The Hidden Stars Page 15

  There were men rolling barrels—casks of wine, tuns of salt, kegs of oil for light and for cooking—longshoremen moving crates of oranges or baskets of figs and raisins and sugared dates; merchants in rich brocades come down to supervise the loading or unloading of their goods, peddlers singing out, fishwives wrangling and cursing. Gulls screamed overhead; parrots and peacocks screeched in their wicker cages; and a sailor played on a whalebone flute, while one of his shipmates danced a hornpipe. Beyond them all surged the restless blue waters of the bay, crowned with whitecaps.

  But there was one sight in which the Prince took no pleasure at all. On the next quay but one, a gang of dirty and emaciated prisoners, chained together in a long line with heavy iron fetters, were being herded toward a galley of thirty oars. Catching sight of one of the prisoners, a small boy of no more than eight or nine, so thin and weak that he could scarcely stand, Cuillioc felt an uncomfortable jolt of surprise. Disturbed and not a little curious, the Prince sent his guard captain to fetch the overseer.

  The slave driver arrived, bowing and scraping, darting sidelong glances. “Pardon, Great Prince,” he said with a cringe. “Had I known you’d be boarding just now, I’d never have offended your eyes with this filth from the prisons.”

  “I have seen uglier sights in the war,” Cuillioc answered shortly. The wind had changed, blowing off the land, bringing with it the stench of the city. He felt his gorge rise, as much from the brute’s servility as the reek of sewage and rotting fruit. “But how is this? The laws have grown harsh indeed if mere infants are now being sent to the galleys.”

  “‘The law is stern, but the law is just,’” the overseer quoted. He jerked his head in the direction of the prisoners. “That boy over there is a sneak thief, Lord Prince.”

  Cuillioc frowned, for this could mean almost anything. “A cutpurse?”

  “Most like. They train these young rogues to a variety of trades, as you might say: to cut purses, snatch cloaks, filch goods from the marketplace. This lad, now, he was caught where he’d no business to be, holding what he’d no business to have. Entirely wicked and unrepentant, too.”

  “He doesn’t look strong enough to pull an oar!” blurted out one of the Prince’s companions. “Poor little gutter rat.”

  “No more he does, Great Lord. They use little ’uns like him to beat the drum. That frees one of the men to take up an oar.”

  “By the look of him, he won’t last many days even at that,” said Cuillioc, with a measuring glance. “He will be shark bait inside a week.” That the boy was shiftless, dishonest, as unrepentant as the slave driver painted him, he did not doubt. He tried to convince himself that the young thief’s fate was no concern of his. And yet—and yet the thought of a child, any child, being chained belowdecks with those rough, violent men was simply intolerable.

  Cuillioc gave up the struggle with his too-tender conscience. Cruel to be kind, said the Empress, and stern but just, said the slave driver—but the Prince only knew that he was already tormented by too many nightmares, and he had no wish to make them worse. “My page is ill with a fever and can’t sail,” he said with a sigh. “This boy will take his place. You may turn him over to the Captain here, then go on boarding your other prisoners.”

  The overseer gaped, at a loss for words. Then he became flustered, stammering out a protest. “Great Prince, I haven’t the authority. It’s as much as my position is worth. And the boy—the boy was sentenced to the galleys.”

  “He will be on a galley. What becomes of him there is no concern of yours. Or do you—” Cuillioc asked, with a glinting smile in his long, green eyes “—do you question my authority to do as I wish with your prisoner?”

  To this the slave driver had no ready answer. He merely cringed, abased himself, and hurried off to loose the young thief from his chains.

  Satisfied, Cuillioc nodded, turned to his guard-captain, and instructed him to have the boy made presentable before bringing him on board, and immediately lost interest in his new acquisition.

  An hour later, in his luxurious cabin on the galley, the Prince surveyed the newly scrubbed and more or less decently clad urchin with a mixture of humor and dismay.

  “You are scarcely prepossessing, are you?” he said, with a rueful glance.

