Waterborne Exile Read online

  “I see.”

  If he noticed her evasion he didn’t comment upon on it. Of course he didn’t – this was Marten. He played so many games of his own, adding one of hers to his list was the merest– No, perhaps she was being unfair. Perhaps he simply knew this was not the time to push the issue. She turned her full attention to the elders, trying to divine the source of hostility. There were several men and a few women, some appearing no more than middle-aged while others were clearly very old indeed. Alwenna would have guessed them to be elders, simply because of the preponderance of grey hair and wrinkled faces. Not to mention a certain air of weighty self-importance that hung about them. But she ought not pre-judge them, even if they did remind her of every group of royal advisors she’d been obliged to mouth polite acquiescence to in the past.

  The canopy of the stunted tree grew mainly off to one side of the trunk, shaped by unrelenting winds at some time in the past. Beneath this side were boulders on which the elders now sat, arranged in two arcs facing the tree itself. At the foot of the tree was a bench, fashioned of stone, and it was there that Marten indicated Alwenna should sit. It reminded her very much of the courtroom at Highkell. Did this assembly presume to put her on trial?

  Marten cleared his throat, glancing uneasily at Alwenna. “I am sure you are all by now aware this is the Lady Alwenna, rightful ruler of the Peninsular Kingdoms and beloved of the Goddess.”

  Quite what he hoped to achieve by that, Alwenna wasn’t sure. Perhaps half the assembled elders regarded her with thinly-veiled suspicion. One woman, with a deeply wrinkled and tanned face watched her with alert curiosity. Alwenna was reminded of a small bird that had once frequented the palace gardens, always following her about when she and Wynne had worked there, gathering herbs or thinning and re-planting plants. It felt like a lifetime ago. A faint movement in her abdomen reminded her that in some cases it was literally a lifetime ago. Beloved of the Goddess…

  Marten had continued speaking and she had no idea what he’d been saying.

  “– And the circumstances of our departure from the summer palace meant I have sought this meeting at the earliest opportunity, for the Lady Alwenna is in great need of your wisdom and advice.”

  A skinny old man stood up. “It is incumbent on me as leader of the council to offer the Lady Alwenna our greetings, and our condolences on the death of her husband. King Tresilian was ever a friend to the freemerchants.” He fixed Alwenna with a steady gaze.

  Here was the source of the hostility. How much had he heard of Tresilian’s death already? Alwenna drew on her years of training to remain outwardly cool. “I must thank you and your people for your hospitality in my hour of need, sir.”

  The old man did not smile. Instead he cleared his throat and addressed Marten. “Before we take this discussion any further it is the wish of this council that you first give us a full account of recent events. It was our understanding you were to reunite the lady with her husband. It was never part of your plans to bring her here. We must consider the full implications of her presence among us now.”

  Marten smiled. There was little to betray his displeasure at the line the elder had taken, but Alwenna knew the displeasure was there, nonetheless. “Sire, we have already discussed this, have we not? I made all the facts known to the elders last–”

  “But some were not present, for the meeting was called at short notice. And it is imperative that we put certain questions to the lady herself, in the circumstances.”

  Marten spread his hands wide. “I hope you do not doubt my veracity, Rogen?”

  “I daresay all is as you said, Marten, but I doubt you’ve told us the full of it. In which case I must assume you have withheld certain knowledge for your own purposes. And your purposes, I confess, I find as impenetrable as they are frequently outrageous.”

  There were one or two murmurs of agreement from those seated behind him. There appeared to be two distinct factions within the elders, as well as a number of people who as yet adhered to the views of neither group. Alwenna’s champion was not the most popular in freemerchant circles, it would seem. Marten certainly appeared to have his fair share of opponents. Whether he had a similar or greater number of supporters remained to be seen.

  Marten waited for the murmuring to die down before he spoke. “My purposes remain to ensure the wellbeing of the freemerchant people. This is as they ever have been.”

  “And pray tell me how it promotes our wellbeing when you flout our time-honoured codes? It is well-known you were carrying a sword on your travels through the Marches. With as little shame as any landbound peasant.”

