Winterbirth (34 page)

A more problematic figure stood close to the Taral Thane: Alem T'anarch, the ambassador of the Dornach Kingship. With his pale hair tied back from his face, and an ostentatious diamond clasp at the collar of his black cape, the ambassador was an exotic, faintly unsettling presence. Since his return, Gryvan had refused to even meet with T'anarch, despite insistent requests; uncowed, the ambassador had submitted a demand for reparations to be paid to the families of the two hundred or more Dornach hire-swords Gryvan had captured and executed during the campaign. It was an outrageous claim, and the whole dispute smelled to Mordyn like the kind of game-playing that could easily get out of hand. War with the Kingship was inevitable, if the Haig dominion was to continue spreading into the rich lands of the south, but the time was not yet right for that struggle to begin.

The gift from the Goldsmiths was the last. Horns were blown, their notes bounding back and forth in the stone-clad hall like silver in the air. The audience began to flow towards the doors, a slow river of glorious indulgence and self-satisfaction.

When Mordyn went to speak with him in the evening, Gryvan was in a fine mood. Mordyn could smell sweet wine upon his breath. The High Thane had been drinking with his sons while they trained hunting eagles in one of the long, high terrace gardens on the palace's flank. Mordyn had little time for either the Bloodheir Aewult or his younger brother Stravan. Neither matched their father's singleminded hunger for power, and that, as far as the Chancellor was concerned, made them poor inheritors of Gryvan's mantle.

Or of his own service. But the Thane of Thanes loved them well, so Mordyn kept his thoughts to himself.

There was time yet; one or other of them might some day become what was needed to keep the slow avalanche of Haig supremacy moving.

The brothers had departed to seek livelier entertainments elsewhere by the time Mordyn came walking softly across the grass to join Gryvan. The High Thane was at the edge of the terrace, staring out over his city. A group of huntsmen stood at a respectful distance, the great brown eagles massive upon their arms. Gryvan's shieldman Kale was with them. Both he and the birds watched the newcomer as he took up position at Gryvan's side. Mordyn had been in the service of this man for so long that he could read all but the subtlest of his moods without a word being exchanged, and Gryvan had few moods that would merit the description subtle. Now, the Chancellor could sense that his lord was in an exalted state.

Beneath them, thousands of houses were crammed together, making warrens of narrow streets from which there rose the murmuring of countless lives being lived. Here and there, scattered between the Moon Palace and the distant horizon of the city wall, greater buildings rose above the rooftops like islands in a dark, tumultuous sea. In the distance Mordyn could see his own Palace of Red Stone , its porphyry glowing dimly in the last of the sun, and he thought of Tara waiting somewhere in its deep embrace for him to return to her. There were other grand houses too: the Palace of the Bloodheir, where Aewult hosted revels of a kind Mordyn preferred not to attend; the marble-faced White Palace, where Abeh took her household whenever the High Thane was long out of the city; the Crafthouse of the Gemsmiths, to which a tower taller than anything in Vaymouth save the Moon Palace itself had only this last summer been added. That edifice caught Mordyn's attention for a moment longer than the rest. It was an uncomfortable reminder of his earlier musings on the rise of the Crafts. He did not allow the thought to distract him. He had other concerns to share with his Thane this evening.

'It is a sight, is it not, Mordyn?' Gryvan breathed.

'It is,' the Chancellor said softly.

'When I was a child there were fields wide enough to race horses across within Vaymouth's walls.

Orchards enough to give every child an apple a day through the season. All gone now; all become houses and workshops and markets.'

There was no nostalgia in Gryvan's tone. It was with something close to wonder that he spoke.

'We have sucked the world to us, you and I,' he said. 'Built a place that draws life to it. Was Dun Aygll ever quite such a sight, do you think?'

'No,' said Mordyn, carefully colouring his voice with reflection and thoughtfulness, 'not such as this.'

'They fell because they grew still, the Aygll Kings. They made nothing new for too long. They forgot to cow their warlords with ever greater glories.'

Hardly an accurate assessment of the Aygll dynasty's collapse, Mordyn thought. They fell because their strength was spent on the battlefields of the War of the Tainted; because the mines in Far Dyne were exhausted, and because the last King of their line who was worthy of the name was turned into a puppet on a string by the
na'kyrim
Orlane. Still, the High Thane could be allowed his drink-fuelled fantasies.