  Lamps had been lit, and the cabin was bright, if a little close and stuffy. It was plain to see that the boy had not been improved much by washing and dressing. His mouse-colored hair stuck up in tufts and cowlicks; at least half of his teeth were missing. He had eyes like two grey pebbles in a thin, pale face, and the dirt in the creases of his neck and his hands was apparently ineradicable—though the Captain had assured Cuillioc that he did his best.

  The retreating tide tugged at the galley, so that she strained at her anchor. It was a warm, windless evening, and Cuillioc heard a clatter down below as oars slipped into their locks, a murmur and a groan as slaves took their places on the benches and prepared themselves for the long hours of labor ahead. “I wonder if you have any least idea what I have saved you from?”

  The urchin muttered something unintelligible in response. He would, Cuillioc supposed, have the accent of the stews and a foul tongue besides. And thinking of his former page, left behind at the palace—a handy, well-trained, efficient lad from an excellent family—he expelled a deep sigh.

  The Prince sat down on his bed, linked his fingers together, and rested his chin on them. “I would imagine the qualities of a sneak thief are much the same as those of a spy,” he said, more to himself than to the boy. “To move silently and unobtrusively. To listen and to observe the movements of others while remaining unseen yourself. Perhaps, occasionally, to obtain by stealth letters I might wish to look at.”

  Opening a small gilded casket by his bed, Cuillioc extracted a sweetmeat: a dried apricot dipped in honey, then rolled in nutmeg and cassia. He tossed it to the boy, carelessly, as he might throw a scrap to a dog. There was a movement so swift as to be almost imperceptible—the urchin caught the sweet in midair and popped it into his mouth.

  The Prince reached into the coffer again and produced another sugarplum, which he offered this time on the palm of his hand. It disappeared even more quickly than the first.

  “I don’t expect you to be grateful, that much is certain,” he said, with a grimace. “You could hardly have studied gratitude, the life you have led until now. But I do expect you to be useful—I hope that you may be.”

  9

  The air reeked of blood and sweat and burning feathers, rang with the harsh metallic cries of wyvaerun. Sindérian did not want to wake. There was a pounding inside her skull, her head ached intolerably, and she did not want to open her eyes, but she knew that she must. When she finally forced her eyelids open, the sunset sky blurred overhead, then gradually came back into focus. She rolled over on her side, put her hands to the ground, and pushed herself into a sitting position.

  The grass around her was littered with black-feathered bodies, but the battle raged on. Faolein’s flaming staff barely glowed; it gave off puffs of dirty white smoke. The wizard’s movements were stiff and slow—he looked, Sindérian thought, as though he were fighting underwater. The guardsmen, Jago and Aell, fought on, their faces pale and streaked with sweat; it was evident that they, too, were tiring. Even Prince Ruan moved more clumsily, his lithe body less quick and agile as he avoided the strike of an iron beak. They had killed dozens of the wyvaerun between them, but they were still outnumbered. It was a question, she realized, of how long their strength would last.

  I ought to help them, Sindérian thought. If I don’t do something, we will all die. Yet a great weariness was on her, a heaviness weighed on her limbs, on her will. Halfheartedly, she scrambled to her knees, fumbled in the grass for more stones that she could throw. She picked one up, aimed, searched her mind for the same spell she had used before. Her lips moved but she could not form the words, could not even remember them—and her head ached so, she thought that perhaps she might not mind dying after all,
just to be quit of the pain.

  Then, unexpectedly, the surviving wyvaerun all rose simultaneously high into the air, and, as if in response to some unheard command, went winging off toward the south.

  In the sudden silence that followed, Sindérian’s companions gathered around her. Speaking in low, tense voices, they took stock of their situation.

  The men had sustained only minor injuries: scratched hands and faces; a deep cut over Aell’s left eye, which bled and bled as head wounds will, but did not look serious. Sindérian realized she was by far the worst. Feeling under the hair at the back of her head she found a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg, and when she tried to stand her knees buckled; the ground tilted beneath her. The dark sky was not where it should be; constellations danced, stars burst into rainbow showers around her, and a pain like red-hot iron shot down her neck to the base of her spine. Faolein threw out a bony arm to catch her and carefully lowered her to a seat on the grass.

