Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (15 page)

Taw Ricks Hunting Lodge, Caladhria

7th of For-Autumn

W
AITING FOR NEWS
from the parliament had become intolerable. Zurenne had decided that she must do something or she would surely go mad. So she had begun with a few roughly sketched plans. Now those were overlaid with much-amended lists of all that would be needed to rebuild the manor. As best she could guess, anyway. Zurenne’s pen nib hesitated over an estimate of the tiles needed to reroof the great hall.

‘Mama?’ Ilysh looked up from the pile of maps which she was studying at the far end of the sitting room’s long table. ‘What do you suppose is happening in Ferl?’

Esnina looked up from her copy book, her little face anxious. Zurenne saw the little girl’s hand shaking and stifled a groan. That would mean another page of blots to prompt a tantrum when Neeny realised what she had done, without anyone so much as venturing a criticism.

‘Try to cultivate some patience, Lysha,’ Zurenne advised in the mildest tone she could summon. ‘What are you looking at there? Why don’t you show Neeny?’

Ilysh hesitated but as Zurenne had hoped, her desire to show off what she had learned got the better of her.

‘See, Neeny? Madam Merenel says that these mountains are called the Southern Spurs. The Gidestans mark the close of their mining season as the year turns to For-Autumn and head back to the Dalasorian side of the mountains—’

Zurenne had only the haziest idea of what the Tormalin magewoman had been talking about. Come to that, she’d had no idea that her husband had amassed what Madam Merenel assured her was an outstanding collection of charts and travellers’ journals.

Lysha had unearthed them in a search through her father’s chests to find a second white raven set for Neeny to play with, to stop her screaming that she wanted to learn like Lysha and snatching game pieces out of Madam Merenel’s hands.

‘Some of the Gidestans take the western pass to spend the winter in Wrede but that’s a hazardous journey.’ Ilysh’s finger traced the Dalas river running east towards the coast before she tapped a void in the mountains above it.

On the map it was a modest distance though Zurenne had no notion what that might mean in terms of travel on the ground. These sweeping charts were incomprehensible compared to the strip-maps she was familiar with; each page depicting a single day’s journey and showing the halts and landmarks along the way. What more did a traveller need?

‘The Ushaltena pass is the widest path to the ocean and Madam Merenel says that its trails have been well maintained for generations,’ Lysha was explaining. ‘Most of the miners take that route to winter in Inglis and the villages thereabouts.’

Esnina leaned closer to study the neatly inked dots tracing the great roads’ routes through the mountains and the forests. ‘Trees,’ she said brightly, one plump finger pressing on the parchment.

‘That’s right.’ Ilysh smiled. ‘And these little marks mean marshland, like our own saltings back home.’

Zurenne had never realised there were marshes in Tormalin. All she knew of that land and its Emperor was what her father had told her. That the noble princes of the Empire’s great houses were forced to surrender a yearly tithe of all their profits to support his legions. Legions which would march west to reclaim their lost Empire, given the slightest excuse. But her husband hadn’t believed that and if half the rumours of the past year’s upheavals in Lescar were true, her lost beloved would be proved right yet again.

If her husband had been so interested in these distant lands, that surely made them a fit topic for Lysha to study. That was surely preferable to her daughter learning how to play white raven. Zurenne shuddered to think what any prospective husband might think of such a pastime. Such strategy games fell solely within the purview of the men who might one day have to lead men into battle, not that a Caladhrian baron had done so for generations.

Her pen shook and now she saw she had blotted her own page. Ilysh already had a husband and he would be coming back within a handful of days, for good or ill.

‘Home?’ Esnina echoed her older sister, looking anxiously at Zurenne once again.

‘Soon,’ she promised, hating herself for lying to the child.

‘Perhaps the Archmage will have some news—’ Ilysh’s hand went to her own silver pendant.

Zurenne was sorely tempted to rip it from the girl’s neck, if only to assert her authority over her daughter. She clenched her fist beneath the tabletop and spoke as calmly as she could. ‘What makes you think he’ll tell you, if he wouldn’t tell me?’