Even when drunk he usually heeded counsel wiser than that offered by wine.

'The great must never be still if they are to prosper,' Gryvan was saying. 'They must always be moving onwards. The south calls to me. Ah, it's a tempting call. Next year, or the year after, before I am too old for the testing, we must measure ourselves against the Dornach Kingship. If we could humble that nest of thieves and whoresoldiers, what a legacy to leave my son, eh?'

Mordyn could not help but think the High Thane underestimated the toll the passing years were taking upon him. The man was not recovering as quickly from the recent campaign as he once would have done. His face still had a pinched look to it, and there was a tiredness in the skin beneath his eyes that had not been there before he rode out to make war on Igryn oc Dargannan-Haig. A campaign against Dornach would be an altogether more demanding endeavour.

'Indeed,' the Shadowhand said, 'though Dargannan must first be secured for such an undertaking to succeed.'

Gryvan tore his gaze away from the great vista before them. He regarded his Chancellor with a wry smile.

'Ever the practical man,' he said.

'I share the vision,' Mordyn said and thought, You had not the half of it before you opened your ears to me. 'But still, the glories of two years hence are founded upon what we do tomorrow, and next week and next month.'

Gryvan clapped him on the shoulder and laughed. 'I know, I know. You remind me often enough that I shall not forget it. And we shall pick Igryn's successor soon, though I am tempted to leave his bloodthirsty brood to tear at one another for a while longer. No great harm can come of it, so long as the thousand men I left there remain.'

Mordyn nodded, and judged that the moment was right to share the small concern that had been nagging at him over the last couple of days.

'Appealing though the southern prospect is, I fear we must give some thought to events in the north, my lord.'

The High Thane was not so drunk that he did not raise an eyebrow at that, and fix Mordyn with a steely gaze.

'I thought we were on safe ground there, Mordyn. We agreed before I went south that anything that happened in the Glas valley would matter little in the long run.'

'Of course,' said Mordyn with an ease he was no longer sure he truly felt. 'Gyre has as much wish to see the Horin Blood spending its strength as we have to see Lannis being drained of its. Ragnor oc Gyre will not come to Horin-Gyre's aid.'

The Chancellor still believed it to be true. He, and therefore the High Thane, had always known there might be an attempt upon the Glas valley once they had summoned Croesan's best warriors away, but Mordyn was certain Ragnor oc Gyre lacked the will to put his full strength behind it. He had a few precious eyes and ears buried amongst the Bloods of the Black Road and knew something of how things stood there. More importantly, he had the words of the Gyre Thane himself. It would likely trigger instant revolt in the lands ruled by both men if it were known that Gryvan and Ragnor had exchanged messages in the last few years, especially if the content were revealed. No promises had been given, no explicit guarantees, but the outline of an understanding had been sketched: Gryvan would not threaten the strongholds of the Black Road so long as Ragnor extended the same courtesy to the True Bloods. If some of the lesser Bloods — Lannis and Horin the obvious, unstated examples - came to blows, neither High Thane would permit the situation to escalate into full-scale war and neither would permit their peoples to claim any new lands. Unrestrained conflict was in nobody's best interests. So long as that held true, no great damage could be done by the latest disturbances, save to Lannis pride.

Only in the last few days had a sliver of doubt intruded upon Mordyn's confidence. There had been no word at all from Behomun Tole in Anduran, and the last message from Lagair, the Steward in Kolkyre, reported rumours that the Lannis-Haig capital itself was besieged. The Chancellor was not accustomed to being surprised; that news had startled him. How a Horin-Gyre army could be encamped around Anduran so quickly, given the strength of the defences upon Lannis-Haig's northern borders, was a mystery. The most worrying possibility - that the Bloods of the Black Road were, after all, united in the assault and had simply overrun Tanwrye with an immense army - was one the Chancellor would not admit to Gryvan, but which demanded some precautionary measures. If it was indeed the case, Ragnor oc Gyre had lost his reason. He must know that sooner or later the Haig Bloods would destroy even the greatest army the Black Road could keep in the field south of the Stone Vale.

'So, if you do not fear Ragnor has played us for fools, what is your concern?' the High Thane asked him.

