The Silver City, page 11
‘Do you mean that?’
Ansaryon had entered the courtyard behind them, noiseless as usual. Abreth whirled round, his hand going to his dagger before he remembered that it had been courteously but firmly removed at the outer gate of the Palace. He stared at the Prince in angry disbelief. ‘I didn’t know you spoke our language.’
‘It isn’t so very different from ours,’ Ansaryon pointed out. ‘Indeed, in Tayo’s time it was the same. A few different words and meanings, a more complicated and elaborate grammar, that’s all that has changed here in nearly 300 years. Well, Halthris of the Tanathi? I take it that since you are now reunited with your brother, you wish to return with him to your companions?’
‘You know I do,’ Halthris said. She glanced at Abreth’s hostile face: evidently, his experience of Ansaryon so far had only confirmed the alarming stories they had been told about him. She added, smiling, ‘If you had not interrupted us, I would have had the chance to tell my brother that despite the fact that I know next to nothing about what you call the “politics” here, and like what I know even less, I have come to regard the Lord Ansaryon as my friend. And if he is my friend, he is yours as well — so unravel that horrible scowl, Abreth son of Charnak, and show the man some courtesy.’
‘Courtesy?’ Ansaryon said, and grinned. ‘That advice from you, Halthris of the Tanathi, is akin to the Emperor of Toktel’yi advocating a life of simple austerity. Let me tell you, Abreth, that I have never met anyone ruder or more forthright than your sister. I had to keep her here for her own safety.’
‘So you said,’ Halthris reminded him quietly. ‘But not for the reason you’ve just given, I think.’
Her eyes met his, with significance. After a while he smiled rather grimly, and shrugged. ‘Believe me. you are both better off in ignorance. My advice to you both is to return now to your friends, sell your horses as quickly as you can, and then ride back to your people as if Ayak’s wolves were at your heels. And leave us to ourselves, or to the Ska’i — sometimes, you know, I’m not sure which is which.’
‘I am,’ said Abreth grimly. ‘You’ve never even seen a Ska’i warrior, have you? Well, we both have. They’re ugly, squat, powerful little men — they ride shaggy ewe-necked ponies that can trot all day, and all night too, without getting tired — and they’re dedicated from birth to Ayak the Devourer. And because they’re all Ayak’s, they think it’s blasphemous to attack and kill each other, so they curry his favour by killing everyone else they come across, instead. The words for mercy, love, or peace don’t exist in their language, but they have twenty-seven expressions meaning “death”. And they collect heads, Lord Ansaryon — they dry them in the sun and hang them by the hair from their trophy lances, men’s heads, and women’s and children’s too. The more heads a Ska’i warrior can gather the more likely Ayak is to grant him long life. They believe that the wolf won’t want to devour them as long as they can give him lots of other lives in their place. How many heads does Quenait have outside his tent? Hundreds, I’ll bet. And he may not be able to get inside Zithirian — he’s only a barbarian savage, after all — but he’ll kill every living person outside the walls, if he can catch them. If you tell your father that, I don’t think he’ll still be so certain he’s safe.’
‘I have told him,’ Ansaryon said. ‘Several times. Unfortunately, I’m not the only one giving him advice — and there are many whom he favours more than me.’
Abreth stared at him. He said finally, in tones of angry resignation. ‘Well, it’s up to you now. We’ve done our best to warn you, to help you — if you won’t take any notice, it’s not our fault. Hal? Shall we go?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘My pack’s all ready — I’ll go and get it.’ She turned and went back to her room.
Ansaryon was looking at Abreth with something almost like amusement in his face. He said, ‘Your sister told me that you were not as blunt as she is. For once in her life, she appears to have been wrong. But, refreshing as your honesty may be to one who has lived in this festering pot of intrigue and deception all his life, it is also dangerous. So are politics, in Zithirian. Do you have that word in your language?’
‘Politics?’ Abreth pronounced the unfamiliar syllables with care. ‘No. What does it mean?’
‘Affairs of state — the business of government — and also, all the plots and behind-the-door dealings and playing off of one person or faction against another. It’s all to do, basically, with power. An alien concept, amongst the Tanathi?’