  “Had I not been carrying that sword I would not be standing before you today, sire. And neither would the Lady Alwenna.”

  “In which case we might all have been a great deal better off!” Rogen responded, spittle flying from his mouth and catching in his beard.

  “Come now, Rogen. Our meetings would be dull indeed without Marten here to stir us from our complacency.” The bright-eyed old lady had spoken up. “At least listen to his report. He has spent more time out in the world than we have of late. Need I remind you a freemerchant who no longer travels the roads is no longer true? Marten is truer to our kin than you or I now.” Again there were murmurs of assent, but also one or two voices, seated behind Rogen, who muttered disagreement.

  Rogen sniffed. “He’s forgotten too many of the old ways, I tell you. It is not for us to meddle in the affairs of the peninsular kings.”

  “And what happens when those same kings close the bridges to us? What then, Rogen? You know, do you not, that the usurper Vasic intends to charge a toll for everyone crossing the new bridge at Highkell? For everyone, without exception?”

  The forbidding Rogen turned his attention to the woman, whose demeanour didn’t alter in the slightest. “These are nothing more than rumours and idle gossip. The bridge is not yet even begun – better, perhaps, to ask yourself who tore it down in the first place.”

  He swung to face Alwenna. “Or do you attempt to deny that, Lady Alwenna?” He spat the name as if it were a curse.

  Once Alwenna might have been shamed – flustered, even – by his accusation, but his hostility stirred a similar response deep inside her. She sensed the curl of anger with a strange detachment. Oh, she knew resentment of old, a petty, fleeting, moody thing. But this was… Something harder, unyielding. As if a sleeping demon stirred inside her, stretching and close to the brink of awareness, but not quite waking. Even as she thought it an odd fancy, she knew she must respond to Rogen.

  “Your ways are not the ways I was raised to at Highkell, sire Rogen. But our blood is the same. I was named sister by Nicholl on the road from Highkell months ago, and that I understand, is according to the old ways. Or would you sooner set aside some of the old ways yourself, when it suits your purpose?” At her side she heard Marten murmur agreement.

  Rogen’s face worked before he recovered his composure. “That is not the issue here. I spoke of the bridge at Highkell. What have you to say about that?”

  “The bridge was torn down when the tower collapsed. I was given to understand the collapse of the tower was the will of the Goddess.” She saw again Garrad’s face, the moment he realised, the moment before he turned the blade upon himself. Was it the truth? It was her version of it, to be sure.

  “Do you dare deny you caused the collapse of the tower at Highkell?” Rogen rounded on her triumphantly.

  “I did not will it.” Not wittingly, anyway. She would not admit her doubts to this audience.

  Rogen turned to face the other elders. “You see how she twists everything? We cannot make such a one welcome among our people.”

  Another old man stood, tall, his features vaguely familiar. “If my son named her sister – and I have no reason to doubt he would have done – then she is by right welcome among us.”

  “She will bring disaster down upon us. It is well-known she was predicted to destroy Highkell.”

  Nicholl’s father
shrugged expansively. “This is what happens if you put all your faith in the word of landbound seers. Is that our way?”

  Rogen turned away from Nicholl’s father. “She will bring danger to our people. Heed my warning now, before it is too late. She’s already led Marten away from his true path.”

  “Come now, Rogen. You see demons behind every tree.” The bird-woman, as Alwenna thought of her, spoke up again. “All I see here is a fellow traveller who has met trouble on the road. This young woman is in great need of our compassion. We must do everything we can to set her on her way again – I am sure she has no more wish to remain immured here with us than we would care to hold her back from her path.”