  Sindérian put her head down on her knees, drew several long, deep breaths. I will not be sick, she told herself fiercely. Yet her stomach continued to heave, the world refused to settle into place around her. She felt sticky with sweat and as weak as a kitten. Might it be a concussion? She struggled to remember the symptoms, but it was agony even to think. If she could not help herself, how could she possibly hope to help anyone else?

  Then she felt Faolein’s hand laid gently on her shoulder. The life force surged in her veins, and a little clarity returned to her. Her father was aiding her in the best way he could. He could not work a healing spell, lacking the requisite fineness of touch, the trained mental reflexes, but he was pouring some of his own strength into Sindérian, so that she could heal herself.

  “Enough,” she whispered after a moment, when she felt his power begin to flag. Looking up, she saw that his face had gone grey with fatigue. Out of concern for her, he had given more than he ought to have spared. She removed his hand from her shoulder, took it between both of hers, held it for a moment to her lips. “I will be entirely myself in another moment or two.”

  It was a lie, and they both knew it, but he wisely withdrew. The danger might not be over; one of them had to remain as strong and alert as possible.

  She dropped her head back down on her knees and allowed herself to drift off into a waking dream.

  Finally, Sindérian felt well enough to stand. Shaking her hair out of her eyes, she gathered the long dark weight of it up in a knot on the top of her head, picked up the silken veil, which had fallen to the ground, and pinned it securely in place. Then she joined the men in the deep shadows under the trees, where they had begun to discuss what they ought to do next.

  Their faces were grim in that failing light, and the eyes of the men-at-arms wary and a little wild.

  “This was no chance attack,” Prince Ruan said, as she walked up. “That creature you saw back in Tregna, the way the wyvaerun swooped down on us without provocation. It is too much coincidence.”

  “I think you must be right,” she said unsteadily. “It was the abominable Goezenou who sent the wyvaerun. And he may not be done with us.”

  The men exchanged glances; their faces grew grimmer still. “You think that he saw you and knew you, that he guessed where we are heading?” asked the Prince.

  Sindérian shook her head and regretted it; the motion made her so wretchedly ill. “He recognized something; he recognized one of us. I don’t flatter myself it was I. What was one more healer on the battlefield to Goezenou?”

  “It is likely that I am the one the furiádh recognized,” Faolein admitted with a sigh. “It was so long ago that we met on Phaôrax, and we have both changed so much, I never thought he would see me to know me again.”

  The horses and pack mules had bolted during the attack, and had yet to return. Faolein sent out a spell to call them back, but soon realized they were still too agitated to respond. “They have run so far and in such a panic, they may not return at all,” he told his companions. “It is hard to speak to them at this distance. And impossible to calm them.”

  “We would be fools to walk back the same way we came, with our enemy, very likely, on the road following us,” said Ruan, speaking between clenched teeth. “So long as we are afoot and he and his men are mounted, the advantage will all be theirs.”

  Faolein nodded wearily. “Speaking for myself, I don’t fear Goezenou very much. But I think of those other galleys we saw, and I wonder who else came with him into Mere. To meet two or three Furiádhin in this lonely place—I must admit that I dread the outcome if that was to happen.”

  “We are five days’ march from the fortress at Saer,” said Ruan, apparently retaining a clear mental picture of Faolein’s map. “Perhaps less, if we leave the road and cut across country.”

  “That would be best in any case. On the road, we are too exposed.”

  All their food and supplies, all their bedding and extra clothes, had been lost with the horses and mules, except for some leather flasks that Jago had filled at the stream shortly before the wyvaerun attacked. Fortune, or the Fates, had been with them in that much. Otherwise, they had only those things they carried on them: armor and weapons for the Prince and his men, Faolein’s staff and the contents of his pouch, some packets of medicinal herbs that Sindérian kept in a pocket of her cloak. They had also the Prince’s heavy purse, still weighted with the High King’s gold—but much good that was likely to do them, without a town in sight. If they wished to eat, they would have to forage, and so early in the year the land would not have much to offer.

