Prince Maesa, page 22
‘What was the gift, master beardy?’ said Shattercap.
‘My beard!’ Stonbrak snapped. ‘I cut a tress from my beard. It wasn’t very long, and it was very straggly, as the beards of young duardin are, but a beard is a duardin’s pride, and I wanted her to have something personal. I took a knife, and cut a piece, and laid it with shaking hands in the box. Then I went to the forge and worked up a good sweat so I’d smell good and proper.’
‘Poo!’ said Shattercap from his hiding place. The sound of a flapping hand accompanied his exclamation.
‘Proper duardin smell of sweat, and smoke, and metal!’ Stonbrak said between his legs to Shattercap. ‘Bah, I probably smelled like a beardling, all coppery and of yak milk.’
Maesa raised an eyebrow.
‘Never mind,’ said Stonbrak. ‘Anyway, I’ll bet you can guess who was waiting for me when I got to the Iron Master’s Hall.’
‘Bhari Zhondr?’ said Shattercap.
‘Aye, Bhari Zhondr. He came out first to laugh at me, then all his cronies. They took the gift. I was humiliated. Word got back to the maiden and her father, and the humiliation got worse. Cutting your own beard off for a woman is an extreme act for my people, in case you’re wondering – it’s the sort of thing poets do.’ He spat the word. ‘I was a laughing stock. I had to leave my apprenticeship, which cost my old dad. He wasn’t best pleased. First thing I know, I’m apprenticed to the merchant guild, at a hefty wage cut I might add, and shipped out to Chamon on a nine-year trading circuit while my brother back home gets better and better at the jeweller’s arts.’ He stopped, saddened. ‘But you know his story. It took years for the hullaballoo to die down. I was ashamed. Forty-six, what kind of an age is that to have your heart broken?’ He shook his head. ‘Lucky for me, my new master was a wise and kind old soul, who talked me out of anything stupid, and made me see things weren’t so bad as all that. I’ve known duardin snap under less pressure.’ He sniffed deeply. ‘But not Idenkor Stonbrak. I applied myself very diligently to my new role, and gathered much wealth. I mean, partly thanks to Jurven’s skill, but they could see I was good at what I did. That shut everyone up. So, that’s why Bhari Zhondr.’ He patted his mount. ‘I get to ride him around all day, tell him what to do, and if he annoys me enough, I can eat him.’
‘What happened to the maid?’ Maesa asked.
‘Well,’ said Stonbrak. He pulled the gar-hare off the fire. ‘She only married Bhari bloody Zhondr, didn’t she?’
Shattercap tittered, then gasped. ‘So sorry,’ he said, and sounded like he meant it.
Stonbrak handed Maesa a portion of the meat. Maesa gave him some back, and passed half of what he retained under the log. Shattercap ate it noisily. Maesa tasted his gently.
‘This is well prepared, Idenkor.’
‘Thank you,’ said Stonbrak.
‘That was a personal tale you relayed.’
‘Yes, it was,’ said Stonbrak. ‘A second one at that.’ He started to speak, then stopped, then started again. He looked at Maesa with eyes that welled. ‘But though I’ve told people about Jurven before, I have never told anyone about Bhari. Not ever. I prefer to think it didn’t happen.’
Maesa nodded. ‘I know your race better than you think, Idenkor,’ he said. ‘You are proud, and sincere of heart. Telling me that story is as sure a sign of friendship as you could ever offer me.’
Stonbrak hunched over his meal and shrugged. ‘That’s all right.’
Maesa put his hand into one of his bags resting against the back of the log and pulled out a bottle of wine. He passed it to Stonbrak, then pulled out another. Carefully, he laid his meat aside and pulled the cork.
‘In return for this great honour you have shown me, I will relent.’ Maesa drank from the bottle as daintily as if he sipped from the finest crystal glass. ‘I have decided I will tell you how I gained the Song of Thorns, after all.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
GREEN WITCH
They were getting wetter when Maesa began to speak, but with the fire burning well to their fore, they were warm enough, and their cloaks kept out the worst of the damp. They finished their small meal, and drank together as Maesa told his story.
