Paul Kearney - The Mark of Ran

Psellos hosted a grand feast in the finest suites of the Tower as he did every year, and so lavish were the preparations that it seemed he must denude the stocks of provender for miles around. Convoys of wagons brought in load after load of food and drink so that the lower levels were piled high with barrels and crates and sacks and earthen jars. Whole vintages were unearthed from the cellars, dusted, and set forth like ranks of soldiers; an entire bakery was hired to turn out pies, pastries, and cakes of every description; and as the fishing season was over, half a hundred deer were culled from the inland estates, along with pheasant, partridge, hare, and piled wicker baskets of larks and starlings.

The protracted preparations grated on Rol’s nerves, as did Psellos’s air of supercilious bonhomie. Rowen had taught him how to ride over the past few months, and he used every excuse he could find to saddle up the aged bay gelding that was his teaching mount, and trot up the hillside, beyond the sprawl of the city, into the green growing light of the hills and the clamor of the dying leaves. Once there, he would rein in and be able to see the whole shallow arc of Ascari bay, the headland beyond, and a world in which even Ascari’s teeming streets seemed a small and untidy blot on the hugeness of the earth and the mantling sea.

The sea, the sea. He had read stories of how the Weren had become enamored of the young world they had been born into, and how some had taken to the gray stone of the mountains, others to the deep fastnesses of the woods, and some to the shifting, ever-changing oceans of the world. Many of the creatures that roamed this diminished earth owed their existence to the early works of the Elder Race. Dolphins, it was said, had their origins in a dream of Ran. Horses were the puissant valor of the earth made flesh. And peregrines had been sired by the spirit of the west wind.

Legends only, but there was a rightness about them that made Rol hope they were true.

Another rider making their way up through the woods toward him, passing from light into shadow and back into light again, all dappled with the pattern of the sleeping trees. It was Rowen on her black mare. He mouthed the gelding backwards behind a wide gray beech and watched her as she gentled her mount up the root-strewn slope, kicking up saffron leaves as though they were flakes of autumn sparked by her horse’s hooves. She thought no one watched, and her face was open and alive-she loved her horse, all horses-and Rol heard her speaking to the young mare, cajoling, soothing, praising in tones warmer than she ever used with any human being. A small, helpless sense of mourning rose in him, and unwillingly he kicked the gelding forward again, out of the shelter of the tree.

Her head snapped round in a quarter-second and a long throwing knife appeared naked in one fist. The mare half reared and laid her ears back, alarmed by the change in her rider’s mood. But then Rowen saw who it was, and sheathed her knife, and clicked her mount onward.

“You are missed down in the Tower,” she said coldly. “I was sent to fetch you.”

“What use am I down there?”

“Perhaps they need another wine-pourer. How would I know? Come. The Master is waiting. The guests will arrive soon.”

“The guests? And who are they, I wonder? The great and the good of lovely Ascari, come to enjoy the largesse of the Monster of the Tower.”

Rowen looked at him. “Come, Fisheye. Time to go.”

He set his hand on Fleam’s hilt at the sound of the old nickname. Something white and cold and ugly seemed to rise up in his voice.

“And you, Rowen, what is your role in the festivities of the night? Will you take them two at a time in the Master’s bed? Or are the flags of the kitchen good enough for you? How many will you service tonight, Rowen? Will you let them beat you, or will they be more old-fashioned than that?”

Her pale face went paper-gray.

“When you are ready, get you back down. There is a change of clothes waiting in your room. No arms to be carried tonight, not even by you and me. The guests will begin to arrive at dusk.”

She turned her mare and with nudges of her heels set it trotting back down the slope to the city. Rol watched her go, black desolation burning a hole in the walls of his heart.

There was a bottle of Cavaillis, the fragrant brandy of Cavaillon, in his room. A gift from Psellos, it was older than half of Ascari. He broke off the seal of the bottle and slugged the potent liquor straight from its neck, feeling it burn a bright path down his gullet, warming the chill of his insides. He stank of horse, for he had pushed the old gelding hard at the last to get back to the Tower in time. A splash in the silver basin some maid had filled for him put paid to that, or so he hoped. He drank deeply of the brandy again, then turned his attention to the clothes lying neatly upon his bed.

A silk shirt, dark as a raven’s back, woolen breeches, and a sleeveless tunic. There was embroidery about the tunic’s neck, black on sable, silk thread. Two horses entangled in a repeated but variegated pattern, their necks entwining, side by side sometimes, in other places running headlong at each other. He admired it, drank from the brandy bottle, admired it some more. He must buy Arexa some frippery for this; it was exquisite.

He dressed hurriedly, set Fleam in her place by the head of his bed, and took a deep breath.

Your time approaches.

It was the sword, speaking to him.

It is right and fitting that you be here. You can follow any path in life you wish, but in the end it is inevitable that you come into your full self. You can be master in a place such as this. Only command me.

It was the brandy. He grinned at the blank walls, drank again of the Cavaillis, patted Fleam affectionately, and left the room, his shoulder striking the doorframe as he exited.

They came two by two, in coaches, in hired barouches, on horseback, with liveried servants behind them and armed retainers shadowing them up the tortuous Cartsway. The great and the good, trooping obediently to Psellos’s door. They avoided his laughing eyes and were reluctant to shake his hand, but they came anyway, drawn by the glitter of their fellows, like moths to a flame irresistible. And perhaps Psellos’s reputation only made the occasion more delectable. There were Feathermen lurking in every side street, producing a delicious shudder in the passing carriages. The occupants did not know that the King of Thieves had been paid to make this evening inviolate. Not so much as a beggar stirred in Ascari without his leave, and he had been bribed to ensure that there would be no hitches on the road to the Tower.

Rowen was dressed in a tight-laced bodice that emphasized her slim form and lent sex to its strength and athleticism. Her raven hair was piled up upon her head with silver clasps and her arms and shoulders were bare. The scars upon those shoulders had been powdered out of existence and the black velvet of her skirt hid all but the toes of her iron-buckled boots. She and Rol did not look at each other as they stood with Psellos in the massive atrium of the Tower and welcomed the entering guests.

Ascari, and by extension Gascar, was an oligarchy of sorts, ruled by the heads of half a dozen noble families who had been powerful in the city for time out of mind. These tolerated Psellos much as they tolerated the King of Thieves; because he was useful, in his own way, and because his eradication would take far too much blood and treasure for it to be contemplated. The Tower in which these worthies stood was older by far than the foundation of the city that men knew. Rol had learned that it was a place of the Elder Race, a hollow stronghold constructed by them in the lost millennia of the current world’s shaping. Psellos had found it derelict and forgotten half a century before, and had taken it as his own-even then he had possessed the funds to make a capital city turn a blind eye. Now only graybeards remembered it as anything other than Psellos’s Tower. Rol could not help but wonder whether Psellos had found more than he claimed in the rubble-choked lower levels of the place’s foundations. The Tower had had a name once, he was sure of that, but no surviving record revealed it.