  “Dam Jenna, I would gladly set her on her way, if that path were not one beset with death and destruction. Now she is here among us I believe our duty is to stop her entirely. Marten has told us of the dread knife she wielded. We should turn it upon her while she is still too weak to prevent it.” Rogen glared at Alwenna, and she felt that sleeping demon stir again. If all he could show her was hatred, she was more than happy to reflect that back at him. She’d met such hatred before, less overt, to be sure, but she knew it of old. It was as familiar to her as the lines that criss-crossed the palm of her hand. She knew the blood-rich taste of it in her mind, knew the final death-squeal of it and the dreadful loss of it and the awfulness of its final flutterings to be free–

  Goddess, what was she thinking? Her fingers had closed around the front edge of the stone bench on which she sat. She was acutely aware of every grain of sand within the ancient slab, every tiny crystal of quartz glinting inside its hidden depths, every tiny, tiny space between each of the grains. The slab on which she sat had once sheared from the cliff above them, and now she knew it, knew every grain of it, knew the place it had sheared from, the rain that had dislodged it, so slowly, year after year until it fell. From… That spot right there, that spot where its siblings still rested, so ancient. And the hairsbreadth fracture line between that slab and the cliff that was gradually, almost imperceptibly, widening. She could sense it: the rock cried out to join its sibling there on the valley floor, beneath the tree among the loose grains that had given up the uneven struggle against gravity so long ago. And it was tired, so tired. Alwenna understood it – she too was tired… It was no longer worth the effort of holding on… Easier to let go… To give up the struggle… To fall free… She scarcely heard the cracking sound as the block of stone sheared oh so slowly from the cliff face above, scarcely felt the ground shudder with the impact as it landed and began to slide on the loose sand beneath the cliff, tilting and twisting as the banks steepened and a cascade of smaller stones scattered around it. So easy now, just to let go…

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tad was dragged from his cell in the darkness. They stripped him of his clothes and doused him in a water trough. No one told him why. As they dragged him out, coughing and spluttering, he caught a glimpse of the glow of sunlight appearing on the eastern horizon. It was not long before dawn. Again without explanation they threw a linen tunic over his nakedness. He shivered there in the pre-dawn light, trying to fathom what was going on, but whenever he met a soldier’s eye, the man would turn away.

  Tad hunkered down on the cobbles by the trough, his teeth chattering, clutching his arms about his knees in an attempt to get warm. The soldiers ignored him and he crouched there for ten miserable minutes before the brethren came for him.

  Durstan himself stood before the boy and ordered him to stand. Tad tried to comply, but his frozen limbs were slow to respond. Durstan watched with impatience as Tad pushed himself up to a standing position and stood there as best he could, knees knocking.

  “You’ll have to do, I suppose.” He turned away, casting an order over his shoulder. “Bring him to the altar room. We have no time to waste.”

  The air in the altar room was warm and filled with incense. The heat hit Tad like a wall – it should have been welcome, yet still he shivered and broke out into a sweat.

  “Kneel in the presence of the Goddess.” The priest’s voice was indifferent.

  Tad complied, trying desperately to control the shaking of his limbs by clutching his hands together. His bladder suddenly felt over-full. He could not face the shame if he were to lose control here before the assembled people.

  He realised someone was speaking to him in a low voice. “Here, drink this. It will help.” Hands held out a small, silver bowl to him. In the bottom was a milky liquid, viscous and syrupy.

  “It will help.” This time he recognised his sister’s voice. He hadn’t known it without that edge of scorn he was so used to hearing. This was the voice she saved for important people, for people who mattered. That thought strengthened him.

  He reached in gratitude for the bowl, but his hands shook so much he risked dropping it. She bent down, and wrapped her fingers over his, holding the bowl so he could sip the syrup from it, tilting it carefully until he had taken every drop. The trembling of his fingers ceased, and the rest of his body somehow unknotted.

  “May the blessing of the Goddess be upon you.” His sister’s voice seemed far away now. She must have taken the bowl from his hands, for he no longer held it. He knelt there, facing the table where other, larger bowls were sitting. There were ornate patterns etched into the metal and he gazed at them in wonder. Never had he seen such beauty.