  Before they set out, they each knelt on the bank by the stream and took a long drink. There was no saying how soon or how often they would be able to refill the flasks. The country they were about to travel, the sparsely wooded hills to the northeast, was higher and drier than the marshy ground they were leaving behind.

  They abandoned the road, scrambled up a slope where the scree slipped and slid dangerously underfoot, pushed through scrubby bushes of heather and broom until they found what looked like a path. A game trail it might be, for it was very narrow and rough, winding through the trees and the waist-high brush; and once, bending low in a patch of moonlight between the trees, Sindérian spotted the hoofprints of a deer pressed into the earth.

  Faolein called up a tiny breeze to cover their tracks; he would not keep it up long, for the lledrion itself might also betray them—magic left its own trail, even if that trail was difficult to detect. “It is possible,” he said, “that Goezenou and his men will be distracted for a time following our horses.”

  “If they bother with us any further at all,” said Sindérian, putting a hand to her head, which still ached fiercely. “It is one thing to call up a flock of wyvaerun to harry us, another to turn aside from their own road—particularly if they are in any sort of hurry to go somewhere.”

  “Somewhere meaning Skyrra, seemingly,” muttered Jago, under his breath, trudging along just ahead of her. “But what if they are heading for Saer the same as we are?”

  Faolein considered that in silence for several minutes before he spoke. Glancing back over her shoulder, Sindérian saw him rake his fingers through his beard, then shake his head. “It is the next large settlement, yet I hardly think they will choose to go there. Or that they would be welcomed inside if they did. Where the loyalties of our sometime ally the Duke of Mere lie now is a matter for debate, but the same can hardly be said of his liege man Goslin of Saer. He’ll have no dealings with Ouriána or her Furiádhin. He lost his two sons and all three of his brothers in the war.

  “And Saer,” he added, “is a place they would find it difficult to enter without an invitation.”

  Letting his breeze die down, the wizard went ahead of the rest, edging past Sindérian, Jago, Aell, and the Prince, who had been in the lead before. Ruan fell back without demur, and took a place at the rear of the party, behind Sindérian.

  She tried to ignore his presence, though he walked so close behind her. He moved so lightl
y, she could not even hear his booted feet striking the hard earth, but she was keenly aware of him all the same: his bright eyes and glittering golden torc, his watchful posture, the way he kept his hand on the hilt of his sword. She was as sure of those things as if she could see him, flowing like quicksilver through the dappled moonlight.

  She pulled the black veil down over her face, lowered her head, set her jaw, and forced herself to concentrate on the uneven path before her.

  For many hours they kept on moving, plodding through that stony, slanted country—always, it seemed, uphill. At last, in the cold dark time between midnight and dawn, they came to a hollow sheltered on all sides, where Faolein thought they might safely camp for what remained of the night.

  Aell and Jago and the Prince threw themselves down on the ground. Sindérian wrapped herself up in her cloak, stretched out with a sigh on the coarse, moon-silvered grass, and was almost immediately asleep.

  Faolein made a small smokeless fire. While his companions slept, he kept watch, his staff at his side, feeding his fire with twigs and bits of bark and dried moss.

  It was a clear, starry night, and the wizard was very much aware of the immense waxing moon overhead—westering by then, but not to set for another hour. It was a weight upon the sky, upon the hills. Under its influence, the earth rumbled from time to time; only the smallest tremors for the moment, but as the moon continued to grow these would increase in power and frequency. In another day or two, when it was quite full, there might be earthquakes, this whole region was so unstable.

  Sitting cross-legged by his fire, Faolein felt himself drifting off, despite his best efforts to stay awake, and caught himself just before he slipped away. He was unutterably weary; age, it seemed, was finally catching up with him. He could remember a time, eighty years ago when he was in his prime, when he could walk all day without fatigue, when sleep was a mere distraction, and one that he could, as often as not, easily dispense with. He ached to the very bone; if he could only lay his head down, close his eyes, and rest for a moment—