Juliet McKenna - The Assassin's Edge

“Just so.” Olret had no trouble recognising the Tormalin term for the last of the three ancient races. “A select few have long made such crossings, defying the sea-roving shades, though ill fates befall the unworthy who risk themselves.”

“I have never heard tell of such visitors.” Ryshad was hiding his scepticism behind a well-trained face.

“We do not linger,” Olret assured him. “The men of the grasslands lay curses on those who outstay their welcome by overwintering, so we permit no such ship to land. Too many return laden only with stinking corpses, carried here by the sea shades.”

Could there still be remnants of the ancient Plains People in the northern vastness? Tormalin history would tell us they’d all been driven out or married into the Old Empire’s high-handed delineation of their provinces of Dalasor and Gidesta. On the other hand, I’d known a fair few cast adrift from the wandering herdsmen of those endless grasslands to skulk like me on the fringes of the law. A lot of them had the sharp features and dark slenderness that legend attributed to the lost race of the Plains. Besides, plenty of those herding clans still passed down ancestral resentment of Tormalin dominance and that could well keep them silent about sporadic visitors bringing something worth trading. I wondered what that something might be.

Olret was talking to Sorgrad again. “Forgive me, but you will not find a welcome if you bring trouble upon my poor people. We’ve suffered a full measure of grief in these last three years.”

“The mountains have been burning?” Sorgrad was all solicitous concern.

Olret nodded grimly. “The Maker first struck sparks from his forge two years since. At first we hoped the Mother’s judgement had finally come upon Ilkehan but every isle was shaken or riven. Fish floated dead from the depths of the seas. Goats choked with the ash or died later, poisoned by their fodder. Whole families smothered as they slept when foul air filled the lowest lying hollows.”

“Then we appreciate your generosity all the more,” Shiv said seriously.

I took another piece of the smoked meat and a sliver of flat bread and avoided Shiv’s eye. It was Planir, Kalion and a couple of other mages who’d set the mountains erupting hereabouts, to give Ilkehan something to think about besides chasing us as we fled his clutches. It looked as if the Archmage had started something reaching a good deal further than he’d intended.

Olret managed a wry smile. “We searched out what favour the Mother showed us. There were turnips cooked in the very earth for the hungry. With so many beasts dead, we had fodder to spare for strewing on the hot ash.” He saw we were all looking puzzled at that and hastened to explain. “It prompts new growth, that we may recover the land as fast as possible.” His face turned sombre again. “But many have died for lack of food these two years past and Ilkehan preys on the weaker isles like a raven following a famished herd. He piles trouble upon trouble on them before claiming the land by force of arms and saying the people will it thus. Then he grants the starving food to keep them alive enough to work but too hungry to spare strength to resist him.”

“Is that what happened to the westernmost isle?” I asked politely.

Ryshad saw Olret was ignoring me again and asked his own question. “Have you no overlord or any union of Ilkehan’s equals to deny such conquest?”

Olret stiffened as if he’d been insulted before forcing a smile and asking Sorgrad, “Do the Anyatimm now submit to some king?”

“Never,” Sorgrad replied forcefully, half a breath ahead of ’Gren. “Every kin manages its own affairs and answers to none but its own blood.”

“And all who share blood ties work together for the common good?” Olret smiled with satisfaction as Sorgrad and ’Gren nodded. “Thus is ever with our clans.”

Which was all very well and entirely necessary in the mountains north of Gidesta, when the nearest neighbours were ten days’ travel over hard ground in good weather and thirty in bad. Everyone pulled together through that selfsame bad weather because they risked being the straggler who died if they didn’t. I wasn’t sure how well the notion would work here with everyone cheek by jowl in these meagre islands. “How are your leaders chosen?”

Olret ignored me again. “What is Ilkehan to you?” he demanded abruptly of Sorgrad.

“An enemy,” he replied simply. “To all of us.”

’Gren spoke up unexpectedly. ”He merits death by our law and by yours too, if that’s the price for wintering over the seas.”

Olret looked at him with sharp curiosity. “How say you?”

“Eresken was Ilkehan’s son?”

’Gren answered Olret’s nod with a satisfied smile. “I got it from Eresken himself that his mother was a slave taken from the grasslands and Ilkehan got her with child overwintering there.”

Hope in Olret’s dark eyes was soon quenched. “What is one more misdeed among Ilkehan’s manifest crimes? Do you not think we would have stood shoulder to shoulder and marched against him if we could?”

“Why can’t you?” asked Ryshad carefully.

“He draws the true magic from every hargeard and wields it like none since the time of the wyrms. The rest of us are left without the strength to ride the oceans in safety and even should we try, Ilkehan uses his dark rites to find and sink our ships.” Bitterness choked Olret. “I do not know where he gets such lore. He kills any who see into the realm of enchantment apart from those cravens who crawl at his heels, learning his secrets until he sends them to curse his enemies to death.

“Do you not think we would have thrown him down to break on the rocks below his stronghold if we could? He is proof against any attack. We could pile up our dead to reach his very ramparts and he would still be laughing as he watched us die beneath the lash of his magic.”

“Have you considered sending a single man to kill him?” Sorgrad asked. “One might escape the notice that a host attracts.”

Olret shook his head. “Ilkehan kills any exile who reaches his territories, lest they be some spy. As if I would let any man risk the Mother’s curse by making such a profane claim just to enter Ilkehan’s domains.”

“What’s a hargeard?” ’Gren demanded, picking berry seeds out of his teeth.

“You do not know?” Olret looked both wary and confused.

“We do not know the term,” said Sorgrad smoothly. “It will doubtless be called something else in our tongue.”

“The hargeard is sacred to the Mother and the Maker both,” Olret said guardedly. “Where we lay our ancestors to rest that the true lore may bind our past to our future.”

Sorgrad nodded reassuringly. “For us, such rites are centred in the tyakar caves.”

That meant nothing to me but visibly mollified Olret. “We use the Maker’s stones.”

Because anyone laying a body to rest in one of these curse-stoked mountains would probably come back the next day to find their revered forefather nicely cooked for carving. I decided that was better left unsaid and tried one of the berries before ’Gren took a quite unfair share.

“We have hopes of making Ilkehan pay for his crimes.” Sorgrad had decided we’d spent enough time with shuffling positions and measuring up the other players. It was time to cast the runes and see who came up a winner. He looked Olret straight in the eye. “We have come to kill him.”

That spark of hope flared again in Olret’s eyes and this time it burned brighter. “By your faith in the Mother?”

“By the bones of my soke.” Sorgrad was in deadly earnest.

Olret drew back a little. “But he has powers none can withstand.” That really galled him.