Sun Wolf 2 - The Witches Of Wenshar (9 page)

Nanciormis grinned. “She should. When she was a little girl there wasn’t a boy in the town she couldn’t trounce in either a fight or a ball game. She can ride anything with four hooves and dances like a bird on the wing. I’m afraid it wouldn’t do, though.”

“No. The boy doesn’t like her?” Sun Wolf guessed.

“Worships her—or at least he did, up until a year or so ago. He tolerates her now, as boys do with older sisters.” A gust of swallows swirled down into the central court, perching on the stone rim of the nearly dry fountain there to drink. Bees were coming out as well, dipping down to the water that was fed by springs welling from the harsh stones of the Dragon’s Backbone. Sun Wolf guessed there would be water in these fountains year-round.

Nanciormis went on, “No, it isn’t a problem with Jeryn. But as you know, Tazey’s going to be married to Incarsyn of Hasdrozaboth. He’ll be here tomorrow for the final negotiations. And while among my people there is the occasional warlady, it certainly would not do for their lord to marry one, or for Osgard to—shall we say?—foist one off upon him as a wife. Nor would Incarsyn want such a woman—certainly his sister would not and she’s the true ruler of the Dunes. The marriage is a political expedient to tie these—” He paused, catching himself up over some epithet he had been about to apply to the sons of slaves imported from the north to work the silver mines, who had taken the best of the foothills land from the Desert Lords and pushed them deeper into the wastes of the K’Chin. Then he concluded the phrase. “—these new realms to the Ancient Houses, even as his own was. But, as with Osgard’s marriage to my sister, there can be romance in it as well. Incarsyn is young and comely, but he is a man of the shirdar and not apt to take to a woman who is too adept in wielding a sword.”

Sun Wolf glanced along the colonnade. Like sheets of opaque gold, the sunlight lay between the arbor pillars now, blinding and stiflingly hot where it struck. The contrast with the twisted shade of the vine-sheltered bay where Kaletha and her small group of students sat was dazzling. Their dark robes blended with the shadows, the faces only a white blur like cutouts from paper. Kaletha was speaking to them all, her voice a soft, hypnotic drone, whispering hidden secrets of magic and power. Beside them, leaning on the pillar, Starhawk stood listening, the shearing brilliance of the sunlight lying dappled over her square shoulders and close-cropped hair like wind-scattered petals.

He smiled a little to himself and said simply, “That’s his loss.”

“Captain.”

Sun Wolf, whose single eye was good enough to distinguish in the polished brass of a shield on the armory wall the reflection of the man who stood in the doorway shadows said, “My Lord?” before turning. “Keep at it, boy,” he added, as Jeryn automatically lowered his sword. “An enemy’s not going to give you time to rest your arm, so neither will I.”

The red-lipped little mouth tightened angrily, but the boy turned back to the ironwood hacking-post. His strokes against it barely splintered the wood. Down, backhand, forehand—down, backhand, forehand—each blow with its laborious windup and finish was a separate action, with no carry-through of momentum from one blow to the next. Sun Wolf turned to face the King.

“I’d like a word with you.”

“You’re paying for my time,” the Wolf responded, walking over to the broad arch of the door. The faint, uneven tup . . . tup . . . of steel on unyielding wood echoed softly in the stone vaults of the round room with its high-up ring of windows, a muted percussion behind the words they spoke.

“Damn right I’m paying for your time,” Osgard said. He stood foursquare, his shoulders broad in their straining doublet of dull bronze, the wide gold chain over his shoulders catching little chips of light on its S-shaped links. As usual, the King’s neck ruff was undone and lay in limp disorder under his chin; also, as usual, he smelled faintly of stale wine. “And what I’m not paying for is to have it said that my son’s being taught by witches.”

Sun Wolf hooked his thumbs over the broad leather belt of his war kilt. Salty droplets of sweat hung from the ends of his thin, wet-dark hair and trickled down through the gold rug of hair on his back. His rusted voice was soft. “Who says this?”

“Are you denying it?”

“No. I’m just curious to know who says it.”

“I have that carrot-headed bitch in my Household out of respect to my dead wife and because I’d rather, if we do have a witch in Wenshar again, that she was under my eye rather than scheming in the pay of the shirdar lords or the Middle Kingdoms. But I’ve told her to keep her distance from my children. I’m not having talk start about them, and, God knows, there’s been talk enough, with that sleek little tomcat Egaldus sneaking here from the Bishop’s palace and Galdron all in a snit over it. Well, I won’t have it, I tell you!”