‘But I am—’ Ilysh flushed red as she bit off her words.

The Lady of Halferan? Zurenne couldn’t face that quarrel again.

‘We expect Madam Merenel shortly after noon, don’t we? You should get some air before nuncheon,’ she said crisply. ‘Take Neeny for a walk around the deer paling.’

‘Mama—’

‘Come on, Lysha.’ Esnina closed her copy book on a glistening page, her discarded pen leaving a smear on the table. She hurried into the bedchamber.

‘Go and find Raselle,’ Zurenne ordered Ilysh before the girl could argue any further. ‘I don’t think it will rain but you should both wear a cloak.’

Ilysh’s expression remained mutinous. Before she could speak a knock sounded on the door.

‘Enter,’ Zurenne called out briskly.

‘My lady?’ It was Master Rauffe, holding a ledger.

‘Is that the final reckoning of all that’s been salvaged?’ Zurenne held out her hand. ‘Ilysh, take your sister for her walk.’

‘Come on, Lysha.’ Esnina had already found her own cloak and was standing in the bedchamber doorway, her sister’s in her arms.

Ilysh accepted the garment with ill-grace. ‘Don’t you go tugging at my skirts and asking me to carry you back.’ As she fastened the clasp, she glanced at her mother with veiled eyes.

Zurenne had seen her fingers brush that silver pendant once again. Had Lysha only agreed to the walk in order to pester the Archmage without any witnesses but Neeny?

There was no point in accusing her. The girl would only deny it. Anyway, if the Archmage yielded to Lysha’s entreaties, they would finally know their fate.

‘Master Rauffe?’ She invited the steward to show her the ledger as the girls departed.

The wiry man set the book on the table and turned the pages one by one to reveal his neatly inked entries.

‘My oath to Saedrin, my lady,’ he concluded at last, ‘I believe we have now recovered all that’s worth having from Halferan’s ruins.’

‘Indeed.’ Zurenne blinked away a sudden mistiness of grief. She didn’t have time for weeping if the manor was to be rebuilt. Though it was hard to imagine they’d have any use for
seven serving platters, red-glazed earthenware, chipped
.

Rauffe closed the ledger and picked it up again. ‘If we are to see the rubble cleared and the brickwork begun before the onset of winter, we will need to start at once and to summon every strong man from across the barony, aye and any women and lads who can be spared. And my lady, Madam Merenel, when she was here the other day, she did say a second time, there are wizards who’ve offered to help.’

Zurenne recalled a Caladhrian-born mage making that same offer, that first and last time when she had seen the ruination of her home.

She also wondered if Master Rauffe realised how the tightness in his voice betrayed him, along with the way the tall man hugged the ledger to his chest, as though leather-bound boards could protect him from magecraft.

She wished she could find some way to tell him that she understood his apprehension. That she still shivered whenever she recalled the successive waves of wizardry wrought in their defence as he had driven the baronial carriage away from the howling barbarians intent on destroying Halferan. Who could have imagined such things were possible? After seeing such a thing, asking a mage to help shift beams and bricks seemed ludicrous, not to say insulting.

‘My lady?’ Master Rauffe prompted her for an answer.

The door to the entrance hall flew open.

‘Oh my lady, he’s back!’ Raselle was so torn between excitement and uncertainty that she was barely coherent. ‘The captain— that’s to say, the baron—unless—’

‘Tell Corrain to meet me in the great hall, in the new shrine,’ Zurenne ordered. ‘At once! He is to talk to no one until he has spoken to me!’

She could only pray to Trimon, god of travellers, that Lysha and Neeny were already well away on their walk, their backs turned to this bustle of new arrivals in the stableyard. She needed to know Corrain’s news before she had to deal with her daughter.

How insufferable would Ilysh be, if he had indeed been confirmed as baron? Making his wife the pre-eminent lady of the demesne? Well, if Ilysh thought that raised her above a mother’s discipline, she would learn different. Zurenne lifted her chin as she hurried through the cluttered entrance hall.