‘No,’ said Abreth, with a reluctant grin. ‘Not at all, especially in the winter months.’
‘That’s when you choose your Chiefs, isn’t it? Yes, Halthris has told me a lot about your customs. She also, in her own inimitable fashion, made it quite clear that she considers them far superior to those of Zithirian.’
‘She’s right,’ Abreth said. His initial antipathy to this peculiar and somewhat alarming man was beginning, rather against his better judgement, to give way to a reluctant liking. He could still quite easily imagine him indulging in the hideous rites those young Zithiriani had described in eager whispers last year, over cups of sweetened wine in the tavern courtyard. But Halthris had come to no harm here, under his protection: indeed she had even referred to him as her friend. And Abreth, although two years older than his sister, had always tended to defer to what he considered to be her superior judgement. Hal seemed to act instinctively, without thinking, and yet she was rarely wrong, and never made a fool of herself. In contrast, he needed time to come to a decision, and usually worried about it afterwards. Both his sisters, Halthris the younger and Tarli the elder, had always teased him about his active conscience.
‘She’s right in my opinion too,’ Ansaryon said, and glanced round as Halthris came out into the courtyard, her pack slung over her shoulder and her flame-coloured hair bright even in the shadows. ‘Your horses are waiting for you in the Outward Court. And if I were you, I’d sell your herd tomorrow, for whatever price you can get, and return to Lake Raiyis. If the Ska’i go there, your people will need you — and if they do not, well, the defence of Zithirian is our own business. We are not worth the useless expenditure of Tanathi lives. You have risked a great deal to bring us your warning, and if we choose to ignore it, that is our tragedy, not yours. We do not expect you to die for us, as well.’
His voice was quiet, and desperately bleak. To Abreth’s astonishment, Halthris seemed to be almost distressed. Then she gave herself a little mental shake — he could see it in the way her shoulders straightened, and her eyes narrowed — and smiled, the old, brave, resolute smile with which she always faced difficulties and danger. ‘Next year, my Lord Ansaryon, I shall remind you of your wild imagination over a cup or two of Hailyan wine, at the Wild Goose Tavern.’
‘I shall have to come in disguise,’ Ansaryon said, smiling suddenly in return. ‘Princes of Tayo’s Divine Blood are not supposed to demean themselves by drinking in taverns — even one as respectable as the Wild Goose. But, yes — I shall.hope very much to see you both there, Halthris and Abreth of the Tanathi.’
He held out his two hands, in the gesture of friendship common to all the known world, and Halthris took them after a brief hesitation. ‘Goodbye, my Lord Ansaryon,’ she said formally. ‘May your journeys be light, may your days be bright, and the darkness of night never hide you from sight.’
It was the traditional Zithiriani farewell, spoken by those who did not expect to see their friends again for a very long time, if ever: words very similar were part of funeral ritual. Abreth noticed that the Prince did not offer the hands of friendship to him, although he smiled and wished them both a safe journey in return.
Then the blue-clad servants arrived almost instantly, to escort them back to their own people, their own world, loved, familiar and above all, despite its many uncertainties and dangers, secure, compared to the deep, dark and perilous waters of the Zithiriani Court.
It was almost dark when they finally arrived at the camp, and the air had turned much colder, with a sharp northerly tang to it. All along the winding corridors of the Palace, through the outer courtyards, and during their passage out of the city, Halthris had said very little, and her face was as unyielding and formidable as the slopes of Mount Annako. Abreth tried to distract her with tales of Kettan’s appalling behaviour over the past few days. He had disobeyed orders, kept up an unceasing mutter of complaint about everything and everyone, and finally made such a nuisance of himself with Inri that Sherren, normally the mildest and most conventional of men, had been goaded past bearing and had punched Kettan in the eye at supper in front of everyone, a breach of good manners that had afterwards deeply shamed him, although everyone blamed Kettan.
But even this sorry story did not lighten her mood, and for the rest of the way they proceeded in silence. Abreth longed to ask what had happened to her in the Palace: not only was he desperate to satisfy his overwhelming curiosity, but he hated to feel that there was anything which his sister did not wish to share with him.
