Ian Esslemont: Blood and Bone

Again, the woman’s imperiousness stole Shimmer’s breath. Gods above! She stands in K’azz’s lands and denounces him for crimes committed by another — and all in a distant kingdom? It was too much to tolerate. She would have sent them off that instant.

K’azz, however, seemed to possess inhuman patience. The man merely tilted his head as if considering the woman’s point from all possible angles. Then from behind his beard he allowed a small considered frown. ‘It occurs to me, Rutana, that Skinner entered into vassalage to your mistress when he first arrived in Jacuruku, did he not?’

The woman clutched the leather bindings of her arm, twisting them savagely, and rage darkened her features. After a moment she mastered her emotions enough to answer: ‘There was no formal agreement as such. For a time my mistress and he merely struck up a relationship.’

K’azz’s shrug announced he considered the subject closed. ‘Be that as it may, Skinner has long gone his own route and I am in no way answerable.’

‘Yet even now the Vow sustains him,’ Nagal suddenly broke in, his voice low and melodious. ‘Your Vow, K’azz.’

Something like pain clutched at the prince’s features. ‘I would revoke that if I possessed the power,’ he answered, strained. ‘As it is, I have disavowed him.’

‘That is not enough,’ he answered. ‘Still the Vow encompasses him. Our mistress knows the mysteries of it, K’azz. Are you not curious?’

Shimmer felt a profound unease. Through these two servants she was aware of the influence of this mistress of all witches, Ardata, stretching out to touch them. The sensation made her queasy and her flesh crawled as if befouled. K’azz, she could see, was shaken by what could only be taken as an Ascendant implicitly offering to examine something entwined with his very identity.

Tentatively, he began, ‘I do not question your mistress’s wisdom and power. Perhaps, in the future, I shall take advantage of her generous offer.’ He inclined his head without taking his eyes from the two. ‘But until such time I bid you a safe return journey.’

He turned and walked away, rather stiffly. Shimmer followed, backing away, unwilling to take her eyes from the two.

The big man, Nagal, simply raised his voice to call: ‘Yes, some time in the future, Prince. For do we not possess all the time in the world, yes?’

That checked K’azz for a moment but then he moved on.

‘One last thing!’ Rutana shouted.

Sighing, K’azz turned. ‘Yes?’

‘As you are uncooperative, my mistress has empowered me to reveal one last point.’

‘Yes?’

‘You know my mistress’s powers as seer and prophetess. She has foreseen that soon there shall be an attempt upon the Dolmens of Tien. What say you to that, K’azz? Can that be allowed?’

At first this obscure warning meant nothing to Shimmer. Then she remembered where she’d heard that odd name before: the very locale where K’azz had been imprisoned in the lands of Jacuruku. Her attention snapped to him and she was shocked to see his reaction: he had gone chalky white and his shoulders visibly bowed as if beneath a crushing burden. He shook his head in denial. ‘That mustn’t happen,’ he finally grated, his voice thick.

Rutana’s smile revealed a hungry triumph. ‘My mistress is in agreement with that, Prince.’

‘You’ve made your point, Witch.’ He turned to Shimmer. ‘Summon the Avowed. I sail for Jacuruku.’ And he walked away.

Shimmer stared after him in stunned amazement. Just like that? One vague threat or hint, or whatever that was, and he agrees? She glanced back to the two but their avid gazes ignored her, following instead the rigid, stick-like figure of K’azz as he appeared to drag himself, painfully, up the road.

* * *

The vessel’s bow slid up the strand with a loud scraping of wood on sand. At the bow its master stood scanning the dunes and scrub stretching inland. All the crew and the assembled warriors awaited his command, for though cruel and harsh he had led them on many successful raids and they trusted his leadership in war. His long coat of grey mail hung to the decking, ragged and rusted. His hair and beard hung likewise grey and ragged. The Grey Ghost, some named him — in the faintest whispers only. He preferred the title Warleader.

With a savage yell he vaulted the side, landing in the surf in a splash. His crew followed him, howling like wolves. Of them, if any one might be named second in command, this was Scarza. A great hulking warrior who some whispered possessed more than a drop of Trell blood. He came now to the Warleader’s side, noting, in passing, how the rust of the man’s armour left a great blood-like bloom trailing behind in the surf.

‘No shaking of the earth, Scarza,’ the Warleader observed, shading his gaze upon the scrublands. ‘No pealing of trumpets. Not the end of the world.’

‘What is this you speak of, Warleader?’

The man’s aged sallow eyes flicked to him, then away. ‘Nothing, my good Scarza … It has just been a great many years since I last walked these shores.’

‘And what are we to do in this wretched land that reminds me too painfully of my own?’

The deeply furrowed lines of the ancient’s face darkened as he smiled; he seemed to enjoy his second in command’s caustic vein of humour. ‘It’s not these lands I want, Scarza. It’s the neighbouring kingdom. It’s ruled by a complacent set of self-aggrandizing mages who style themselves master alchemists and theurgists. Here , however, are ragged bands that make their living raiding the Thaumaturgs. These we will take under our wing and show what rewards a sustained campaign can bring.’

‘Their deaths, you mean?’

The lean man’s lined mouth drew down as if in mild disapproval. ‘Well,’ he admitted, ‘eventually.’

The Warleader turned to the surf where the rest of the fleet of ten raiders now came grinding up on to the strand. ‘In the meantime send out scouts and see to the unloading, then dismantle the ships for their timber, yes?’

Scarza bowed. ‘At once, Warleader.’

The grey man returned his attention inland, shading his gaze once more. ‘So,’ he breathed. ‘I’m back, you wretched circle of mages. What will you do? Yes … what will you do? ’

Saeng pounded mortar with pestle, grinding the sauce for the midday meal. In went nuts, young crayfish, greens and peppers, all to be mixed in with sliced unripe papaya for a salad. She worked on her knees, bent over the broad stone mortar, her muscular forearms clenching and flexing. Her long black hair stuck to her sweaty brow and she pushed it away with the back of a hand.

All the other women her age in the village were performing the same task in their family huts, yet with the all-important difference of fixing the meal for husbands and children. Saeng had neither. She prepared meals and cleaned house for herself and her aged mother, who, to Saeng’s continual annoyance, never missed an opportunity to criticize her efforts, or to wonder pointedly why her daughter was on her way to an early spinsterhood. How could it be otherwise, Mother? With you dismissing all our neighbours’ religious festivals as superstitious cowshit, their household shrines as false idols, and their faiths as ignorant childishness? No wonder Father disappeared. And no wonder we stand as the village pariahs .