‘There was a time before I met with Shattercap,’ said Maesa, ‘or with Aelphis, the king of the stags, when I wandered alone without purpose. I went to many lands, and had many adventures, as the foolish would call them, these brushes with death and disaster. I came one time to a great swamp in Aqshy, a vast land of lakes and low islands full of trees draped in moss. While there, for the first and only time in my life, I became lost…’
There was a hut on the island, there was no doubting it. It was well camouflaged, the profile an extension of the island’s natural contours, the roof mossy as the rest of the ground. Three trees growing as one from the top further hid it, their interlaced roots providing support to the walls. Maesa might not have seen it at all, were it not early, the hours before dawn, and a single candle shone between the roots, lighting up a solitary window.
Maesa watched the window for half an hour before deciding to move on the cottage. The swamp objected to his presence, and the normally sure-footed aelf tripped and blundered his way to the island. Roots seemed to snag him purposefully. Branches reached down to hit him across the face. A shallow pool opened up and swallowed him to his chest. His body was covered in insect bites, his skin bruised. The swamp had been meting out this treatment to him ever since he had stepped into it, and he was wearied to his bones. He would have left, if only he could find the way.
Even the island, which seemed level and free of hazard, tripped him as he walked its perimeter. The hut’s door was small, and virtually invisible behind a bushy fern. He rapped on it tiredly.
No voice answered him, but the door opened, dragging against the packed earth of the cottage floor.
There was no one inside; nevertheless, the cottage welcomed him. The sense of hostility he had endured outside was absent. A small iron stove put out a welcome heat, and Maesa went to it, keen to dry his sodden clothes. He put down his filthy pack and checked Ellamar’s bones. Her remains were tight and dry in their wrappings. With relief, he put them away again. There was a three-legged stool hanging from a peg on the wall, which he took down to sit on.
The cottage was tiny, more of a burrow than a house. Polished roots made up the majority of the walls, with the spaces between filled with wattle panels covered in clay. There was a small sleeping platform at one end of the cottage, high off the floor in a hollow directly under one of the trees, with a curtain to screen it off. Cupboards built into the walls lined all the opposite end. Dried herbs hung from the ceiling. With their fragrance and the roots around him, he felt embraced by the swamp rather than rejected by it.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had stretched out his legs, leant into the softness of the wall and fallen into a deep sleep.
A soft dabbing at his face woke the prince. He came to with a start, nearly falling from the stool.
There was an old woman tending his bites with a rag soaked in astringent oils.
‘Easy there, kin of Teclis, kin of Tyrion,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a-sleeping in my house.’
Maesa stood. He towered over the woman, and his head brushed the ceiling of the cottage.
‘I rarely sleep,’ he said. ‘You enchanted me.’
‘No, no,’ she said. ‘You are very tired, that is all. You’ve come a long way to get here. I’ve been waiting a while for you to show, but you’re here now, so that’s all right, ain’t it?’
‘Who are you?’
‘Goodwife Melisin,’ she said, and executed an ironic curtsey. ‘Pleased to be making your acquaintance, your highness.’
Maesa looked down at her. She was a human, as far as he could tell, and very ancient for her kind, so old all loveliness that her race could possess had long ago withered. Her nose and chin were as pronounced as a grot’s, her skin wrinkled and back humped so high it nearly came level with the top of her head. Her eyes had a sharp intelligence, however.
‘Places like this can be traps,’ said Maesa. He hesitated. ‘Yet I see no evil in you.’
‘Well isn’t that nice to know,’ she cackled. ‘It is true. I’m a nice one.’ She nodded out of the room’s single window. ‘My swamp don’t like you much,’ she said. ‘Sorry for that. I’ll have a word before you’re on your way, see if I can’t make it a bit easier for you. Thing is, it’s been a bit on the hostile side these last couple of centuries. Don’t take well to strangers. You’ll see why soon enough.’