The new shrine was still only hidden by the curtain which Evrel the seamstress and her daughters had sewn from a tapestry formerly decorating the kitchen corridor. In keeping with the lodge’s purpose, the cunningly woven wool showed a hunting scene and that was surely no impiety with Aft-Autumn sacred to Talagrin.

As Zurenne approached, she saw the flower-studded grass along the bottom edge was already half obscured by pinned scraps of cloth, tokens of the household women’s heartfelt prayers.

Drawing the tapestry aside she found the curtain was rattling. Copper cut-pieces pierced with hammer and nail had been stitched to the linen backing. Of course; men were accustomed to nail copper pennies, sometimes silver ones, to their local shrine’s door to mark their entreaties and vows to the gods, for their friends to witness and their foes to fret over.

Though what measure of devotion was this? Halved and quartered pennies were common currency among the poorest of the poor. Then Zurenne rebuked herself. In such uncertain days, the dispossessed villagers were surely wise to hoard their whole coin.

‘My lady?’ A booted footfall on the floorboards was lost in the thud of the closing door.

‘Corrain.’ Zurenne gripped the edge of the tapestry. ‘What news?’

‘What is this?’ He was walking slowly up the hall, his eyes fixed on the statues of the gods now half-revealed. The rest of the great hall might have been echoing emptiness for all the heed he took of that disorder.

‘We made a shrine—’ Zurenne broke off as Corrain’s gaze fixed on the table shrouded in white linen.

‘Rosemary for remembrance.’ Corrain was looking at the green sprigs framing the silver leaves of the urn’s base. ‘For my lord?’

Zurenne nodded. She had found the herbs there just after dawn when she’d brought her own wreath of bay laurel to garland the new urn. She didn’t know who had laid them.

‘The Archmage,’ she began to explain. ‘He drew my lord’s ashes out of all the rest and—’

‘Planir?’ Corrain’s scowl accused her. ‘What bargain did you make with him for that?’

‘None,’ Zurenne protested.

How dared Corrain speak to her in such a manner? He wasn’t her husband and he was Ilysh’s only in name for the sake of defending the barony. Let him conduct himself as befitted a guardsman.

‘Could you not have sent word for us to expect you?’ she demanded with some heat.

‘I rode as fast as any despatch rider.’ Corrain shook his head. ‘I am Baron Halferan, confirmed by the parliament’s decree.’ He sounded as if he didn’t believe it.

‘Saedrin be blessed.’ Zurenne’s euphoria was short-lived. She contemplated the heaps of belongings all around the hall and wondered how long it would take to return all these people to their homes. If they had any homes to go back to.

‘Now you are confirmed as baron we must rebuild without delay,’ she said slowly, ‘if we’re to have the manor and village fit to live in before the winter weather bites.’

How long would that be? Could they hope for any more boons from the gods? Would Maewelin hold off the first frosts for the sake of the widows and orphans?

As she turned her back on the silent demands of the household goods piled up in the hall, Zurenne looked for the Winter Hag. Seeing the rough-hewn representation carved from twisted bog oak and rescued from some ransacked shrine, she was shocked by a sudden memory.

Zurenne had promised the holy crone a new statue if her children were rescued from Minelas. The ancient goddess’s most sacred duty was a secret passed from mothers to daughters; the Crone was the righter of women’s wrongs at the hands of men. But Zurenne had never made good on that pledge. She must do so and quickly, with the Archmage’s coin.

‘We will need wizardly aid.’ Zurenne raised her hand to her rune sigil pendant with sudden resolve. ‘Madam Jilseth will surely advise us, or Madam Merenel. Do you recall her? She’s been teaching Lady Ilysh—’

‘No!’ Corrain reached out as though to physically stop her before drawing his hand back into a clenched fist.

Shocked, Zurenne retreated a step. ‘Why not?’

The misery in his face sent a sick chill through her.

‘The Archmage.’ Corrain twisted the broken slave shackle around his wrist. ‘I will have to answer to him now. As long as he swears to keep Halferan safe—’