'I can only admit that it seems the Horin-Gyre forces have moved more swiftly than I - than any of us - thought likely,' Mordyn said with as much humility as he could muster. 'It is no great worry. We still have time enough to deal with them. No, it is Kilkry-Haig that occupies my thoughts.' There was truth enough in this line of argument, Mordyn believed, to convince Gryvan.

'There must be some doubt about how long even the leash of your command will keep Lheanor from the field. We do not want him gaining some glorious victory on his own. Anyway, should he be drawn in before our strength is mustered, this could become a more protracted affair than it need be. The outcome would be the same, of course, but there would be more... waste.'

'Waste,' repeated the High Thane. 'And you do hate waste, don't you, Mordyn? Well, you would not raise the matter if you had no answer to it, so let me hear it.'

'We remind Lheanor that he is to await the arrival of the armies of the other Bloods before taking the field, my lord. And perhaps hurry along a few men to reassure him that we are making haste. A few hundred should suffice.'

Gryvan nodded. 'Easily enough done,' he said.

'And perhaps,' Mordyn went on, 'lend a little more urgency to our assembly of the main force? If Anduran is indeed already besieged, there is little to be gained from further delay. The sight of the Black Road hammering at his own door will have given Croesan pause for thought. If he has not realised by now that his best interests lie in maintaining your good favour, he never will.'

Gryvan turned and looked out once more over Vaymouth. Night was coming on quickly and the city was falling away into shadow. All across the sprawling capital of the Haig Blood pin-pricks of light were sparking as the citizens lit torches, candles and lanterns. The High Thane yawned and rubbed his face.

'Do it, then,' he said. 'We can use some of the men I brought back from Dargannan-Haig; they've not dispersed yet. The great must keep moving onwards, but we might hope for a little more time to rest between our triumphs.'

Gryvan laughed at his own words, and Mordyn, satisfied with his evening's work, joined in.

The Chancellor rode back towards his palace flanked by grandly attired guards and preceded by a pair of torchbearers who cleared a path through the thronged streets. Parts of Vaymouth seemed more convincingly alive during the hours of darkness than in the day. There had been a fashion for night markets this last summer, and even though the lazy warmth had gone from the evenings, a few still operated.

The seething crowds parted, in the main without protest, at the approach of the Chancellor's party. Even those who did not recognise him could tell from his escort and dress that he was a man of importance. It was a giddy height for the son of a timber trader to rise to, but then Mordyn Jerain had never been quite like other merchants' sons. As a young boy in Tal Dyre, when Vaymouth was just the name of one more foreign city, he had not been popular with his peers. He imagined he must have been an arrogant child: cleverer than most, more instinctively aware of his own potential even at that tender age. He could not really remember. His childhood often seemed to have been lived by some other person, linked to the man he was now by only the most tenuous of threads. He learned the arts of manipulation as a defence, and they came naturally to him. By the time he left the island at the age of fourteen, he had more allies than enemies amongst the other children, and those who spoke against him would quickly be on the receiving end of a beating.

He liked to think that as soon as he saw Vaymouth he knew he would never return to Tal Dyre. The merchant isle was still a match for Vaymouth, in wealth at least, in those days, but the capital of the Haig Bloods was so vast and crudely vibrant that it was intoxicating to the ambitious young Mordyn. While his father laboured to build a business, Mordyn had set about educating himself in the ways of the city. It probably broke his father's heart when Mordyn abandoned his Tal Dyreen roots and took service at the Haig court as a lowly official. Probably, but the Chancellor could not be sure, for he had never seen any of his family again. They had left the city and returned to Tal Dyre many years ago. His Tal Dyreen contacts knew better than to trouble him with any news of them.

The Palace of Red Stone was filled with the scent of honeyed cloves. They had been set on lattices above the braziers. It was an indulgence of his beloved wife that the Chancellor could not refuse. A slight breeze toyed with the silken drapes that hung across the bedchamber's windows. Mordyn could hear the metal-shod tread of one of his guards on the terrace outside. The sound was so familiar he barely registered it, and it did not distract him from his task. With precisely weighted fingers, he worked balm oil into Tara's naked shoulders. The sensation of her slick, pliable skin beneath his touch worked an almost hypnotic effect upon him. He inhaled deeply, savouring the rich mixture of smells: the cloves, the oil, her.