangled bittervines netted over the banks of a marsh, the huntsman encountered fresh boar’s slots. The black, boggy earth lay hacked and churned where the creature had savaged the ground, perhaps rooting up fallen acorns, or else testing its own rank strength. The hounds were given the scent. A ridged moil of black
and tan bodies, they surged baying down the glen to a whipped, pale turbulence of ferns.

The prince of Tysan set spurs to his mount, his hair like sun-caught flax and his gloved hands easy on the reins. Eager and restive beneath him, his blooded horse crashed through saplings and brush, and scattered winged tempests of finches.

‘Fiends plague us!’ groused the taciturn captain at arms as the royal escort mustered to follow. ‘Your wives had better like sewing. Here’s good clothes we’re going to shred to rags.’

The hounds streamed through the underbrush in a primal, belling frenzy. In his sensible cross-gartered hose and leather jacket, the huntsman blew his horn to speed his pack, while riders ducked branches and splashed through the sky-printed mirrors of puddles in chase.

Through the course of that first, mad gallop, the party lost sight of their prince.

The pack was whipped off at the first check and a search begun for the man. Avenor’s master huntsman proved a skilled tracker. He found the prince’s horse inside the hour, grazing knee-deep in meadow grass and marsh mallow, its saddle flaps caught with pinched leaves. Both stirrups dangled. The boar-spear was gone from its socket and the reins rested looped, neither broken nor trailed on the ground.

Of Lysaer s’Ilessid, they found no sign.

While the hounds milled and snuffled and whined their frustration, then lolled panting on their bellies, the leathery old huntsman pursed bearded lips and fingered his coiled rawhide whip. ‘I see no sign of any accident. If you’ll hear my opinion, let be and go home. His Grace wanted time to himself.’

‘You would take such a chance?’ The burly captain flicked bruised leaves off his thighs and adjusted the sour leather of his gauntlets. ‘His Grace holds our hope of deliverance. Enemies know it. This could be a barbarian
trap.’ His order sent the equerry back to summon Captain Mayor Pesquil and muster men for an organized search.

‘You waste effort.’ Too laconic to be rankled over doubts about his competence, the huntsman raked back streaked hair and snapped his fingers to break off a growling confrontation between a hound couple. ‘I’d know, were barbarians about. The ground’s too mired to hide footprints. If enemies lay waiting in ambush close by, no blackbirds would scold in the brush. Your prince will return when he’s ready. If you trouble the head-hunter captain to check, mark me, he’ll tell you the same.’

Poised beyond view in dense brush on a knoll, the royal subject of the argument listened as the voices of his retinue grew heated. Lysaer grinned in smothered amusement, then crept away through the trees.

He turned south, determined to stay solitary. For the wise old huntsman had interpreted his wish like a brother: this day’s work had little to do with a ceremonial hunt to kill a boar.

The season was too new for the trees to be leafed in full canopies. Patched, ephemeral shadows imprinted the ground like a cat-tangled skein of loose yarn. Black earth and rotted oak mould breathed through the burgeoning fragrance of greenery and undergrowth sprigged in yellow buds. Too warm in his suede jerkin, Lysaer slid damp hands along the grip of his boar-spear. In all ways, he dreaded this errand.

But a meddler in force who used magecraft to terrorize and kill; a reiver in whose name clan barbarians committed outright slaughter; such a one deserved no stay of mercy. While unwary cities were attacked out of hand, no upright sovereign dared waste the time to search through conventional trackers.

To ferret out the Master of Shadow’s location, a prince sworn and dedicated to his people’s defence must not
cavil at a liaison that might yield results through arcane scrying.

But even for moral right and mercy, the prospect of sorcery left Lysaer deeply unsettled.

Truly alone for the first hour since the machinations of a sorcerer had banished him through a World Gate into exile, shouldered since with responsibility bequeathed by long-forgotten ancestors, Lysaer thought of the mother he had barely known. Lost when he was four into the arms of a s’Ffalenn lover, she had been the only daughter of a high mage. From her had come his given gift of light and Arithon’s deadly touch at weaving shadow. Lysaer’s last memories of her were indelibly twined with the scents of citrus and spices; of delicate jewels and silver chains, and a rippled fall of pale hair. The Lady Talera had made no spells in his presence that he could recall. More clearly he remembered his father’s savage rages, the acrimony of the kingdom’s prim seneschal, and the lengthy, hushed sessions of the kingdom council following her repudiated marriage vows.