As they trudged back up the dark hill they had ridden down such a short while before, Ferras Vansen could hear the heart-rending screams of his horse in the valley behind them as the Longskulls began to hack it into pieces.
Slaves or meat, he thought, feeling as hollow as a lightning burned tree. My horse is meat, but we are slaves—and still alive. At least for now.
Part Two
MUMMERS
15. The Boy in the Mirror
Zhafaris became a tyrant who did not observe the laws, and who cheated his relatives of their due, my children, and they began to whisper against him and his authority. Fiercest of all when it came to talking were the three sons of Shusayem, but in truth they were all afraid of their father.
Then Argal Thunderer said to his brothers, “I hear that in far off Xandos there is a mountain, and on that mountain lives a shepherd named Nushash, who is as strong as any man who ever lived.” And it was true, because Nushash and his brother and sister were the true and first children of Zhafaris, although they had lived long in hiding.
The wind had blown the clouds into tatters, and although what remained was enough to keep the sun dodging in and out, for once the skies were dry. All over the castle people were emerging, eager to feel something other than rain on their faces.
A dozen young women came out into the garden of the royal residence. Matt Tinwright, who had been feeling sorry for himself and searching fruitlessly for something that rhymed with “misunderstood,” stood and straightened his jerkin. His mood had suddenly improved, and not only because he could show his well-turned legs and new beard to some pretty girls: their arrival, bright and lively as a flock of migrating birds, felt like a harbinger of spring, although winter still had weeks to run. As he watched them scatter across the formal garden, some wiping the benches dry so they could sit, others forming a circle on the central lawn to toss a ball of feather-stuffed cloth, Tinwright could almost believe that things in Southmarch might again become ordinary, despite all evidence to the contrary.
He took off his soft hat and ran his fingers through his hair, wondering whether it would be more enjoyable to insert himself into the proceedings directly or wait a while, watching the play and smiling in a friendly but slightly superior manner. A moment later all thought of the ball game fled his mind.
She walked slowly, like a much older woman, and with the young maid beside her she might have been someone’s dowager aunt—especially since on this day, when everyone else had chosen to wear something with a little color in it, she was still dressed head to foot in funeral black. But there was no mistaking that pale, resolute face, the fine, slightly sharp chin, the long fingers twined in prayer beads. At least she had left off her veil today.
What would have been quite sufficient for a casual game of ball and some seemingly accidental contact with the players was no longer enough to pass muster. Tinwright paused and pulled up his stockings, brushed a few crumbs from his chest—he had been eating bread and hard cheese while contemplating the unfairness of life—then made his way down the path looking only at plants, as if too taken by the harsh beauty of the winter garden to notice the arrival of several nubile young women showing more skin around the neck and bosom than they had in months. He wound in and out among the box hedges by a path so circuitous he might have been a foraging ant, crunching along gravel paths unraked since late autumn, until at last he approached the bench where the object of his garden quest sat with her maid.
Elan M’Cory was sewing something stretched on a wooden hoop; her eyes did not lift even when he stopped and stood for long moments, waiting. At last, his courage dying quickly, he coughed a little. “Lady Elan,” he said. “I bid you good afternoon.”
She finally looked up, but with such an unseeing, uncaring gaze that he found himself wondering against all sense whether he had approached the wrong woman, whether Elan M’Cory might have a blind or idiot sister. Then something like ordinary humanity came into her eyes. An expression that was not quite a smile, but almost, tugged at her lips.
“Ah, the poet. Master...Tinwright, was it?”
She remembered him! He could almost hear trumpets, as if the royal heralds had been called out to celebrate his now unmistakable and confirmed existence. “That is right, lady. You honor me.”
Her gaze dropped to her sewing. “And are you enjoying the afternoon, Master Tinwright?”
“Much more for your presence, my lady.”
Now she looked at him again, amused but still distant. “Ah. Because I am a vision of loveliness in my spring finery? Or perhaps because of the cloud of good cheer that surrounds me like a Xandian perfume?”
He laughed, but not confidently. She had wit. He wasn’t certain how he felt about that. He didn’t generally get on very well with women of that sort. On those occasions when he received compliments he wanted to be sure he understood them and that they were sincere. Still, there was something about her that pulled at him, just like the flameloving moth he had so often cited in his poetry. So this was what it felt like! All poets should be forced to feel all the things they wrote about, Tinwright decided. It was a most novel way to understand the figures of poetry. It might change the craft entirely.
“Have I lost you, good sir? You were going to explain the subtle charm that draws you to me.”
He started, ashamed at his own foolishness, standing slack-jawed when he had been asked a question, however sardonic. “Because you are beautiful and sad, Lady Elan,” he said, uncertain whether he might not be overstepping the boundaries of propriety. He shrugged: too late—it had been said. “I wish there were something I could do to make you less so.”
“Less beautiful?” she said, lifting an eyebrow, but there was something underneath the gibing that hurt him to hear— something naked and miserable.
“My lady points out rightly that I have made a fool of myself with my clumsy talk.” He bowed. “I should go and leave you to your work.”
“I hate my work. I sew like a farm laborer. I am more of an executioner than a chirurgeon when it comes to handcraft.”
He didn’t know what that meant, but she hadn’t agreed he should go away. He felt a surge of joy but tried to hide it. “I am sure you underestimate yourself, lady.”
She stared at him for a long moment. “I only like you when you tell the truth, Tinwright. Can you do that? If not, you may continue on you way.”
What was she asking? He swallowed—discreetly, he hoped—and said, “Only the truth then, my lady.”
“Promise?”
“On Zosim, my patron.”
“Ah, the drunkard godling—and patron of criminals, too, I believe. A good enough choice, I suppose, and certainly appropriate for any conversation with me.” She turned to the young maid beside her, who had been listening to them and watching openmouthed. “Lida, you go,” she said. “Play with the other girls.”
“But, Mistress...!”
“I will be fine. I will sit right here. Master Tinwright will protect me from any danger. It is well known that poets fear nothing. Is that not right, Master Matthias?”
Tinwright smiled. “Known only to poets, perhaps, and not to this one. But I do not think your mistress will be in any danger, child.”
Lida, who was all of eight or nine years old, frowned at being called a child, but gathered her skirts and rose from the bench, a miniature of dignity. She spoiled the effect a little by sullenly scuffing her feet all the way down the path.