  He was vexed when a priest stepped in front of him so he could no longer marvel at the intricate patterns. He tried to voice a protest, but he could make no sound issue from his mouth, could form no words. Instead he gaped up at the priest, open-mouthed. Durstan looked down at him and set a hand on his forehead, intoning verses in a language Tad could not understand, but he could feel the blessing of the Goddess flow through him. He smiled up at Durstan. This was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to him.

  One moment seemed to drift into another. He scarcely realised when the priests lifted him and placed him on a stone bench with such care as he’d never known before. He gazed up at the ceiling for a moment or two, while voices around him began to chant. Somehow the ecstasy left him as the voices rose up in unison and the chill of the stone struck through the thin tunic and into his bones. The stone slab was unyielding, digging into his tailbone and his shoulders where he had too little flesh to cushion his body. He tried to raise his arm to shift his weight and ease the discomfort, but he could not. He tried the other arm and it was the same. That was odd. The chanting had grown in volume and he began to feel he was being watched. The feeling was so overwhelming… He twisted his head to one side, but there was nothing there but stone wall. It was almost too much effort to look the other way, but he summoned all his strength and twisted his head round once more. He was so drowsy now, he wanted to sleep. But he was being watched. He opened his eyes, but all was a blur. Then he blinked and his vision cleared. There was the soldier, the man his sister had told him was their father. He was lying on a stone slab, his hands lashed down to a bar of wood that ran beneath the slab, feet tied, trussed up like a goose ready for roasting.

  His father. He might have been, after all. His sister didn’t know everything. He was watching Tad now, as the priests chanted around them. Tad could see concern for him in the soldier’s eyes: he’d never felt more valued in his life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A single, high scream pierced the air and the chanting ceased. At the last the boy had fixed his gaze on Weaver who, hardened soldier though he was, had to close his eyes to escape the pain he saw there. When he reopened them the boy’s body lay limp and still on the stone slab. The air was redolent with the boy’s blood. The priest, carrying the bloodied misericord dagger, stepped around the end of the stone altar and out of Weaver’s sight.

  He heard the footsteps cross the stone floor of the altar chamber, one foot shuffling slightly with each step yet still somehow deliberate and measured, each footfall in time with Weaver’s own rasping breaths. He could picture the unevenness of the man’s
gait, could picture his face, the grey eyes and heavy brows. The priest had made his way past Weaver’s head now and moved round to his left side, still out of vision. Weaver recognised his face, he was sure of it. But recalling where was too much of a fight and he was so blissfully tired. Too tired to puzzle over it. Too tired to think about anything at all. So tired.

  The chanting began again, with renewed vigour, cutting through the haze that clouded his mind. Something prompted Weaver to twist his head round. A familiar face in the ring of worshippers surrounding the stone altar caught his eye. Tresilian’s priestess watched with fierce interest. Gone was the cool disregard; now her eyes were fixed on Weaver – the eyes of a feral creature, starved and desperate for its next meal, her lips parted as she watched with supreme confidence that her hunger would soon be sated. Somehow Weaver couldn’t tear his eyes away. She closed her lips then, the corners turning up in a feral smile, the rise and fall of her chest accelerated. And he knew what was coming next. He had a split-second of full awareness – barely time to tense up – before his world folded in on itself with intense, all-consuming pain as the misericord pierced his heart.

  PART II

  CHAPTER ONE

  Peveril sat in the darkest corner of the taproom. He’d formed the habit long ago and it had never yet served him ill. He liked the Miners’ Tavern best of all the inns in Highkell because the darkest corner also happened to be close to the back door. He could be long gone before trouble had even had a chance to focus on the occupants of the dimly-lit room. And Captain Art Peveril liked to avoid trouble. He wasn’t averse to causing it when the odds were stacked in his favour, but he wasn’t fond of taking unnecessary risks in pursuit of either his dubious pleasures, or financial gain. In troubled times such as Highkell was going through at present, a man prepared to sit quiet for long enough could learn many things to his advantage. Often from such questionable sources as meant they were probably untrue, but he’d long ago formed the opinion that there was indeed no smoke without fire, and even the tallest tale would contain a grain of truth that might be turned to his advantage.