His face was scarlet with its mottled network of broken veins; his voice, in the stone vaults of the room, was like thunder. The chop of sword against wood had ceased.

“Nobody in my life ever asked me what I’d have or I wouldn’t have,” Sun Wolf replied, his single eye narrowing, “and I’ll lay odds nobody ever asked you, either. Now, you can push your son into being what you want him to be, but what I am and who I spend my time with is no affair of yours.”

“I’m not pushing anyone!” Osgard roared. “Don’t play the sophist with me! I get enough of that from Kaletha and that damned Bishop! My son is my affair, and my Household is my affair, and I won’t have it said there are witches teaching the Heir of Wenshar!”

Goaded, Sun Wolf snapped, “I’m teaching him swordsmanship, rot your eyes, not poxy divination—I couldn’t teach him divination if I wanted to!”

“I’d better not hear of you keeping company with that damned woman again . . . ”

“If you don’t want to hear of it, then you’d better stop gossiping with your laundry women!”

The guess was evidently correct, for the King’s face went redder, if that were possible, and Sun Wolf set himself for a side step and a blow. But the King only drew deep ragged breaths, his thick, liquor-scarred face working with rage. “Get out of here.”

Forcing down his own anger, Sun Wolf turned in silence and went. Aside from the fact that it was a stupid quarrel, he knew that calm acquiescence would be more annoying to Osgard than reciprocated wrath—and he was right. As he walked past him into the trapped heat of the stone corridor, Osgard bellowed, “GET OUT OF HERE!” The shout rang in the groins of the roof like beaten steel. A moment later he heard the singing clatter of metal and knew that the King must have strode to snatch the boy-sized sword from his son’s hand and hurl it in rage against the wall. But he did not look back to see.

In the little adobe room on the edge of the empty quarter he left a note: Gone to the hills. Then he singled his own dappled gelding from the palace cavy, saddled up, and left Tandieras as the sun touched the broken edge of the Dragon’s Backbone like a phoenix settling to rest.

For her part, Starhawk was not unduly disconcerted by Sun Wolf’s disappearance. She had long experience with his habit of storming off in a rage to be by himself for hours, days, or sometimes a week or more—and she had her own suspicions about where he had gone. From the open watch-station on the highest tower of the Citadel of Tandieras where she stood guard duty, she could look across the flatlands to where the isabel-line scrub country faded into the vast plain of blackish, pea-sized gravel called the reg—treeless, waterless, lifeless, stretching away to join the ergs, the dune seas of the south. Though the sun had barely cleared the shoulders of Mount
Morian, the desert had already begun to shimmer with the heat. Through the wavering air could be seen, like the dark spine of a half-buried skeleton, the Haunted
Range, which guarded the dead city of Wenshar
at its feet.

With Starhawk this morning was Taswind of Wenshar, the dry wind flicking at her tawny hair as it stirred in the turban of white veils that Starhawk, like the other guards, wore to protect her head from the desert sun. Instead of her usual boy’s riding clothes, Tazey wore a gown of rose-colored wool; following the girl’s absent gaze, Starhawk could guess why. Around the tower, the Citadel lay spread out like a peasant’s counterpane of blackish grays and maroons and a dozen faded hues of homespun buff, stitched here and there with the dull green of dusty bullweed and cactus. The square block of the Hold lay almost directly underfoot—the Hall, the King’s solar and his bedchamber beyond, the long balcony which connected the rooms of his Household, the sprawl of Women’s Hall and Men’s, and the brighter quadrangle of the kitchen gardens.

From up here, Starhawk could see the small cell where she and the Wolf had stayed and the little gate that led from the empty quarter to the dark, granite courts beneath the balcony of the Household. The empty quarter beyond lay like a picked skeleton—a jumbled chaos of adobe walls, five and six feet thick, decaying back into the mud of which they were formed, a tangle of shadows over which doves stirred like windblown leaves.

Starhawk, neither sentimental nor concerned about proving her courage to herself or anyone else, had slept last night in a bunk in the Women’s Hall with the laundresses, scullery maids, and female guards, and had slept well.