But even if she had wanted to confide in him, all chance of it was gone the moment they entered the camp, in its sheltered hollow down by the river. Even Kettan joined in the welcome, undeterred by her scathing reference to his truly splendid black eye. Not even the news of Urdray’s death could shadow this reunion: laughing and smiling at last, Halthris was drawn into the bright crowd of faces around the fire in the centre of the ring of tents. There was hot roast meat (Inri, ever practical, had organized the purchase of a spring lamb from a farmer who had brought his flock to sell it at the Gathering Fair), jugs of wine and spiced gellin, the Zithiriani peasant drink made from fermented honey, very thick and warming, and fresh scented risen bread, a luxury that the Tanathi, who did not use ovens, never tasted except at Zithirian. The gathering was loud and convivial, and ended in song, led by Halthris, who had a strong, clear, tuneful voice, and a gift for improvised parody.
Abreth, watching her unhappily, was confused by the strength of his feelings. As children, they had been so close. He would have done anything for either of his sisters — even died for them. So why, oh why, did she shut him out at the very moment when, surely, she must need his brotherly support and friendship the most?
Something had happened during her days in the Palace, to change her. Surely Hal, so energetic, forthright, honest, so positive in her judgement of right and wrong, would never claim true friendship with an effete Zithiriani Prince with a sinister reputation for sorcery and other, even more repellent practices? Had she fallen victim to some terrible spell?
He worried about it all evening, a state of mind not helped by the wine and the gellin, and at last, his head spinning and his throat dry and aching with too much smoke and song, stumbled into his fur-heaped bed in the tent he shared with Djekko, Iriyan and Sherren. Sometime during a long, dark and restless night, he afterwards remembered feeling cold, and pulling more furs and felt blankets up over his shivering body.
And in the morning he woke, still cold, puzzled by the blinding brilliance of the light flooding into the tent as Djekko opened the door-flap. He sat up, staring. Sherren was kneeling by the entrance: he made the warding sign, and said softly, ‘Hegeden help us all!’
Outside, the ground was covered with a thick, deep, soft layer of snow.
CHAPTER SIX
‘It’s impossible!’ Once more it was Kettan, denying the obvious. ‘There are three more months to midwinter!’
‘Can’t you believe the evidence of your own eyes again?’ said Halthris. She bent, picked up a handful of snow and threw it at him in a gesture that might have been playful, but was not.
‘Ow!’ cried her cousin, wiping the mess from his arm. ‘That hurt!’
‘I doubt it,’ Halthris said unsympathetically. ‘It’s definitely snow, wouldn’t you agree? Real, genuine, cold, wet, snow — at least a month early, but snow all the same. Abreth? Shall we call a meeting?’
Chettay came wading back: it reached almost to the tops of her boots. ‘The horses are all right, but pretty miserable. Like us, they weren’t expecting it, and they’ve all still got their summer coats.’ Her breath blew great puffs of smoke into the clear, frosty air, and she waved a hand at the grey clouds bunched menacingly over the Northern Mountains, far away across the river. ‘And there’s more to come, by the look of it.’
Sherren was gingerly touching the snow as if he had never seen it before. He raised a handful to his lips and tasted it. ‘Looks like sorcery to me.’
‘Looks like more snow, too — Chettay’s right,’ Abreth said irritably. He had a headache — surely due more to the terrible blazing intensity of the sunlight than to the few small cups of gellin he had drunk the night before — and it was difficult to think clearly. But this needed urgent discussion. Sorcery or not, the snow was only too real, and their plans would have to be altered.
A little later, the twelve remaining members of the Sayni clan’s horse traders sat round the brazier in the hearth tent. Although smoky and stuffy, at least it was warm in here, and Djekko, who could always be relied upon to think of food, had laid a stack of flat griddle cakes on the bars above the brazier, to singe over the heat.
They were charred, but delicious. Abreth found the thick, chewy unleavened bread enormously satisfying, and a cup of melted snow, pure and clear and bitterly cold, washed it down very refreshingly. His headache had receded to a dull throb, almost possible to ignore, and he had had time to think. So, by the looks on their faces, had his companions.