‘What are you talking about? I am a–’
‘Yes, yes, an exiled nomad, an aelf of the Wanderer Clans. Prince Maesa, last of his house, banished by his own people for fancying the wrong kind of lady, la-di-da.’
‘How do you–’
‘Never mind that,’ she interrupted again. ‘First things first, let’s see to these bruises and these bites. You’ll be no use to us at all if you’re not fighting fit, so sit down, and be quiet awhile, there’s a dear.’
Maesa sat back on the stool and did as he was told. The woman dabbed on more of the oil. His skin tingled, and the itching subsided. Then she hobbled off to one of her cupboards and opened it, revealing a mass of stoppered bottles. She pulled one out and came back to the prince.
‘Whortlewood, for the bruising,’ she said, then proceeded to smear a greasy unguent onto his injuries.
‘I don’t need your aid, madam,’ he said.
‘Yes you do,’ she said. ‘Too proud by half you aelves are. You’re hardy, but you can be hurt. Still, as I reckon it you lot of the greenways are the least pompous of the bunch, and the best of the wild aelves.’ She grinned at him. ‘That’s a compliment, by the way.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. His arm was losing its stiffness. He flexed it. ‘You know your herbcraft.’
‘I do,’ she said. ‘Now drink this.’ She poured a thick liquid into a wooden cup. ‘I know what you lot are like when you’re lovelorn, don’t look after yourselves properly.’
He sniffed the cup.
‘Just drink it. It ain’t going to kill you, it’s good for you. Now, I’ve got something here that you need to listen to while you get that down you.’
He drank the liquid, and a delightful, warm sense of relaxation suffused him.
She went to another cupboard and took out a misshapen log about the size of Maesa’s smallest bag. She got down on creaking knees and fussed around it, propping it up with small, colourful rocks and carved bits of branch, and Maesa saw it was a section of tree. Contorted, still covered in bark, perhaps rotten. Not much use for timber or for burning. Melisin poked it. It rocked, but did not fall over. She then fetched several small bottles, and spent some time dripping oils and tinctures onto various parts.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’ll do it.’ Melisin cleared her throat. ‘Oi, Findelfil. Wake up. He’s finally here. Findelfil’s been getting a bit distant of late,’ she explained to Maesa. ‘It’s a good job you’ve come now. I don’t think he’d have lasted much longer.’ She turned her attention back to the lump of wood. The bottom and sides where it had been cut away from the tree had been sealed with resin. ‘Findelfil! The prince has come, wake up!’
A pale blue light flickered in the hollow at the top. Melisin sat back on her heels, all her joints popping at once, and gave a gummy smile. ‘Aha! That’s my lad. Here he comes.’
The glow brightened, and coalesced into dots and shimmers that danced around one another, emitting a tinkling like the bells on a horse’s harness heard from far away. These solidified, becoming the outline of a head, shoulders and a ghostly arm, which further sharpened until they took on the seeming of solidity, and the partial figure had grown around the wood. It had the features of Maesa’s people – the sharp bones, the beauty, the ears tapering to a point – but an arboreal soul looked back from its shining eyes. This was no aelf. At best, it was the memory of one, expressed by the imaginations of the trees, a mark of remembrance for an alliance long broken.
Findelfil was a Tree-Revenant, a creature of the Sylvaneth, and a horribly mutilated one at that. Maesa had met such beings in the past. They were the foot-soldiers of the glades, part living wood and part spirit, kin to the spites and the dryads. Most often, they had legs, torsos and a left arm of living wood, the upper part of their bodies, their heads and their right arms expressed by the magic of Ghyran as a tangible spirit form. Findelfil was missing most of his woody parts. Now Maesa understood why the timber was sealed with resins.
‘Champion of Alarielle, I greet you,’ said Findelfil. Words like the breeze through leaves soughed from his mouth. ‘As life made me so, I am Findelfil, warrior of the forest.’
‘I greet you in return, noble spirit, with great respect. As life made me, I am Maesa, of the Wanderer Clans. But forgive me, I am no champion of Alarielle. You flatter me. The compact between she and my people is over, though it shames me to say so.’