Where the stables ran into the vacant quarter there was a harshness of new yellow wood and unweathered tiles. A row of old shops and halls had been converted into stabling for the white horses of the shirdar lord, Incarsyn of Hasdrozaboth, and quarters for his servants and guards. Elsewhere, more repairs marked the rooms where he himself was housed. A scrap of red bunting from yesterday’s welcome stirred in the tepid morning wind like a strayed hair ribbon. It was to these rooms that Tazey’s eyes were drawn.

“New earrings,” Starhawk commented after a moment, not adding that Tazey had also done up her hair differently to complement the tiny, lustrous teardrop stones. “Were they part of his groom-gift?”

The girl’s face went pink like a deep-desert sunset. “No,” she said, and shyly met the Hawk’s eyes. “He sent these to me this morning all on his own, not because he had to—I mean, they weren’t heirlooms of his house or anything. He bought them new in the market, just for me. They’re sand-pearls.”

Starhawk studied the odd, pearl-like stones found so rarely in the wasteland stream beds. “And, if you’ll forgive me for being crass,” she said, “not cheap.”

Tazey blushed still pinker, recognizing that Starhawk understood the compliment their cost implied. The Lord of the Dunes had arrived yesterday with his retinue, and, in the ensuing twenty-four hours, Starhawk had seen Tazey undergo a transformation from an unselfconscious girl to a young lady who knows herself to be not only wanted, but desired. It was a role she was not used to, but the very novelty, at the moment, gave her a sparkle of untasted delight. Whatever else could be said about Incarsyn of Hasdrozaboth, at least he knew the proper way of dealing with a bride who had been given no choice of her groom.

The girl shook her head, took a deep breath, and met her eyes. “Warlady, listen,” she said. “I—I need to talk to you. I think I need help, but it can’t get to Father. Will you promise?”

“No,” said Starhawk calmly, and saw the girl’s tanned face fall. She looped back a trailing end of her white veils. “Your father pays me for my loyalty—I can’t promise not to tell him something I don’t know, when it might touch the safety of his realm. But I do promise I’ll give you as much as I can.”

Tazey looked relieved and nodded, understanding the distinction. Starhawk had time to think obliquely, She isn’t pregnant and she hasn’t learned some invasion
plan of Incarsyn’s . . .  before the girl said, “It’s Jeryn. He’s gone.”

“When?”

She shook her head. “This morning—maybe last night. I don’t know. You know Father had a fight with Captain Sun Wolf.”

Starhawk shrugged impatiently, “The Chief fights with everyone he works for. It’s nothing. He’ll be back.”

“Jeryn . . . ” Tazey hesitated. “Jeryn asked me the night the Chief left if he’d gone for good. He said he didn’t think so, since you were still here. And I said, I—I thought he might have gone to the old city of Wenshar.”

Starhawk’s eyes narrowed. “Why did you think that?”

The absinthe green gaze avoided hers. “It’s the sort of place he might go if—if he were interested in magic and wasn’t afraid of the stories.” Her face still averted, she hurried on, “And then this morning, I went to Jeryn’s room because—because he’d been upset yesterday. Uncle Nanciormis said something to him at his lessons yesterday—you know Uncle’s back teaching him? I think he called him a coward . . . ” She looked back at the Hawk, grief and hurt in her face at what she could neither control nor repair. “And he isn’t a coward, really he isn’t. Only . . . Anyway, his bed was empty. And I’m afraid he’s gone after the Captain.”

Starhawk considered this in silence for some moments, wondering how much of the obviously fabricated tale was based in truth. Tazey’s gaze had fallen—she was an appallingly poor liar. Her hands, long and slender like Nanciormis’ and presumably her mother’s, though they were burned brown as a cowhand’s by the sun, pleated nervously at the silk-fine folds of her skirt.

“You realize it’s far more likely he’s hiding somewhere because it’s time for his lessons? Especially if your uncle’s been calling him a coward.”

Tazey’s face flushed, and she shook her head emphatically. “I—I’ve looked in all his usual hiding places. He’s not in the Fortress. I know it.”

Starhawk forbore to ask her how she knew, knowing she would only get another evasion. She glanced out across the reg toward the crumbling black line of the Haunted
Range, hiding behind its curtain of heat dance, then back at the girl. “I’m not free until after breakfast.” By the angle of the shadows that lay across the face of the Binnig Rock, the giant granite half-dome which loomed above the jumbled shoulders of the Dragon’s Backbone where they crowded close to Tandieras knoll, that would be fairly soon. “After this long, I don’t think an hour either way will make much difference to Jeryn.” She added, “You know it can’t be just you and me.”