‘Whether Sherren’s right or wrong, whether there is sorcery at work, I don’t know,’ Abreth said soberly, staring round at the others. ‘But the fact remains that snow has fallen very early, and for the first time in my memory, at least, winter has come while we’re still in Zithirian. We can either stay here and wait for a change in the weather — ’
‘Unlikely, to say the least — once the snows come, they usually stay until the spring,’ Inri pointed out.
‘I agree — unlikely. Or we can sell our horses cheaply, and go back to Lake Raiyis as soon as possible. If we follow the river valley, there are plenty of farms and settlements where we can shelter if there are blizzards. I know it’s more direct to go straight across the steppe, but conditions up there would probably be much worse.’ He glanced at his sister, but Halthris was gazing into her untouched cup, as if the water reflected something quite different from her intent, freckled face.
Feeling more than usually adrift, Abreth continued. ‘And then there are the Ska’i. Where are they? Are they going to attack Zithirian, or the Tanathi? Is this unseasonable weather something to do with them?’
‘Their shamans can do almost anything if they give Ayak enough blood,’ Sherren said. ‘It must be their doing — it must. It’s too much of a coincidence.’
A muttering around the brazier indicated that several Tanathi agreed with him. Abreth held up his hand for silence. ‘All right. Assume the snow is caused by sorcery, and not just an unlucky change in the weather. Assume that it’s the work of the Ska’i shamans — although I must say I’ve never heard of them being able to affect the weather so drastically before. That indicates that they might attack Zithirian at any moment.’
‘Why?’ Kettan demanded. ‘Why should they want winter to come before they attack? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Because the rivers will freeze,’ Halthris said. She raised her head, and looked round at the others. Abreth saw that her face was white under the liberal scattering of freckles, and there were deep shadows under her blue eyes, as if she had not slept. ‘In a day or two, the Kefirinn will be frozen over. There’s already a crust of ice several paces out from the bank. And when it’s covered the river, Zithirian will be defenceless on two sides.’
‘No, it won’t — what about the cliffs under the Palace rock?’ Kettan objected.
‘Easy to climb. And you can just walk up the steps at the ferry crossings and enter the city through gates that are only guarded by a few soldiers. There are no proper defensive walls anywhere along the river, except by the Palace — only gardens going down to the water.’
‘Haven’t you warned them about it?’ asked Chettay.
‘Yes, we have — but they won’t take any notice,’ Halthris told her. ‘Zithirian imagines that its size and splendour make it invulnerable. Everyone seems to think that a pack of barbarians wouldn’t even dare to ride within a day’s march, let alone attack them. The Toktel’yans took the city, true, but that was many lifetimes ago, and they broke in through the Sunset Gate, before it was enlarged and strengthened. No one, ever, has attacked across the frozen river, and so the Zithiriani believe that no one ever will. Yes, I know it’s ridiculous, but they’ve been living soft and pampered lives for so long that they’ve forgotten what real warfare is like. They think the Ska’i will ride down from the steppe, raid a few farms, drive off the cattle and go away again. I’ve tried to tell them that this time it’s different — believe me, I’ve tried. And of course, there’s always the chance that they may be right — that the Ska’i will attack the Tanathi, and leave Zithirian alone. But whatever is going to happen to the city, I think we should go, and go quickly.’
People were nodding. Abreth said quietly, ‘The King told me to leave before it was too late. So did the Lord Ansaryon. Are you sure that you’re not just acting as their mouthpiece?’
Halthris jerked round to face him, her long amber-gold braids swinging. She said angrily, ‘No, I’m not. You think we should go too — you’ve already said as much. But the fact remains that if the Ska’i attack Zithirian, twelve Tanathi to help defend it won’t make any difference. But if the Ska’i are heading for Lake Raiyis, then we’ll be needed there urgently. We can’t help Zithirian, but we can help our own people. And that, surely, is where our hearts and our duty lie.’
He had never heard Halthris, his practical and unsentimental sister, talk like that before. She caught his eye and smiled. ‘Wouldn’t you agree, brother?’