‘What you know, oh prince, is not so important as what is true, and what is true is what you are,’ said Findelfil. ‘The trees and the boughs have whispered of your coming for decades.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ muttered the goodwife. ‘I’ve been waiting a long old while this time.’
‘I never gave up hope,’ said Findelfil. ‘Now you are here, and you will aid me.’
Maesa made a face. ‘What if I do not wish to?’
‘You will, for that is what is meant to be,’ said the revenant. ‘I am the last of the glade-kin of my household, who were slain by the evil that dwells in the heart of this swamp. I ask that you return me home, and overthrow the evil, and plant my soulpod so that I might grow again and call the spirits of my people back.’
‘A small task for me, then,’ said Maesa. ‘To fight and kill something that destroyed a whole band of your kind, noble spirit. I will surely die.’
‘You will not, for that is not what is intended to happen,’ said Findelfil sombrely.
‘Fate has a way of tricking us,’ said Maesa. ‘What is this foe?’
‘A fearsome plague daemon,’ said Findelfil. ‘It has made its home amid the ruins of my glade-kin’s dwellings.’
‘For a single daemon to do what you say it did, it must be powerful,’ said Maesa. ‘If that is the case, I shall have no chance against it.’
‘You will prevail. We were killed furtively, weakened by disease. We were half dead when it came against us openly. You will not be, and you shall have help.’
‘In what form?’ said Maesa.
‘Our greatest treasure, that we held in trust for Alarielle’s champion. It is yours, prince, you need only take it and wield it.’
‘A weapon then?’ asked Maesa.
‘A sword like no other,’ the revenant said. ‘Use it, and keep it. Know the favour of Alarielle. She is the Goddess of Life. Surely her patronage would be useful to you, when you seek to overcome death?’
Maesa did not ask how the revenant knew of his quest. There was magic at work there. He thought a moment on the offer.
‘I shall accept,’ said Maesa.
‘As was foretold,’ said Findelfil.
‘On one condition,’ said Maesa.
‘Name it,’ said Findelfil.
‘That your mistress aid me in my quest, and return my love to me if she can.’
The revenant smiled. ‘She always helps you, oh prince. You are her favoured hero. The weapon is the key to your success.’
‘I know nothing of that.’
‘It is true nevertheless. The weapon has always been yours.’
Findelfil’s spirit form flickered, and withdrew back into the remains of his wooden body.
‘Oh, right then,’ Melisin said, as if she had not been paying attention. She got up off her knees with a groan. ‘He’s no more to say. That’s that then, laddie, all going to plan. I’ll give you the necessaries to get through the centre of the swamp without dying. Potions you’ll have, and medicinal things, some Aqua Ghyranis. ’Tis a black place now, full of death.’ She raised a finger gnarled with rheumatism. ‘But first, I’ll make us something to eat.’
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PLAGUE BEAST
Having extracted binding oaths from Goodwife Melisin that no harm would come to Ellamar’s remains, Maesa left the bulk of his belongings in the cottage. He donned his mail and his horned helm, and took his weapons, and a satchel of Melisin’s potions, but nothing else. He tied a rope to the life-wood remains of Findelfil, slung him over his back and set out into the swamp.
Melisin’s home vanished quickly. After only a few dozen yards, Maesa could not tell where the witch’s house was. There were a number of low islands sporting clumps of trees, and any one of them could have been the location of her cottage.
‘She will mind the bones of your beloved well,’ said Findelfil from Maesa’s back. When he manifested to speak to Maesa, the weight increased greatly. ‘Pay attention to our task. You must go towards the very centre of the swamp.’
‘It may take some time,’ said Maesa. ‘The trees here objected to me before.’
‘They will not now,’ said Findelfil. ‘They protect what is left of the goodness of this place. Now they know you not to be a foe, they will not hinder you, they have been told to let you pass.’
Findelfil fell silent, and his stump became easier to bear.
